Dhru Purohit Show - The Top Foods in Our Diet That Contribute to Increased Anxiety with Dr. Uma Naidoo

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health, Whoop, and JOOV.  Anxiety diagnoses have been on the rise, especially in a post-pandemic world. With more and more people suffering from anxiety in our stressful lifestyles, it can be challenging to find a path forward and calm our minds. But we know that anxiety can be a powerful signal from our body that change needs to occur.  One change we can implement immediately is changing what we eat daily. Our food has the power to lower inflammation in our body, enhance gut bacteria, and ultimately change how we feel.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Dr. Uma Naidoo, a Harvard trained psychiatrist, Professional Chef, and Nutrition Specialist. Dr. Naidoo shares the research that shows the connection between the foods we eat and how we feel. She also shares the common myths about anxiety and lifestyle factors that can increase our anxiety, including ultra-processed foods, lack of fiber, and a sedentary lifestyle. Dr. Naidoo shows us how to fill our plates with foods and incorporate anxiety-busting foods into our diet.  Dr. Naidoo founded and directs the first hospital-based clinical service in Nutritional Psychiatry in the US. She is the Director of Nutritional and Lifestyle Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and Director of Nutritional Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital Academy while serving on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. She is the author of This is Your Brain on Food, and her new book, Calm Your Mind with Food, focuses on anxiety, the gut brain connection, and practical tools to calm our minds. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Naidoo dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): The common misconceptions about anxiety (1:44 / 1:44) The foods in our diet and lifestyle factors that have increased anxiety (5:53 / 5:53) The interlink between the brain and the body in relationship to anxiety (10:12 / 7:48) Fried foods and what they cause in your body (12:00 / 9:30)  How to know if you have a healthy metabolism (17:09 / 14:46) Dr. Naidoo’s journey with anxiety (23:32 / 21:10) The truth about foods that are marketed as “healthy” (33:14 / 29:04) The importance of dietary fiber in our diets (38:12 / 34:00) Leptin resistance (40:37 / 36:16)  The impact of a sedentary lifestyle on anxiety (42:50 / 38:38) Dr. Naidoo’s patient testimonials (48:41 / 44:30) Protein for satiety (51:40 / 47:17) Foods and recipes Dr. Naidoo loves (58:00 / 53:50) Dr. Naidoo’s cancer diagnosis journey (1:01:44 / 57:25)  Also mentioned in this episode Preorder Book Bonuses from Dr. Naidoo Access more than 3,000 specialty lab tests with Rupa Health. You can check out a free, live demo with a Q&A or create an account at RupaHealth.com today. WHOOP is a personalized digital fitness tracker. To get yours, go to join.whoop.com/dhru and get your first month free. Right now, Joovv is offering an exclusive offer on your first order. Head over to Joovv.com/dhru and apply my code DHRU. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Restaurants, which is most times that we are consuming fried foods, they are using oils that are highly processed and are inflammation driving oils. They are driving inflammation inside of our bodies. Once you start to drive inflammation in the gut, you are starting to drive inflammation in the brain, which we've covered in the past. Gut and brain are connected, and therefore the inflammation in the gut leads to inflammation in the brain. So an anxious gut is an anxious brain. Hi everyone, welcome to the Drew Prod Show. This week's guest is Dr. Uma Naidu. Dr. Naidu is a Harvard trained psychiatrist, professional chef and nutrition specialist.

Her niche work is at the intersection of nutrition and psychiatry. It's called Nutritional Psychiatry, and she is regarded as both nationally and internationally as a medical pioneer in this field. Dr. Naidu founded and directed the first hospital-based clinical service in nutritional psychiatry in the United States. She's the director of nutritional lifestyle psychiatry at Mass General Hospital while serving on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. She is the author of This Is Your Brain on Food. That was her first book, as well as her new book, which is out now, which is about calming your mind with food.

In fact, that's the title. Calm your mind with food. It's out officially as of December 26. We're going to chat about the key takeaways in that book to get you excited to read it. Stay tuned for an exciting episode with Dr. Uma Naidu. Dr. Uma Naidu, welcome. to the podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here. I want to jump right in. Today we're talking about calming your mind with food, specifically getting to the root of anxiety. But I'd love to start off

with what are the top misconceptions that we have about anxiety and why people get anxious in the first place? It's a great question. Thanks for having me, Drew. Always lovely to talk with you. The first thing that people feel is that anxiety is bad. And I'm not fully in the belief system that anxiety is bad, I think that we can use what we know from the research about anxiety and what I share in calm your mind with food to actually turn that into something that can be a powerful driver for your success. So it doesn't have to be a negative. The other thing that people misconceive, I feel, and actually I'd like to quote Kierkegaard, who said that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, and that's kind of what got me thinking about how can we use anxiety

to our best power or superpower. The other is that what we eat and what we do doesn't really impact anxiety in that it is about getting the right medication like benzodiazepine or an SSRI to help calm us or a form of therapy, all of which are important for the right individual, but it's not the only thing. What we eat significantly impacts our metabolism and our mental health, but specifically anxiety. because it turns out that metabolism and when the brain is interacting with metabolism and the body, it interacts with the same centers where anxiety is located, some of the same centers.

So we want to make sure that we're eating well to also help our anxiety, and people don't realize that. What's changed the most in our diet that all of a sudden there's so much anxiety? Like, are there foods that are there that people are eating today that have largely been the drivers of the anxiety that people face? I think that today, as we sit here, post-pandemic, the last few years we've seen an increase in anxiety. The SSRIs specifically Zoloft for the first time in my career went on shortage in early 2020 because there were more new diagnoses for anxiety. That settled down, but anxiety continued. And studies just post-pandemic are showing that we have a much higher rate of anxiety.

I have to think that in addition to, to the angst and whatever we went through, the different kinds of worries, whether it was vaccines, school closing, where we're getting our food, supermarket shelves being empty, all of that contributed. But one big factor that changed is that processed food sales, the United States increased from about March 2020, and have continued to be at a higher level. I think that fear of seeing supermarket shelves empty drove a lot of different things. And we have continued to not eat as healthily. That being said, we also tend to eat the standard American diet. Now, today, we're in the state of California, one of the states that has generally a very different attitude

about healthy eating. But for the most part of the country, that's not all parts of California. However, for most parts of the country, there's the standard American diet. And we know from research that about 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy, meaning that if our metabolism is impaired, that is impacting our anxiety. So I feel it's the food that we ate. But another fascinating study done at Mass General in neuroimaging looked at individuals during COVID who did not suffer from the COVID-19 infection and looked at their brains and found that they had neuroinflammation.

Now, I talk a lot about neuroinflammation in my book because inflammation and neuroinflammation are also linked to anxiety. The point about the study that I, learned was that even individuals who didn't have COVID-19 were struggling with inflammation specifically in the brain. And what it said was the level of isolation, social distancing, being apart from loved ones also impacted us because as humans, we're social creatures. So that in addition, I think, was some of the things that have impacted anxiety as we've come out of the pandemic.

