Dhru Purohit Show - The 7 Anti-Aging Spices You Need To Eat! - Heal The Body & Stop Inflammation with Deanna Minich

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers, Momentous, and Air Doctor.  We know that spices have healing properties, but we are now learning that they can help us live longer and fight disease. Today’s guest, nutrition researcher Dr. Deanna Minich is giving us a master class on spices.   Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Dr. Minich to discuss the power of spices. Dr. Minich shares the science behind how spices can reduce the development of advanced glycation end (AGEs) products in our cooked food. She also reveals the top spices to incorporate into our cooking, powerful synergistic combinations, and explains the spice rainbow. Whether you are just starting your cooking journey or looking to expand your spice palate, this episode is for you!  Dr. Deanna Minich is a nutrition researcher, educator, and functional medicine-trained clinician with a unique approach to nutrition that combines physiology and psychology. She has served on the Institute of Functional Medicine’s Nutrition Advisory Board and curriculum committee and is a faculty member teaching nutrition for the Advanced Practice Module for Environmental Health. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the American Nutrition Association and is President of the American College of Nutrition.   In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Minich dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Preventing AGE’s (00:0016 / 00:0016)  The power of spices in meat preparation (1:04 / 1:04) Five spices that should be incorporated into your diet immediately (4:20 / 4:20) How spices can prevent AGEs and their role in the gut microbiome (6:20 / 6:20) The benefits of the spice rainbow (15:00 / 11:30) Incorporating spices into your food and the sensitivities they can cause (18:00 / 14:30) The most researched spices and their anti-inflammatory effects (22:00 / 18:45) What to look for when purchasing spices and where to store your spices (47:00 / 42:25) The healing power of ginger (59:00 / 54:00)  Garlic for cardiovascular health (1:05:00 / 59:20) The quality and types of cinnamon for blood sugar control (1:17:00 / 1:11:11) Synergistic combinations (1:26:00 / 1:20:00)  Spices to assist with blood pressure regulation (1:28:00 / 1:22:10) The salt inquiry: the sources, microbiome, and minerals (1:32:00 / 1:27:40) Dr. Minich’s passion for eating for diversity and eating the rainbow (1:37:00 / 1:31:00) Also mentioned in this episode: Link to Dr. Minich's Slides A Guide to the Rainbow of Spices  Himalayan Crystal Salt Try This-This Supplement Reduces Soft Plaque in the Heart To learn more about Dr. Minich, follow her on Instagram, Twitter, or her website.  This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers, Momentous, and Air Doctor.  Go to bioptimizers.com/dhru now and enter promo code DHRU10 to get 10% off any order and up to 2 travel-size bottles of Magnesium Breakthrough for a limited time. Optimize your Omega-3 levels by choosing a quality fish oil made by and used by the best. Go to livemomentous.com and enter promo code DHRU to get 20% off any order.  AirDoctor is offering my community $300 off. Just go to dhrupurohit.com/filter/ to clean up your home’s air and feel better today.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dana Minnick, today you're giving a master class on the healing properties of spices, including your top seven that everyone should have in their kitchen. We're going to get into that in a second. But before we go there, you have a mind-blowing fact that you want to share about spices and longevity, and it's around something called ages. Can you talk about that? Sure. most of the foods that we're cooking, especially under dry, hot heat, forms these damaging inflammatory

compounds. And in fact, it's been shown that those compounds, which are called ages, advanced glycation and products, and even the acronym is age. So these things age you. Studies are showing that spices can help to overturn those advanced glycation and products, that formation in foods when we're cooking them. That's mind-blowing. So we're cooking at home. And if we're not using spices, and you're going to talk about some of the top ones and the ones that have the most research around them, if we're not using regularly using spices in our cooking, you have whatever you're cooking. And in particular, if you cook meat, meat is something that can develop a lot of ages, these end products, and you get exposure to these sort of toxins in your body. Is that accurate the way you're

explaining? That's right. That's right. So heat catalyzes that reaction. So if you have a food with carbohydrate, and that food also has things like amino acids from the protein or fatty acids from the fat, in the presence of the heat, these things can come together and complex. That is what is called the advanced glycation end product. In the body, those damaged compounds go into the cell and basically upregulate inflammation. So spices block that connection between the carbohydrate and the fat and the protein. They prevent that complex from forming. That's wild because, you know, when I look at it from the outside,

and we're going to talk about which spices actually might help with this specifically before we get to your top seven, you know, most recommended spices. And we're going to go further from there in your master class that you've presented. And by the way, also, if you're listening, you can check out the slides in the show notes. If you're watching on YouTube, we have a bunch of slides. to share. When I look at your statement, I think about, man, you know, in modern times, in most modern civilizations, we used a lot of spices, the tradition that I come from, you know, there was a lot of spices that were being used in cooking. I wonder if there was something these

communities and civilizations knew about the healing power of spices when it came to protecting the body, even if they didn't fully understand the science. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I think spices can be used for so many reasons, right? I mean, yes, perhaps there was something that we just intuitive about our food in the cooking process with the advent of fire and cooking food that we needed to bring in certain plants in order to protect us from that cooking process. I also think, Drew, though, I mean, spices just make food taste good. They just taste good. Come on. I mean, you're the guy from India talking with me about spices. I mean, you know, one of the things about ages, too, that I want to mention is in functional

medicine, we talk a lot about how inflammation is the foundation for so many chronic diseases. It's the foundation for accelerating the aging process. Another interesting tidbit about these advanced glycation end products is that they may be implicated in food allergy. So your question about, like if we just go back in time, you know, did spices evolve, like the whole spice trade, because why were they so desirable? Yeah, they were precious in terms of being medicine and healing and good for foods, and they smelled good, they tasted good. tasted good. But I'm wondering if our use of spices now in modern day, if we need to ramp it up and amp it up, because we are seeing increased food allergy, we are seeing increased

inflammatory states. So I'm thinking, you know, back to what you're saying, if we look at history, when spices were traded and they were seen as like gents, they were desirable. People would go and trade amongst different countries for these spices. I mean, wars were started. Wars were started. Civilizations were conquered to control spices. So on this topic of ages, tell us a few. I think you had three in particular that have some evidence around protecting our body from these ages, these advanced glycation end products.

We don't want a lot of them. We're always going to get some exposure to them through the cooking process, but we don't want an abundance of them. So tell us three spices that could potentially help protect our body from them. I'm actually going to give you five. Okay, great. Perfect. So there was a study, and this is on slide 37, where I actually detail this study.

And there are a number of studies on this. So I'm just giving you one, and it's one of the most recent studies. In this study, they looked at 14 different spices to look at whether or not they helped to inhibit ages. And what they found was that there were basically these five. They had star anise, cinnamon, all spice, cloves, and oregano. Now, some of these spices have actually been shown in other studies to be good for preventing ages. The one that was new, though, was star anus.

Some people like to say star anise or, you know, you can say these spices in a variety of different ways. But actually, star anus was the top. So it helped to prevent these ages from forming by 88%. Then if you look at some of the other ones, cinnamon, 85%, all spice, 81%, and clothes 79%. 79%. Oregino was good for preventing a certain kind of age and forming, one that corresponded to more sugar like glucose. So it's kind of interesting to see these top five. So this is, again, very new research. If we look at the study, you know, it's newer research. There are other studies looking at where you take a spice blend, you put that in hamburger

meat before you cook, then you subject it to the heat, and you start to see this reduction in ages. a number of other compounds that form. What is special about spices that they're able to do this when it comes to specifically reducing the impact potentially of these glycation end products? You know, I don't know if we know that for sure, but I'm going to postulate what I think it is. Please. Because I think you and I are thinking the same thing right now.

It might be the presence of these polyphenols. Polyphenols are a very specific category of phytochemicals. So they're actually the largest category of phytochemicals. About 8,000 different polyphenols are known to exist. And spices are very concentrated in polyphenols. In fact, if you took a fresh herb and compared it against a dry spice, you would find that there are many more times in the way of polyphenols in the dried spice because it's so concentrated.

So I think that the polyphenols are probably blocking that inflammatory reaction. But in terms of the exact mechanism, I don't know if we know that exactly. It could also be just a general antioxidant effect looking at reducing oxidative stress. So I think that the polyphenols might be the secret sauce here, but it'd be nice to have some science to back that up. Yeah, it's a good theory. And it builds on top of this idea that spices in general are one of the ways to get diversity in the diet, which you're a huge fan of.

We're going to be talking about eating the rainbow and how important it is. You've heard other people talk about it before, but really you're one of the biggest champions of this. And even more so, it's a way to get these polyphenols, separate even from ages specifically, polyphenols have all sorts of positive benefits they bring to the body. So expand it a little bit further, starting off with like even the gut microbiome. Well, the gut microorganisms love to feed on polyphenols. And so 90 to 95% of these polyphenols don't get absorbed.

They actually hang around in the gut. They make their way into the colonic bacteria start to metabolize those polyphenols. And the end result of those metabolites, sometimes they get absorbed and they start to have that gut brain connection and they start to have their neural protective type of properties. So we see far-reaching effects of these polyphenols,

even if they're in the gut and not being absorbed systemically. There are very simple polyphenols, like we might find in a cup of coffee or in a cup of tea, and there are more complex polyphenols that we might find in something like pomegranate or walnuts or even some of these spices. So I think that, you know, the polyphenols are one category, but as we would see with turmeric,

with turmeric, what we actually see is we have curcuminoids, which could play very nicely with polyphenols. And we know that those curcuminoids don't tend to be absorbed, just like the polyphenols. So I think you're right, Drew. A lot of these effects are actually experienced at the level of the gut, and not everything that we take in needs to be absorbed to have an effect. Sometimes it's the metabolism of what we take in, like these spices, that can ultimately be signaling throughout the body.

