Ali Miller: The Anti-Anxiety Diet, Lowering Inflammation, and Food-As-Medicine | MMP #226
Ready to roll? Cool. Ally, welcome to the show.
ali:Thank you. I'm stoked to be here.
harry:Twice in one day. I know. This is a very special occasion.
ali:I like this. I feel like we've already acclimated, and now we're ready to rip.
brett:Yeah. We met on your podcast, Naturally Nourished, for the first time virtually. Yes. We had the pleasure of having you in studio because the dynamic in person, you you can't beat it.
ali:No doubt. No doubt.
brett:And we were saying we're we're always just blown away at the amount of incredible people in the health and wellness space that are just local to us in Austin. And Colin, our noble cofounder, was, like, talking, speaking so highly of you, just saying, like, how great the relationship has been, how great your content is. And then when we started to dig into it, just prepping for this podcast, we were like, everything you speak to about using food as medicine, your allopathic background, how women should be fueling for proper hormone function, like, those are all things that we're very passionate about talking more about because it is a male dominated audience, but we do a lot of women that listen to us too. So I think a great starting point would just be, like, how did you get into the registered dietitian space and the allopathic space? Like, where where did your story really start?
ali:So, technically, I really went well, I did get into the allopathic space first, but I really went right into naturopathic. So I was a ballerina in college. So I was not a college baseball player, but was technically a college athlete as well myself. And kind of background to y'all in the sense that just used my body as an instrument, and it was more about in out of, you know, macros and not really looking at qualitative nutrients. I honestly didn't even think to pause to question until my mid twenties of if I was even eating foods in the first place.
ali:Because I I call I use this term chemical shit storm. A lot of us are eating chemical shit storms and aren't even eating foods, you know, in the first place. So, fast forward a year and a half into ballet major in college, I realized that that wasn't really going to be my career path. And I took a break year. I started to get really into the locavore movement.
ali:And so I started to help volunteer at farmers markets, get to know some of the growers and ranchers. I was vegetarian at the time and realized that if I really wanted to incorporate this lovely produce that I was buying, that I couldn't be just a vegetarian eating cheese pizza and mac and cheese as a typical college freshman was. So very quickly, I started to incorporate more plants. And that actually helped me to find Bastyr University, which is the first medically accredited college of naturopathic medicine in The US. So I went to their campus.
ali:They now have two campuses, but I went to their campus outside of Seattle, Washington. And what drew me there was that, dun, dun, dun, they had a vegetarian, cafeteria. And, they also practiced naturopathic medicine. And so I was very drawn into this idea that food could be medicine and that we could heal. However, I was very misguided by a lot of, vegan indoctrination, if you will, a lot of the works of PETA, and even the raw vegan movement at this time.
ali:This was 02/2007. And the raw vegan diet and macrobiotic eating were very on the rage at that time. So it was like sprouting, you know, your grains and making, different probiotic beverages. Rejuvylac was sprouted barley, probiotic beverage that we were all making before kombucha kind of thing. And, I learned very quickly when I actually myself started dealing with panic attacks and pretty severe anxiety, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's hypothyroiditis and, I was also diagnosed with anemia, both of which were really exacerbated by my vegan diet.
ali:So what I learned very quickly as a student of nutrition and also as a practicing clinician at the naturopathic clinic that if food was gonna be medicine, that I had to break up with my doctrine. And I think that that's a really important thing for all listeners. Right? So we tend to really dive 110% in as people that, at least our type of people. Right?
ali:These type a go getters. We're like, oh, cool. We read a book. We saw what happened for some person. I'm all in.
ali:And we have to know that the body has different needs and different seasons. There's different adaptive processes and that we have to use hormesis to challenge the body to actually yield continual beneficial outcomes. Otherwise, the body kinda gets stagnant or lazy. And specific to me, I mean, I was eating, I'm sure as your listeners are familiar, a lot of anti nutrients. Right?