What about even zooming out beyond the pandemic? Just talking about sort of modern industrialized life. Yes. What do you think about its relationship, food, and other factors when it comes to this topic of anxiety? It's an excellent point because industrialization of food has changed the food system forever. So we know that Americans eat mostly processed, ultra-processed foods and fast foods. We know that those foods from research are engineered to actually be hyper-palatable. So we eat them, we want more, we crave them, and it continues. We also know that these cravings are related to our brain.

The fact that we no longer really eat whole foods, here's a fun story if you drew. I grew up in South Africa, so I moved here to study. For the first time in my life, I learned what a sweet breakfast was, and I learned what a Pop-Tart was. And I remember being, you know, studying and finding foods that were quick and fast and easy and convenient, you know, not things.

thinking to myself, this was not real food. I always cared about nutrition and always been healthy, sort of eating healthily. No one's a perfect eater, but I was eating generally healthily. But I think back was like, how was that okay for me to start doing? It didn't even occur to me. So even from my own experience, when you have those things in front of you and you gravitate towards them, it changes how you think. So I saw a colleague of mine say that, you know, high fructose that apple juice should not just say that it contains high fructose corn syrup, but should be called high fructose apple syrup or something like that, something to that effect.

And I thought that was actually accurate because there's so many things that are touted and marketed and sold to us as healthy, but in fact they're just incredibly bad for physical health but also our brain health. This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health. When it comes to achieving optimal health, my philosophy is test, don't guess. sure that's the case for many of the practitioners that are out there listening to. The problem is ordering comprehensive lab tests can be super complicated, tedious, and time

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head on over to join dot whoop.com slash drew to get your first month free on whoop that's join dot whoop dot com slash d hr you for your first month of whoop free you know so many people have this idea still today that anxiety first starts in the brain but part of what you're talking about with this book is that really it's the interlink between the brain and the body It is. And that the body is just as important, if not more important, to how anxiety starts. So what is anxiety and like where does that sensation come from inside of the body? It's hard to actually know.

There are many different theories about this. And there are many different treatments that actually target symptoms without looking at where is this coming from. And that's where I try to help readers kind of understand for themselves, what is their journey of anxiety and how can we intervene. So if we think about it, the brain has to interact with certain parts of the body, specifically. It interacts with all parts of the body, but specifically around metabolism, the immune system, for example, the endocrine system. And yet at the same time, what we know about anxiety, is anxiety originates from things like the hippocampus and the amygdala. Those are some of the regions of the brain where we think about targeting or understanding where anxiety comes from. So we realize that as we're eating, as food is being metabolized,

as we're making choices at the fast food trench fries versus the healthy green salad with healthy fats like avocado, whatever the foods might be, that there's a difference in how those foods are going to break down. And therefore, food can derivatively impact our emotional health and specifically conditions like anxiety over time. I don't know if you saw this recently. Maybe we could pull up the study. Tessa, it's called French fries and anxiety. Did you see this recently? I think I did. There was an observational study. It had like almost 140,000 people that was looking at what is the one food that is the most correlated in this study. I think this might have it. So clinical relevance, French fries may increase the risk of depression and anxiety. A new study found that eating a lot of French fries is linked to

a 12% higher risk of depression and a 7% higher risk of anxiety. A class of chemicals in frying known as acrylamides may cause inflammation and oxidative stress in a variety of ways that triggered depression and anxiety in the brain. Some scientists have expressed skepticism over the findings saying a host of other dietary and lifestyle factors may be contributing. What's your take? I don't know if you've looked at that study or not, but just based on the headlines, do you think there is there any truth to there about French fries in particular might be being linked to, at least observationally, anxiety and depression. I did look at the study, and I'm actually glad you brought it up.

I do think that just from clinical work and reading the research and what I did for the book, there is a correlation. I think it's cool that research is focusing on sharing this with the public in an open way, because does anyone love a French fry? Most people do? I've yet to meet someone who hates French fries. But do we need to be eating it every day? And do we need to understand that how we cook our potatoes, because potatoes actually can be a

healthy food. We'll come to that later. But how we prepare them and eating them from a fast food restaurant, not only are the oils impacted because these are cost-effective oils which actually drive inflammation. But fast food french fries in the United States often are coded or have sugar. They have sugar because the research and development has actually shown us and shown actually the food manufacturers and the fast food outlets that they can sell more french rice to us if they add sugar. We don't taste it. But it's engineered. into the food that it taps into those cravings that we have. So often you will drive up and buy French fries, you'll upsize and then you'll eat that whole box. And have you ever had that

feeling where the next day you want more? You know, they engineered to work in our bodies a certain way. So I think this is a good study. And I think the fact, I think these these are correlated. What is going on with, you know, French fries are potatoes. And largely because there's so much consumption here in America of process and particularly ultra-process foods. I believe potatoes are the number one consumed vegetable and a huge percentage of that comes from French fries, right, on sort of the national surveys that are there. So we're not here to demonize any one particular thing. We're talking about people eating these things on a regular basis, which obviously they are eating them on a regular basis if it's the number one vegetable that's out there, right? People aren't eating

whole potatoes and baked potatoes as much, right? It's not kale or something else. It's a good point. It's French French rice, right? So what is it, right? Here they're talking about acrylamides as being part of that, but is there something also uniquely to the fact that fried food could have some sort of link with anxiety? So what happens with fried foods most often? So if I'm ever doing high heat cooking, I use avocado oil. Restaurants, which is most times that we are consuming fried foods, I would say that than preparing them at home. They are using oils that are highly processed and inflammation-driving oils. So not only are they deep-fried, then they fry it in oils that are unhealthy. Then you get the issue with the acrhylamines. And they're driving inflammation inside of our bodies. Once you start

to drive inflammation in the gut, you are starting to drive inflammation in the brain, which we've covered in the past, gut and brain are connected. And therefore, the inflammation in the gut leads to inflammation in the brain. So an anxious gut is an anxious brain, is generally how it works and how I see clinically. So the idea of French fries being the number one vegetable and the fact that we are consuming it this way is not helping us. But then, you know, we need to think out of the box, like learning or teaching people how to do air-fried French fries or air-fried zucchini fries. They don't have to have French fries every day. Can they switch it out with, you know, there are healthy carbs and vegetables so we can get them from zucchini.

So there are different ways to do this. But the other factor about potatoes, you mentioned, it's not like we're eating baked potatoes. You know, there are tips about how to make mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving. There are tips amount how to bake our potatoes because, you know, newer science has shown us that, you know, when you bake potatoes and you cool them, especially if you place them in the fridge overnight or leave them for a certain number of hours, it undergoes a process called starch retrogradation, and what that does is low as the glycemic index of the potato.

Now, it's hard to do that and then make French fries, so I think the tip for French fries, I'm sorry, I am a chef, so I love to talk about food in this way. But the way to think about French fries is can we use an air fryer? The way to think about mashed potatoes or other forms is can we bake them, cool them, and then use them. A big through line in the book is metabolism. And how do people know if they have a healthy metabolism or if they don't, right?