Would you say that we are, you know, nationally, in America, but we also have a lot of people that live internationally. Because of the exporting of the Western processed diet, we are truly at like a polyphenol deficiency. It's kind of a time and an opportunity, which one of the things you're trying to do on the podcast today is sort of sound the alarm that our diversity in our diet is getting less and less every year. Is that a fair statement? It is a fair statement. In fact, there's been a study looking at people following a polyphenol diet, and they see differences in their gut microbiome. So they see lower bifidobacteria, and bifidobacteria are associated with things like immune health, mental health, just establishing a

better gut milieu. So I think that what we're seeing is that because of this lack of diversity and feeding at this gut terrain level, all of these microorganisms with things like spices, which would be heavy hitters in the way of these polyphenols, that we're starting to see, changes in the gut microbiome. So we can help to undo. It's not like you can undo a bad diet or, you know, a highly, well, very processed, ultra-processed diet, although some of the studies would suggest that by adding in even small amounts of spices, that you can help to reestablish the gut microbiome in as little as two days. So there can be very acute effects of spices on the gut microbiome. Awesome. Well, you have a whole list. And I want to give a little

bit of a preview while we're at the beginning of this podcast. And we're going to break all this down. You're going to talk about how to buy the best spices, what you should be paying attention to, some of your top favorites that are there. You know, should you be worried all about toxins or sourcing or other things? But first, let's talk about the top seven spices that you've highlighted here that have a large amount of literature around them. And people should be excited about wanting to use them on a regular basis. A couple of them you mentioned, but I'll hand it over to you to take us through these seven. Yeah. And Drew, like you mentioned, I love talking about eating the rainbow. I also think that there's a spice rainbow. And within that rainbow, I gave some thought to each of these

colors. And of course, there could be some, you know, some spectrum variety within each one. But I'm going to go with my favorites. So let me just give you them quickly. And then we can go into each one. So for the red, I think of chilies, chili powder. I think of cay and pepper, paprika. For the orange, everybody's darling, I would say, is turmeric. Right? We know that turmeric powder comprises curry. And in fact, it's been thought that this is one of the reasons why in East India

that we don't see a lot of, just in general, a lot of chronic diseases, although that is changing throughout all of India. Yellow, I think of ginger. Ginger to me is like the queen of spices. oregano is my choice for green. I could have picked so many, like thyme, dill, parsley, cilantro, is a favorite of many Americans, actually. But I would say oregano.

For brown, cinnamon. Cinnamon is widely used internationally. So cinnamon has a lot of great benefits that we're going to talk about. The number one spice that I'm including in the rainbow here that is currently consumed by most people is black pepper. So black pepper, I'm including black and we're going to even do white as part of this rainbow. So black pepper is for the black. And then white, I want to bring in kind of an outlier, kind of a cousin to spices, which is salt.

And perhaps you can have a whole podcast on salt because there's so much that's being unearthed. I know that you're very much into hydration. Hydration ties right into high quality salt. So that would be my rainbow of the red all the way to the, through the colors and then into brown, black, and white. So let's go back to red. I think you mentioned chili, paprika, some of these items. Yeah.

So we'll sort off with the practical. One of the things that I've noticed that, you know, a lot of people, if you didn't have somebody in your home that really sort of took you under their wing, your mom, your dad, a grandmother, and kind of really taught you how to experiment, people get very nervous around spices. They're like, I don't know how to use them. I don't know what recipe. And I think kind of like the goal of today's podcast is also to encourage experimentation, right?

Experimentation and it doesn't have to be that you have this perfect recipe. So on a small level, some of these red spices you highlighted before we get into some of the literature around them, what are some simple ways that you look to incorporate them in your day? Let's talk about like chili or paprika. Well, first of all, they have to be close by. They have to be in your kitchen. So people need to get them, buy them, keep them in close proximity to their cooking process.

When it comes to chili pepper and paprika and a lot of these red spices, I also want to just have a disclaimer that not everybody can tolerate every spice. And in particular, the red spice can be spicy. Some of these peppers are actually a little bit mild or sweet, so there's a whole spectrum within chilies. So what I would say here is here's where I think

about different ethnicities and their types of cuisine. Like I would think about Mexican food, Thai food, sprinkling in a little bit of chili powder to give a little bit of an amplification to a dish. And that could even be something like an egg scramble. It could be even be in a soup or it could be in meats. So I do think that bringing in the chili powder is nice. It could even be sprinkled even on avocado toast. This is another great conduit of how to get spices in. So chili pepper in general, I think is good for heightening the flavor profile of a food. But again, not everybody can tolerate it and can get to be very warming for certain people. Yeah, I can't handle a lot of chili, which is crazy because I'm Indian.

I always tell people I'm a fake Indian because I don't handle hot food. It's a little bit of a joke. But paprika I generally do really well with, right? Night shades. A lot of night shades in my diet I actually don't do well with. I get a lot of redness in my skin. if I'm having a lot of bell pepper capsicum for those that are international. But paprika, which is the dried powder of pepper, right?

Bell pepper in particular is the biggest ingredient as part of that. I do well with it. And one of my favorite things is I'll make like a chicken sausage stir fry scramble in the morning, like with chicken sausage, a ton of bok choy, maybe some other like the cognac noodles that are there. And I'll throw in a little bit of paprika and some sea salt just to kind of elevate the flavor a little bit. And it tastes fantastic.

So what is some of the research around any of the category of the red spices that you highlighted? In general, it's kind of interesting because for some people, they're inflammatory. They cause, like you said, you can get kind of like that upset in the gut or, you know, you might get skin changes. It can cause inflammation. Right, like you have GERD? If you have GERD or even if you already mention it, but the nightshade family.

So if you do have sensitivity and what I have found clinically is that 10 to 15% of people, including myself, have some degree of nightshade sensitivity. Sometimes that's captured as joint pain or skin changes, gut changes. So the double-edged sword here is that the Chili's may help with inflammation. So they can actually help with things like pain relief. And so you're going to find them typically in formulas that are dealing with inflammation and with pain. So they can, sometimes you'll find them in creams. So creams that are applied topically for helping with joint pain.

So it's kind of ironic, isn't it, that for some people, and this is why I think personalization of food and even spices is so essential here. Because we're going to talk about oxalates and other things that can be in spices that people might be actually sensitive to. But in general, if we look at inflammation, I think of the red of inflammation. I think of the red of chili peppers. And there's some good data to suggest that chilies are really good for helping with reducing cardiometabolic syndrome. If we look at countries that have a lot of chili or certain of these spices, you know, and then we start to plot against certain conditions, what we can tend to see is that looking

at cardiovascular disease, risk might be lower. So again, we have to temper that with our love, our body's love of capsaicin. But in general, chili can be good for inflammation. That's awesome. You know, stepping out of the rainbow for a second, you know, when we were originally talking about doing this podcast, I was asking you, what spices have the strongest evidence base around them, right, in the totality of everything that's there, right? So that people who are trying to think about, you know, just like we don't want people

eating one food for their entire life. We want them eating a plethora of food because that diversity is important. We want diversity when it comes to spices, but which are going to be the ones that, if we incorporate them, are going to have the biggest bang for the buck, right? I know that's my question, and I know a lot of our audience is thinking the same thing. So are there one, two, or three that immediately come to the surface for you when people ask you that question? Well, I think of the Mediterranean diet, which is the most well-studied diet on the planet.

And if you look at the Mediterranean, and there's actually a beautiful article that we could go to a slide to just to kind of show everybody. So if we go to slide 10, what we see here is ancestral plant diversity reflected through spices. And if you look at the Mediterranean diet, if you're asking me, like, what are your go-toes? What are the most well-used, well-studied? Many of those Mediterranean diet spices, and they encompass a lot of the greens. So we look at things like fennel and Dill, Fenugreek, chives, even the chilies there, but also the garlic, onion powder. So the Allium family would be there. And you can see that even the prevalence of cardiovascular disease is lower in the Mediterranean

diet. And we could say, well, is that because of the spices? Is that because of the diet? Is it because of the lifestyle? And I would say the answer is yes, yes, yes. But the spices often go, I would say, undervalued and just neglected overall. So I think that if you were just to say, Deanna, what are the most well-studied spices? And I want the biggest bang for my buck.

I'm actually going to tell you it's turmeric. Turmeric. Yes. Let's talk about it. Yeah, let's talk about it. So that it does fit. You have some turmeric here, by the way. Yeah, I do.

Just in case somebody's been living under a rock and hasn't seen turmeric in a while, right? So this is turmeric. Tumoric is a root. And, you know, the thing with turmeric is that so I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you know, I, I, you know, I get all these interesting questions about, you know, it can come as a dietary supplement. Should you take the skin off? Should you have it as the root? Should you have it as the whole food in the smoothie?

I would say to diversify even how you use turmeric. Use it as the root as the whole food form. And I like it with the skin on so that I'm getting those additional phytochemicals and fiber. And I also like it as a spice. It's pretty concentrated in the curcuminoid family. It is the, I would say, the most well-studied spice. I don't know why that is. It doesn't mean that the others are insignificant,

but I think because there's been interest in looking at cultures that live the longest, and India has definitely held that longevity status for some time. So I think that there was speculation, is it because of the turmeric? And you're going to find turmeric in curry powder. And what's really interesting because I love diversity and bringing in the blends, which are oftentimes complementary in their activity. Curry powder tends to have about five different spices. But I have found one at the store.

I actually read the label because I want the most amount in my curry powder. So I have found one with turmeric, of course, but then 11 total spices in my curry powder. So I like that because I think turmeric plays well with other spices, especially black pepper. I mean, there is kind of like this brother-sister relationship between those two. One is helping the other. So the black pepper just a little bit. And the ratio between black pepper to turmeric is like 20 milligrams of black pepper as that powder and about 2,000 milligrams of turmeric powder.

So then you enhance bioavailability. And we can talk later about how that happens. But essentially, turmeric and black pepper work well together. So when you're using turmeric, there's a hack. The hack is the black pepper, which contains piperine, which slows the metabolism of turmeric in the body. The other hack is bringing in oil. And you would know this from Indian cooking of, you know, first having turmeric and a lot of

the spices that are introduced early on in the meal with oil. So, right, you get kind of this toasting or this, I would call it more of like a flavor enhancement effect. Because, you know, people ask, you know, when do you add turmeric? When do you add spices? And I would say every stretch of the way, especially to help with those advanced glycation end products. Most importantly, is to bring turmeric, especially into things like hamburger meat before it has been cooked. So that is most important is before you actually apply the heat to make sure that you've got those spices in your meal. And for some of them, toasting can bring out the aromatic properties and just even smelling spices. is actually going to help our digestion because we're going to start to salivate. We're going to start to release those digestive secretions. So just even smelling the spices in the cooking process is going to be helpful. You know, two thoughts that I had to that.

