Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Top Lifestyle Habits to Beat Inflammation

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

Dr. Mindy addresses the your frequently asked questions about inflammation, Alzheimer's, visceral fat, and more. The episode delves into the root causes and symptoms of chronic inflammation, emphasizing its role in chronic diseases and discussing how it manifests at the cellular level. Key factors contributing to inflammation, such as poor nutrition, negative thoughts, and lack of rhythm in daily life, are explored in-depth. Practical health tips include avoiding bad oils and refined sugars, fostering positive relationships to boost oxytocin, understanding the body's hormonal and circadian rhythms, and avoiding toxic environments. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep249 Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

Okay, resetters. I am really excited for this solo episode because so many of you have been asking questions, emailing us, asking on our socials, leaving amazing reviews on this podcast, which we appreciate. And so I really want to make sure that outside of having really good deep conversations with some of the most brilliant minds in health right now, that we, I do episodes that answer your burning questions. So on this episode, I want to go through several of the questions that we're getting about inflammation, Alzheimer's, visceral fat, like these are questions that keep showing up over and over and over again. So I'm going to dive in and there are six questions in general that I have been commonly asked and we'll just unpack those. And hopefully those of you that have curious brains like mine and want to know more about how the human body works, especially the female human body.

that you get your answers here on this podcast. So welcome and let's dive in. Welcome to the Resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Okay, the first question was phrased like this. Why Are we so inflamed? And what is the problem? So I don't know if you've heard this before, but hopefully you have, that they say the root of all chronic disease is chronic inflammation. So one of the things when we look at inflammation, we have to understand it is the body doing the right thing at the right time. In fact, you've probably heard me say this in many different aspects

of health, your body is always doing the right thing at the right time. And yet, when a symptom appears, we have a tendency to curse it, ignore it, or medicate it. But symptoms are ways that your body is actually communicating with you. So when we're in a state of chronic inflammation, the body is telling you that it's under a crisis. And in order to handle this crisis, it has brought on this immune response, that's what inflammation is, that it's brought on this immune response to protect it. Now, with that understanding in mind, we have to look at some of the signs and symptoms of chronic inflammation, and they can be everything from joint pain, like aches and pains, to brain fog, to bloating, to trouble with hormones. Hormones can be an inflammatory problem, and I'll explain that

here in a second. So the symptoms very much look like anything that has taken you out of your own vibrancy. So if you're living in a body that has great energy all day, you move really well, you're the weight you want to be, your brain is on fire every single day, you have great mental clarity, there's probably a good chance you don't have chronic inflammation. But if that's not you, if you're struggling to lose weight, if you have a lot of chronic pain, if you're brain fog is bad, now we have an inflammatory situation. So I want to take this conversation down to the cellular level. And the way that I look at this is we have 72 trillion cells in our body. And each cell is like its own intelligence within you. And each cell is always responding to the

environment that you put it yourself in. Now, this is a key point. And this is something I have been trying to express to my reset academy members. I've been trying to express this in my YouTube videos and on podcast interviews. Whatever environment you put your body in, it will respond to that environment. So if you put your body in a loving, nurturing environment, it will respond by giving you loving and nurturing healing responses. If you put your body in chronic environments where you are constantly eating the wrong foods, hanging around with negative thinking people, toxifying your body with toxic products that are pretty much everywhere now, then your body has to protect itself. And it does that by creating this inflammatory reaction. And each one of these

cells on the outer part of the cell has a cellular membrane. And that membrane, the job of that membrane is to breathe. And so it allows the nutrients to come in. It invites hormones to come into the cell. It wants all the goodness that you are doing on a day-to-day environment. It wants to bring that into the cell so the cell can work how it needs to work. But when we are chronically in a state of eating the wrong foods, not moving our body, not getting light, thinking horrible thoughts, chronic barrage of physical, emotional, and chemical toxins, what happens is that cell creates some inflammation around the outside of this membrane so that those toxic things don't get into the cell. But the other thing, now that it has like a wall up, now that it's not an amoeba that's

allowing it to flow in and out, now that it has this protective mechanism in it, it can't bring your vitamins in. It can't bring your hormones in. It can't bring the good things in because the cell is on shutdown. So we have to start to look at inflammation as the body's initial step at saying there is a crisis at hand and I'm going to do everything I can to protect myself. But we also have to look at inflammation as a systemic problem. It's not just a, oh, you spray. You spray. You an ankle. An ankle sprain is a great example of an acute inflammatory process. A little background on me. I was a competitive tennis player as a child. And if you've played tennis, especially growing up, you're bound to get a sprained ankle at one point. A lot of moving side to side,

front and back. I chronically sprayed my ankle and I would twist the ankle and then the ligaments would be damaged and then the ankle would swell. And so I knew in that moment, rest the ankle, you can see the visible inflammation, and yet you knew in that moment you had to rest because the body was healing itself. The challenge we have was systemic chronic inflammation is that when we are eating the wrong foods, thinking the wrong thoughts, hanging out with the wrong people, exposing ourselves to toxins, It's the same analogy. The cells are under attack and they need to protect themselves so they can hear so it creates

this inflammatory response. But we don't slow down to heal ourselves when brain fog kicks in. We don't slow down to heal ourselves when joints become stiff and achy. We call that aging. We call brain fog menopause maybe. Or we call it, I'm losing my focus. We give it other labels. but it's the same thing as the sprained ankle.

