Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - The Anti Anxiety Diet - With Dr. Mindy & Ali Miller

Episode Date: July 7, 2020

This episode is all about learning how to use food-as-medicine to calm your thoughts and stop anxiety for good. Ali Miller, RD, LD, CDE is a Registered Dietitian with a naturopathic background and a contagious passion for using nutrients and food as the foundation of treatment protocols and programs. She is the author of international bestseller The Anti-Anxiety Diet, as well as The Anti-Anxiety Diet Cookbook, and Naturally Nourished: Food-As-Medicine for Optimal Health.   Her Food-As-Medicine philosophy is supported by up-to-date scientific research for a functional, integrative approach to healing the body. Ali is a certified diabetes educator (CDE) and renowned expert in the ketogenic diet with over a decade of clinical results using a unique whole foods approach tailored to support thyroid, adrenal and hormonal balance. In this podcast, we cover: Why going vegetarian isn't the right thing to do How to lower anxiety  The importance of teenagers eating keto  The ways to battle anxiety during COVID-19  About The Anti-Anxiety Diet How our world is in a health crisis  The ways you can apply The Anti-Anxiety Diet 6 foundational "R's" Our sponsor of this episode is: PRIMAL KITCHEN | Use code: PELZ JULY METABOLIC RESET SIGN UP RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Ali Miller:  https://alimillerrd.com The Anti-Anxiety Diet: https://alimillerrd.com/collections/all-books-and-programs/products/the-anti-anxiety-diet The Anti-Anxiety Cookbook: https://alimillerrd.com/products/the-anti-anxiety-diet-cookbook Food-as-Medicine Ketosis Program: https://alimillerrd.com/collections/all-books-and-programs/products/ketosis-program Naturally Nourished Supplements: https://alimillerrd.com/collections/all-supplements Ali's Twitter: https://twitter.com/alimillerrd Ali's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alimillerrd/  

The information discussed in this episode is intended as general information only. It is not intended for one-on-one medical advice, and you should always consult your healthcare practitioner before making any changes. And if you like the content discussed in this episode, please go leave a review so that others can benefit from it as well. I am a woman on a mission that is dedicated to teaching you just how powerful your body was built to be. I like to do that by bringing you the latest science, the greatest thought leaders, and applicable steps that help you tap into your own internal healing power. The purpose of this podcast is to give you the power back and help you believe in yourself again. My name is Dr. Mindy Pels, and I want to

thank you for spending part of your day with me. So I have another really interesting guest. Ali Miller has written a book that I think we all need. It's called the Anti-Anxiety Diet. And did you, have you read it, Jess? I haven't read it, but I think the world could really use it right now. Oh, my gosh. Maybe we should like express a copy to all of our resetters. Yes. Yes.

And what was interesting about this interview is that she had some really sound nutrients and information that you need to be adding in to get your brain to function in a calm state. So I think it's, we have a tendency to think anxiety is because of what. going on in the world. And what I learned from her, and I knew this before, but what she really hammered home to me is that you can have a neurochemical imbalance in your brain that makes you more prone to anxiety. So specifically, this, I don't know if you remember this part, Jessica, but she talked about how organ meats, that organ meats, I know. Do you eat organ meats? No, no. Although somebody, one of our family members, eats a lot of heart.

heart and liver. And I just, I can't get the nerve to try it. Are they anxious? No, they're actually one of the comments people I know. Yeah. Maybe that's why. Shoot, I never put that together. Yeah. So again, she had me intrigued because she talked about the amino acids that were in organ meats. She talked about other things too. So you don't have to just love organ meats. But the thing that my takeaway was, she talked about how you can blend the organ meats with other ground meat. Like you don't just have to grab some liver and you can hide it down. Yeah. It's like having children, right, where you like hide the good stuff in other things.

Oh, God. I've tried hiding it in bacon. Yeah. So she talked about how you can mix it with ground meat. So she did give us some recipe ideas in here, which is great. But what was so interesting and why I think this interview is so important is not only I don't know about you, Jessica, but the pandemic has created a madness of anxiety. I see it here in our clinic.

I see it with my friends. Your husband's not very anxious, so I don't think he's experiencing it. No, not so much. We're pretty good, just the two of us. But I think our world and our youth, especially with all the transitions that many kids are going through with not having programs and sports and things to look forward to with their school, I think anxiety has just been increased these last couple of months. I absolutely agree. And maybe just everybody needs a little more liver. Well, yeah.

Right? That's just, are you anxious? Just get some more liver. We need like t-shirts or something, stickers. Stay calm. What is it? Keep calm and liver on. Eat more liver. So anyways, you guys, she was, she had so much information. So this is an episode that if you're not, if you're listening to it in your, in your car. Don't do what I'm about to say next. But if you're at home, I would take notes because she was like talking about all the different amino acids, all the different nutrients that you need to make your brain work in a calm way. And I think it's so important that we understand anxiety doesn't always come from the outside. A lot of times it's coming from an imbalance in our brain. So, Ali Miller, this was a fun one. And definitely check out her book, The Anti-Anxiety Diet for, and she's on