Number one, on this topic of spices is that when you get to a place where what you're making at home tastes better than what you could get from the outside, even if you're not like an incredible chef, and I'm definitely not. but there are times where I just crave my own food. And I would think about my dad growing up and my mom was, you know, a good cook. And she would make food. And I would say to my dad, especially as our sort of, you know, he started to do better in his career. And we had more resources as a family.

And so that might mean that, oh, okay, you can eat out a little bit more often. My dad would always say, no, like I crave the food at home because it's like I'm so, in a positive way, I'm so addicted to the food that we have at home. flavor, the way that it tastes, the way it makes me feel. And I feel like I've had that now as an adult, and I think a big part of that is that I know how to make even simple food taste good to me at home. And spices is a big part of that. Spices isn't the only part of that, but it's a big part of that. And if you can step into that space using the power of spices, you'll be in a position where not only will you save money because you're not eating out

all the time, but you're going to generally eat healthier. You know, the vast majority of sodium in a negative context that might be related to hypertension that people are getting, it's coming from eating ultra-process foods, packaged foods from the outside, things like bread rolls and other stuff, and also going to restaurants where they're adding so much salt to a dish that you would never add that much at home. You just need a little bit of a pinch and we'll be talking about salt in a minute. So I think that that's the power of spices. is you figure out how to use them in a way that makes sense to you. That doesn't mean you have to be a world-class chef.

I'm definitely proof of that. You become addicted to the food that you make at home. The second thing is turmeric. I love that you kind of kicked it off with turmeric. My earliest memory, again, this is sort of home remedies that were there. But even I have a lot of medical doctors in my family, and they would use these home remedies. The second that a child started to feel like a little bit of a scratchy throat,

or they felt like they were coming down with something. You didn't exactly know what it was. One of the parents, or if it was your mom or dad, they would take like a teaspoon of turmeric. They would put it into a cup, put in a little bit of warm water, and then take another teaspoon of like honey, right? And they'd whip it together and they'd give it to you, right? You'd always fight as a kid for more honey because you wanted to taste sweeter.

Right. And that was one of the home remedies that we had for helping with a sore, throat. And that's my earliest memory of turmeric way before it was known as a super spice. Well, that it would be a double whammy right there, like an immune enhancing combination, having turmeric with honey, because honey has so many different immune active agents. And turmeric is so anti-inflammatory. And, you know, it's been proposed that it has like something like 50 different healing actions in the body. So that makes sense that your family would be doing man, actually. There was another, it wasn't a study, but it was a paper that I saw that was talking about

the effects of turmeric related to potentially, again, potentially cognitive decline. And one of the things that they were noticing, going back to India, I didn't know so much about the longevity side of it, but the cognitive decline, they were suspecting that spices could be one of these neuroprotective components and that when generally you had people who were in more rural areas, who were used to eating more traditional cooking, which obviously probably meant less processed food and less ultra-processed food. When they were in these rural areas using things like turmeric as being one of their biggest spices, and then they moved into cities, the rates of cognitive decline were completely different, right? Obviously, you're in the rural areas, you're maybe a farmer, you're not sedentary,

you're working all day, you're out in the fields. It's a tough life, but you're active, you're probably leaner. And again, you're staying away from ultra-process foods, but maybe too could be playing apart in the cognitive decline. Oh, there's a lack of cognitive decline. There's definitely literature on that, looking at rates of dementia, looking at India, and looking at that association between curry powder consumption or even turmeric and those rates. And it makes sense because essentially what we're doing is, again, reducing a lot of inflammatory

cytokines that would be implicated in neuroinflammation. So I would say if you want to protect your brain to be taking in turmeric. to take in turmeric powder with some regularity. Now, the thing with turmeric powder that I do want to caution people with, because now we're making it sound like, wow, it's this wonder, almost like a medicinal spice, but it's almost sounding like too good to be true. And there are some things that we need to be aware of. So with turmeric, and with a number of these different spices, because they can be very potent,

even in small amounts. So when we're talking amounts, let's just delve into that for a second. In India, the amounts of spice use ranges between like seven and a half to 10 grams a day. For most people, the benefits could be reached between one and six grams. Now, that seems like a small amount. That's about a teaspoon of a spice spread out throughout a day. That doesn't seem like a lot. But because they're very impactful, they can actually change up how we metabolize medications.

So if people are on things that would change their blood clotting or their blood pressure, they may actually start to need less of those medications. So they need to be aware if they start to just get just all enamored with spices after this podcast just to kind of dive right in and start trying these things out in the kitchen, that there needs to be some up-leveling in terms of, you know, smaller amounts you use, especially if you do have a lot of these medications at your time. The other thing with turmeric that I want to mention by way of this is that it can tend to be high in oxalates.

So even at that teaspoon level, there can be certain amounts of types of oxalates, the more soluble oxalates that could get into the body. So for people with things like greater risk of renal stones or kidney issues or just, there are some people who are hyper-oxalate absorbers and they're hyper-stone formers. It's just something to think about. I'm not saying that we need to not. I feel like I'm taking your beautiful message and now saying, like, yes, but because these spices are powerful, we just have to look at all sides of them.

Well, we don't need to go to the extreme, which is you'll see sometimes people adding a tablespoon of these spices to multiple spices to a superfood smoothie. And if you're talking about oxalates, which can inhibit the absorption of calcium is one of the things that they do, but they can also form into these crystals, which then can contribute to kidney stones in some instances. You have people sometimes making these superfood smoothies that are like an oxalate bomb, right? You have almond milk every single day, a ton of cacao, right? Cale. Putting a ton of kale, sometimes even like things like dandelion greens, which have like the highest amount of oxalates. So it's not to make anybody afraid, but really to go back to this central message,

this is about regularly using a potent enough amount of spices in your cooking. And if you're just regularly using that, if you're using at spices at every meal that you cook at home, just a little bit here and there, you're going to end up getting a lot of the benefits that are there. You don't need to megadose these spices to get the benefits. Is that correct? That is. Correct. And again, if we just go back to thinking in our mind's eye of a teaspoon, what does a teaspoon look like? You know, it's not a lot. It's about four to five grams. So just a little bit. And this is why I like spice blends. You know, you can make your own spice blends at home where you take turmeric and you put it together with ginger or maybe some black pepper. So you don't have this high concentration of turmeric, but you're actually potentating the turmeric by including some of those other spices. There's a very famous grocery store here in L.A. It's called Air One. You've been to it? Yeah. It's known as being one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive grocery stores in America. It's kind of a little bit of a joke. People can see it on social media, but the place is amazing.

One of my favorite things to get from there that I just love to have in the fridge because they use very high quality ingredients is a buffalo chili. So I'll always have, and I stole this from a friend of mine named Mark Mayhew House, who is a owns a bunch of restaurants here, including the tasting kitchen, one of my favorite restaurants. And he was like, the buffalo chili there is amazing. And so what I've found is that I might have certain stores that are known for making, you know, sure, they made the food themselves, but it's a higher quality. It's grass fed. It's this. They put a ton of different spices. But this morning, I had chili for breakfast before I went to the gym. And I just took a little bit of turmeric and I'd put a couple dashes inside just to liven it up because I've gotten the spice bug from following all your content.

And also, like, I barely taste it, right? Tumric is more potent than other spices, so you definitely taste it, but I think I'm used to it. So even if you're buying things that are store-bought and you want to enhance them a little bit, you can add some spices to it as another way to get this diversity and exposure. Absolutely. And for most people, if they're taking a turmeric supplement, many times that is seen as curcumin. So they may not even put it together that curcumin is actually one of the compounds within turmeric. And that is the one I would say that is most well studied.

So if you went from turmeric to something else, right, second place in terms of most well studied or something that you feel excited about when you look at the literature that's available, is there a second runner-up that comes to mind? There is. And I am looking at, oh, by the way, here's the curry powder that I was speaking to. Yeah, what does it have inside of it? It's got 11 different spices. So it has, and all of these are organic spices. So maybe we talk about the quality, too. Coriander, turmeric, mustard, cumin, fenugreek, paprika, cayenne, cardam, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. This would actually be a really good one for cooking and reducing advanced glycation and products. And that's because of the cloves. Claves actually has the highest antioxidant

potential out of many spices that have been tested. And where do people go for pain relief, especially of like a dental pain issue, a tooth issue? Many times it's clove oil. Now, the oil fraction of spices is a little bit different and much more potent, so we need to be conscientious of that. But I really like how this particular curry powder, right, you know, 11 different spices. And in many cases, you know, I'm looking at the mustard. The mustard is, most people wouldn't know that mustard is part of the same family as broccoli and cauliflower, a lot of the cruciferous vegetables. Mustard is a powerhouse.

So even when I'm thinking of condiments where people are like, oh my gosh, I can't do everything she's saying and this is just too much. I don't cook at home. Mustard. Just the yellow mustard. What makes mustard is a condiment yellow? It's the turmeric. So I love when I see mustard in my curry powder because it reminds me of how those two play

really well together. The mustard is from a, you know, it's from a different botanical family, so it's imparting other things. So we get the myrosinase enzyme. We see benefit for detoxification. The turmeric, then, is helping with the inflammatory potential. So this is one, and by the way, no allegiance to brands here, although we should talk about brands and quality, which I'm bullish about. But this one I like, especially for what we started off with, which is ages. No, that's fantastic. How would you be using that? Like, what's the favorite dish of yours or a way that you're, you know, using that spice blend in particular?