ali:So I was eating a ton of soy, which is terrible for the thyroid. It's a goitrogen. And I was eating high concentrates of gluten. I was actually eating at that time, it was called seitan, which was like vital gluten protein, with my sprouted tempeh and whatnot. And so I was literally throwing battle darts at my thyroid gland, essentially, and then got that diagnosis and said, okay, I gotta rewrite this script.
ali:Luckily, I had a professor that was really into, therapeutic whole foods and ancestral foods. And so even as a vegan, I learned how to make bone broth. I had to break down a chicken by hand and get intimate with all of the parts of the animal. And I started to have to make peace with the process energetically, emotionally, and then really start to let myself see the truth behind the science of nutritional density and also anti nutrients on the other end of the spectrum. So quite rapidly, beyond taking my methylated B12 lozenge and my chelated iron supplement to get back kind of out of the woods, I very quickly went from a raw food vegan to a steak with kind of rapid time.
ali:I remember my first rib eye. My husband was making a grass fed steak in pasture raised lard on our cast iron. And I was cramming for a biochem exam, and I, like, floated like a cartoon character. And he turned around, and it was halfway gone. I started with raw egg yolks in my green smoothies.
ali:I caught oysters on Vashon Island outside of the Pacific Northwest. And I just started to say, if I'm gonna do this right away, I knew that I had to do it snout to tail. I had to honor the entire animal and that I knew that that's where I get the most nutrient density. So it was quite a radical shift to be an organ eating, you know, omnivore, if you will, from raw vegan. But that's my story.
harry:Can you explain naturopathy for people who don't necessarily understand it or, don't appreciate it? Because I think it's one of those terms that gets thrown around a little bit, but it's also one that I think has been forgotten.
ali:Yeah. Yeah. So the word allopathic is a fancy term for conventional medicine. Mhmm. So your westernized medicine is allopathic or conventional.
ali:Naturopathic is really guided by nature and grounded in scientific discovery. And so you have, ideally at least, you have that balance of mimicking nature's process and yet still leading with clinical discovery or peer reviewed journal or medical based intervention. Now I practice what's called functional integrative medicine, which is kind of like a bridge between the two. Functional medicine can be done in the allopathic world. You don't have to have a naturopathic background.
ali:But in this sense, we're still looking at an interconnectedness of systems versus isolating the body into, you know, standard allopathic medicine has a cardiovascular doctor or a OB GYN or an oncologist for cancer or an osteopath for bone, etcetera. When we look holistically with a naturopathic or functional approach, we're really trying to understand the biofeedback of the body as a system, versus different disconnected parts, if you will. We're also seeking the root cause of why, not just what. In standard, you know, medical today, we're really chasing these what are called ICD tens or diagnostic criteria numbers because this is the industrialized medical machine of America. We bill based on ICD tens.
ali:So when we're giving someone a diagnosis of Crohn's disease or of PCOS or of, hypertension, you know, these are all coded and then measured with an algorithm, generally speaking, you know, because that's how the system works, of interventions and a one, two, three step process. So hyperlipidemia, you know, first line of defense is they'll tell you to watch diet and lifestyle without giving you any legit guidance. And then they're gonna slap you with a statin drug and then, you know, it progresses on from there.
brett:I realize I think I just absolutely butchered your opening because I think I said allopathic versus natural.
Speaker 4:You did,
ali:but it's okay.
brett:But you didn't correct me. I appreciate that. Listeners, naturopathic, not allopathic.
ali:It's okay.
brett:One of the things that was really interesting to me is you had mentioned that you would you were going plant based. You're going through all these hurdles, different types of supplements, different types of products just to try and hit your micros and your macros, and you develop Hashimoto's and then also anxiety as well. Mhmm. How quickly did you start to notice those symptoms dissipate when you started incorporating really nutrient dense, like, snout to tail foods like you called them?
ali:You know, quite quickly. And and I I started the supplementation really protocol at the same time with the ancestral diet. So I would attribute equal the biochemical response as well as the, you know, whole food support in there as a synergy. But quite rapidly, especially in the world of, like, neuropathy. I had really bad neuropathy.
ali:I had clinical b twelve deficiency as well. And so I would lose the sensation in my fingers and toes. I would step out of the shower. And I have Raynaud's syndrome, which is another circulatory condition in the Pacific Northwest. Not fun when it's cold and clammy all the time.