There is a healing effect going on and your body needs you to honor it. So when it comes to cellular healing, there are three areas I really want you to think about. First is one way that we can start to really heal the outer part of these cells is to look at our nutrition. And when we look at our nutrition through the lens of inflammation, the number one thing that causes your cells to inflame, this outer cellular membrane, are the wrong oils. So you've heard of insulin resistance, hopefully insulin resistance is where your cells can't allow insulin to push glucose in. And everybody thinks that insulin resistance is a too much sugar issue.

And yeah, sugar leads to insulin resistance. But actually, the number one thing that's worse than sugar for insulin resistance are the bad oils. Because every time you eat the bad oils, what you're doing is you're causing this outer cellular membrane to inflame. So the bad oils, I wrote about them in Fast Like a Girl, I've got them in Eat Like a Girl that's out for pre-order right now. I keep coming at those bad oils as much as I can because they are the number one.

one challenge with nutrition. So here we are over here talking about protein, which I love the conversation on protein, but let's go back to the basics for a hot moment. The worst thing you can do for a chronically inflamed body is to eat the wrong oils over it, over and over again. These are your canola, your sunflower, your safflower, your vegetable oils, your soybean, partially hydrogenated. Again, there's lists in all the books that I have been writing. So, The number one thing for chronic inflammation is we've got to get rid of these toxic oils and then come in with the good oils. You've heard of people who like all of a sudden start taking an omega-3 supplement or they

start eating more clean salmon and their cholesterol changes. I just heard a story about this this morning. Why did that happen? Because that person brought good oils into their body and repaired the inflammation around the outer cell, and now all the good workings inside the body can get into the cell and can actually do its job. So the first thing with nutrition is the oils. The second thing for cellular inflammation with nutrition is your sugar load. Of course, ultra-processed feeds. These are your highly refined sugars, your highly refined flowers. They're causing the cellular inflammation,

and most of the time they're mixed with the bad oils. So this is why you'll hear me over and over and over again, talk about nature's carbs. Nature's carbs, nature's carbs. That's what I want you to focus on is nature's carbs. These are carbs that come out of the earth. Your fruits, your vegetables, they have fiber in them. So instead of going for chips or going for a piece of bread, how about you go for a carrot or for apples, something that has more fiber in it and that we move our sugar

tooth over to what nature has given us. So that's the second on nutrition. And then the third on nutrition is something that you're hearing me talk more and more about, which is Obesogens. And eat like a girl. I have list after list after list of Obesagens. And Obesagens are toxins that are allowed in our food. And our body senses them as trauma.

They're a chemical trauma to our body. And so this cells inflame. So learn how to read an ingredient label. I have a whole tutorial for you. on Eat Like a Girl of I literally took an ingredient label and I put it in that book and I deconstructed it so that you all can figure out how to read an ingredient label because it's gotten really tricky. And so it's very difficult to be able to read ingredient labels.

So when we look at cellular inflammation through the lens of nutrition, we have to look at those three things. Oils, carbs, what kind of carbs are you eating and stop eating toxins? Okay, before we count calories, before we count macros, super. important. Okay. So that's the first category for inflammation. The second category for inflammation, I keep saying it over and over again, and I want to make sure I really highlight this because this was Bruce Lipton's work. And that is careful what you think, because your thoughts can create cellular inflammation. So Bruce Lipton, we did a podcast years ago with him, and you can go back and

listen to that. And one of the things that he defined in his lab was that when we think negative thoughts, it inflames the outer part of yourselves. So who are you hanging around? What are you listening to? The thoughts in our brain are programmed by the environments we put ourselves in. And many, some of those environments were childhood environments that we still have those belief systems. But if you don't like the way your thoughts are, you can't get to an optimistic place, really look at who you're letting into your brain. I brainwash myself all the time with books. I've books spread throughout my whole house. I pick them up. I read a little bit of somebody's intelligent mind, and I'm like, I want their mind in my mind right now. That's the power of books

or YouTube videos or podcasts. One of the benefits of listening to a a podcast like this over and over and over again is that you start thinking in a more healthy way. Because my voice starts to become your voice. And I hope it becomes it in all the brilliant ways that my belief in your body, if you listen to this podcast over and over again, you eventually start believing in your body because it starts to create a rhythm and neuroplasticity in your brain that tells you you are powerful, tells you. that you can heal from anything. That's a big part of my message

is that you're living in a miraculous body. But when you hang around environments that tell you're weak, or what about a health care system that says that you're fine until a symptom shows up and then once the symptom shows up, you're weak, so you better go and get a doctor

to be able to tell you what the diagnosis of the symptom is and give you a medication, that's all giving our power away. And we haven't had a belief system around the body healing itself. So careful who you listen to and what you're going to allow in your brain because that creates cellular inflammation. And then the last thing I will say, I'm actually going to put this under the category of rhythm.