Instagram too. I follow her on Instagram and she's got some great posts there as well. Enjoy. Welcome, Ali. Thank you. I'm excited for a fun conversation today. Yeah, I have a lot of, I dove into your background a little bit and I, and I love this idea around anxiety and how we can use the ketogenic diet to help with anxiety and anything else you can enlighten us on that. I really want to dive in that path. Let's start off with this. Okay, registered dietitian is your background. When I look at your website, I look at everything you're doing, you're kind of a unicorn in the registered dietitian world. Am I reading that right? Because when my patients go to the hospital or a registered dietitian, they don't get keto for sure. Yeah, it's far from the norm. I've never been one to color within the lines, if you will. What's unique about my background is I went to a

naturopathic college of medicine. And so it wasn't just a standard university dietetics program. So that had a component to it. And I've always believed that food is medicine. So I never came into the world of dietetics as a calories in, calories out, you know, exercise performance, weight loss approach. It was always on understanding the complexity of the biochemical reactions of nutrients and how particular compounds in foods could actually either upregulate or downregulate the microbiome or hormone pathways or how nutrient deficiencies could drive chronic illness and resolving them could resolve some really severe symptoms that a lot of experience. So I went at it kind of in that already. I was looking for something alternate.

But what is interesting is Best Deer University outside of Seattle, Washington, that's where I got my undergrad. I went there because they had a vegetarian cafeteria. And John Bastille, the naturopathic doctor that opened the school was vegetarian. And I myself at that time was a, you know, locavore, but vegetarian and still eating a decent amount of like the spreads and the things that didn't make sense. So I was really grateful that I went into it with a perspective and came out with it with a completely different. And I birth this mantra that I use all the time, doctrine creates disconnect. And I use that within the scope of vegetarianism, of keto, of anything. If we get to tunnel vision with our diet being dogma or being this thing that is not

malleable or cannot be adjusted based on our stress and our hormones and all these other changes, then we're not serving our body. And I'm so grateful that I broke up with my vegetarian dogma. and I started to heal myself. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's in my school time with stress peaks and probably all the soy and gluten I was consuming as a vegan, but having that ability to say, okay, let's look at this with a critical thought analysis. Let's see how these foods work in the body and what levers I need to adjust. And I came out as a paleo-keto ancestral eater.

Oh my God. I love that. So I always say that we need to stop being zealots for. one style of eating, that it's in the variation that is so magical. And I, too, was a very sick vegetarian. In college, I studied exercise, physiology, and nutrition. And I read John Robbins' book, A Diet for a New America. Okay. And I was like, I'm never eating meat again. And I ended up getting chronic fatigue syndrome. I was like, Candida just took over my body. It was so bad. And I had to come to realize that maybe there were other styles of eating that I needed to incorporate in order to heal my body. And I know that's hard

when you are a vegetarian for ethical reasons. Was that a difficult transition to make? It was, but I had to have that deep introspective thought with myself of, you know, what is the environmental impact of getting butter churned down the road in Washington or getting the eggs right next door, you know, from that apple orchard versus importing this tub of earth balance, you know, which has 11 ingredients. And okay, it's not partially hydrogenated. It's completely hydrogenated soybean oil. And it's non-GMO and it's organic, but it's still wasn't sustainable. And I had to make peace with the idea of biodynamic farming and sustainability. And really, I mean, when you look at the literature and you look at going back to these

ancestral approaches of farming, this is the only way we can regenerate our soil. And so I think that the environmental argument and that component of vegetarianism is a little bit misguided and manipulated. I'm sure we could go on a whole package of a lot. All you have to do is say regenerative agriculture and I've got a whole other podcast for us. But yeah, and I think, you know, it's so important to realize that because there are, there are a lot of different ways we can come at eating and the environment. And I do believe that so many people go vegetarian because they feel like it's the right thing to do or they don't want to hurt the animal.

But in all the research that I've done on the human body, we were meant to eat meat. So do you feel like that too? Absolutely. And Dr. Mindy, that's the thing is I find peace with it as well and more of like a snout to tail approach where you honor the entire animal. You consume all of the parts that are edible. And when people ask me if they can do my anti-anxiety diet as a vegetarian, my first questions are, will you eat eggs? Because I need you to have coline. I need you to have cholesterol, too. Will you, you know, and it's like, so there's these modifiable elements. Will you eat fish? Because I'm going to need to get bone stock and collagen into your diet. So if you're willing to do salmon skin and you're willing to do wild cod collagen and you're willing to make a dashy broth with fish stock and you're willing to eat eggs, eggs, then we can probably make this happen. I don't know what that's called at that point. That's

pescatarian, I suppose, not vegetarian, but that's the lowest I'll go with individuals because I really feel that nutrients like glycine, for instance, and we'll go way down the rabbit hole, I'm sure, today, but glycine plays such a role, not just in connective tissue, and we get this rich in skin, right? So when you're eating your bone in skin on chicken thighs or when you're making broth and such, or you're eating pork rinds, ideally quality source is. for all of these, of course, but the nutrient glycine is such an anxiolytic. It plays such a powerful role in upregulating GABA expression, which is one of the most powerful, you know, inhibitory compounds or mellow or outs in our brain. And so glycine, like we think of the form of magnesium, bisclinate

in a supplemental form, but glycine in a whole food form, it disengages the tension that we hold in our neck and our shoulders and our jaw when we're clenching our jaw through the night. And it can help with that's in quality of sleep. And it really does help to take us out of that pinch trauma of the stress, anxiety response. And we can talk about glutamine. There's so many nutrients that we can really find only available from animal. Yeah, that's so well said. And it's interesting because right now in this day and age, anxiety is like, I mean, as you and I are doing this interview, most of the world's in quarantine, although you're in Texas, you guys might be coming out soon. In California here, we may be in quarantine for the rest of our lives.