ali:Mhmm. And so for instance, I couldn't feel my feet stepping out of the shower sometimes, or I'd be driving and I'd lose sensation of my my fingers. And the neuropathy was the first thing to correct. I would say maybe even prior to that would be a sense of satiety versus chronic hunger and the influence of blood sugar balance and, ketosis as a secondary component to help me feel grounded. So in my book, The Antianxiety Diet, I actually use a ketogenic diet as the foundation of that program because I really believe very strongly just as we are made to be omnivores, which is its own conversation, right, of, like, plants meet, etcetera.
ali:I I I think of plants as a hormetic stressor for the body, but that's an interesting conversation itself. But I believe just as important as as we have a meat centric yet omnivore diet, just important to be a hybrid machine not using just glucose, but have any access to ketones. And I think that a big driver of chronic disease state is that we've lost the ability to use ketones as fuel. Mhmm. Ketones are lower in ROS or reactive oxygen species, less oxidative stress when we burn ketones as fuel.
ali:We get better oxygenation and oxygen recovery and respiratory rate when we're making ketones. We actually enhance our t cell function of our immune system when we're making ketones. I mean, it goes on. And and as far as the mood impact, ketones cross your blood brain barrier. And so the mechanism in which ketosis serves epileptics or epilepsy and seizures, that ketone body actually grounds and interacts with epinephrine or adrenaline, that fight or flight chemical surge, which would create a panic attack, for instance, in an individual or a grand mal seizure in someone that deals with that as a health consideration.
ali:So when ketones reduce that epinephrine surge, they also up regulate their what's called GABA nogenic. They up regulate GABA. And GABA is this awesome neuropeptide that can actually enhance cognitive function. We've seen in studies it can enhance academic performance. It helps us get in the zone.
ali:So like when we're shooting free throws, GABA is gonna be elevated. But it's also anxiolytic. It's like what releases the steam train of the stress buildup or that fight or flight surge. GABA kind of alleviates that fight or flight response. So I think when we get into more of an ancestral pattern of eating and when we reduce carb obsession and we bring our blood sugar down to be able to make ketones, that that has a very grounding effect.
ali:Some people will call it a keto high and so they get improved energy. But I think the cognition in brain is because of less oxidative stress and that GABA and epinephrine shift that we see on our neurotransmitters.
harry:How, how many or so take us back, like, sixty years ago. What would have a normal person's ketones levels have been like before we had this massive shift in the food system? Like, do you ever think about that? Like, how often were people in, ketosis or a state of ketosis?
ali:Sure.
harry:Even if it's a mild state
ali:Well, in babies so babies in utero, when you're carrying a baby, your baby is producing ketones. Right? Regardless actually of mother's diet. Now if mother has severe gestational diabetes, it's possible. I mean, just crazy blood sugar imbalance.
ali:It's possible that that baby would be robbed of ketones. But generally speaking, even if mom just has a standard American diet, that baby is producing ketones. And then breast milk itself still produces ketones for that breastfed baby. And so, you know, our body again is wired to have this hybrid function and that's what allowed us to fast and have more food scarcity without dying or having extreme hanger and blood sugar dysregulation and irritability and, you know, whatever would have happened in tribes during those times. When I think back, I mean, sixty years, I think it might have even had to precede that because now goodness.
ali:I know. Isn't that weird? I always think, like, sixty years have put us back to the forties, but we're in 02/2023. Yeah. And so, I mean, I know that there's a lot of, footage, for instance, of, like, beaches in California or Downtown New York City in the nineteen twenties, '19 thirties, and, like, everyone is metabolically fit.
harry:Mhmm.
ali:And, of course, we look back on records of butter consumption actually was higher than current. Right? Well, maybe not now in our field, but, you know, was. And then, you know, even sugar was not so high. But what we really see is when we started to recommend those eight to 11 slices of bread in the mid eighties and then into the nineties and when we made an obesogenic crop.