This is a new thing that I'm talking about. When we get out of rhythm with our body, our body has to protect itself and it does that through cellular inflammation. We have circadian rhythm. We have hormonal rhythm. and when we are putting ourselves out of our natural rhythms, the body responds by inflaming. I'm not going to go into all the details on rhythm. There's a lot to unpack there. One of the greatest podcasts that I've done on circadian rhythm was Sachin Panda.

So go back and listen to that. All of fast like a girl and eat like a girl about a female's hormonal rhythm. But I really want women. Men need to know this too. but I really want women to understand we are rhythmic beings. We're constantly in a state of expansion and contraction, waxing and waning, very much like the moon. And so when we do the same thing over and over and over again and we don't honor these rhythms, we end up creating an inflammatory response.

So when you ask, what is inflammation? It's complicated, right? because your body is responding with protection by shutting off the cells so good can't get in, but that also means toxins can't get out and the bad can't get out and the cell starts to dysfunction have a dysfunctional moment. So we've got to look at those three things. What am I eating? How am I eating?

What kind of rhythms am I putting myself in? And what am I thinking? we have to go through that where where is my mind going where I'm who am I listening to if you don't like the way you think look at the I really believe in this five the five closest people to you what are they saying because you may have adopted their thought patterns so there you go that's the detailed answer on inflammation and one that again this is a massive problem and if we're going to overturn it we have to understand what the body's protecting itself from and so now you have that. Okay. Question number two. Easy wins. You guys want the easy stuff. How can I get my health

easy? I got it. I want that for you too. Easy wins. What are some of the daily wins women can do to take back control of their overall health? Okay. Well, I'm going to answer that question by telling you a story. So this past week, I was interviewed on Mind Valley's podcast. It was a beautiful interview. If you're not familiar with Mind Valley's platform, I highly recommend it. Vishin Lacani started a really cool platform of self-empowerment and self-healing through lots of different techniques. Beautiful community. And they brought me in.

I'm doing some courses on fasting over there. So those of you are in the Mind Valley community, you'll find my work over there now, which is really exciting. And the woman interviewing me asked me a question about, well, there were two questions. One was about O-Zem-Zem-Pic and like losing weight, and then the other one became about around fertility and why are we seeing such a fertility problem? And my answer, again, you can go listen to that podcast. It'll be out shortly, and I highly recommend you go listen to it.

But one of my answers to her is the reason we have now gotten to a point where we have to look at OZempic as an answer for weight loss. and we are chronically disappointed in calorie counting and dieting is because we don't understand how our body works. So when you ask me, what is a daily win that women can do to take back control of their overall health? My very first response is get to understand your body. So when I explain to this woman about how powerful our eggs are in our ovaries, and I talked about how the eggs that are in our ovaries have the most.

amount of mitochondria in them, which means that we need to play by all the mitochondrial rules, which are eating the right oils, thinking the right thoughts, avoiding toxins, getting light with the rhythm, getting ketones, another rhythm. All of that nourishes these mitochondria. And your eggs have, inside your ovaries have the most amount of mitochondria. So the first thing you have to understand is your body is crazy powerful. You have to understand your hormonal rhythm. And then the parts of the female body that are unique to women, we need to build a lifestyle that matches those parts. So when I think of this through the lens of a postmenopausal woman, and let me, because this is the hardest thing that I have about teaching lifestyle to women

is we have the fertility years. We have menopausal years and menopausal transition, and we have the postmenopause. But when I look at daily habits from a postmenopausal lens, let's now apply the theories I just taught you. Okay, how, what do you need to know about your body? Okay, well, your body's not cycling with your ovaries anymore, but it may be cycling with other parts like circadian rhythm cycle. So it's cycling with light. It may be cycling with the moon. I've talked a lot about the moon cycle and how it's affected ovulation for many women. So we still have to have a rhythm that goes with that female body so that you can have moments of extreme extroversion and extreme introversion, extreme output and extreme input.

The other thing I know for women who are in those post-menopausal years is you have this new brain I've been talking a lot about, which that brain is the best brain you've ever had. It's basically the brain that Lisa Mascone and I talked about on this podcast. It has now your amygdala has calmed down. You have a better look at seeing everything from the culture from a bigger picture. your brain is in a more empathetic place. It doesn't tend to search for the fight or flight amygdala anymore. So the postmenopausal woman, once she understands her body, she becomes incredibly powerful.

And then she now knows how to fit lifestyle cues into that. The perimenopausal woman. The perimenopausal woman is a very interesting scenario because you're losing your hormones. And I call it the neurochemical armor. Your neurochemical armor is coming down. Go listen to the podcast that I did with Dr. Mary Claire Haver, where we talk about all, we called it your menopausal toolbox, all the different things you can do in that transition to adapt to this neurochemical armor. But when you ask, give me some daily wins.