Between blood tests, visually looking at themselves, how would you actually know? Because what your point is inside of the book is that the worst off your metabolism is there's a link to anxiety. That is correct. And going back to the fact that the centers in the brain are linked. You know, there are many different ways. Checking in with your primary care doctor, getting your regular routine check. check up your blood tests. But if you're noticing that you are gaining weight, especially around the midsection, that you are exercising, but you're just not losing weight. Maybe you're trying to

lose weight or maybe you're just trying to be healthy. Just something that I learned in obesity medicine is never assume that someone who is struggling with their weight is not trying and it's not exercising because there are many other factors which may be impacting them. But with anxiety, it's, you know, the how we eating is directly impacting that. So how do we take a step back, re-examine what are we doing, and rethink, what can we do to change this and can there be a correlation with how we're feeling? Because I think that a lot of what I see in my clinic is that by people not making the connection, they continue to eat and they think they're eating healthy.

And actually, they are driving inflammation or are. worsening their condition, even if their weight is maybe improving. So recognizing that you may be gaining weight at your midsection, you may not be losing the weight if you're really trying hard, that your appetite has changed, that you, you know, you usually eat a certain meal at home and you feel satiated and you get up and you maybe take a walk after dinner and you feel fine, but all of a sudden you need twice that amount. That's usually a signal that maybe leptin is impacted or not really reacting or you have some element of leptin resistance in your body. And what that means is that the body is not listening to leptin.

The leptin is the hormone that gives us a signal that we satiated. So things like that can give you a little bit of a tip of, but if you see your doctor, they will check certain blood tests, which will give the medical definition of metabolic syndrome. But I like people to also be able to educate themselves and have signals that they look for in their body. Fatigue is another one of them, just not having energy. not having energy to do the things that they used to do, and another one is post sleep.

How much of the idea of calming your mind with food is about eating the right stuff versus avoiding the bad stuff? How would you break down that percentage when you talk about it with your patients? I'm always about filling the plate, then removing foods from the plate, because I tap into the psychology of how people are, the psychology of eating. When people feel deprived and you say to them, don't eat A, B, and C. I used to do this in early days in my clinic as I developed my protocols. It doesn't work. People don't want to feel deprived and they want to go back to eating that food because

you've told them not to. So for me, it's about what can we add into this plate, not demonizing, as you mentioned earlier, you know, if you had french fries yesterday, that's okay. Did you have a salad for dinner? Can we build you in a healthier meal today? It's about adding in the foods that are going to be nutritiously relevant. And I want to take that conversation beyond what I did in my first book, which was a general outline of different mental health conditions, and this is your brain on food, the foods to eat, the foods to avoid. Because what we want to do now is understand on a deeper level, what do these foods actually do?

How are they interacting with the microbes and how could they target specific conditions? But the science had to follow. So we know a little bit more, and it's still in evolution. What are the most exciting things that you want to talk about when it goes to foods or ingredients and the role? that they play, especially on this topic of, you know, helping us sort of quiet that anxious part of the brain. For one thing, when, you know, the way that I understood and read and researched, how we digest food and what we eat and how they interact with the gut microbes, you know, they quell inflammation and they still do that. They help the environment in the gut. They help those microbes, the trillions

of microbes that live in the gut, to help with vitamin production. Incredibly important when it comes to conditions like anxiety, help with hormone production. Women in the stage of menopause may be more anxious. So these microbes are important. They help with sleep circadian rhythm. Our internal body clock, they help with immunity. 70% of the immune system is in the gut. They help with mental health. So they are active. But you might eat spinach and leafy greens, rich in multiple different nutrients, but also folate vitamin B9. And we know that. that helps anxiety. But once the folate is broken down with those microbes, it also impacts the neurotransmitters and which neurotransmitters impact your brain health and impact your

anxiety. So if you think about SSRIs, they, you know, are used things like Prozacosol are used to target symptoms like anxiety. But you can, depending on how severe your anxiety is, really try to eat the foods that can do a similar thing through the mechanism of, working with the gut microbiome. Now, you know, take a single thing that people love to eat, dark chocolate. Dark chocolate, especially the extra dark, more natural chocolate, and not talking about our traditional candy bars, contain cacao. Cacao is actually the largest plant-based source of non-heam iron. And there's a very large percentage of people in the world, especially women of child-bearing age who are iron-deficient.

So if you eat chocolate, here's a really cool tip. The cacao is going to help. It's a rich flavornol that will help calm anxiety. It's a probiotic-rich food because of how cacao and the cacao beaner processed. But if you eat it with vitamin C, like from an orange and you eat a piece of dark chocolate, that helps the absorption of the iron. So it will help you, you know, give your body a nutrient that it actually needs. needs to keep you calmer. So these are just little things that you can do through food, plus

that's one of my favorite desserts or sweet snacks to have because you're getting it from natural sources. You read about your own story about sort of anxiety and it building up a little bit during the pandemic and other things. Do you want to chat about that for a second? I would. And my main purpose, true, was to share with people that anxiety can also come from positive sources. It's not always negative. Sometimes you feel anxious and actually good things are happening and you don't realize it, but you suddenly have this overwhelming level of anxiety. You know, I had my first part of anxiety I've spoken about before when I had a cancer diagnosis years ago. And that was one of my most powerful lessons in being able to use food to help my treatment and helps really fend off side effects

and keep my health stable while I went through chemotherapy. But over the course of writing my first book coming out, you know, it sort of was one of those books that came out in the early pandemic, but then it sort of took off at a certain point. And this was all, this was good. This was actually good news and everyone was excited. But I also found myself trying to work faster and harder to keep up with the demand that I needed to, that I needed to put in to make it continue. And I didn't realize the amount of stress that was building up with that. And yet the outcome was all good. The book was selling, people were liking it, as in being invited to more podcasts and more things to share the book. But that I didn't even realize was a driver. And then I had a

very positive experience where I was invited to one of the first conferences that went back to being live in the UK. And upon accepting the conference invitation as a keynote speaker in mental health, this was the personalized lifestyle and medicine conference in 2022. I got an email, which I thought was fake, which wasn't, saying, you know, you've been, thank you for accepting this keynote. We'd like you to be one of very few physicians being invited to meet personally with the then his royal highness, Prince Charles. This was, looking back, it was a month before he became king. And of course, no one knew that we were going to lose Queen Elizabeth. So this was, you know, I'd read the email, I couldn't believe it. Then I thought, no, this is fake. Of course it wasn't.