ali:You know, when we made short dwarf wheat, and we started to hybridize our gluten production or our wheat production, we created an obesogenic crop. And that's because in World War two, we were too thin to fight. Now we're seeing those that are individuals that aren't able to make draft weight because they're unfit to fight due to obesity, the other end of the spectrum. So we funded governmentally, you know, what types of things would pack on pounds. And then we recommended these as health supporting optimal eating approaches for the country.
ali:And then we just watched the, you know, obesity epidemic really explode. And in conjunction with that came diabetes and other all cause mortality.
brett:Such a good answer. It's amazing hearing you just explain the science of ketosis because it just seems so intuitive. It seems like it makes so much sense. But it seems like with women in particular, low carb and keto is, like, somewhat of a contentious conversation. Like, we've had on, different types of female guests, and one camp is, like, very similar to you, like, pro ketosis, pro fasting, pro animal products.
brett:And the other group is still pro animal products, but they do not like fasting. They think that women need carbohydrates. And I feel like you have a super interesting perspective into that, so I'd love to explore your
ali:thoughts there. I think that's a great question. So I don't have I wouldn't say I'm in either camp. I would say that I'm, like, the Venn diagram of camps in that sense. I've done both for myself and things have worked differently in different seasons.
ali:So I kind of call it I think of the allostatic load, which is basically the amount of stress that we're able to take on without exploding. I mean, in in layman's terms, it's an easy example to say it. But allostatic load is your stress threshold without the body having an adverse response. Okay? And so if we think of our allostatic load, our stressors that we wear or hold could be endogenous, meaning inside the body.
ali:This could be something like an infection. So this could be Epstein Barr. This could be Lyme. This could be an endogenous stress from candida or yeast overgrowth or dysbiosis. So something can be a stressor physiologically that we are the host of.
ali:Right? We can also have stressors based on our activity and performance. So our physical activity can be a stressor. We all know depending on what type of hit training or what type of, ways we're maxing ourselves. That can be a hormetic stressor.
ali:Sauna, cold plunges. All of these, we would say, practice what's called hormesis, which means that the stressor itself yields a beneficial outcome. But when stacked on too high, and what I typically see here is the calorie deficient mom who's underslept, so doesn't have ample sleep, over caffeinated, and then an amp like, an ample calorie intake. Right? Calorie insufficient.
ali:That trifecta of too much caffeine, too little sleep, too high of stress, and then, I guess, malnourishment, that individual will not do well fasting. And they likely will be in a state where ketosis will kick them over that threshold. They still wanna go super low glycemic and maybe make more, like, trace amount of ketones, but they're not gonna be someone that's gonna be doing really well with, like, a two point o of a BHB read in their blood. Mhmm. You know, you need to really kind of figure out, I say, liken it to ladies in your wardrobe, like, if you're changing your fall season, you have to pull out your summer.
ali:Yeah. So for some people, that means that they have to give up fasting to go keto. For some people, that means that they have to bring their exercise down from a spin class to gentle walking and yoga to get more parasympathetic so that the body feels safe with another stressor, whether that is restrictive eating based on time, time restricted eating or fasting, whether that is shifting metabolically into ketosis, whether that is, you know, a new lifestyle support. Again, that's a positive add on, but we wanna make sure that that threshold is considered. So for some women, I recommend doing a fat fueled fast, especially those that are dealing with low hormone.
ali:So let's say a woman that's lost her menstrual cycle and is high stress, we need ample fat. We wanna be more fat fueled in that case because fat is necessary for steroidal hormone production. So in order to make progesterone and estrogen, etcetera, we need fat. So maybe doing like a tablespoon or two of olive oil on a plate with salt in the morning and then still adding more fat like, full cream to your coffee, blending in butter, and then using a blend of different higher fat cuts of meat for that individual would be very therapeutic. And if they're missing their cycle and their low hormone, we need to feed them more as well so that the body feels safe.
ali:And that connects to a hormone called leptin. I don't know if you guys have dug into that at all, but leptin is a hormone we think of as a satiety hormone. In the Greek language, it translates to the word thin. And leptin, when too high, can drive leptin resistance. It kinda mimics insulin resistance.