The first daily win for that perimenopausal woman is to understand that this neurochemical armor is coming down. You're losing estrogen, and estrogen was stimulating serotonin and dopamine and acetycholine and glutamate and GABA and oxytocin and BDNF. Progesterone was largely stimulating GABA. So you had like a whole set of neurochemicals that were able to help you react to stress. And after 40, those neurochemicals are going away. I call it the girl gang. The girl gang's gone.

So you're going to react to stress more acutely. So a daily win would be have compassion for yourself. You might not be able to do the workload you used to be able to do. You might need to take more breaks. You might need to let your loved ones know that this neurochemical armor coming down is causing you to react to stress more acutely. You might need to put yourself in more oxytocin-rich environments so that you can create a loving energy around you as this neurochemical armor comes down.

You might have, like me, you might have some traumas that need to be dealt with. I've talked a lot, if this is the first time you're hearing this, but I've been in a lot of therapy and breath work and psychedelic experiences over the last couple of years, really working on some traumas that in my younger years I didn't deal with. But that's because the neurochemical armor came down. And so all of a sudden, these traumas revealed themselves and I was like, okay, now it's time for me to heal this. So the daily win was understanding myself.

And then for the woman in the fertility years, this is where we have to really emphasize that you're a rhythmic woman. So there are times of your cycle where you can do all those extreme health habits. There are times in your cycle where you need to rest and relax. And there are times in your cycle where you have so much hormonal power you can take over the world. So know those patterns and how to eat and fast and rest and work out according to. to those cycles. So the daily win is knowledge. Then this is what I'm trying to do with books and

YouTube is give you that knowledge. So the more you get curious about your body, instead of blaming your body and getting angry at your body, the more you will start to see that you are living in such a miracle. This woman on the Mind Valley podcast, again, you can hear it when it comes out, is she basically said to me after I explained how her ovaries work, after I explained how her hormones work, explained why you hold on to wait. She said, so my body doesn't hate me? I was like, wow, yeah, your body doesn't hate you. Your body doesn't hate you. It loves you. And every time it gives you a symptom, every time it's not working the way you want it to work, what it's saying is know me, me, heal me, honor me. That's what it's saying. So every time we have a condition that sticks around,

it's because we have lost sight of how our feminine bodies want to be treated. And you have an opportunity to just get curious about this incredible human skin you get to live in. And the more you understand it, the more effortless your lifestyle becomes and you can really truly live in. And incongruency and integrity with your female body and you will experience firsthand how powerful you are. So that's a daily win to me is keep learning, keep learning, read books about your body, listen to podcasts, listen to YouTube videos, like keep learning how this body works so that you can take amazing care of it.

Okay. Third question, for people worried about Alzheimer's, weight gain, and disease, how important is the role of diet, the diet factor for prevention. The greatest way to answer this question is to ask ourselves, why do we have so much chronic disease right now? Why did a pandemic stop, paralyze the whole world? Why do we have so much anxiety and Alzheimer's and dementia? What is it about this moment in time that is destroying human health? So it's even beyond Alzheimer's, and I will go into Alzheimer's here in a second and dementia. Once we ask that question, the answer becomes much easier because we are living in the most toxic time in human history.

We have more physical, emotional, and chemical stressors than ever before. And because of that, chronic disease is affecting over, like here in America, over 60% of people in America have one chronic disease. And over 40% have two or more chronic diseases. So what is it about the modern world that is promoting chronic disease? And diet is the most logical first place to go. there are chemicals put in our food right now. It's criminal. There's many of them. I put them in the category of Obesogens. We know many chemicals in our food are endocrine disruptors. We know many of the chemicals in our food are inflammatory, just like the sprained ankle example that I give. These chemicals

are causing our brain to inflame. So if you want to get out of this culture and this modern world that is promoting disease, we have to come back to the simple fact that food is medicine. So every time you eat and you put a meal together, do you look at that plate and go, oh, this is going to heal me? When we take a supplement, when we take a medication, there's a knowing that when we take that the body is going to perform something positive for us. We take these medications and these pills so that we can have a positive upside of how our body would feel, whether it's to take away a symptom or like, you know, hormone replacement therapy where we're trying to get some of those hormones back. So we have that knowing with medication and with supplements, but why don't we have that knowing with food?

We let our taste buds drive our food choices, and this keeps setting us up for disease. And the food industry knows this, and they know this by spraying more chemicals on our food to make our food addictive. So if we're going to start to heal something like Alzheimer's, we've got to go back to the fundamentals of food. And in Eat Like a Girl, I go through five major principles, and they apply to Alzheimer's, and they especially apply, they especially apply to women's health. But men that are listening, they apply to you. And Alzheimer's, by the way, affects more women than men. So these five principles, I call them the foundational five, and I'm going to go through them really quickly.