These are, you know, what goes on in your head. This was a very positive experience for me and for my career has led to really more wonderful things that have come out of it. I was so unboundedly anxious. I couldn't get myself together. I couldn't think straight. But, you know, I had to work through that and understand, also through the eyes of my patients, that this is a very real feeling. And sometimes when you're experiencing such levels of anxiety,

it can be coming from a good source. It may not be something that we can always assume it's necessary. negative or it's bad. But it doesn't mean that you, you still need a solution, is what I'm trying to say. So was there any solution? You know, I think about that moment, it's like, you know, everybody's going to have some, you know, the way you're describing it as like positive anxiety. Go have these, do you have these moments in your life where you're feeling nervous, trepidacious, towards something that's there? Do you feel like that's something that has to be intervened on? Or are there techniques that you brought in in that situation to kind of help you with that. And I'm not hearing

you say necessarily that's a bad thing. Really what you're talking about inside the book is the chronic anxiety that people face. Yes, the chronic and unremitting anxiety or the anxiety that we know through medications is not fully treated. We know this from data that about approximately 50% of people take medication and they still remain anxious. And some never go into remission. So we know we need more solutions for me. These were techniques I actually learned while I was, as I was growing up, you know, yoga and meditation for my grandparents as I was growing up and they would babysit me

when my mom was in medical school. But as I went through medical school later on, I learned breathing techniques and research has shown that things like Pranayama yoga or breathwork yoga. or breathwork yoga can reduce anxiety. So a study done actually looking at heart rate and heart rate variability in 2020 actually showed that it also, that just pranayama yoga was lowering anxiety levels.

And I just felt that going back to learning a breathwork exercise was a simple thing. Even the power of a deep breath was very important. I feel that things like breathwork, hydration, simply remaining hydrated, I've had patients have severe panic, not realizing they were dehydrated. And having a mindfulness practice that really appeals to you, something that is personal to you and works for you. That's a very big word.

It means very many things to different people, as does the word meditation, but something that works for you. For me, it's listening to calming music, having something on my iPhone, I can listen to, being able to step outdoors, spend some time in sunlight before I put on my sunblock or sunscreen because the vitamin D is so important to helping. So there are things that I just try to build into lifestyle choices. And I think that if we have some of that groundwork done, then we're doing a lot of stuff that's going to help us along the way. Food is a big component of that, but it's one of the things that we build in. So I turned to a lot of that initially. I've never taken a medication for anxiety myself, but I do believe that some of my patients have truly needed these medications, so I'm not against

them. But I want them to know, and people to know, there are many, many steps we can be taking to actually lay some groundwork. So when that panic or that anxiety is really high, that you have those things you can tap into. You mentioned panic attacks, and some people who have such severe anxiety struggle with panic attacks. Are you aware at all about some of the dialogue in conversation around sort of how a massive drop in blood sugar that comes from sort of a massive spike in blood sugar can induce panic attacks in some people. Yes. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yes. And I've actually seen that. A patient that I treated pre-pandemic experienced that, not realizing while training for a marathon, she was being encouraged by, before she came to see me, she was being encouraged by nutritious to eat a certain way to help her training for the marathon. I thought retrospectively some of that information should have been tweaked for her, because what was happening is she was an otherwise healthy eater, but she was having a very high, and this was specific to her body, not saying all marathon runners will experience this. But for her, whatever diet she was eating was raising her blood sugar and it was falling precipitously. So that sort of sugar crash that people experience when they eat things like donuts or, you know, sort of a very sweet breakfast, for example.

And what was happening is she was actually reaching hypoglycemia and feeling very, very anxious and almost panicked. So these, these again are simple things that we can resolve if we are paying attention to a more healthy diet than not. You know, I'm a big proponent of people enjoying life. And if eating a piece of birthday cake is what a person wants to do on their birthday, I'm not against that. I feel like people, there's a lot of joy in how people eat. But it's about, you know, going back to that plate for the most times, the most number of days of that week, filling that plate with the healthier foods than the packaged processed foods and the fast foods and junk foods. And really being aware of things like sugar and where we're getting our sugar from.

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J-O-O-V-V-com. J-O-V-V-com slash D-H-R-U. That's me, Drew, to take advantage of these holiday deals. That's J-O-O-V-V-com slash D-H-R-U to get access to this limited time offer. Sale ends this Friday, December 22nd, act fast. Yeah, I think that that awareness piece is a big part because a lot of people don't realize that many of the foods that they're being marketed as as healthy, like down the street from this studio here in Los Angeles,

and you can see them all over in L.A., there's like an assay-bowl place. Yes. And, you know, assayi as a fruit is incredible. Yes. And it has tons of phytonutrients, antioxidants, all these different things that are there. The Asai bowl places, typically, it's like more sugar than like, you know, two Coca-Cola's. Right? I'm so glad you're saying. The bananas, the sweetened assaye that's there, then people drizzle honey on top, then they add a bunch of other things. Yes. It can be, you know, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 grams of carbs, depending on how somebody prepares it, especially when they start to add in, you know, granola and other things.

They think, wow, this is like a very healthy way to start the day, especially breakfast. And because most people have never tracked their blood sugar, they don't see that they have this big spike and they go down. But generally, most people, in fact, if you experience being hangary in the day, that's also a version of your blood sugar dropping. Yes, it is. Not that that's an immediate situation. that you're somebody who's unhealthy, but there is blood sugar dysregulation that you're experiencing when you get hungry. You are so correct.

I want to go back to the fruit bowl, the soy bowl, because I actually wrote about this recently and also one of the places that I've seen, people go in to get this breakfast bowl, right? I've actually looked at multiple times, and I keep thinking a few things. One, there's about four servings in the one bowl that you are buying to eat yourself, right? because if you think about it, the amount of each ingredient is high. The as a sai on its own is great. If you have blueberries and they're on their own, they're great, a little quarter cup. But when you put them all together and you add the different layers,

the granola has added honey, then you're adding drizzling honey on top of that. So people don't realize these are actually sugar bombs. And they are not necessarily the healthiest way to consume those foods. And in consuming those individual ingredients is very different. they completely hack, I'm sorry, they wreak havoc with your blood sugar when you eat them that way. And I think that so many things. Another one is fruited yogurts. We've talked about this before.

You know, a half cup with blueberries in it is very different from if you consume dairy, you know, a half cup of plain yogurt with little quarter cup of blueberries and some cinnamon, which actually helps some blood sugar, is totally different from a lot of sugar. is totally different from a fruited yogurt which can have up to 6 teaspoons of sugar in it because of the added sugar. So very, very different products and causing such sues to your blood sugars that you can actually feel super anxious on account of that. Yeah, I was just looking it up for French fries. For a large serving of French fries, it's 64 grams of carbohydrates. And those carbohydrates turn into sugars in our body.

We're not here to demonize carbs, but when you eat that by itself, right, especially people often eat their French fries first before they even eat, you know, their burger or their burrito or whatever else they're getting along with it, that has an immediate, separate from the acrylamide. Yes. Which has some potentially toxic aspects of it in high dosages, and concentrated. That in itself is a rush of sugar, which is over a period of time. day after day is going to wreak havoc on your metabolism. It is going to wreak havoc. And something that people, there's some very interesting gate on this. Again, I'm not demonizing sugar.