never know. But, you know, I think it's so, people don't turn to food and the foods they're eating in a proper way to reduce their anxiety. They turn to the Oreo. They turn to the bag of chips to have an immediate reduction of anxiety, but they don't realize that that sets them up for more anxiety down the road. So talk a little bit about just what are some good practices. If I was to look at my diet to lower anxiety, what would I want to look at? Sure. So with my food as medicine perspective, it's a double-edged sword. You know, we all have to eat, right? So we're looking at as powerful of a combination of the abundance or focus nutrients that aid in managing stress response, giving us powerful nutrients to build neurotransmitters

that are, as I said, inhibitory or mellowing out, as well as it is managing the pro inflammatory, gut disrupting, hormone disrupting compounds in the diet. And so it is a both end of the spectrum. And I take a large kind of stroke to hit both ends of that. And the most powerful one, though, is blood sugar regulation, bar none. And I apply that to all ages, starting with babies, toddlers, talking about early diagnosis of ADHD and children and neurological disorders like ticks and behavioral disorders, all the way into teens and PMDD and mood and going into adulthood. When we're on a roller coaster of blood sugar spikes and crashes, we experience anger, right? We get that all of the symptoms of hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia can really be exacerbated

with someone that's prone towards anxiety, whether that's shakiness, whether that's palpitations, whether that's racing thoughts, whether that's fatigue or burnout. And really the best thing we can start to do for all ages is take us off of that roller coaster and go into a speed bump approach by at least applying a low glycemic diet, by harnessing those elevations and blood sugar levels, which are hitting those refractory over insulin surge crashes and creating that vicious Oreo cycle. Right. Going for more, right?

Yeah. And so when we can pull off the refined carbs and we can get to more of a whole, food's diet and we balance every carbohydrate with protein and or fat, like if you're to have half an apple having that with the almond butter and whatnot, you're getting a step closer. But then you can get even further if you can start to restrict carbohydrates enough and increase that fat lever and play with your protein and start to produce ketones because ketones cross the blood brain barrier. And similar mechanisms, you know, if we all take a step back and think about the grand acknowledgement of the use of ketones for epilepsy and management of seizures, we can apply that

similar mechanism that when those ketones cross the blood-brain barrier, they reduce the excitatory signals to our nervous system. And they also aid an upregulation of GABA. They're gabernogenic. So they actually increase that expression of that mellow out compound that helps us to feel safe. And ketones also have a powerful influence on the pituitary. So this whole HPA axis of hypothylophthalm, pituitary adrenals, that's our feedback of what regulates a sympathetic fighter flight or parasympathetic, rest, digest, and I say reproduce, metabolize, regulate. That's the regulatory, not just breast digest function. Right. So I love all that. Like you're speaking my language because I just love what diet does to the brain. And I think we live in a society that feels like if there's something

wrong with the brain, we have to fix the brain or we have to talk it out or we have to change the situation. And when you dive into some of the things you just said, it's like, wait, no, we have so much more control that can be controlled around the quality of the food we eat. Yeah. But what about the teenage world? Like, I remember, you know, my daughter came home from high school one day and said, said that her friend had anxiety so bad she couldn't go to school anymore. And I was like, what? Like I never, when I was a kid, we never had that. Yeah. So what do you think is going on in the teenage group and how do we get them to do what you

just said? How do we get them to do the ketogenic diet? Well, I think something that's going on now that's concerning that I bring light to in the book is that the dopamine depletion and the dopamine imbalance and catacolamine or stress responding chemicals that were driving from the blue light exposure, which is a big piece. It really is. And if you pair that blue light, which is, you know, any screen, so whether it's a computer, a tablet, your smartphone with social media,

which has, I mean, I missed that era. I was in the AOL messenger. I'm like, I just got there. And texts were still the multi-numbers to hit the letters, you know, like two, two, two, to get the letter E or whatever. I don't know. And so I got my first iPhone when I was in my last year in college. So I don't really know what that feels like to be.

a high school environment, but I can't imagine of having at your fingertips such volatility and, you know, sheltered ability to comment and be snarky and mean, unfortunately, and judgment and these parallels that we're trying to hold ourselves to. And we know from research that the blue light alone is going to impact our dopamine in our brain. And when you're talking about something like eating snacks or things to try to get that, that food coma or that escapism, that's used. usually we're looking for a dopamine surge and we burn through serotonin and dopamine when we're under stress. So again, the blue light exacerbates that dopamine depletion. So we're coming at a lower level. And then we're getting less bliss reward because we're comparing ourselves and thinking

negative self-talk of, I'm a loser, I'll never look like that, X, Y, Z. And so we end the day and we open the pantry or we go to the 7-Eleven or wherever we are. And we want that, I made it through another day. I get? What's my pick me up? What's my reward? And adults, adults do this too. And we find ourselves in the pantry or opening the bottle of wine or whatnot before we've even processed, am I hungry? You know, what does my body need? What will serve me? And we've seen in research that sugar, especially sugar paired with fat actually can spike and hold your dopamine levels elevated longer. But what refined sugar does not do is it doesn't replete your nutrient stores to produce dopamine. So you get this short light up from an already low space from the way that you're living,