Well, in cooking things like the meats, as I mentioned before, or for people who are doing meats. Like a steak, like if you were making a steak or if you're making some chicken, like you're grilling it, you're just going to put a little bit on top. Maybe put a little bit of oil on it, put some on top. Yes, you can, yeah, and I would say marinating. So this is a very common practice for people who cook meats. So they'll take the meat, they'll put it in a dish, they'll put some oil, extra virgin olive oil, and then they'll put the spices.

You know, you kind of want to, you also want to include a little bit of acids. So things like lemon juice or apple cider vinegar. And in fact, it's been shown that those acids help to reduce ages as well. So when you bring in the acids plus the spices and you marinate and you just let that sink into the meat, a bit, and then it's ready for prime time and cooking. Now, people think that, oh, well, I don't eat meat. So, you know, when it comes to vegetables, I guess, you know, I get the easy ticket. But that's not necessarily the case. You can also get advanced glycation end products that would form with vegetables. And I usually get like that big sigh of like disappointment because people think, oh, my gosh,

I can't grill my vegetables. That's the only way I like to eat them. Well, if that's the only way you like to eat them, doing exactly what you're just asking about, taking that curry powder, and putting the oil, putting the curry powder on the vegetables, and then grilling or sauteing. But again, it has to come before the heat is applied. That's really key. Before the heat's applied. Before the heat, yeah. And so the curry powder would be good in savory dishes, like you mentioned with eggs,

if people do that. But also, you know, you can make a warm milk, like an almond milk or, you know, for people who don't do almond, coconut milk, anything with a little bit of fat to bring in some of the turmeric and or the curry powder. You know, we think of golden milk, right? Like, I'm surprised you didn't mention that as part of one of your remedies because in India, that was kind of, you know, having that fat. You talked about honey and turmeric.

Then there's this whole thing with like coconut milk, turmeric and ginger. Buffalo milk, cow's milk. Yeah, whatever the choice of milk. The milk is irrelevant. It's more important that you get the fat. Yeah. So you pick your fat of choice because most spices, and this is a key point, most spices are going to be fat soluble. So in other words, if you're just cooking with water and you're steaming veggies or you're steaming your food and you add the spice, you probably won't absorb

a lot of those spices and the other compounds that it can, that it has. So spices have more than just the polyphenols. You also have carotenoids. You have vitamins. You have minerals and spices. You know, many times their roots, they grow in the earth. So you're getting a lot of those minerals. So without the heat, without the oil, you're not going to have the full potentiation of what that spice is capable of. So typically, so let's say you're grilling. So let's say you're stir frying some chicken, right? So number one, first, if you want the maximum impact, if you can get a little bit of marinade with some spices, right?

getting those spices on the meat, in the meat a little bit before the heat touches it. Then you're going to put a little bit of oil on the pan. Some people like ghee. Some people like avocado oil. Some people like olive oil. I like to cook with all above. I don't do a lot of ghee because I'm a little sensitive to dairy. So you're going to put a little bit of oil on there. And then even with the food having some marinade, whether it's some vegetables, whether it's the meat itself, then as you're kind of cooking it, you might add a little bit more spice for flavor, but also the protection element of it. Is that right? Agree. And actually, I think it can go in all three places. Before cooking, during cooking,

after cooking. That would be the best, not just for the medicinal property of the spice, but also for the actual flavor. Because I'm not a culinary specialist here, but a cook or somebody who's seasoned in the art of culinary science would tell you that there are different things that are liberated aromatically in a flavor way at each stage of that process. So pre, during, and post. So you're actually fortifying the dish, making it taste better and giving it more medicinal impact if you're doing it throughout. So that means you need to have your spices wherever you are preparing the food and wherever you're eating, right? You know, I have a friend. I just have to tell this funny story actually that just came to me. I was going out for lunch with him to a Mexican restaurant.

and he's bringing into the restaurant this little tote. And I'm thinking, what is that? What is he bringing in? Well, as it turns out, he had six little jars of spice with him. And I said, oh, that's so interesting. I never thought about doing that. He said, oh, well, you never know what you're going to get in a restaurant. So he always just leaves it in the car to take with him.

So we got our plate of our Mexican food. And he just took, I mean, his whole plate was covered in green. He was so into all of his spices, you know, bringing in all of the, the, you know, for the flavor. And also because a lot of these spices, you know, one of my areas is detoxification. They're great for binding things. So if we're including them into a meal, even if it's at the end of the meal, they can be great binders. So I think about things like cilantro or anything that's green because it would have chlorophyll. So I think, you know, keeping spices around wherever we are, even for travel, you know, sometimes that's a nice thing

to be thinking about. And they can be put in very small jars, preferably glass, just small glass jars if we want. Well, I've definitely taken like flake salt, my own flake salt to a restaurant. And sometimes I'll go get sushi. And I've definitely brought like gluten-free like namishoyu, right, instead of having like the traditional, you know, soy sauce that might be there, which I feel better at when I take it. So I haven't taken spices yet, but I got to try it. It's going to be a little bit challenge. Well, I'm going to comment on the gluten too. You know, many people don't realize that gluten can be found in spices. Interesting. Yeah. Is that because they're adulterated or is that a natural process of creating certain spices? So when you read your spice label, look for Malto Dextrin.

Spices are expensive, right? Back to the spice trade and how these are very coveted items historically. So they're very expensive. They're very concentrated. And what some many manufacturers may do is they may actually put the spice on top of maltodextrin, which acts as a great filler. And what is malta dextrin? It's just a carbohydrate. That maltaxrin can come from rice, tapioca, or even wheat. So in some cases, if it's not labeled as gluten-free, and if you don't check it out with the manufacturer, and it says malto-dextrin, you might want to be thinking, oh, well, first of all, I would say that's not going to be a very potent spice. It's not going to be as flavorful because you don't have the same concentration. So just wanted to mention that, that spices

can also have gluten. Yeah, going back to something that you shared before, you know, it's key. Just like they tell you, you know, one of the best selling books in the last like three years on habit change was a book called Atomic Habits. Yeah. And it featured the work of a lot of different researchers out there in the space that look at habits and studying habits. One of them was a gentleman name BJ Fogg was featured in that book. And he's somebody that's, you know, friendly in our community. He's been on this podcast before. Incredible guy. And he has this whole approach called Tiny Habits. And he wrote his own book about that. And the key concept there is with anything that you want to make a habit, there's some key elements to be thinking about. The first one is

habit stacking. So take something you already do and now add this new thing to it. Right. So if you're already cooking and you're doing some cooking at home, even if there's one, one spice that you want to now. This isn't about going and now using every color of the rainbow. Start off small. You like dill. You like dill when you eat out at a restaurant. You want to start using it home. Just keep that dill spice out or at least in a place where you can easily sort of see it and reach it and just focus on adding that particular spice as one step in the right direction. So habit stacking. Take something that you already have and attach a new habit to it. It's much more likely to stick. And I kind of mentioned the second one.

which is make it easy for you. If you want to run in the morning, I'm not a runner, I don't like running, but if I wanted to run, you want to keep your special running shoes out. You don't want to have them hidden in the closet, even if you're not running that day. Just keep them out and keep them by the door.

The easier it is to do something, the easier it is that you're going to incorporate it into your life. Okay, so this leads up to a question that I have before we go back to some other evidence space that you have on some spices. people always tell you, okay, keep your spices in sort of a dark place, right? Keep it away from sunlight. Here's what I've found as I support my wife in her effort to get more spices into her cooking.

If I don't keep it out for her on the countertop, right, which sure exposes it to light, fine, but generally I'm thinking that she's going to be better off having spices in her diet than not have it in her diet. if I don't keep it on the countertop, she's not going to use them. We have a whole beautiful spice jar, but things get lost in the shuffle. So I'll just take out one or two or three spices, including a high quality salt. We're going to chat about that in a second. And I just leave it out in the morning for her. And it's there.

She doesn't have to think about it. So if she's making her eggs in the morning, she's making a stir fry, she's making whatever it is, she can reach out and she genuinely is much more likely to use them. So I always say, you know, not I say this, but I like to borrow on this saying, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. So I want to hear your thoughts as somebody who's in this space. You know, what do you think about that and how do we support people who are listening today to make spices more of a regular occurrence in their day-to-day life?

Two things. One is, you're right, if they're not visible, you know, out of sight, out of mind. So how can we make them visible but yet potent so that they, don't lose their activity by having them in the light, heat, and subject to oxygen. So one of the things there would be to actually, have you ever seen one of those spice holders where you can put the spice jars into that turning kind of cabinet? Yeah. So the actual spice is concealed and it is covered by the container.

So you can see the name of the spice. That would be great because, especially for her, because they're right there on the countertop. They're not close to the stove top, but they're on a stove top. a countertop, you can spin it, you can look at them, and you can fit like probably 10 to 12. And even if you buy the smaller ones, even if it's like six spices or something, it's better than none. So I would say that's the first thing. That would be the first tiny habit. And what I would think is that the more that she starts to incorporate them and she starts to notice the flavor difference, that in and of itself is a behavior, I would say a celebration. You know, BJ talks about

you know, the dental floss and cheering. I think the body, you'll start to change the taste buds. And typically I've seen that happen within like seven to 10 days. And then you're going to start to notice when it's not there. So that's one thing. The other thing is just to focus on like three. Three spices. Just like three. Yeah. I mean, I know that I'm talking about the rainbow here. But I would say just like you are saying, like go with where you're at. Like for most people, it's going to be cinnamon, black pepper. Those are like the. two big ones. Tumark is actually up there. Ginger is also another favorite. You keep asking me about like which one's most well studied. Ginger, we need to get to ginger. But for her and others that want

to start making that step in that direction, just, you know, maybe it's almost like, you know, when we say try one new food every week, well then try one new spice every week. Okay, so this week, we're just going to play with ginger. All things ginger and see how that is. Fresh ginger, grated ginger into the smoothie or fresh ginger grated into even a salad or, you know, however people like to prepare it, they start to get the taste of it, right? And there's so much powerful information and data coming out now about taste receptors and how taste informs function. We have taste receptors in the brain. We have taste receptors in the gut, in the airway tract, and the reproductive tract, we have taste receptors beyond the tongue.