ali:So an individual that has more body fat will have leptin resistance. As they start to use fat as fuel or burn their reserves of fat, they'll start to get more leptin sensitivity. And that leptin docking will give them satiety, and that's what helps with that keto high and maintaining, like, that not having to white knuckle your diet. You know, being able to take your kids to get ice cream and being like, well, that's not on my program. Moving on.
harry:Right.
ali:But if leptin is resistant, you're gonna be white knuckling your diet. And so for individuals that have leptin resistance, they need to fast. They need to allow their body to get into that deep freezer reserve, and they need to create that sensitivity again by restrictive time, restrictive eating, and really shifting and lowering their fat. For those that are low leptin, their body's saying, we're not fed, we're not safe. So a low leptin individual has to actually fat fuel, they have to not fast, and they have to carb cycle with their keto.
ali:And that's kind of the caveat there. And so if you run low leptin or you're that's the person that's the high stress, you know, lower percent body fat or optimal percent body fat, extra exercise, and maybe not enough calories, there's someone that we have to kind of fix that leptin deficiency and help the body to feel safe again so that it can get back to balance. Otherwise, the body's in chronic survival, and that can create other imbalance in the body. If it's not shown through low progesterone, it'll be shown through insomnia or anxiety or something else of the liking. So needless to say, some women need to carb cycle.
ali:Some women need to fast. Some women, like perimenopause or postmenopause, I'll put on a protein sparing fat because they don't need that extra fat fuel for hormone production. We're actually trying to maintain their muscle as they age. So, you know, it just kinda depends on the priorities and the base point of that individual.
brett:Different strokes.
ali:Totally.
brett:Totally. What, what would be the best way to actually test your leptin levels to understand if you're low leptin or not?
ali:So you can run a serum level. It's a blood Okay. A blood panel.
brett:Test.
ali:Mhmm. I include it in an advanced cardiometabolic panel that I run. So we include things like LDL oxidation, beyond LDL particle size. So looking a lot deeper into cholesterol profile, for instance, We look at CRP in that and homocysteine, which is a marker of methylation for people that are MTHFR, or we're looking at vascular inflammation as a risk factor. Homocysteine is another marker of Alzheimer's disease, and so it's good to get that.
ali:And then, I look at leptin and adiponectin as the metabolic markers there. So adiponectin regulates, you know, more of your brown body fat, more metabolically active, and then that leptin has that influence on, like I said, metabolism, mood, etcetera.
harry:Awesome. How often do you see someone come in who's eating enough fat, enough healthy fats, still have hormone problems?
ali:So I'll see some people that are eating too much healthy fats. So, again, this doctrine creates disconnect. Right? Like, they jumped into keto. They're still making their 500 calorie keto coffee in the morning.
ali:They've stalled on their weight loss. Right? They're not moving their body enough to be in a net caloric deficit. And so, you know, even though calories aren't king, I always start with, is it a whole food? And then, you know, looking at the quality of the food itself and, you know, what is it providing our body.
ali:But at some point, you have to consider caloric density to get metabolic outcomes. So some people that are eating too high of fat will be in that state then of all of a sudden they were leptin sensitive, now they're leptin resistant. And now, you know, we need to actually pull that down, level that dial down a little bit to start to get results again.
harry:Interesting. Mhmm.
brett:What is a what is a typical, like, twenty four hour eating window look like for you?
ali:In this season. Right?
brett:In this season.
ali:So right. So we're talking and it's like one zero six. And so I eat differently truly based on the weather. I'm really someone that tries to stay connected to my environment and our circadian rhythm. So I'm all about sunrises and sunsets as much as I can witness them.
ali:I mean, that's the best infrared light that you can get out there, and I mean, it's so powerful. Yeah. Anyway, so, you know, when it's really hot, I like to eat colder and I like to eat less. Whereas as it starts to get into real fall, I'll start to do more, like, stews and more, like, slow cooker dishes, more broths, etcetera. Today, I kicked off my morning with bone broth.