We need natural sugars for our bodies to work. And we're not demonizing carbs either. But carbs also exist in healthy, cruciferous vegetables. But four grams, if you're looking at a food label, another thing that often tricks us is our recipes in the United States on pounds and ounces, but our food labels are in grams. So four grams of sugar is one teaspoon. And that's an easy conversion just to use when you're shopping online or you're in the supermarket.

By understanding that, now it wouldn't directly convert from 64 grams of carbs. But if you think about it, you're somewhere in a very high range. But if you're just looking at sugar or added sugars on a food label, that's an easy conversion. And that's how you can know in a half cup of yogurt that you're getting up to six teaspoons of sugar. And I think just understanding that despite the labels of healthy, organic, whatever the label says, actually look at the ingredients because that's empowering yourself in your own mental health dialogue to know that you're not consuming too much of the wrong ingredients. Well, one of the big things you talk about in the book is that it's, as you

mentioned, sugar has its challenges in these concentrated forms largely because it's removed from dietary fiber. So do you want to talk a little about dietary fiber and how that plays into this whole thing? So dietary fiber, you know, there's been an emergence of really good books and data and research over the last few years, understanding fiber a little bit better. As I say, you know, fiber used to be what we thought our grandmothers drank in little orange drinks because, you know, maybe she's having a problem going to the bathroom. Fibber is much more serious than that. It is an ingredient in food that we really need. We definitely need protein, but Americans tend to focus on counting protein grams and ignore fiber. So we're eating much less fiber

than we should. You get fiber from plant foods, from beans, nuts, seeds, legumes, healthy whole grains. I guide people to whole grains versus, you know, the processed, ultra-processed grains. So I think that having some of that new diet is important, not the whole thing. Fiber is the main nutrient for the gut microbes. So the gut microbes, the trillions of them that live there, really look to fiber to nurture of them. So by taking care of those gut microbes, you were taking care of your physical health, all of the functions of those microbes that we talked about earlier, plus your mental health. Fibers also satiating. So I always say fiber is your friend when you're anxious. Why? Because a fiber-filled food would break down more slowly in your body, would not cause that blood sugar spike,

would metabolize more slowly in your body, and you would feel full. It's not feeling hungry after you've eaten a donut 20 minutes later and wanting a second and third donut. And think about if you've ever had that experience when you have a most satiating meal. So fiber is a very powerful ingredient that I think we kind of need to be paying more attention to just by including, and a simple, easy way to do it is building up your salad bowl, you know, not the assayi fruit bowl, but the salad bowl with your different colors of vegetables, the different, you know, beans, nuts, seeds, all sorts of things, your clean proteins, whether that's chicken or beef, whatever it is that you prefer to really add to your fiber.

You mentioned leptin before. Do you want to expand on that a little bit? We've talked about a bunch on this podcast, on previous podcasts, but do you talk about leptin, metabolism, anxiety, the relationship between all those things? Yes. So, you know, leptin is very simply the hormone that tells us that we're full in simplest terms. And when you develop, if you've been eating poorly stressed, multiple different things, and if you've developed leptin resistance, which basically means your body, the cells in your

body are not really recognizing or responding to the leptin signal. You develop something called leptin resistance. So you eat that first plate of food and you're starving. You feel like, you know, when I barely ate anything, I need more, and you go for a second or third helping. This is usually a signal that there's something that's off with your metabolism. But remember, we talked about how the brain interacts with different parts of the body and metabolism, including the immune system, the ANS, the autonomic nervous system, as well as the endocrine system. So by interacting with systems, we know that the brain is, you know, that firstly, we know that mental health is no longer just an above-the-neck concept, but we also know the brain is relating to the body around

metabolism. And then the way that it's connected back to the brain is that anxiety mostly is understood through the amygdala and the hippocampus. So there's a connection there. Leptin resistance means that our body is not responding to the right metabolic signals. We're eating more. We're impacting our metabolism. Not everyone will develop metabolic syndrome, but we may become one of those 88% of the country that we think are metabolically unhealthy. And that then will impact, certainly impact in a good number of people, the level of anxiety you feel. You mentioned the hippocampus. We recently had a gentleman named Dr. Majid Fatoui on the podcast,

and he is known for a lot of his research in tracking, and his research over like 30 years about tracking like the size of the hippocampus and different things that shrink the hippocampus over time. And separate from the topic of food, and he did note that a high sugar diet, is something that shrinks the hippocampus, is people not being active or living a sedentary lifestyle. So where does that play into the conversation of anxiety? I'm really glad you asked that because another thing that I walk people through in the protocol in my book

is that it's not just one thing. So it's not just food. Food is the focus of my work and my research. but I also have sincerely believed for a very long time that medicine needed a holistic and integrated approach. And so in my clinic, I started asking people what they were doing for exercise and taking it out of the 10-minute model of a medication check to, you know, what else you're doing is spending time outdoors. Are you engaging in forest bathing, which is basically spending time in nature, spending time outdoors, all of these things positively impact mental health? So when it comes to this specifically, I feel that including more solutions for people

beyond just medications and psychotherapy becomes critical for anxiety. And having a protocol that they can follow and build in things that they enjoy, exercise is critical. We know we need a certain number of, technically by definition, a certain number of minutes of exercise a week. What I ask people to do is find things that they like. like to do. Maybe they just, maybe if they're severely anxious and not feeling great with their mood, all they can do is walk. Maybe they start there, but they build it up in a certain way. We know that we want them to be building up their protein and their muscles. So that's another part of the protocol. It becomes almost a system that is very personalized for the individual, based on their

goals, their level of anxiety, their metabolism, their metabolic health overall. But exercise is a huge part of it and just being able to, I've had a lot of patients tell me that they exercise to kind of release that angst that they're feeling. And that is actually true because endorphins get released. We feel better when we exercise. So for some people with anxiety, they will get on a treadmill and do 20 minutes in the treadmill to expend some energy and they feel a lot of karma after that. For others, they're so anxious they can't get on the treadmill. So I might ask them to walk. Can they engage in a class that they like at the gym?

Maybe it's a Zumba class. Maybe it's a high intensity class. Whatever it is that appeals to them is usually the way to go. Because not everyone just takes naturally to exercise, but it's an important part of an anti-anxiety protocol to integrate something you enjoy doing and build up, just like you reformatting your plate, to build up on more and more of what you enjoy doing

so that you're keeping healthy. Yeah, you know, you mentioned that not everybody takes naturally to exercise. Would you also say, though, if somebody's struggling with anxiety, if they don't fix their sedentary lifestyle, it's likely that it's not going to improve. This is a tough one. I think that... It's kind of like asking, well, I don't want to cut you off. No, no, please.

Genuinely, I want to hear your thoughts. And sort of the second part of that question would be, if somebody's struggling with anxiety, but they're eating ultra-processed foods, is it? Is there any chance that they would ever get better? So let's start first with the exercise one, because I cut you off, and I apologize about that. No worries at all. That is such a great question. So I'll tell you that I feel people should exercise because it's so critical to things like our cardiac health.