I think I've mentioned them on other podcasts before, so I'll just go through them very quickly. The first one is your blood sugar matters, calories don't. Now, I know we have a ton of science on calorie counting being so important for weight loss. But the challenge with calorie counting is it doesn't tell us how many nutrients we're getting in. it's hard to sustain. Nobody knows if they had too many calories or too little. The measurement is so tough. So let's focus on blood sugar. You can get a continuous glucose monitor. Alzheimer's, they call it diabetes three or diabetes of the brain. It is glucose that has gone out of control.

It is the blood sugar not knowing after you eat what your blood sugar response is. One of the things that I talked to Lisa Mascone about when I brought her on my podcast and please go listen to that episode. It was so good is how as a woman ages and goes through menopause, her brain becomes less sensitive to glucose and it becomes more receptive and sensitive to ketones. This is why fasting is so great for perimenopause and menopausal women. It's because the fuel source of a ketone really powerful. for keeping those neurons really sharp and delivering information and avoiding the

placking that happens with Alzheimer's. When we don't dip into the fasted state and get that ketone and we're eating toxic food that's elevating glucose and making us more insulin resistant, the brain can't use that extra glucose so it inflames and that inflammation starts to create more placking. So principle number one of the foundational five is incredible. incredibly important for Alzheimer's. We've got to get your blood sugar under control. Bottom line. Another way, those of you that maybe have a relative that has Alzheimer's, the other way of looking at this is watch your hemoglobin A1C number. You all get blood tests

every year. Make sure that hemoglobin A1C number is sitting around five. Once it creeps up to 5-2, 5.3, you've got to go back to looking at your blood sugar and really watching that. So principle number one of the foundational five is blood sugar matters, calories don't. Okay, principle number two is eat nature's food, not human-made food. Here's something, try for a week to eat food that doesn't have a label on it, doesn't have an ingredient list. So that would be your animal products, that would be plants, that would be your fruits and your vegetables, your legumes, for those of you that are plant-based, like just, just

get things that don't have an ingredient label that you've got to figure out. Or maybe there's only three ingredients in whatever you eat that week. But something that is back to nature's food. Nature did not mess up when it provided us food. So once that food goes into a laboratory, now we have a problem because humans change it, destroy it, hijacked our taste buds. So principle number two of this foundational five is eat nature's food, not human-made food. Okay, principle number three is feed your microbiome, not your taste buds.

So we've got to go back to understanding that we're growing good and bad bacteria in our gut. And that good and bad bacteria break hormones down. They regulate our blood sugar. They give us neurotransmitters like serotonin. they support an immune system. So how many times have you gone into the store or been at a restaurant where you're like, what am I in the mood for? Instead of asking what your taste buds are in the mood for, what if you ask yourself,

what do my microbes need today? And we've talked about this. They need fiber. Your microbes need diversity of food. They need prebiotic, probiotic, and polyphenol foods. I put list after list after list in fast, like a good. girl of these foods. I put them again and eat like a girl so that we can bring back into the microbe conversation these foods. These are like, again, they're nature's foods. There's like

nuts and seeds and berries and olives and chocolate. Yay chocolate for feeding our microbes. So make sure you're feeding your microbiome when you choose a meal, not feeding your taste buds. And after, I'm not saying you can't like enjoy food. I'm just saying over time you may end up realizing that once you feed your microbes, you will start to make different choices around food. One of my favorite studies that was ever done on fasting, and this was like early on, it was like when I, like, I had to have been like 10, 15 years ago that this woman came out with a book called The Every Other Day Diet. And she was a researcher and she took a group of people and basically what she did is she

had them eat whatever they wanted one day, and then the next day, they didn't eat at all, they fasted. And then the next day, eat whatever you want. And then the next day, no food at all. And she had them do this over a year. By the end of the year, everyone had lost weight. All their metabolic markers had changed. But the most surprising thing was that their food choices changed. They chose better food. I think that happened because of two things. Fasting changes your microbiome. It brings back a healthy microbiome. them. Second, when it comes to health, you don't need motivation, you need momentum. And fasting gives you that momentum. So these people got momentum and they started to want to make better

food choices. So principle number three is let's feed these microbes, not our taste buds. Okay, principle number four is protein is the hero macronutrient. Definitely. It's definitely the hero of the day, especially as we age. I'm not opposed to the protein conversation that's happening on right now, I think we need to prioritize protein, just like I think women should prioritize fiber. We need to be eating more protein, so make sure you're having protein with every meal. And then the fifth foundational idea around food that will help with every chronic disease, including Alzheimer's, especially Alzheimer's, is fat doesn't make you fat. It feels to me like this is a principle.