So when you were talking about your father preparing a meal and how sometimes you just want to have a meal at home, it's not just sitting down to that meal on the plate. You're tasting before you're tasting. You know, all of those smells. And so I think that as she starts to experiment with one or two spices, maximum three, I think that the human mind can only really take on like, you know, three is a good number in that way. but everybody's going to be a little bit different.

So I think, and the other thing, a very simple thing, would be to do a spice challenge and to do that with friends. You know, I even talk about people putting the rainbow on their cabinet, like a little magnet or a little, like just something to cue you visually, like, oh, yeah, that's right. I got to eat each of these colors, and I can bring these spices into my meals to get better health. They're part of that rainbow.

You mentioned ginger and talking about that. Yes. Let's talk about ginger. Let's do that. I think you have it here. I do. So you're going to show up for those that are watching the video. Uh-huh.

So ginger root. So turmeric and ginger are cousins. They are very similar. They're very, and because they're roots, let me just make a comment about that because one of the biggest things that people say about turmeric is that, oh, my gosh, it's contaminated with lead. You know, and it can be, for sure. It can even be contaminated with coloring agents to make it more orange and enticing. And that's typically people who don't have good reputation as a brand, lower quality spices, but generally speaking, if you're buying from a brand that is known for, you know, true,

you know, level of transparency and commitment with spices and especially a lot of the organic brands are going to be more in that direction. That's right. You're going to be better off. Like I would always have a challenge to my parents who love shopping at the Indian stores, right? There's like here in Southern California, you know, every city, L.A., whatever. And there's like a little India. It's called Artisia.

And my parents love to get some of their traditional snacks, all the things, which are almost always like super ultra-processed. They don't need a lot of them, but they like to have them around the house sometimes for guests. But then they also sell. And a lot of places do this. You'll have sometimes like Asian stores or like, you know, the Iranian store, the Persian store that has their own spices. And a lot of those products and spice companies that they're bringing in, they're from overseas. And I don't want to immediately

throw them under the bus because of that. But I think that there's a lot of incentives because these spices, especially things like saffron and turmeric, they're expensive. And so if you can stretch it out a little bit, and these countries are not necessarily known for being the most buy the book, so to speak, and the brands and labels are not like touting transparency. So I tell my parents, like, okay, stay away from these stores when it comes to getting the spices, pay a little bit more and just get it from like Trader Joe's or Whole Foods or your local co-op and stick to organic. They may not be perfect, but you're going to be way better off than buying something random.

And that goes with, you know, some of the big companies that make spices here in the United States that might themselves have, you know, spices that are unintentional. intentionally adulterated because they're buying it from, you know, third parties overseas. And they're relying on these certificate of analysis, which basically means that you're just taking the company's word for it. It's not like they're testing the spices to see. Is this actually turmeric or is it turmeric cut with cornstarch and yellow color? So that's my sort of model on that situation. Stick to organic, buy higher quality spices. Don't buy, a ton of them and just use them more frequently in your life so that you can replace them.

Anything you want to add to that? That's really well said. Quality is everything when it comes to spices because you could be buying rancid spices, adulterated spices, spices loaded up with heavy metals or different other agents. So I think you're right. You know, one of my go-to sources is Consumer Lab. So I'm a member of Consumer Lab. It's a very modest membership. And they will often, and just go and pull different spices and analyze them. Like, what's actually in them? What is in that turmeric? How much in the way of curcumin?

Is there lead chromate or something else in there that would be an adulterant? Now, that's going to change, right? Because manufacturing practices are going to change. So just, you know, you need to regularly evaluate that. But yeah, for somebody who doesn't want to spend a lot of time to do all that research, I would say choosing an organic brand would be your best case scenario. for sure. Amazing. So I kind of got you a little bit off track by going into my monologue, but we'll go back to Ginger. And you were going to talk about ginger and it's a root. And you mentioned that

some people are worried that it has heavy metals in it. And you said it could be. It's all about quality. But now back to the healing properties of ginger. Yeah. You know, ginger is like turmeric where it does go back just into traditional use, historical use. And when I think of turmeric, I think of a very potent anti-inflammatory. Like that. can rival certain pharmaceuticals in terms of its ability to help with reducing inflammation, reducing pain. You know, it can't always go apples to apples and compare exactly, but it's pretty potent in that regard.

When I think of ginger, I think of a gut type of healing spice. And I'll tell you why. First of all, it is also an anti-inflammatory. It works on the Cox II and that psycho-oxygenation. to pathway as it relates to inflammation. So some similarities there with turmeric. But it also has gut motility effects. So it's able to key into certain receptors that can help to stimulate the gut. We think about it when it comes to things like acid reflux or even nausea, so a lot of upper gastric kind of complaints. So for some women who get nauseous during pregnancy, sometimes ginger

tea is advocated. Now, the thing with ginger that is very similar to something like black pepper where you could go over the edge or like with chili, where you could go over the edge, where you could have too much. And you can actually create the very thing that you were trying to get rid of by taking that spice. So with too much ginger, you can actually get some acid reflux. You can irritate if you're taking too much of this warming spice. And you know, when we think about Ayr Veta and traditional Chinese medicine, many of these spices are looked at in a more, I would say, an elemental way, like warming spice. So for somebody with a lot of pita or somebody who's just very warming by nature, me, you know, I need to watch how much ginger I would do

because it could just create more warming. So ginger is great as a gut type of root. I love ginger and turmeric together. There's something about that combo. And oftentimes I'm juicing them together. I'm putting them in smoothies. I have a colleague, Helen Perks, who talks about even taking ginger juice and putting it into an ice cube tray and then putting a mint leaf into each one. She just recently mentioned that to me, and I thought that that was a great idea. Because back to your point about like yeas, convenience. So what if you had ginger juice, which you could buy, not as the spice, but you could buy it as the juice at the store, making sure it's pure, has no added sugar, because it's going to be pretty pungent and spicy, and then pouring it

into the ice cube tray, putting a mint leaf or maybe even a little bit of turmeric. You know, you might want to have that powerful anti-inflammatory combo, and then putting that in the freezer and then taking a cube out, if you want to add that to water, you want to add it to tea, you want to add to some anything, but it's already there. Now, the thing with ginger, I just want to mention quickly is that, and much like these other spices, is that depending on the format that is used, you can get different phytochemicals. So if you're using the juice of ginger, you're going to have different phytochemicals than if you had raw ginger just grated into something. And you're going to get different phytochemicals, then you would in the spice, which is a dry,

concentrated powder. Now, so you might be thinking, well, which one is best? They're all appropriate, right? I think it's really important not to say, you know, just to hammer on the powder. I do think that the complexity of the different phytochemicals coming through the different formats is also part of that diversity message. And what about ginger tea? Do you like it? Is that another way to sort of get exposure to this spice? Absolutely.

You could do obviously fresh ginger and boil that. Or a lot of people do maybe like a tea bag from, you know, repinal tea supplier. Is that one way to get this spice? That is one way. The only thing with ginger tea, like in a bag, is that then you're not getting the plant. you're just getting whatever is water soluble that decides to come out in that hot water. So if you had something fatty, you know, remember again that most spices have some degree of fat solubility, they like fat, hence all of the cooking practices with the oil ahead of time.

So I think that it's beneficial. There's nothing wrong with it. I think it's a lighter way to get the ginger benefits. If you want more heavy hitting type of benefits, you're going to have to bring in either the root, again, fresh-grated, or bringing in like the powder, which would be pretty potent. Amazing. Yeah. So we talked about turmeric.

We talked about ginger. You have shared a little bit about black pepper as kind of like sprinkling a little bit throughout that process. One that you have on the list that tends to get overlooked a little bit is garlic. Everybody's familiar with it. Yeah. But how often are people actually regularly using it as part of their, you know, cooking So I'd love to talk about garlic for a minute.

I'm glad you do want to speak about garlic. I mean, it is part of the Mediterranean diet. It's used in a lot of different, I would say, formats, just like ginger, where you could have the actual garlic clove. So when we think of garlic, I think of the bulb. And I think of, you know, just having a clove. And so even on this particular garlic powder, I really like the communication on the front, which says an eighth of a teaspoon equals one clove of garlic.

That's pretty profound. you know, to think that for people who don't like garlic as much or don't want kind of the taste effects, they just want a little bit to go a long way. Getting in the garlic powder would be a good idea. So garlic, when I think of body systems, you know, how we talked about, you know, turmeric is just kind of plays in a number of different systems. I think of ginger is more gut. When I think of garlic, I'm thinking heart.

And that's because of all of the data, all of the literature. and I believe Dr. Joel Kahn has also been on your podcast talking about garlic and his love of garlic, whether it's aged garlic or it's fresh garlic, it's spice garlic. Garlic has benefits for lipids and helping us with cardiovascular health. Of course, that kind of spills over into the anti-inflammatory effects, but it seems that garlic specifically has blood lipid lowering effects and can help us in that way. Yeah, I know Joel is on here. We wrote a newsletter about it.

Dr. Joel Khan cardiologist who you mentioned, he talked about, and we'll link to the newsletter in the show notes below, it was titled, This Supplement Reduces Soft Plaque in the Heart. And it was a groundbreaking double-blind, randomized placebo control trial that separated 23 individuals into two groups. One group took a placebo for a year, while the other group took 2.4 milligrams of aged garlic extract. And I believe there's a kind of a key supplement. I forgot the brand. It starts with K.

Chiolic. That was used or is the main one that's in that process. And they found that the group that was not on the placebo, the one that were taking this 2.4 milligrams of aged garlic, had a reduction in soft plaque, which has typically been hard to actually show. You have hard plaque in the arteries. We have soft plaque.