And people forget, I'm here talking about anxiety today, but the number one killer in the United States is cardiac disease. So we know that keeping an active lifestyle and a non-sedentary lifestyle is going to help your cardiac health. So I cannot sit here as a physician trying to be responsible about everyone's health and say, you can't, you have to, you can avoid exercise and kind of sit on the couch and do what you want and eat a healthy diet, but sit on the couch. So I've heard Dr. Mark Hyman say this, you know, you can't exercise out of a bad diet. And I completely agree with that. And I've said that to all of my patients.

So you can't eat the ultra-process food and do 200 minutes of exercise a week and say, I'm fine. And it also has nothing to do. do with your weight, by the way, because you can be very slender and slim, but you can have visceral fat, which we're not seeing from the outside of looking at your body, which may be impacting your metabolic health. So it's really, it's a much more complex discussion, I guess is what I'm trying to say. I feel like you also can't outrun the processed, out-processed food. So if you're eating junk food, that's what's feeding your body and your brain. That's what's feeding those gut microbes. That's what's driving the inflammation inside of your body. And again,

you may still be slim and slender, but it doesn't mean that you're going to be feeling physically healthy in the long term or that your mental health is going to benefit. So yes, to exercise, what I have to do in mental health is if a person is so severely anxious and maybe has an impacted mood as well, because often those two conditions go together, maybe they can't get out of bed. You know, what do they need first to get them going? Can they start with walking to get coffee? You know, can they walk to get the newspaper? Can they take the dog out and walk?

Can they get their bodies moving? So you're trying to change that mindset of I'm feeling depressed and anxious. I'm going to watch television every, you know, the whole day. I'm going to sit in front of the computer. So those things are hugely important. And I don't think we can really get away from understanding those things now. So yeah, very long answer to a short question, but yeah, we got to exercise, but find what works for you. And yeah, patient testimonials from, you know, putting people on protocols like the protocol in your book that you want to share?

Yes. You know, one of the patients that I remember, because I wouldn't have really initially linked this until I started to uncover what I talk about in the book, which is sort of the impact of immunity and the immune system, which is 70% of the immune system. is actually in the gut. A young woman who came in with a rash on her skin, and you're probably thinking, well, why is she coming to see you? Well, her dermatologist had referred her, and she came in because she was feeling super anxious. And it turned out with a little more investigation that she had a condition called SLE. And the condition actually shows up with rashes that are very specific kind of a textbook diagnosis. You learn in medical school. But I also uncovered that her, she really needed help with her diet and the impact of the immune system,

her dietary needs and anxiety were all linked. And what I liked the most about it was, and why I seemed to remember her, was that I had not really thought that these systems were connected. I might have come across a study, I might have read something, but I didn't see that immediate connection until I worked with her. They had really uncovered why I wrote about immunity as part of this book. In the past, I've had individuals who had made changes to their diet, and it wasn't immediately linked, say, to the immune system, but made changes in their diet through a work in promotion and things like that and had developed inflammation and gut dyspiosis. And diet can also help there. But here it was very specific to healing across the systems.

Yeah. So what were some of the things you had her do? Some of the things I had her do were, firstly, we cleaned up her diet. We worked collaboratively with her dermatologist. There were some things that she did need to do. We improved, you know, some of the recipes that I wrote in the book are recipes that I gave to patients to try out, basically using high-impacting anxiety-ridden foods, a protocol, a shopping list that really carved out for her the food she needed to buy and cook for herself. And also really teaching her other things like mindfulness practice, asking her to find a breathing technique that worked for her, having her learn that.

So these also sort of calmed down her system in a way that helped her through this episode. It was very encouraging. One of the things that you write about inside of the book, we talked a little about sugar, we talked about carbs, it took about five. is you talk a little about protein. And because so much of metabolic health is maintaining, you know, good blood sugar and not finding yourself in a place where you're completely hangary during the day, what are your thoughts about that?

It seems to be through multiple studies and people talking about satiety, that protein is one of the most satiating things that people can be eating inside of their diet. I know obviously people can get their protein sources from multiple things, things. And even though you're vegetarian, you celebrate people eating all sorts of different types of healthy diets. It feels like for a long time, though, there wasn't enough education with a lot of patients that they were starting their mornings off with foods that were either very high in carbs or often very high in fat. But both of those foods are typically not as connected with satiety as much as like a high protein breakfast would be.

Any thoughts in that? So that's such a great question, and I'll tell you from my own personal experience, two things. I think there's a lot more research now and a lot more great doctors and authors and clinicians talking about, you know, what foods to eat and what order,

what foods are most satiating. But I actually agree, through my own experience, that protein is extremely helpful for satiating ourselves. It's important for our metabolic health, It's what you paired with, but it's also starting your day in a certain way. Why? Because as a vegetarian, it has been a struggle throughout my life to figure out how to get enough protein. And over the course of writing this book, I actually figured out a way to create a smoothie that is entirely plant-based. That is something I've built into my diet.

And I don't feel good if I don't have it anymore. I only add water to it, and I've found a protein powder, which is one of the bases. And it has changed, not feeling hungry in the middle of doing a podcast, not feeling angry in the middle of working, because I knew there was a gap. And I thought I was, you know, cooking a food and eating out of these vegetables and those proteins to make up, but there was still a deficit. it. And I found that because I didn't have enough energy for the training that I was doing. And I'm not training for a marathon or something. I'm just trying to get my exercise routine, right? And

realized that it was kind of my trainer basically said, you know, I think you need to be eating more protein. I respected you vegetarian, but I'm calculating what you're saying. And I know you know this, but maybe it's not enough. But, you know, sometimes someone has. highlighting that to you because I wasn't feeling hungry. But I also wasn't getting enough protein. So really, you know, this journey of this book has taught me a lot. And one of them is for myself, I really needed to put that smoothie into my day several times a week. I don't always have it.

I can't always have it when I'm traveling. But putting that enough times in my week that I'm getting that protein source. What are some other things that you found that have been helpful for people? like that you feel like it's not really being talked about when it comes to the topic of anxiety. Anything that we haven't touched on? I think we've done, I think we've covered a lot of stuff. But I feel like my biggest message is that this is a more complex topic and then it's not always negative and that there are solutions for people. Because I think everyone is feeling a little anxious these days and that's what I'm noticing.

and really it was inspired by a lot of the last few years and what I've seen the most of. Do you want to chat at all about, you know, do you practice any sort of media boundaries, media fasting, any way that you consume media, whether it be TV, social media, news of any sort? You know, I decided at a certain point that during the pandemic that I needed to understand as a physician, what the data was, but I could not have access to the news 24-7 because it really was just impacting my work during the pandemic, which I had to do as a hospital-based doctor, and that it wasn't helping me. So I would consume the important tidbits that I needed to know.