Hopefully people know by now, but we have to bring fat back into the diet all the time. Like, just like I need you, I'm going to encourage you to eat more protein. I'm going to encourage you to eat more fat. So we can't shy away from fat. It's not going to make you fat if you eat the right fat. And for the brain, the brain is nourished by fat. Your blood sugar is stabilized by fat. There is so much healing that has.

happens with fat. So let's bring fat back into our diet, but make sure it's good. So those are the foundational five. So if you know anybody who has Alzheimer's or you want to prevent Alzheimer's, always follow these five. So it's blood sugar, not calories, nature's carbs, not, nature's food, not human-made food, microbes versus taste buds, protein is the hero macronutrient, and don't shy away from fat. It's not making you fat. Okay? Awesome. Like if you just spend your life, working on that, you will end up in the right place. Okay. Next question that I was asked is what are the most common foods people eat to cause chronic

inflammation and disease? Well, the foods that people eat to cause chronic inflammation and disease is anything man-made, human-made, both men and women. It is this ultra-processed, ultra-refined food is absolutely destroying the world right now. It's contributing to chronic inflammation and chronic disease. And you mix that with the packaging. There's a lot of discussion right now about microplastics being in everything and how harmful that is to our system.

Just because food is allowed in your supermarket does not mean it's healthy. This is the sad reality. So if you want to avoid the chronic diseases and the chronic inflammations, we have to get back to the simplicity of food. And the simplicity of food, again, is. everything that I've been talking about here, which is eat the food that nature provided, not the food that you found in a lab or was created in a lab. So there's going to be like a cracker.

A cracker had to be created in a lab or in a warehouse is what I was going to say, but that sounds so dirty, but in, you know, in some kind of man-made environment. So what if you, if I pick an apple off a tree, like nature made that. Whereas if I grab a bag of crackers, there was a human that had to put all those ingredients together. So let's lean into nature's food and get away from the human-made food. And with that, I'm going to really encourage you to learn how to read a label. This is why I did a whole section on it and Eat Like a Girl.

But if you want inflammation to come down, you got to get away from the ultra-processed foods. You've got to get away from the toxins that are in our food. It's gotten complicated, I know. That's how important it is when we're looking at food through this lens. Just because they put it all in the supermarket and we call it all food doesn't mean it's all medicine for your body. Nature made medicine for your body. Humans destroyed.

Okay. Question number five. With the rise in awareness of healthy eating, a lot of big food companies are trying to promote healthy food to eat instead. What are some of the fake healthy foods people should be aware of that still cause inflammation and damage to their health? Yeah. So the first thing you got to understand is that there is a profit in keeping you addicted to food and there is a profit in keeping you sick. I'm really sad to be, if that's the first time you're hearing this, I'm really sad to be the one delivering you that message. This is why I really feel strong that so many people are in

health crises right now that are not their fault. But their health is still their responsibility. So the first part of this question being that so many people are waking up to the importance of healthy food warms my heart. It's like, yes, yeah, that's what we need to do. That's it. We need to just stop over-complicating this and just get back to healthy food. But because profits are at stake, the food industry has gotten very crafty with the labeling. I have mentioned this many times, but worth mentioning again, and I brought her on my podcast, Vonie Hari. We will leave links to all these episodes in the show notes.

For those of you that are watching this or listening to this on my Resetter podcast, This will also go on my YouTube channel, so you can watch it there if you want. But Vani is the food babe, and I love this woman. She has been going after the food industry for a very long time. She actually was one of the people that got the toxic oils out of In-N-Out Burger and got them to put the correct oils in their fries, which is huge. And she would sit in the waiting room of big corporations until the CEO came out. to try to hold him or her accountable for the toxins, chronic disease toxins that they were

putting in their food. And one of the things that she taught us in this interview that I did with her on the Resetter podcast was that the term natural flavors. Natural flavors is actually code for they can put small amounts of toxic food into that ingredient and put it all under natural flavors. So, chemical flavor enhancers like monosodium glutamate. Now there are some really good monosodium glutamate. That's an interesting ingredient because nature provides a lot of positive, healthy monosodium glutamate products, but then there's a synthetic version, a lot of the, that enhances taste. So something really interesting that I'll share with you that might help you understand the food industry. So my son right now is training, my 22-year-old son is training to be a

chef. And we have been geeking out on the taste profile of the tongue together. He was sharing with me from a chef's perspective that umami is a taste that allows more parts of your tongue to be stimulated. Now, when I heard that, I was like, well, I wonder if more parts of your tongue are stimulated, does that mean then that you get a bigger dopamine response? Or does that mean that you stimulate parts of more neurotransmitters get stimulated and that and maybe more brain centers get stimulated when the brain actually gets more stimulation from our foods? And so he had me thinking.

So I started to go and look at some of these chemicals that they put in our food like monosodium glutamate, like the synthetic version. And what I found out is absolutely the food industry knows this. And so like artificial colors, artificial flavors, monosodium glutamate. I'm trying to think what some of the other neurochemicals, like even like things like NutraSuite, they have ways of stimulating the tongue so that we have a deeper like, oh, that tasted really good. I want more of that.

This is why we got to come back to nature's foods because the food industry is absolutely controlling our taste buds because they understand this umami flavoring in our tongue. And they understand that when they can get like sweet and sour, those tastes are on the outside of your tongue and on your tip of your tongue. And so the brain response sometimes can be a lot different. So, but the chemicals they're putting in food actually. is driving us to eat more of this toxic food. So natural flavorings is one of them, artificial colors and red dyes.