I've had my own cardiologist on who's talked about the amount of hard plaque I have, which is none and a little bit of tiny soft plaque that was shown in my clearly scan. And how getting rid of soft plaque, especially as we age, is a very tough thing to do. So the fact that garlic can help us be able to do that, aged garlic, which is a little bit different than traditional garlic, but they both can be beneficial, is actually like was a huge and kind of like a big deal for a supplement to be able. to show that. Yeah, I agree. And I really appreciate the fact that a supplement company or even, you know, that garlic extract has research. Because most times you just see research out there on spices and it's very generic. It's just like, okay, let's get this garlic. But let me just make

a couple of comments about garlic. Yes. So the fact that they have an aged extract that has been researched, that's great. And they've shown great activity for, like you said, the soft plaque. let's just go back to the ages for a second because part of the way that through that fermentation and that aging process of garlic, there can be some degree of ages that form in that process because I believe a little bit of heat is used. And it can depend on the process exactly. So that's why I think, and if you look at the taste profile of like the black garlic or the fermented, it's a little bit sweeter than the pungent variety of garlic. that's more fresh in that powder form.

So it might be more acceptable for some people. So I think that that's good. One of the hacks, if you will, when it comes to garlic, is that, and it's very similar to the cruciferous vegetable family. So if you have, let's just say somebody is thinking, oh, you know, they're Italian. You know, I would mention this to some of my Italian friends and they would be thinking, no garlic powder. I'm just going to go for the straight on garlic and just give me the real thing.

Well, one of the things with garlic, when it is fresh, after it's been peeled, and then it has been, in some way, diced, sliced, chopped up. You know, the plant in and of itself perceives that as, you know, stress. Sometimes you can get additional phytochemicals that formed. But in this case, with garlic, what you're doing is you're breaking apart the cell wall and you're liberating one of the enzymes that helps to make more of the potent Allison, one of the main compounds in garlic. So what you do is after you're done dicing that garlic, you let it sit for about 10 minutes on the

cutting board. Let the plant do its magic. Let that enzyme leak out of the cell and start to create more of this Allison component. So then you get that already made and then you put that into your dish. If you do it prematurely, you won't have that degree of potentiation. And what about if you get it in sort of a whole powder form that you're recommending? It just depends on how they're actually creating this. There's a lot of variability, and you don't see, you know, this is not a supplement. The difference between a spice powder and a supplement of garlic is standardization. So on something like an aged extract, an extract typically will be standardized to a certain percentage

so that you are guaranteed efficacy based on that percentage of that particular active. Now on this, we don't know. Yeah. We don't know. Yeah. But the truth is for most people, they don't need to know. They just need to incorporate more spices. They do.

Eat whole foods. Stay away from ultra-process foods. Work out to a degree that makes sense to you for your goals. Right. Especially 40 and above and making sure you're not wasting away your muscle, eat enough protein, get good sleep, have community. You focus on the basics. And hopefully today's episode should not feel like,

work to anybody. And if it does, I highly recommend, right, even if you are watching your budget, one of the best uses of your money is find a local cooking class of somebody who's not teaching you French cooking, somebody who might even be able to teach you a dish that you like to make regularly at home. But it's going to be a chef or a cook or somebody, even go to one of your neighbors or family members and say, walk me through this process of how you make this. food. And ideally it should be something that you can make within 15 to 20 minutes, right? But they're showing you and they're putting a twist on it. They're incorporating spices or they're doing a little bit of that magic that you do when you know how to cook. And it's going to get

you excited for how to eat more whole foods at home. If you can spend 50, 75 bucks, 100 bucks, you and your partner, you and your girlfriend, wife, spouse, whatever, and you go to a cooking class and you learn and you get excited, you step into that place where you empower yourself. You know now how to make and you only need like three to five dishes at home because you can always create variations of them. I know how to make like three to five dishes, but then I know how to make infinite variations of them and I know how to combine them in ways that makes sense for me and my family at home. And it empowers us to be able to make food on a more regular basis. So this is just about getting enough spices to get the diversity, the exposure,

and in particular, getting you excited about cooking at home because spices add more spice to life. They do. You know, and I have found that people who crave spicy food, they may actually be longing for a little bit more spice in their lives. I've actually seen that clinically where some people go into a restaurant and they want like the spicy hot. And I'll ask them because sometimes that's not so good for them. And, you know, I start to have that unraveling conversation about like, you know, I actually need more spice in my life. I'm bored. Wow.

And sometimes spice through food can wake you up, right? In many ways. So, yeah, I love what you're saying, Drew. I think that there can be small things that we do in the everyday. And for somebody who doesn't have time to do a cooking class, I mean, gosh, you know, you know, one of the things that I do, just a simple thing, I'm thinking still about the garlic a little bit, I'll get like a gluten-free frozen pizza crust, just a naked crust. And I can go to town with spices on that crust.

So bringing in a pesto, bringing in a pesto, bringing in. an olive oil. I don't do tomatoes as much, but for people that want the tomato sauce, and then you start shaking on the spices. I mean, kids can do this. Everybody can shake on oregano, the garlic powder. I mean, I just feel like there are so many opportunities there from, you know, just starting, like you said, with these tiny habits to experiment. Now, some people, I just want to say, can't tolerate garlic. My dad's like that. You know, he, Is it a preference thing or they're actually getting some sort of reaction? There's a reaction.

So for people that follow the FODMAP's way of eating where they can't have a lot of carbohydrate because whether they have small intestinal bowel overgrowth or they have some gut issue or they just have a fructan intolerance, garlic could be problematic. So in those particular cases, having that fermented extract or something where a lot of those carbohydrates are broken down might actually be a better bet. Yeah, I love it. One more question. Sometimes I go to the grocery store, like a Whole Foods or a local co-op or whatever.

And you'll see two different types of, let's say, garlic. You'll see the garlic that is more of like it looks more earthy and brown, like the one that you held up in the bottle. If you could just hold that up to the camera so that people can see. So it looks a little bit. It's definitely more chalky. and then there's one that looks like very white. Is there a difference in terms of some of these spices about which ones are like a more concentrated powder, which one are the whole plant?

Is there any difference about those? Oh, goodness. You know, I have a good friend who grows garlic, and there are so many varieties of garlic. You have purple garlic. You have like a darkish color bulb garlic. And she keeps them all in her basement and all of their individual shelves. And so it could just be a different variety of. garlic where, you know, again, I'm just saying garlic, but we're not getting into the botanical

aspects. Sure. But browning of a of a spice powder, I would be thinking about any kind of oxidation, advanced glycation and products, because one of the signs that there are ages in food is a brown color. So I don't know. I don't know how that spice was made. Wow, my store is trying to sell me some bad spice. I don't know. I don't know. Just, you know, just, you know, here's my. best practice, just inquire with the manufacturer of the spice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, when bone broth was all the rage, my biggest concern was, well, what about all of the lead that's in that bone?

So that's being cooked away, right? So the only way to know that is you just get on the phone or you email these different manufacturers and you say, have you tested for lead? Do you have third party testing? Do you have third party testing? Did you test? And same thing with the spices. I think that's what you can do.

All right. Well, let's come back to spices. We have one that was in your top list that we kind of talk about, but we didn't. And there are some nuances. that are there to it, it's cinnamon. There was a period of time, this was probably about like five years ago. I felt like people were putting cinnamon in everything, and there's smoothies and this,

and people would talk about the blood sugar benefits of it. So give us the skinny on cinnamon. What's true and what's beneficial when it comes to the usage of cinnamon? So if we think in terms of body systems, when I think of cinnamon, I think of something sweet and I think of blood sugar. So that's why there is this association with type 2 diabetes or even insulin resistance and incorporating cinnamon into foods that are sweet to help with that insulin sensitization effect.

I'm really glad that cinnamon has such a great flavor profile. And in fact, it's one of the most popular spices that's used internationally with some of these others. So cinnamon is palatable. You know, kids can tolerate cinnamon. It goes well with savory as well as sweet dishes. So now you just alluded to something about cinnamon. there are a number of different kinds of cinnamon.

There are at least four varieties that I know of. So you have the true cinnamon, which comes from Ceylon cinnamon. And then you have cinnamon cassia. So different points of origin, the cassia comes more from China. The Ceylon comes from Sri Lanka. So where spices grown can also change its actives. So they both have phytochemicals, no doubt. And in fact, one of the phytochemicals that cinnamon is known for is proanthosyanidins.

And we know of the benefit of those proanthosyanidins for things like blood sugar and their anti-diabetic potential. There's just one thing to note with cinnamon, at least one thing. And that is that you want to choose, if you see them in the store side by side, Cassia and Ceylon, if I had to choose, I take the Ceylon. And this is what this one is. So as I was picking out spices for the show, so this actually is, says organic fair trade Ceylon cinnamon co-op grown in Sri Lanka.

I mean, they're giving you a lot of information on this particular front panel, right? The reason why I say Ceylon over Cassia is because you get less of an active. It's actually a phytochemical, but it can become hepatotoxic. It's called C-O-U-M-A-R-I-N, C-U-M-A-N, C-U-M-A-R-N. And you're not going to find that on the label. You're not going to know how much C-M-R-R-N that Cassia spice has. And the cassia form of cinnamon tends to have more appreciable amounts. Like a child could get a significant amount of that cumerin from cassia cinnamon.

So spend just a little bit more. Spices, one of the things I love about spices is that they're accessible to people. Most people listening to the show already have them in your kitchen, but they have them as crusty, caked, probably well past their expiration dates. Two, three, four, ten years old. at least. And so this is one where if you have to choose quality, it's not that expensive. I don't know what I paid for this, probably $6 to $7. I mean, versus Cassia cinnamon. I mean, we're probably looking at maybe 50 cents difference, but with better quality and less

risk of things like hepatotoxicity. Yeah. And especially if you're just getting started out, just getting a few, three, four, some of the ones that you listed over here, garlic, ginger, right, turmeric and just playing with those and trying to figure out a way. This isn't about mega dosing for one week, two weeks, or even a month. It's about having tiny little bits for years to get the protective benefits that are there. Yeah. And with cinnamon, when you say tiny, the studies on cinnamon show blood sugar lowering at about a gram. So if you take a teaspoon and you divide it into four, one gram would be like just one fourth, right, of a teaspoon. That's a little amount. I mean, you could probably make golden milk with cinnamon and you're done. There's your blood sugar lowering.