We had broadcast throughout the hospital during the pandemic, and I would listen to those because they gave us the data, told us what was going on inside our hospital and in the world. that was very helpful for me. In terms of social media, because I am an author and I share my work through a mental health platform on social media, I consume some of that, but I'm not, my biggest role on social media is really creating content, which I can honestly do without being on social media. I write a lot of content all the time. I care deeply about accepting media inquiries because it's an opportunity for me to share appropriate information that's well-vetted. I don't assume that I'm always right. I'm sure that I'm not, in fact, but I always answer media queries from reporters because

I want people to have well-vetted information. So not huge on reading media all the time. I try to keep up with the research, and I consume it in a way that I can tolerate, and I, you know, watch things for fun when I have downtime. Yeah. Do you ever tell patients that they should just take a break from the news and like turn the news off? When they have anxiety, very often I give them guidelines, guidelines around, listen, do you need to be, because some people will come in and say, you know, watching the, you know, current, whatever the situation is on the news. And I'm really very upset about it.

And sometimes, and sometimes, you know, around politics, this happened a lot. And I would actually say to them, look, you, I understand you feel strongly about this, but this is not helping your mental health. You are consuming every bit of information about either a political figure, about an incident. It's not that it's not a value to you. But taking a break from this is actually going to help calm you down because it's just driving your system in a way that you are an overdrive mentally all of the time and super anxious. Is there a food that you personally started eating more of in the research of this book?

And is there a food that you started eating less of in the research of this book? So I started to, it's a funny thing. In culinary school, we did multiple different recipes, and we were taught to pair chocolate with citrus, so orange with dark chocolate. But it blew my mind when I found out that the extra dark natural chocolate and pairing it with citrus will actually help the absorption of iron. So to me, I started eating more extra dark chocolate. And one of my favorite fruits is like little Clementeim's, is something that in the citrus family,

because I enjoy that combination. For me, it's almost like a dessert. So definitely yes to that. And less of, I would say, I really leaned into learning and recipes in the air fryer and making things that were crispy that I otherwise may occasionally cook at home, but really leaning into what can I do more of in a healthy way with virtually no oil or touch of avocado oil in an air dryer to still make something tasty. Yeah, what are some examples if you don't like sharing?

Sure. So I love cauliflower. I love cruciferous vegetables. And so making, using kind of Indian spices, but making crispy cauliflower in the air fry, making zucchini fries, but again, leaning to the spices that I like, not just kind of, let's say more Asian-based spices. other recipes that I really leaned into this time was kind of Mediterranean. So using the principles of Mediterranean diet, but bringing in spices from, you know, Thailand, from India, from

China, from different parts of the world, into recipes. So I have one for eggplant that I really like in the book. And also I make a kind of a fresh cucumber salad that's inspired from a Korean recipe. So things like that that really make it delicious, up your spice game, but actually whole foods, which are special, special for me. Any recipes with fermented foods inside of the day? Yes. So fermented foods, I'm trying to think, oh, a lot of stuff with kimchi and adding kimchi to different foods. I didn't include a recipe for kimchi because there's so many traditional ways to make it. But also, you know, switching up things like making people think differently about breakfast. As a vegetarian, that's another thing that I, if I travel, I really had

to find solutions for breakfast because I don't consume eggs. So creating a chickpea omelet was something that I think could even be used as a lunch option, was one that I really enjoyed testing for and then making your own kind of, you know, I'm not a believer in sort of supermarket cereals. And in fact, I recently saw the Japan banned things like frosted flakes because of the impacts on health, which I thought was fascinating. But rethinking, so getting actual Kiena and soaking it and then making your own little kind of version of a porridge. So simmering it and cooking it in a way that it's a hearty breakfast that you can consume because it's a great source of protein as well. So it was also kind of my quest to improve my protein. Yeah. You know, you talked a little bit before about your cancer diagnosis and journey. And I believe you also wrote inside of the book in the intro that you had gotten great news. And was that during the pandemic that you had went to go visit your doctor? Yes. Yes. They had told you that basically now you're moving from one category to another. Can you share a little bit more about that?

Yes. Thank you for asking. So I, and this actually goes back to my own anxiety journey, I have to say, because I had my follow up with my doctors. And, um, I was kind of surprised because out of the blue, my doctor said to me, well, you know, we were about to book my follow-up appointment. I said, well, should I come in, you know, extra number of months? And she said, no, actually, you know, we're graduating you to the survivorship clinic. And you only need to see me in, you know, next year. And I was very taken aback. I hadn't really been tracking the time. But one of the things that was, you know, I wish that every person with cancer.

gets to this point. But when you graduated to that clinic, what it is is they teach you more lifestyle measures to maintain a healthy life and hoping that you don't have a recurrence because the incidence is lower. It's never gone completely, but it's lower. But what it taught me was how much angst I'd been carrying even in my physical body. Because I just noticed after that day my appetite was different. My sleep was different. It didn't have to be. It didn't have to be. immediately, but I just started to notice and I realized that I was worried, that I was really worried and it may not have been manifesting in everyday anxiety, but I'd been worried about that for some time. So that was a highlight for me. What kind of lifestyle things were they teaching you?

So in the survivorship clinic, they want you to maintain a healthier weight or they want you to be exercising regularly. They're wanting you to pay attention to nutrition. So Dana Famba in Boston is also the Zaykham Center, which really teaches and helps with integrative help and other modes. So they do yoga and meditation. You can do it in the hospital or you can be doing it on your own. But it's really focused on that. Yeah, I don't know if we talked about this at all, but my mom probably about this now more than

12 years ago was diagnosed with breast cancer. I don't know if we talked about it. She's doing great today. And much like you, like we all grew up vegetarian, right? kind of coming from an Indian, traditional Hindu background. And that time I had stopped being vegetarian. I had my own kind of journey of doing a lot of functional medicine labs and other things and just trying a different approach and started to feel a lot better.

My mom, one of her physicians was also a cancer survivor, a doctor Elizabeth Bohm, who's at the Ultra Wellness Center in Massachusetts. And she was expressing to my mom, because we had put a whole team together. including this gentleman who was kind of consulting named Ralph Moss. He runs a website called Cancer Decisions. I think he's retired now, but his kids have taken it over. They go and they research all the different integrative cancer centers and doctors all around the world. And they highlight and spotlight a lot of this emerging research that there's this deep link between, it seems, cancer and metabolism.