You'll see red dye number five or ten or all that. You'll see whenever you see on the front of a package, if you see natural on the front, that means nothing. There's no regulation around the word natural. When you see healthy on a product, no regulation. This is why eating foods without a label are your best bet. because the food industry has gotten really crafty. So how does that look?

Like everything I teach you, I apply to myself. So if you looked in my refrigerator right now, you'd see a lot of fruits and vegetables and meats and I do dairy. And so fermented products, fermented yogurts, fermented sourcrow. And, you know, if you looked in my pantry, there's not as much in there. There's maybe some legumes. There's, yeah, I do gluten-free pastas.

every once in a while, but everything in there you would find would be very simple. And so, you know, this is where if you are a bit of a home chef, it really works for you, or you are willing to put some ingredients together to make your own meals, your health will really thrive. And eat like a girl, I gave you over 100 recipes in there that are outstanding and easy to make. So those of you that are getting that book, you will have access to professional recipes made by master chefs, which is really cool. Okay. So that's my, that's my, my rise in healthy eating, and I really am happy that so many are doing that. Okay, last question is for women who want to fight inflammation, live longer, and look and feel younger, what would be the three

things you think women should add or subtract from their lives to see the biggest improvement? Ooh, I like this question. Okay. Three things. I'm a checklist, gal. Three things that women should think about to be more healthy. We've talked about some of them, but I'm going to really try to make this simple so that you can leave this podcast, or if you're watching it on YouTube, you can leave and you can apply it. Okay. So, first thing, we got to know the hormonal hierarchy. The hormonal hierarchy says that your sex hormones, are massively controlled by your insulin sensitivity. So if you are insulin resistant, your sex hormones will be off. PCOS is a great example of that. Okay, then above insulin is cortisol. And cortisol

says that if you're under stress, you will stay insulin resistant. And if you're insulin resistant, you are going to have trouble balancing your sex hormones. So manage stress. Stress is more important than what you are eating and how you are fasting. Eat like a girl, fast like a girl was all about this metabolic switch in helping you understand how to get yourself insulin sensitive so you can balance your sex hormones. That's the whole premise of those two books. But what I'm here to tell you today is that cortisol, no matter how well you fast, how well you

break your fast, how well you eat, if you are chronically in a cortisol saturated environment, you will struggle to balance insulin and you will struggle to balance sex hormones. So cortisol is really important to regulate. But if you talk to any woman in the modern world, they're like, well, shoot, I'm trying to regulate cortisol. It's a really hard hormone to regulate because everything around me is so stressful. Well, that's why at the top of the hierarchy is oxytocin. Oxytocin calms cortisol. It helps then balance insulin and it gets you insulin sensitive again and it helps you balance your sex hormones. So rule number one for women is prioritize oxytocin above everything else. Think about

that. Above everything else as a female, your most important health habit is to prioritize oxytocin. So where do you get oxytocin? Connection, connection to humans. I'm reading a beautiful book right now called In a Different Voice, and it's a book put out by a feminist philosopher, and it was written back in the 1980s. And the book talks about how when we look at the female brain in comparison to the male brain, now this was written in the 80s, so I'm not excluding the non-binary community or anyone who has changed sexes. I'm not excluding that.

I'm just saying in general, what we know about the female brain and the male brain is that the female brain is more geared towards relationships. relationships. Everything the female brain wants to do is to connect in relationships and it thinks through the lens of relationships. Whereas the male brain is more linear. It likes rules. It likes to make rules. It likes to break rules. It's a much more linear brain. So again, I understand this is high generalization. So it's a tricky topic because I don't want to offend anyone. But when we look at the health habits of women, we need to act in accordance to our body. And one of the ways that we know what our body and our brain is constantly looking for is relationship, positive relationships.

When we are in positive relationship with people, we have oxytocin and that calms cortisol and balances insulin and balances our sex hormones. So your number one health habit is keep connecting with loving, uplifting people, keep putting yourself in environments where you're you're getting oxytocin. Instead of going to the gym one day and pounding the treadmill to try to get your body to drop weight, maybe what you need to do is actually skip the gym that day and go call your bestie and make time for the people in your life that love you and want to support you. That might be a more beneficial health habit for you in that moment than trying harder, doing more, dieting more, working more, oxytocin and relationships heal a woman's body.

We need to bring that conversation back. Okay, second, because the question was, what are the three that would fight inflammation? So the second thing I would tell you is act in accordance to your rhythms. It's like what I mentioned earlier, act in accordance to your rhythm. your circadian rhythm really matters. Are you getting light at the right time? I've done a ton of videos and podcasts on this. Are you prioritizing sleep?