Now, a lot of these spices, though, have half-lifes. So that means that they're going to degrade. They're going to be metabolized and excreted from your body over time. So what's a little bit better, especially with cinnamon, is throughout your day to split that dose into two if you can. So to have a little bit of cinnamon in the morning, a little bit of cinnamon in the afternoon would be preferential just to having all of that cinnamon at once. And plus, that's another warming, hot kind of spice. So that's, you know, it's good on a cold day. It's good if you're kneading a little bit of blood sugar lowering, and it tastes good.

So many kids gravitate to cinnamon. My grandmother used to put them oddly enough on green beans. Interesting. She used to sprinkle. I don't know why, but she would have cinnamon on the green beans. And I just thought that that was such an interesting aspect. And when I think of all the parents potentially listening about, their kids and, oh, she just mentioned cinnamon. Well, there was a study that was done showing that

when spices were added to foods like vegetables, that kids ate up to 18% more of those vegetables. So diversity counts, like giving them choices. Adding spices could actually improve your child's ability and desire for eating things like vegetables. I love that. One of the things that I do when comes to spices, especially, you're like, people are talking about a different food to try. I often have this with like Dr. William Lee, who's such an advocate and sort of an ambassador around trying new and different foods, is obviously, and I share this with my audience all the time, you can't do every recommendation that you hear from this podcast, from social media, from everywhere. But every so often you hear themes and you hear things returning and you get

reminded about stuff. And you're like, you know what? That's the third time this week that I heard about the beneficial properties of garlic. That's the one thing that I'm going to do this week. I truly believe in serendipity. I believe that the universe is constantly conspiring for our greater good. And it's giving us reminders all the time. So I don't worry about doing everything. I don't have fear of missing out. I have the opposite. I have joy of missing out. Right. So I'm excited not to do every. Jomo. I'm excited not to do everything. But then if few things that I hear again, then I hear it again, then I hear it again, then I hear it again, like, okay, you know what? That's the thing. I used to use a lot of turmeric before, for example.

Having used it as much, let me go and pick that up the next time I'm grocery shopping. Just a tiny little thing that I'm going to incorporate in because that's the particular thing that spoke to me. That's how I think about all content in this space. Because again, we can easily get ourselves overwhelmed if we try to do everything. And that's not the purpose of today's episode or any episodes that are out there. It's about incorporating little bits that the totality of all those changes make us a healthier and a different human being. It's true, Drew. That's really eloquently said. And I would even say to, you know, I'm just thinking as an idea for somebody who is thinking about like, oh, wow, now I have to remember to put, just like your wife to put like spices into every

meal, which you actually can do is you can take your extra virgin olive oil and start to put some things like the garlic powder in it, you know, oils again, will play very well with spices. I know I make a ghee that Dr. Liz Lipski had given a recipe for. So I make my own ghee, which is just clarified butter, right? It's very simple to make. You just buy, you know, grass-fed butter, you melt it down. So when you're pouring off the part that you want, you can actually build spices into that and make your own spiced butter.

You can make your own spiced honeies. You can make your own spice blends. So, like, you can build them into things that already exist in your everyday. And in fact, even for holidays, I had one year where I was making these spiced geese, I'd take rosemary. And what's really great, like, to gift somebody with. I know Dr. Joel Kahn talks about giving people blood pressure cuffs, like Valentine's Day gifts. I think of mortar and pestle, you know, like just to, like, grind things up.

So like typically I would take rosemary from my garden and I would just kind of grind it up, pulverize it a bit. And then I'd put it through the ghee. I'd crush up. Now I'm going over the top now into minerals. I'd take zinc. I'd crush that up. Zinc is really hardy. It's not going to destruct with heat.

And I put the zinc and the rosemary into the ghee. And then I'd let that solidify. And it's like, okay, I've got some super immunomodulatory ghee here that I'm going to gift to people. You could put lavender buds in ghee or oils. You know, just let your imagination go a little bit too because creativity is also one of the spices of life. Yeah. You know, you're talking about the combination of some of these things. And this goes to this idea that you have a slide for.

It's number 26 on your slideshow. And we'll put it up here on YouTube. And again, if you're listening on audio, you can find these later on in the show notes below. And this is the idea of the synergistic combinations of a lot of these spices. Can you chat about this for a second? Yeah. Well, what is synergy? Synergy is where you have two things that come together that do more than they could on their own

or even from an additive perspective. So it's like one plus one is three. Like you get an amplified effect. And there are known food synergies that are out there. And some of the synergistic combinations, I've already spoken to one, which is the black pepper, so the piperine plus the turmeric powder. That would be a very powerful spice combination. most people know about that one. The other one that has also been studied is rosemary and the curcumin,

which is in turmeric. So rosemary and turmeric would also work well together. There's also the EGCG that you would find in a cup of green tea, so the epigalocatican gallate together with turmeric. I mean, turmeric just has been well studied and it has been studied over and over again. So many times some of these studies are just looking at the synergy of turmeric plus whatever. else. There's also synergy between curcumin and resveratrol. Resveratrol typically you're going to find in the skin of grapes. So it's not a spice per se. But think in your mind about not just spices creating synergy, but foods and spices creating that synergy. So having or even supplements, you know, making sure that you're taking your supplements in a meal that have the spices that

could potentiate it. So those are some of the other ones that I like. So the rosemary and and the turmeric or the curcumin aspect of the turmeric would definitely be a spice, spice synergy in addition to the turmeric and black pepper. Well, sister to spices is salt. And we're gonna talk about that in a second. But before we do that, there was just as I was going through your slideshow

that you graciously shared with me before we started recording, I flagged a few slides that just made me feel like so excited to wanna talk about a few things. Consider it sort of a rapid fire round. A few different things that were there. You kind of hinted at this before, but slide 34, this idea that a small amount of spices equals a significant impact on blood pressure.

High blood pressure is a major problem here. And a lot of people don't understand how tiny behaviors they're doing throughout the day, including, of course, staying away from ultra-processed food, which is their primary source of exposure to high levels of sodium that they would never have at home. That being one of the biggest, people always get so worried, they go to the doctor and they say, oh, you have high blood pressure, you're dealing with hypertension, you need to cut out salt in your diet. Well, it's not the salt that you're adding at home, that you're springing a little bit of sea salt. It's the ultra-processed foods that you're eating that have almost pharmaceutical doses of sodium

that you're being exposed to. Of course, everybody knows potato chips, but I saw the study and the research that bread rules was one of the biggest ones, Bread rolls. You're having like bread and bread rolls or, you know, even hot dog buns and things like that. They can have a ton of sodium. And that's how people, cereals that people are eating, you don't realize it, but this all adds up and that can make, you know, blood pressure worse off. But talk about the research around spices and its impact on blood pressure. You know what's so interesting is that when most people these days, even within our space of health, they think of lowering their blood pressure. Many people think of, let me just have more beat,

root powder. Let me get more nitric oxide. And there's this whole other pathway of looking at spices. So in this particular study that everybody sees on slide 34, so this was a study that was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2021. And it was a study in which there were men and women and they were fed basically a diet and then they were given, or they had their diet, but then they had spices that were overlaid into each of those. So there was a low spice diet, so like 0.5 grams. Then there was a moderate spice diet at 3.3 grams and a high spice diet at 6.6 grams. And it was the 6.6 grams. So, you know, that's just a little bit more than a teaspoon of spice. And by the way, they used a combination of spices, like 24 different herbs and spices,

and then they incorporated it into their food. And what they found after four weeks is that there was an improvement in their 24-hour blood pressure. And that was seen specifically more so in the women, which I thought was really intriguing. Is there a personalized response for women? Are there certain mechanisms of action which are keying into maybe is there an interplay with estrogen or, you know, I don't, this is just simply telling us the result without giving us the mechanism. But yeah, to your point, and if people are on blood pressure lowering medications and they start taking a number of spices all at once, they could have a further lowering. So it's really worthwhile to just keep that in mind. Like you could lower your blood pressure

significantly by taking in spices. Anything else just while we're on a topic that you feel is important for people to know, obviously spices being a part of it, you know, avoiding ultra-processed food, anything else because you have so much knowledge in the space that's important for people who are dealing with high blood pressure, like separate from the spice categories or anything else that you want to mention to them? Well, I do. Like when you were talking about sodium and salt, I think that there's this perspective, and I even see it with people I know very well, or like within my family, where you think, I'm going to have salt, this will increase my blood pressure. Well, we now know that there's a personalized genetic response to salt. Certain people are just naturally going to be

more sodium sensitive than others. Not everybody has those particular genes to make them salt sensitive and respond. I also think that it's important to think about hydration as we think about blood pressure, that looking at that water salt combination, you know, if we look at salt, not in its refined format, where we're just amping up all that sodium, but in its more complex format, we may actually have some minerals that may help to balance things like blood pressure, You know, very small amounts, but it's worthwhile to say that not all salt is created equal and not everybody is responsive to the blood pressure effects of salt that we think. It's one of those things that I think needs to get debunked, you know, that it's,

blood pressure is not just about salt. It's not just about sodium. But I completely agree with what you're saying about high sodium and ultra-processed foods. We see that even in foods that are known to be healthy. Like I think about a lot of people who are older who might be healthy. having canned soups or canned anything, typically we'll have more sodium because it has to preserve, right? And that so the sodium is also helping to preserve whatever that food is, whether it's a vegetable or the soup or to give it flavor. So, but blood pressure is not just

about salt. Right. And sodium is not salt. That's right. That's another good distinction. Is so much more than sodium itself. And generally, if you're going to be making stuff at home or you're going to be controlling the amount of salt that is going into your food, this idea that you're going to have super large levels of sodium in your diet from home cooking, it's just from everything that I've seen, it's just really not there. So on the topic of salt, right? Because salt is like a sister to this whole conversation. And I thought we could end on this topic a little bit. What do you want to tell people about salt? I want to mention something that many people may not realize is that salt has a microbiome. It actually does. You know, there are some,

research on salt, suggesting that its origin, you know, where does salt come from? It comes from lakes. It comes from riverbeds. It comes from caves, mountains. So depending on where it's coming from will inform its mineral composition as well as its microbiome. You know, I know that there are many different salts out there. I like the original Himalayan crystal salt. And it comes in different formats. It comes in the stones. It comes in like the coarse granulated and then the fine so that people can decide how they want to put that into their food. But what I like about that in particular is that it has been studied for microplastics. You know, many people don't realize that a lot of these spices and or salt can come in with microplastics.