And that many forms of cancers, not all of them seem to have this deep component that would have you start to really feel that cancer is deeply impacted by your metabolism, right? That cancer almost in a way could be overly simplistic, but related to the metabolism aspect of it. And when my mom was meeting with this Dr. Boehm, one of the things that she was saying, she was like, look, I know you've been vegetarian your whole life. I need you in your macros. I need your protein up. And kind of my mom took a food diary and they sort of estimated and they kind of had her macros and everything. And she was very good about the variety of foods. She was good at sort of like the gut health aspect, eating a lot of the fermented foods in the

Indian tradition. But her fat consumption was quite high. And our carbohydrate consumption was also really high too. And the protein was very low for her. She said, I know it's going to be tough for you, but, you know, would you ever consider not being vegetarian? would you have fish? And my mom really had to sit with it for a little while, you know, as you can imagine,

and you know firsthand, it's not an easy thing to, it's like, it's like changing religions. Right, right. It's somebody coming to tell you like, hey, you grew up Hindu. Like, can you become Muslim next to that? Can you become Christian or something? It's a big change, right? Or Jehovah's Witness. My mom sat with it and she, you know, was doing her own research and kind of looking at it and said,

you know what, I really want to tackle this firsthand. and she decided for her at the time that she wanted to go through this approach. So she actually started shifting her fat sources. They wanted her to be having a lot of these more monosaturated fats, avocado oils, olive oils, things like that, and actually practice a little bit of not a fully ketogenic diet, but more towards that direction. But not removing vegetables. So still getting a lot of good vegetables.

and then including in high-quality proteins so that you could get the carbohydrates. Right. You know, down, which the Indian diet, especially the modern version that people have today, starting from breakfast till the end of the day, is just filled with carbohydrates. And then we are Godrathi background, which tends to have more recently, from what I understand, the history of the food, it tends to be highly focused on there's a lot of added sugar into the foods. So they'll add sugar into the dolls. And then there's a lot of fried food that's there.

These breweries and other things like that, these flat breads that are fried. And she went all in. She went gun ho. And, you know, it definitely was a major change for her. And listen, I'm just sharing her background and story, just kind of empathizing and kind of connecting a little bit. I love that. And obviously her situation is an end of one situation. There's plenty of any other things that were there.

she luckily didn't have to have chemotherapy in her instance but she did have a shortened period of radiation yeah and then working with the whole group of integrative doctors they kind of told her what you know what drugs were worth it for her and what drugs were not worth it for her there's a lot of you know the cancer drug industry is a lot of corruption that's inside of that space entire drug industry but in particular cancers cancer drugs and nobody's written about this better that than this gentleman named Dr. Vene Prasad about how a lot of drugs are sort of pushed on these doctors where the side effect impacted this drug and the likelihood of an increase in your lifespan might be like, you know, 0.1%, but because insurance is going to cover it, they're

pushed on patients. Yes. And you really have to have good physicians around you that know, and don't just take the drug industry's sort of marketing. Yes. And do the research for themselves. And what's covered by insurance. And what's covered by insurance.

It's all interrated. And of course she was, you know, doing exercise now and integrated, you know, supplements, other things like that. It was a holistic approach that was there. Knock on wood, you know, about nine months later, she was in remission. Fantastic. Again, hers was caught early. It was a her-two positive form of breast cancer. And it's just, you know, that, you know, I think a combination of things that are there

that made me think about wanting me to share my mom's story. Number one, you were talking about how important lifestyle is. Yes. Right? And cancer itself can be such a scary thing for people to get diagnosed with and go through. And the family. And the family, of course. And it was for us as well, too.

But there are resources that are available. Your story, my mom's story is a perfect example of that. The other reason that I wanted to share it is that both for your story and my mom's story and many other people who have written in, it's like people often think about, well, what's the right diet for cancer? What's the right diet for anxiety? What's the right diet for this? the same diet that you talk about getting away from ultra-processed foods increasing your fiber intake increasing the amount of vegetables and phytonutrients that you have getting high-quality protein in your diet

from whatever form you know fits for you if you're vegetarian or if you eat meat you know staying away from processed sugars and big fluctuations in blood glucose throughout the day keeping your fasting insulin in an optimal range which is going to be less than five for you know people you know that's same diet that will help you with your anxiety is going to be the type of thing that's also going to minimize your risk of cancer or other chronic diseases that are there. So all these things are connected, one and the same. They are connected. And, you know, I think you're absolutely right. I think you, I feel as though one of the things that we're missing in medical science is that we are focused, the way that our medical system is driven and run is, you know, we practice defensive

medicine and doctors and hospitals are practicing that way, but also it's driven by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. So choices that doctors make in hospitals are driven by what medications are approved by the pharmacy and what will be covered by insurance. And those are not necessarily the best way to be making decisions anymore, which is why I feel we need more solutions. Now, you know, if you're getting treatment in a hospital and you attach to a good medical center, I'm not damning that at all. I think that's important. Good medical care is important,

but we need to have nuances around the decisions we make, like you spoke about the cancer drugs and what the actual impact may be. I think that regarding anxiety, what I feel was different is that book one, I call it book one, but this is your brain on food, really was a compendium of the different conditions in mental health.

I felt someone need to put it out there for people because mental health has always been in crisis. It's not just since the pandemic. Now more so. But with anxiety, there are these nuances around the different things that you can do, the different combinations of food, to really up your game. And also understanding that it's related to your immune system, it's related to the gut.

We've talked a lot about gut health over these past few years. But the relationship to inflammation and neuroinflammation is key. And then understanding that link to material. metabolism is science that also has evolved. And I feel like those nuances were important too. But to your point, Drew, I feel that this is where we're missing the forest with the trees. You know, by focusing on only one condition, it's not just cancer. It's not just anxiety. It's how can we improve our lifestyle in a way that improves our overall help? And that's where, you know, having a more inclusive culture of how we eat instead of labeling things like eat this and not

that becomes important. I'm really impressed that your mom made that diagnosis, that decision in relation to her diagnosis because it probably actually helped her heal. And I say that as a vegetarian. You know, I have no issue with that. I think we have to do what's important for our health. I have members of my own family who dabbled in changing their diets, even though we were raised vegetarian because of health reasons. other physical reasons that they needed to make that change or adjustment. I think that's so important in life. It's really no longer a one-size-fits-all, and I feel that the diet culture in the United

States is not helping our mental health, because the diet culture drives, just like the pharmaceutical industry and medical insurance industries drive hospital-based care and defensive medicine in a similar way, the eat this, not that mentality of the culture on social media, on all types of social media and the media. That's why I accept any media that comes my way because I want to use it as an opportunity to share hopefully good information. It's so key. People fall into these camps and becomes very divisive.

Well, you're doing your best to sort of bring people together. I am. I'm trying. And depending on when this podcast comes out, either the book is either out today or it's in pre-sale. So it's calm your mind. with food, a revolutionary guide to controlling your anxiety. Anything special you guys are doing as part of the book being out there and the launch? Yes. We have a link through my newsletter, which can be found at UmaniduMD.com or on social media

at DRUMA, N-I-D-O-O, really a pre-sales campaign where you can buy the book. You get access to my mini-course and anxiety and several other resources which we are offering you, in addition to a free chapter of the book to kind of get your journey started until the book comes up. That's great. Well, we'll have the link for that in the show notes, and everybody can get a chance to pick up their copy.

Dr. Nidu, thanks so much for coming on the podcast again. It's a pleasure to have you on, and I hope that this book reaches everybody that you want it to reach and that the world feels like a less anxious place for people. Thank you so much. Drew, always great to talk to 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.

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