right? You get that little pick-me-up, then it crashes and the foundation isn't moving in the right direction. The foundation is, in fact, getting lower because we know things like refined sugar. We know things like flour-based foods actually deplete B vitamins and B vitamins are co-factors. We know we're not getting any tyrosine, which is the amino acid that builds dopamine, which we'd find in our egg yolk or our dark poultry, most protein-containing foods in general from a salty, crunchy or refined carb snack as well. So I like to recommend things like Nori seaweed, which is what's made with sushi. So interesting. That was my teenage daughter's favorite thing. I know. Perfect. She was living with us. She's in college now. Yeah. So like a norie sheet with

like avocado slices and turkey is like a really easy like four o'clock. I call that a dopamine boost. So then when you get home, you're already arrived in a status of elevated dopamine or at least you're picking up what you drop from your stressful day. You're not coming empty looking to fill that void. Now, I don't know. Maybe your daughter's unique in the sense that a teenager would eat that, but maybe in our 20s, right? I think in a teenager setting, it's just a conscious conversation and an empowerment. And I think meeting them with nutritional supplements. I'm a huge fan of orthomolecular therapy. I'm a huge fan of functional use of nutrients. And that particular individual would probably do well, you know, some myoanosotol, some magnesium bisclinate some GABA in a bio-identical form to get them going,

a bee complex, see if they're on birth control, because that could be depleting their bee status. And then once you get them above water, then you can start layering and adding. And I find things like smoothies work really beautifully for the team population. So things that allow them autonomy and ownership and are still kind of on trend and kitschy cool, but you can modify the macros to still be low glycemic and still be brain boosting and supporting. Okay. What do you think of this new, like, phrase that's come out in the last couple of years called dopamine fasting? Do you feel, do you know about it? No, no. Oh, it's, so I'm in Silicon Valley. So it's quite popular here that the belief is that with social media that and all are access,

to the dings and the whistles and everything that's going on and the blue light, that we are, just like we're insulin resistant, we've become dopamine resistant. Sure. And so part of what's happening to the world and this is all ages is that there's just that general level of unhappiness because we've flooded our dopamine receptor sites with poor food and with all the video games and all the social media that we can't even, even if we're producing dopamine, we're not getting it into cells. It's fascinating.

So what you do, supposedly, is you go completely, like, away from everything for 24 to 48 hours. I love that. Right. It's a great idea. I don't know if you get a teen to do it. Yeah. But it would, and that it resets the dopamine receptor sites. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's a fantastic thing. And cutting off screens, wearing blue blockers, there's always kind of happy mediums, at least adjusting the settings on your phone, getting your feet on the grass and grounding and things like that. I think that those are all great things. I think in many ways when we look at the dynamics of what's going on in our health story as we've evolved through industrial revolution and whatnot is that we need to go back to go forward. And I think that's another one of those ways, you know. Yeah, so true. So let's talk about what's going on in the world right now because

anxiety. Surely, are people like reaching out to you left and right? Anxiety has to be like on the top of everybody's mind. It's palpable. I mean, it really is. Like you said, I am in Austin, Texas and I think my daughter went back to school today at a Montessori school. And that was quite the conversation because I didn't feel it was appropriate to send her to school if the teacher would be wearing a mask because she's three and a half. And how does one show empathy or make a child feel safe or help them with expression and pronunciation if they can't see their nonverbal communication and their mouth? Oh, my gosh. That is brilliant.

What a conscientious mama you are. And I think some people listening to this would be like, are you crazy? I would want my teacher to wear a mask. But what is the three-year-old going to learn from that? I know. And imagine a teacher trying to organize a classroom. Okay, children, get together. Yeah, right.

Oh, my gosh. Everyone's like, da, da, da, whatever. Yeah, so that was a little bit of a work structure. And they're doing temp checks. I'm on board with that, of course, and things like that. We're all navigating very new territory. And we all have very, we're either in the narrative of the mainstream media or we, and we can be a little bit of both.

It's a Venn diagram, I think, in many ways. But I think there's very strong opinions across the board. And it's a pretty polarizing time. And that in itself. can create some palpable anxiety. But I mean, really what I think like March, April in my space was this like just zombie apocalypse palpable. I mean, you couldn't walk outside. It was like you could just feel it. The anxiety was physiological and in the environment. And it's been a high need of serious burnout, waking in the middle of the night. I have neurosurgeon clients at Texas Children's Hospital that are waking up in the middle of the night screaming. You know, there's just a lot. And not because, of what they're seeing, it's more about the protocols that they're having to go through and the changes in their structure of their day-to-day performance. That's a big hit. Yeah. Yeah. We've done that here in our office. We had to like to stay an essential business,

what we had to do to stay open. After about two weeks of that, I looked at my staff and I'm like, we're all going to be burnout at the end of this. And so we actually cut our hours back just to be able to like take good care of ourselves. Yes. If you are in the healthcare care world right now, it's, it's really what you have to do. Or even in the teaching, like what your teacher, what your child's teacher has to do to show up, just to teach three-year-olds is crazy. So what I think, again, like I go, okay, well, how do we help the population with the knowledge

that you have? It's like, okay, we could lean into, we can't change what's going on with the way that we have. this shelter in place regardless of where, but we can change what we're eating. So what I heard from you is like keep your blood sugar low, which is great. What else? What other foods? And let's also put it in the context of like, how do we help all socioeconomic backgrounds? Because some people can't afford supplements. Right, right. How do they get it in food? No doubt. And so my anti-anxiety diet takes a six-r approach and they're all functional medicine kind of layers, if you will. And My whole hypothesis, actually, I put this book out postpartum, and my whole hypothesis was a decade of working with functional medicine and individuals, as I'm being the detective of their body, whether they were deeming anxiety, even on their top three, top 10, shoot, I don't know, priorities.