I mean, microplastics are everywhere, right? We can't avoid that. And is that this through the manufacturing contamination process? Is that how they're sort of extracting them? Like, why would there be a bunch of microplastics in salt? I know, you wouldn't think, especially coming from mountainous regions that have been sequestered under the earth. But yes, through the manufacturing process is where they would have been introduced.

The other thing that most people don't know about salt is that many times explosives are used in order to shatter the mountain or the rocks in order to get to the salt, right? So then you've got explosives. And so at least I know with the Himalayan crystal salt, that is hand-mined, right? So it's done in a community best practices. That's really important. And I think that when we look at salt sources in other places, how is it changing the ecological system that it's in?

Are we taking from a lake and then just continuing to draw from that lake? And what implications does it have for the ecosystem that that lake contains? So I think with a couple things with salt, I think the questions to be asking of the manufacturer would be, what are the? minerals that it contains, you know, with the Himaline crystal salt, I know 84 trace minerals. So it's more than just an ACL, more than just salt, right? The microbiome is an interesting piece. I think we should be on the lookout of that. You know, we also haven't even, you know, what would happen with looking into the microbiome of spices? I think that eventually we'll be

looking at that as we become much more sophisticated. And so, yeah, I think inquiring, and it's also how we're using it, how we're bringing it into the meal, right? And I also think that for people who have adrenal fatigue, right, so they're just on the run constantly, they actually start to have an imbalance. They start craving salt because their mineral corticoids become out of balance together with cortisol. So some people may actually need to bring in a little bit more salt to help recalibrate their hormones. You know, you've been on this podcast before. And for those that I might have missed that episode. Talk about why are you so excited about the space? Why are you so excited about spices? Why are you so excited about the idea of diversity, which includes sort of

getting the rainbow, not just with spices, but when it comes to diversity of the foods that we're having, you know, for our microbiome, for the polyphenols, for everything else, like, give us a little bit of the origin story and how that led to so much excitement of you being a champion and also getting deep into the research of the space. You know, I feel like, nutrition is so polarized. You know, we see it all the time. It's like a pendulum swinging. Like one day fat is in, one day it's out, one day protein is in, one day it's out. It just has always felt like it's swinging, it's polarizing. It can pit people and organizations against each other. And to me, food is a unifying force. Food is what connects me to you. We can share a meal

together, even if we may not agree in everything, we're humans. We need to eat. Spices, to me feel like they have survived history with humans. They're kind of like our partners in the eating and the food, the nourishment experience. So for me, I try to take less of a dogmatic view to nutrition. I want people to be excited, joyous. They feel nourished. They don't feel on edge because they have a certain way that they eat. I feel like we can all share in that. And the rainbow is something that's easy for different generations to also bring in. So my three principles are color, creativity, and diversity, and all of them have science underneath them. That's not always so important. I always look to see what will keep people eating and feeling better. And to me,

it's about the colors, the colors of our food make for the colors of our mood, the creativity. Some of the things that we spoke about would infer creative use of spices, like just try it out, put it in oil, put them on your counter. Try it with, as you mentioned, your chicken sausage breakfast, right? So the creativity kind of gets us out of our grooves, our ruts, our routines. And then the diversity, to me, has many layers of meaning. Diversity of food confers a better gut microbiome, better immune health, better nutritional status, lower toxic load. And to me, diversity is the message of nature. What survives? It's when you have polyculture. It's when you have organic plants being grown together, not just rows of the same plant over and over again, because that only

has so much staying power. So I see that as a people message as well, that we as people need to parallel our eating and those principles of embracing color, embracing creativity, and also that diversity message. So that's what I'm about. That's what you're about. And you've been doing it, which I super appreciate you. You've been doing it well and putting that message out there for a while now in this space. And I just want to, you know, thank you for all your work. And just for everybody, because you didn't mention it. You also do have a research background. Can you just mention that briefly in your PhD and what that was in? Yeah, I'm a nerd at heart. So I love the research. I have a PhD in medical science. I have a master's degree.

in human nutrition and metabolism. And my biology start came as an undergrad. You know, I thought I always wanted to go into medicine. And then I realized, wait a minute, I kind of grew up with a healthy mom. And I felt like maybe she was right. Maybe I need to go into research and understand nutrition as a way to understand health and healing. So I pivoted from that medical school path that I was on into nutrition.

And I'm really glad I did because I feel like this is the, We fought nutrition science, even though it's got a lot of polarity, it has taken center stage and has helped people to have that locus of control for their health. And I've had amazing mentors, Drew. I've had mentors like Dr. Jeffrey Bland, who I worked with for over a decade. I've had Barb Schultz as my nutrition mentor and even back to my mom. You know, sometimes I think it goes back to our upbringing. You gave up to everybody here a lot of your memories. And sometimes food and our connection to it goes back. And so I want to also thank my mom because she was that pioneer. I grew up in the 1970s when it wasn't cool to eat healthy food or even to be thinking

about spices and smoothies and all of these things. I mean, we finally have arrived there. But I feel like spices is what most people can do, right? You know, I'm really glad that you invited and opened a space to have this conversation because I don't think food needs to be exclusionary. I I wanted to be inclusionary, all the cultures. And that's why whenever I travel, I eat whatever. You know, when in Rome, eat like the Romans, right? When you're in Iceland, eat like the Icelandic people. I just got back from Peru.

And I was eating up the potatoes, the quinoa, maca. I mean, I love seeing how all these cultures have their own food staples and their own spice. I would call it a palate, an artistic palate. Is there one spice? I'm sure it's challenging, but when you think of your mom, is there one spice that is most associated with, you know, her, even just for you, right? It doesn't mean that she was obsessed with that spice, but is there one spice that reminds you of your mom? Funny, when you said that, not a spice, but cocoa came to mine. Even now, I just visited my mom not too long ago, and she made this incredible coffee with, so she

and I have the coffee thing going on. Yeah. And she puts in a cocoa powder. She puts in cinnamon. I'm probably going to get her whole recipe wrong, but she puts all these different spices in her coffee. Almost sounds like a Mexican coffee, right? Yeah, it is. Like, I don't know if that's an appropriate term, but that's how I've seen places describe it that make it. Sometimes I add a little bit of chili inside of it or Aztec or a Mayan coffee

or this thing or that thing. Actually, that is some, I didn't grow up with it. But now that I, Coco was always something that she and I had shared and we enjoyed. She was really into garlic, which did not make my dad happy. But garlic was definitely a part of our upbringing. But now I think about coffee as that vehicle. You know, coffee is a wonderful one for people that do drink it, bringing in that cinnamon, cardamom, even ginger, and a bit of turmeric.

You know, I think that that's a nice way to get lots of phytochemicals. Yeah, and a little bit of caffeine, too. Or a decaf for those that don't partake. That don't partake. Deanna, this has been amazing. I super thank you. You know, you came down to LA. You worked on this incredible presentation.

There literally could have been two more hours that we could have gone into all the material that you put together. But I think this is a great starting place to get people excited about something that is a low-hanging fruit to not only add literally spice to their life, but to get all the health benefits associated with spices, the gut microbiome benefits, the polyphenol benefits, the longevity benefits,

the potential cognitive benefits that are there. All the different things that you mentioned, like spices is one of those things that can easily help us step into that. And it's not that hard to do. And you reminded us of that today on the podcast. How can our audience keep in touch with you? And is there anywhere that you want to send them for any resources or any of the cool products or anything that you mentioned here today? Well, I already mentioned a number of the different products. You know, the salt, the Himalayan crystal salt, a number of the organic spices. Yeah. And that's from a brand. If you wouldn't mind just mentioning that brand. Yeah, so the original Himalayan crystal salt, so Himalayancrystalsalt.com is where you can find more on it. Some really cool stuff on there about Soleil Therapy and such.

One of the things I did not show you, but this is a gift for you that I brought along with me. And this was gifted to me from Dr. Catherine Clinton. These are spice blends. And I love how they've done these. So this is more of a hot curry, Jamaican, Thai spice, Greek spice. spice and then this is a Moroccan blend. I had a Moroccan cab driver last night and I said, tell me what you know about spices in Morocco. Oh my gosh. You know, he just loved that question. So anyway, I love these spice blends. You can also make your own. But if you want to gift them,

I think that spices aren't like the perfect gift for people because even if they're not into health, it's a way to get them there. So it's just more about the flavor and about, you know, just enjoying food. Mmm, that's well said. Spices and I think also like olive oil is a good entry place too. Olive oil is one of those things and you can give them together. Yeah. You can give olive oil that has spices in it. You know, it's a great way to say like, hey, you know, here are some high quality things

that will elevate what you're making at home and take it to the next degree. What about you personally? If people want to keep in touch with you and follow along with the incredible work that you've done and the books that you've published. Oh, thanks, Drew. My website would be the best place to find me, which is Deannaminik.com. So on there, I've got a number of resources. I even think I have my spice download on there that people can just get where I kind of go through,

like the rainbow of spices and then best practices. I'm on Instagram, Facebook. But my website would have a number of the different blogs as well. We've done a number of blogs on spices. So we have one on turmeric, garlic. We even have one on all spice. And we didn't talk about that today, but that was one of the top anti-glication spices. So there's a blog on there.

So people can read more about all spices. And all spices like cinnamon. It can play well with savory and sweet. So it's all spice. But yeah, that's my my website would be the place to find me. Amazing. Well, we'll have the link to everything you mentioned and your website in the show notes below and the presentation, which is worthwhile checking out.

We didn't get to all the slides, but you can check it out in the show notes below. And on YouTube, Deanna, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. It is a thousand times better and more fun to do this in person. Oh, I so agree. Thanks for the invite, Drew. Great to be with 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 it 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-O-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says, try this.