ali:And so I don't do what would be called like a naked or a pure fast. So when I have bone broth, you know, I'm getting about 20 grams of protein. I'm getting glycine. I'm getting glutamine and gelatin, and I'll add salt on top of that. I did fond bone broth, this morning.
ali:So I'm getting a good 20 grams of protein, you know, within thirty minutes of rise or an hour of rise. So it's not true fast. Now I would still say that likely I'm in a state of autophagy because it's a 20 calories. It's not like a 600 calorie meal. Right?
ali:So again, that's kinda that not getting myopic or tunnel vision. You have to adjust dials. So I'm starting with broth even though it's hot. And then I did an iced, green Sencha tea with collagen peptides in there, two scoops there. And then I did the trick that I mentioned, the olive oil on the plate with salt.
ali:Sometimes and especially in the winter season, I do a lot more dairy. In the summer, I don't tend to do as much dairy. It just doesn't resonate with me as much other than, like, cold raw milk. But, that was the start. And then I had a smoothie, kind of a total liquid diet I'm talking about today.
ali:But, then I had a smoothie because I was rushing and threw in greens and ginger and ground flaxseed and put in, like, quarter cup of raspberries and, like, a quarter cup of frozen mango and, full fat coconut milk and a splash of raw milk. So kind of a blend of the two milks. Blended that on high and did a scoop of, grass fed whey, a non denatured grass fed whey. And then, tonight, I'll probably have, like, a rib eye and some roasted brussels sprouts and a glass of red wine. And that's the night.
harry:Alright. I'm hungry. Yeah.
brett:So, like, nice and simple during the day, like, light on the stomach, still nutrient dense, and then dinner is when you're really gonna let it rip and have, like, a really nice hearty meal.
ali:Yes. You know, I'll do, like, a cold protein salad if that was prepared, and I I'd I'd sometimes prefer that over a smoothie, of course. But if I'm in clinic or between interviews and I don't have time to chew, I really do try to honor that idea that the body, when it's in that sympathetic fight or flight response, is not in a prime digestive state. So the things that I can do to mechanically predigest my foods, like sip on a nutrient dense smoothie, for instance, during those windows can be very health supporting and less digestively stressing. It's less work for my body to do to assimilate those nutrients.
ali:Otherwise, I would double down on a digestive enzyme if I was doing, for instance, like a truffled egg salad. That's another thing I rotate regularly on romaine cups. I do a vibrant chicken salad with chicken thighs and like a, you know, paleo mayo and a bunch of, scallions and cilantro in there and some, apple julienned in there with some pecans. And so if I'm chewing more of a dense protein, I'll usually add digestive enzymes midday. Whereas in the evening, I might not need that as much because I'm kinda chill.
ali:I'm back into parasympathetic, you know, watching the sunset, that kind of thing.
harry:It seems like the bone broth in the morning is one of those, like, cheat code types of, hacks that you can incorporate into your, like, diet lifestyle. Because it's light, it has protein, and it stays stays at you.
ali:Yes.
harry:In so many ways, gives you electrolytes. Like, I think that is such a great piece of advice.
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
ali:And in the evening, you know, especially if we're getting back on structured eating and we know that we got we have some sort of, like, hanger pain or craving, I think sipping on bone broth is really great. And bone broth will also support that GABA response, which can get you into that kinda mellow brain space, help you wind down in the evening.
brett:The food that you're making just sounds, like, just so vibrant, like, I would imagine, that it almost it it almost makes me increase my energy thinking about it. And the reason why I'm saying this is, like, we've talked we've talked a lot about the carnivore diet on the show. We talked about it on your show.
ali:Right.
brett:And there is absolutely a time and a place for it. Yeah. And for me, when my gut gets inflamed, red meat, bone broth, salt, butter, I'm good in, like, a week. But I also feel like I don't know. Some like, the the concept of, like, just eating meat and salt all the time, it just seems almost, like, dead where, like, the way that you're describing, like, ginger, scallions, like, fresh mayo.
brett:Like, it all it's I don't know. There's just, like, this vibrance to it, and I don't know the science behind it. But I would imagine, like, there's something about that that probably intuitively just makes your energy more vibrant too.