I could see that, you know, maybe we're working with a Crohn's patient and we've done all the gut protocols. And the only thing that wasn't hitting was they weren't sleeping through the night. they were constantly wiry, they were burning out, and you know what? Stress depletes your secretory IGA, and it elevates your lipopolysaccharide. And so there's these complex mechanisms of the stress response, or we could call it anxiety, we could use those interchangeably, that really destroy the body. And so I came with this hypothesis that anxiety is the Achilles heel of wellness. It doesn't matter how clean your diet is, how perfect your supplement strategy is,

if you're in a constant state of unknown, of ruminating on what was or anticipatory stress of what will be, your body is not going to feel safe and you will not be well. And that comes down to this concept of that pendulum swing of the HPA axis of not thriving in this sympathetic fight or flight mode, but bringing the body back into that regulatory parasympathetic state. And so that's kind of the premise of my work. And I look at both, as far as the six hours go, removing inflammation. So I demonize five pro-inflammatory foods. So I demonize corn.

Tell us. Tell us. Yes. So I demonize corn, gluten, which are probably out for most of your listeners. Soi, dairy, and then refined sugar. And in a couple of those areas, there's little caveats. But generally speaking, it's because, you know, corn and, or high GMO, 93% of both of those crops. So why would you consume something that has neurotoxin

activity if you're looking at a neurological enhancement? Why would we consume things that are high omega-6 and processed oxidized polyunsaturated fats if we're looking to reduce oxidative stress? And so I kind of identify with each. Within dairy and soy, I have some caveats for miso, and I have a caveat with dairy as far as kind of a choose-your-own adventure. After 12 weeks of removal. You could play with raw milk if you have. I was just going to say, what do you think of raw milk? Yeah. So I think raw milk is a great way to build immunoglobulin in the body. I think so many of my asthmatic pediatric patients do fantastic with it because of that secretory IGA and immunoglobulin connection. I mean, again, going back to nature, we destroyed milk when we put it through ultra-heat processing and

filtration and we broke those particles to create oxidative stress. And we lost all. We lost all. We all of the pro-bacteria in there when we pasteurize it, right? And that's what creates more lactose issues because you're losing a lactase enzyme. There's a lot of things that we've done wrong there. But Fesadway and ghee and raw milk are the ones in raw aged cheeses that might work. But casein in general, even the A2, less inflammatory casein, casein does cross the blood-brain barrier. And so when we're looking at mood regulation and especially in the world of like anxiety with addictive tendencies or outrage or irritability, the kiosomorphine influence on our opioid receptors can be somewhat imbalancing for individuals that have, for instance, like bipolar disorder or

schizophrenia. I find that dairy is one that we have to be tighter based on the mental health status of the individual. So I do pull that out tight for 12 weeks and then I give you a little reintroduction. So say the six again, it was corn wheat. That's just the first. Oh, okay. No, I'm sorry. Say the foods in the first one again. Yeah. So there's six R's, which are functional approaches. And the first R is remove inflammation. Okay. And within that inflammation, the five foods are corn, soy, gluten, dairy, and sugar. Here's what's interesting. And this is something I've just been thinking deeply about because I feel like the messaging that we're getting so much right now in this COVID situation is that we don't have, we should fear. We have no control. So I started a, a discussion on my Facebook page about what was more important, masks, social distancing, or a low glycemic diet. And people were like, you can't compare those things. You're not, you're comparing apples to oranges. And my belief system is it doesn't cost any money to change the foods you're eating if you're going to look at what you're taking out. So those five

things you just said, anybody could take that out and we could have a massive change in their immune system. We could also have a massive change in how they perceive anxiety. So instead of us all avoiding this, how do we get the education out, especially to some of the lower income places, that those five have to change if you want to have a fighting chance at keeping your immune system up and your brain happy? I think it's bidirectional. I mean, I think one element, is unfortunately the farm subsidies, and that's where I'd love to see grassroots movement really make an impact.

And I'm hoping that that's a part of this great awakening. That I'm so, yeah, within Dr. Christian Northrop's language. I'm all about this being the Great Awakening. I mean, that would be a beautiful thing to come awake with because we're seeing comorbidities and metabolic disease as being the primary influential factor of mortality. Point blank, I'll say it.

And so that is a way that we unfortunately are funding the accessibility of these commodity crops and not regulating the quality in which they're grown. We're also depleting our soil and our future food system. And these items are being subsidized in the sense that, I mean, there's no way logically to look at a, I don't even know, Big Mac 199 meal, whatever some of these fast food meals, are where you're getting a beverage fries and a burger of sorts, and it's under $3. There's just no logical sense. And then when you look at the number of ingredients, how many imports, all of the influence of that, how that came down to be that price point is very frustrating.

I mean, we can't compare to Whole Foods. And Whole Foods right now cost more expensive, not the store, whole single ingredient foods. And there's just no reason why a Pad with 17 ingredients should be cheaper than ground beef. I just can't logically make sense of that. And it's unfortunately heavily impacted by our subsidies and then also influenced by our food stamp programs in WIC, they will subsidize processed American singles, but not single ingredient cheese.