It's part of your circadian rhythm. It's where your brain heals and detoxifies. To prioritize sleep, for God's sake, you burn fat when you sleep. You detox your brain when you sleep. You repair your organs when you sleep. You reset your circadian rhythm when you sleep. And when that circadian rhythm is in balance, your hormones will be in balance. So it's this, I hope this badge of honor that we're staying up late and we can accomplish a lot

or women who just are like, I've just, you know, sleep is, I can get away with a lot of sleep. No, you can't. You are a rhythmic human. And your rhythm demands that you are put into the day, night cycle. So follow the rules of circadian rhythm. The other rhythm that we haven't talked about on this podcast yet is your nervous system rhythm. your nervous system rhythm switches just like your metabolic system, and it switches over into a place where can go into a sympathetic, where it's in fight or flight, and then it needs to switch back

into the parasympathetic rest and digest. So make sure that you're getting enough rest and digest, because if you stay in sympathetic too long, you're now cortisol saturated. We've already talked about what that does. And you eventually will move to a third nervous system. It's a part of a theory called the polyvigal theory where you go into a freeze mode and so many women are in freeze mode where they're disassociating. They're numbing themselves with food and alcohol and drugs and social media and people pleasing and workaholic attitudes because we are so stuck in a freeze nervous system. So where are you resting? Where are you recovering? When are you going to allow your parasympathetic nervous system to be able to have a chance to mature?

If you're constantly in a stress rhythm, you will find that your female body feels like it's working against you. So we need to look at our rhythms, our circadian rhythm, our nervous system rhythm, our metabolic rhythm, our hormonal rhythm. I have an eat like a girl. I have a new concept. I've talked about it here. It's one of the most popular podcasts we've done, and it's called the dysregulation loop, how each one of these rhythms are getting thrown off by the modern world, and they're causing so much, so many health challenges for both men and women, but largely for women.

So we've got to stop dysregulating ourselves and put ourselves back into all these rhythms. And if you look at all these rhythms, you look at the metabolic rhythm. I taught you, hey, guess what? Eating all day long is actually putting you in a metabolic dysregulated state. I taught you that, hey, when you stress all the time, you're actually putting yourself in a nervous system dysregulated state. I taught you about in the fast like a girl and eat like a girl how if we eat the same foods, if we fast the same way all month long or even for my postmenopausal friends, that you will

put yourself in hormonal dysregulation. When we eat the same foods all the time, we put ourselves in microbial dysregulation. So rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, regulate yourself. And it ties well to the principle number one, which is hang out with an oxytocin-rich environments. And when you hang out an oxytocin-rich environments, most women will figure out they're now getting themselves back into some kind of rhythm. So see yourself through the rhythm lens.

And then, you know, the third and the last one I will probably put in there for health habits for longevity and inflammation. And that's putting yourself or avoiding, this one's going to be a little more of an avoid, avoiding toxic anything. Toxic food, toxic people, toxic environments, toxic social media. The toxic piece of the modern world is violent. The way that well-intending people are delivering messages on social media can be harmful. Because there's a lot of do this, don't do that. There's a lot of you are powerless. You need a doctor.

You need a diet. You need a health influencer. You need a president of your country. You need somebody to save yourself. Nobody's coming to save you. You are coming to save yourself. And each time you put yourself in these toxic environments, You shed another layer and you give another layer of your power away.

So look at your environments and ask yourself, is this a nurturing healing environment for me? Or am I putting myself chronically into these toxic places that are taking me out of balance with the wisdom of my female body? So toxic, anything, plastics. I mean, this is a hot topic, plastics, phallates. Phalaids are the air fresheners. So we know the chemicals are destroying us, heavy metals, massively destroying us. But then social media, I've curated my Instagram. That's where I spend most of my social media time for my own personal use.

I've curated it to be, you know, animals, funny people, places I want to travel to. Anybody who has a toxic message, I unfollow because I don't want their toxic thinking into mine. This is why I highlight for you all, N of one. And eat like a girl I talk about N of one. You have to find your own rhythm and path with your health. Stop waiting for some guru to show you. Be your own guru. So where are you putting your mind?

Where are you putting your body? What are you putting into your mind? What are you putting into your body? And is it toxic? If it's toxic, it's taking you out of rhythm with your female body. And when you're out of rhythm with your female body, you lose oxytocin. and when you lose oxytocin, all the other hormones fall apart. Make sense?

So, again, I'm here to offer a more empowering thought, a thought that is so needed right now in our culture. And I'm here to give you the keys to your own queendom back that you are in control of your health. Where you sit right now may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility. And it starts with understanding how this. brilliant body you live in works, having appreciation for it, and being highly curious about how you can get the most out of it. So, as always, I hope this helps. Thank you for the questions.

It's fun to answer questions. I spend a lot of time answering questions on in my reset academy, where people can ask me questions directly. I spend a lot of time answering questions from podcast interviews, but this is really fun for those of you who have been dedicated listeners and followers. I appreciate you so much. So many of you come and find me in public and say such beautiful things to me. And I feel like we're just all in this together. And, you know, I was blessed to have spent 25 years in the trenches with patients, teaching them lifestyle, tens of thousands of patients over that time. And to be able to bring that to you now and have you implement it is a real blessing of mine. So I love being on this journey with you. So as always,

there you go. I hope this helps. And if it connected with you, please send it out into the world so we can get all women healthy. Have an awesome day. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.