Because it has to have a brand, because there's so much corporate lobbyist interest, unfortunately, in what foods, and I use air quotes, what foods are available to the lower income. And so I do think it's a definite uphill battle. And it's going to be a process from ground up, up, down, because we need the policy change. We need the accessibility. But we also need to empower at all levels of socioeconomic status, because that's how we can unite through this and really make a healthier country. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Like, I feel like you need a mic drop on that one. I couldn't have said it any better. And I feel like

This is what we're arguing in this moment is not the proper argument. It's not virus avoidance. It's that we have a country, a world that is in a health crisis. They are sick. And this virus is showing us that. Yet like what you just said, you have to have money to be able to eat food that doesn't destroy your health. And that is wrong. That is completely wrong in my opinion. So. So yeah, dive into the other. I just want to make sure we don't miss the other. other ones because I could talk for hours on that, that one topic. Yeah, I really want to give people applicable things because that topic actually is anxiety producing. It's a little sad. The second R does overlap with what's going on now too, and it's reset the microbiome. So the first R again,

remove inflammation, reset the microbiome, repair gut lining, then it's restore nutrient status, rebalance neurotransmitters, and rebound adrenals. Those, to our flip, rebound adrenals, rebalance neurotransmitters. And so in my book, I do give you quizzes. So in each chapter, someone might start heavily on the resetting their gut, for instance. Maybe they've had a history of antibiotic use for their acne. You know, maybe they're dealing with floating and dissension or they failed my dysbiosis quiz. So that might be their first kind of priority entry. So they'll be focusing on food as medicine like caprylic acid in their coconut oil beyond the generalized anti-anxiety diet. There's different kind of levers or tools that we would add up.

If it's someone that had to evacuate from the hurricane a couple years ago, they might be dealing with that rebound adrenals because they were living on adrenaline and their cortisol was so elevated for a period that now they're dealing with chronic inflammation and histamine overload because they're totally burned out and depleted with their cortisol values and they'll have a different approach. So I do try to provide you, it doesn't work in that order of those six as a one, two, three, three, four, five, six. You may kind of hone in a, on one area. But resetting the microbiome, I think, is so relevant now because the same kind of conversation in the sense of, I really feel it's a disservice that we're only messaging sterility

stay at home. Yes. And we're not allowing the lack of rhetoric on the influence and the power of the innate and acquired immune system and how pro-bacteria have been shown in clinical research with double-blind, randomized clinical controlled trials to influence both the innate and acquired through toll-like receptors through our gut-associated lymphatic tissue. I mean, the fact that we aren't talking about probiotics, it just has me hitting my head on the wall daily. And then secondarily, that we are emphasizing sterility so much makes me so concerned. You know, even like the hairdressers and the places that are opening now, they're using medical grade sanitizers that really are quite harmful to a robust microbiome can really insult our gut bacteria. And our microbiome is not

just in the GI tract. You know, this is inside our nose, inside our oral cavity, our ears. This is what started our inoculation process through our birth story through vaginal versus cesarean. And it's a lifetime of symbiotic journey with the host. And yes, it can get thrown off. But what we really want what I'm really trying to continue to speak on and tread lightly on in this current narrative is being mindful that sometimes when you go too far, it's very difficult to rebuild that robust diversity. You can consume the cultured foods absolutely please do. And I want you to have your fermented beverages and I want you to have the lactobacillus pickled foods and such. But we also need to kind of take a step back and critically apply that the hygiene hypothesis has not proven itself.

that we've seen in research, kids that play in the dirt, kids that have a dog because dogs are dirty, let's just say, and they have dander and antigens, right? You know, that these are healthier, more robust children. And I'm concerned about that for sure. Yeah. Yeah, I throughout this whole thing I've been saying, I think in order to be a politician, you have to take an immunology exam. Like, you need to know how the immune system works because it works by interchange with other people. And I heard something the other day that when we went into isolation, the idea was that the hospitals needed to organize themselves. So let's just put everybody in isolation for a couple of weeks so we can organize ourselves, figure out what we're going to do with this. And then the idea was originally then to come out.

And I don't know about you, but we've been for eight weeks now. And you've got a generation of people that are boy in the bubble. that what are you going to do when these people come out if you haven't gotten your immune system to be strong? And it just, that part baffles me as well. So what like other than a probiotic, what are some of your favorite ways to rebuild the gut? Gardening. So getting into the earth, actually, and incorporating those soil-based organisms. Again, you can get, you don't have to eat the dirt, although I don't peel my carrots and such. Yeah. I mean, we do a little bit, you know, it's just through inhalation, just through interchains, you're going to be able to get some of that good microbiome in.

The reduction of the sterility. So, yes, wash your hands. But again, we've seen time and time studies that show good old friction and soap can be a powerful tool for hygiene. And we don't need all of these antimicrobial sprays and the lysol in our kitchen countertops and all of those types of things where we don't need that level of hospital sterility in our household. So I think reduction again and then access to outdoors and then consuming. those fermented foods. And I will note, because this kind of connects back to the book, I often get the question from people that don't tolerate probiotic rich foods. Like, oh, I ate some sourcrown. It felt like a bomb went off my belly. I got so bloated, you know, like this big food baby of distension,

and I was belching, and I had flatulence and all sorts of stuff is going on. Well, you know, our gut bacteria is about three pounds of our body by weight. And the microbiome, outnumbers the cells that make up our body 10 to 1, hundreds of trillions of cells. And they do have their own agenda and, you know, they work on their own flow. And so sometimes when the gut is in a dysbiotic state, meaning that there's an overgrowth of a pathogenic bacteria or a harmful bacteria or even an overgrowth of common soul wildflowers and you don't have enough of the ideal symbiotic flora, when you then introduce a probiotic, often there's a battle in environment. And so we can see sometimes more distension or intolerance of gut bacteria as being a

wake-up call that we may need to go through a tighter gut cleanse. And connecting to anxiety, when the gut is symbiotic or optimized, you manufacture more serotonin and gaba. You're mellowing out for the brain. In fact, we say 90% of our serotonin is manufactured in the gut. And if the gut is in a dysbiotic state, it actually puts out more epinephrine. So the body actually starts to put out these bells and whistles to our central nervous system that things aren't right. Adrenaline starts to go up in a dysbiotic state. And so that just further kind of can perpetuate than the fight or flight response. Yeah, yeah. It's so well said. And when you when you dive into that level of understanding, you're like, holy molly, do we have a big problem? Yeah. Yeah. Like we need to put our

money, our resources, our energy on changing. If we just change the microbiome alone, we could transform people's health. Yeah. It's really, it's, but yet we're over here arguing about do we have enough health care for everybody, which is really a sick care for everybody. So talk a little bit about adrenal. So again, I, what I noticed with a lot of my patients is like at this time, they were already on max stress. And now I've got like families that have two working parents. They were on max stress. And then they went into quarantine with their children that they're now having to homeschool. So how can we support the adrenals with diet? Yeah. So we really want to focus on, this is a time when that snout to tail philosophy works well because organs are fantastic for the

adrenals and the mitochondria. So if we're dealing, and usually if you're dealing with adrenal fatigue, your mitochondria could appreciate a little bit of extra love as well, because that's going to only help your energy production in the body and the brain. When we look at nutrients that are powerhouses for the adrenals, I think of pantothenate, which is vitamin B5. I also think of our vitamin C, which we can get in our citrus. In fact, in all the glands in the body, the tiny adrenal glands, little walnut-sized glands, hold the most vitamin C stores. And very connected to this time as well,

because vitamin C status can optimize white blood cell function, can reduce oxidative stress. We've seen some compelling studies of use of vitamin C therapy, and we've seen in past viral activity being supported by optimized vitamin C stores. And that's why we think of that always as immune time, which I think the holidays kind of deplete us, and then that makes us susceptible in the new year always for some of these types of pathogens. And then we call it a flu season.

Yeah, flu season. It's vitamin C and low vitamin D status. Yeah, it's low vitamin C season. Yeah, yeah. I should call it. Yeah, because vitamin C plays a huge role in cortisol, metabolism, and production. And so that is one of those kind of adds insult to injury then. The organs are fantastic because they're loaded in B vitamins and they're highly bioavailable.

So we have a bunch of recipes of like. I was going to say, I'm like, okay, I'm willing to do almost anything, eat anything for my health. I'm not sure about organs. So tell me how I can do that. The best way of getting an organ, so you can do shellfish as one option, like oysters. You know, so that's a fantastic way to get a really bioavailable boost of vitamin B12. You're getting also some nice zinc in your shellfish, which is great. Zinc is a huge mood boost for the brain and immune system. We have so many overlaps today.

Right. But shellfish is fantastic if you're getting the organ now. right in there, muscles, clams, oysters. But if you're doing ground organ, I like to recommend starting at a quarter of your ratio of your ground protein. So if you're doing, for instance, like bison or grass-fed beef, you would do, for instance, three-quarters of a pound of brown beef with a quarter pound of an organ blend. We actually have in Texas, I'm sorry? So you grind it up. Yeah, yep. So you can put it through your food processor, like your Queesnart, especially something as simple as liver. Heart and kidney are a little more dense.

So those ones you would want to either treat with buttermilk and lemon and then you'd want to maybe chop that up before you'd food process it. But I do. I would run it through a food processor just with the S-blade, just so it gets kind of ground and then incorporate that into ground beef. Then you can do taco meat. We have a bacon meatloaf recipe. I mean, anything with bacon and like a jammy tomato flavor that takes off and gives some umami flavor, which cuts that medicinal, metallic flavor of the organ. That's a fantastic recipe in the book. And we do some meatballs, too. So anytime you're adding fresh herbs and a lot of flavor, and then you work with your ratio with your palate. So you could even start with two pounds of brown beef and a quarter pound, you know, and you can kind of work

your way of even lighter. But I find a sweet spot to be a quarter ratio that's to work well. Okay, that's a good idea. Yeah. Do you worry about tar. oxen's in those? Because I think about eating a liver and I'm like, wait a second, I want to make sure that animal is really clean. I do focus on grass-fed pasture raised organs, for sure, most definitely. But with that being said, I really think that the boost of coline. And I mean, sometimes we're talking about 200 to 300 times the nutrient density would get of that muscle fiber in the organ itself. And I mean, if you look ancestrally, that was the harvested kill. You know, like it was the- Oh, yeah, they didn't get rid of stuff. And that's what like the tribal leaders got or the women got to eat, you know, as far as keeping their bodies fertile. And we do know that a lot of bee density hundreds of times higher in the organs. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Okay. You got, you have me rethinking it because I've heard that before. You know, the first person who talked about organ meats was Terry Walls. You know, she talked about how the autoimmune diet.

And I remember when I heard that and I thought, yeah, I can do ketones. I can do vegetables. I can do all the other things she said. But organ meat. No, thank you. Yeah. But I never thought of grinding it with other meats. That's a great idea. What about with oysters? Do you worry about the toxicity because the shellfish?

Is there a way to do those as toxic? I haven't eaten golf oysters if that answers the question. I've been living in Texas since 2009. Oh, my gosh. I really like Pacific Northwest. And I also watch for pathogen. I try to watch the time of the year and heat. and I try to be mindful, of course, but I'm definitely a fan of good half dozen raw oysters here

or there. Yeah, no, it's a great idea. So, okay, talk a little bit about your book. Tell me, yeah, like what resources can people have? Because I love how you're just looking at the food and then you're looking at all these nutrients and combining that together. And then it feels like you've done it in a very applicable way because information is not helpful if you don't know how to apply it. Totally, totally. sexy paper that collects dust doesn't help anyone. Right, exactly. Exactly. So I don't want people to leave this podcast and be like, oh, that was great information, but then they don't know what to do with it. Yeah. So like I said, I think one of my favorite parts of the book, so I have the anti-anxiety diet book,

which is like the nonfiction like deep dive, nerdo if you want to read all the research. And it's a fantastic companion with the anti-anxiety diet cookbook, which came out last fall. So the anti-anxiety diet is the one that would have those kind of quizzes per chapter. And I think it's a really great way for you to just look functionally at your body looking at, is it something that I have to consider in my adrenals? Is this potentially a progesterone thing? And do I have to think about sexual hormones? Is this potentially gut bacteria or leaky gut or an inflammatory response? And that'll allow you to just kind of pick up some aha moments. And then yes, like you said, with each chapter, there's actually food as medicine recipes that are given, even in the non-fifigure

in book that just doesn't have the like cookbook style, but there are 40 plus recipes in the first book. And for instance, you might be recommended to do the bacteria battling chimituri. So if you did fail, yeah, if you failed the gut, you know, dysbiosis quiz, then that's going to be laden with oregano and garlic and olive oil, all these compounds that have known bioflavinoids or polyphenol-based compounds that can actually eradicate bacteria overgrowth and place a successful piece of your cleanse process. So you'll get these kind of like abundance food goals and then recipes, which incorporate a synergy of those ingredients in hopefully a really delicious,

applicable form. Brilliant. And how long did it take you to write these books? Quite a while. So it was about a year for both books. Yeah. Yeah. So the anti-anxiety diet cookbook is my kind of newer baby.

And it does stand alone. So that came out last September. And I said, you know, like for the holidays. if you've read the first book and you've a family member that you think needs it, but you're like, I'm not sure if they're going to go that deep. It might work the other way where you start with the cookbook. It still gives you an intro to all of those six functional R's and gives you food for thoughts.

So like, for instance, in the repair gut lining chapter, there is a table called bone broth five ways because I make a joke about how in Austin, Texas, not everyone wants to sip hot meat juice in the middle of the summer when it's 95 degrees. So we have recipes like a bone broth, Bloody Mary. We have with or without vodka, but we have options of doing things like blending your greens into your bone broth, a cream of kale soup with coconut milk and turmeric and a couple handfuls of greens and two clothes of garlic. And you just blend that. And then that's much more of like a hearty delivery and might feel a little better than that hot meat juice. So I try to think of the challenges

that came out from the first book in that year and kind of kept layering and applying into the cookbook. Oh, I love it. I can't wait to check it out. I will definitely get my hand on one. Okay, let's finish with this thought. So one of the things that's unique or that we love to bring people that we love to bring on to this podcast are people that are just like on a mission to like change the world or to get a message out and really make this world a better place than the day they first landed on it. So what do you feel like that is? If you had one message that you could shout from the highest mountain in the world, what would that message be? that your body is capable. And I think that that's really good messaging now. Your body,

when fueled with whole real foods and given access to nature is capable to do so much. And it's capable to battle pathogen. It's capable to prevent chronic illness. It's capable to feel amazing, to have clear thoughts and to feel like yourself again. You are capable. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, and just you. It's like, we don't need all this extra. That's amazing. I, I just am absolutely in alignment with that. Like, we're born in a miracle. Yeah. Let's just maximize that miracle. Yeah. I love it. Well, this was awesome. I really enjoyed talking to you. And I can't wait to get your cookbook and your book to my audience. So we'll put links in there. We're online. Where's the best place to find you. I keep it really simple. It's just at Allie Miller, R.D. And so that's like Instagram and Facebook. And then I have two websites. I have Alley Miller, R.D.com, which is my naturally nourished supplement line and my protocols and books and programs. And then naturally nourished RD.com is where my blog and my podcast and my clinic resides. Awesome. Well, thank you, All right. Allie. This was a true joy. And you've got me convinced. I'm going to go get some organ meets. All right. Love to hear about it. Thanks. Appreciate your time. Thank you for having me on.

Uh-huh, yeah. You put the whole foods in, you tits out, you put organic food in, and you shake bad toxins out. That's what it's all about. Put fast cycling in good fats in, trying seven fast types out. You download carp manager where your food is all graft out. That's what it's all about. That's what resetting is all.