ali:There is. You know? So right. The the color wheel, if you will. That's one of the goals that my seven year old daughter, we have when we pack her lunch is, you know, pick three colors because that's going to provide us more phytocompound or antioxidant.
ali:And, you know, I think that, yes, in different season, again, like so I'm doing more raw salads, more crisp veg in the summer, and then in the winter, more roasted, like sweet potato, butternut squash, more warming seasonings like cumin and chili powder and that type of stuff, because it's just more grounding and and feels more seasonally appropriate. But I do think that switching it up is really helpful, and and it kinda comes back to that concept of, hormesis. And so I've had Paul Saladino on my podcast, and we've we talked quite long at length, you know, about how he'll call it a plant toxin and how I call it a hormetic stressor. So if you want to call it an anti nutrient or a plant toxin, that can be appropriate language, and this can be referred to you know, there's there's always a continuum or a good, better, best, I believe. And I think that we both kind of think in that sense of something like a lectin in, gluten maybe not worth it cost to benefit because we also know beyond the lectin presence, which can destroy gut lining.
ali:Right? That the gluten itself can actually interfere with our zonulin, which will disengage our, you know, gut, tight junctions, which will drive more of a leaky gut response to anything we're eating at that said meal. But if I look at something like curcuminoids, in turmeric, or if I look at something like, you know, the impact of broccoli sprout and, some of the superfood research we see with superoxide dismutase enzyme pathways, I think it's non debatable when we've looked at, you know, placebo controlled, clinical trials of eating studies of saying that this individual ate this amount of grams of this thing and that their body produced more glutathione. You know, glutathione is our master antioxidant. So vitamin c would be like the the little baby, and then in the middle is, where we'd see, like, co q ten and selenium.
ali:And and then cysteine, a lot of people know about NAc or n acetylcysteine, is just one below glutathione. And glutathione being the master antioxidant means that it is going to reduce oxidative stress the most efficient in the body. And so if you back, you know, pedal to pandemic time, we actually saw well, vitamin d status is, of course, important. But glutathione, was really a superstar nutrient. We saw that it was most directly inversely related, with basically, based on your glutathione store, if you had clinical deficiency that you had higher risk factor of mortality or death.
ali:We were using nebulizers in, protocols for, respiratory protocols, and NAC will reduce, mucus in the lungs. And we know that, you know, glutathione actually has an inverse relationship with all cause mortality. So this includes cancer. This includes any form of autoimmune condition or any form of inflammatory response. Now, again, if if someone says, well, but there's an anti nutrient and there's oxalate in turmeric, I say, if I eat turmeric and it makes more of this, which we know is good, then I say good.
ali:Does it do does it make my body make glutathione because it stresses it? Possible. Just like if you're lifting weights and you're tearing your muscle to repair it.
Speaker 4:Mhmm. You
ali:know, so is that a toxic response to tear your muscle or is it a beneficial response to gain the beneficial outcome?
Speaker 4:Right.
ali:And that's kind of where I I use plants, as a hybrid approach and the idea that, yeah, I agree there could be some anti nutrient effect. That's also what's antimicrobial and what can support keeping our gut on track. That's also what, again, will support our body in actually producing antioxidant, that stress response.
harry:It has to be different for everyone, but where do you kinda draw the line in terms of balancing between the hormetic response that you'll get from vegetables or from eating plants versus those not as hormetic or no hormetic beef
ali:Yeah.
harry:Beef products?
ali:Yeah. So, you know, one thing that we look at is, of course, gut integrity. So for an individual that has inflammatory bowel disease, I put them on a tight carnivore diet myself, and I start with a five day bone broth fast, and then I slowly bring in proteins. And I actually tend to bring in fish before beef just because it's a softer protein. It's easier when we're at such an ulcerated state.
ali:But I bring in beef as the second protein protein right away. We tend to go for, like, mechanically ground first. Again, easier to assimilate and absorb, and then we kinda work our way up into steak and, short ribs and those types of cuts and such. But, you know, animal products are really important, of course, because they aren't inflammatory. They don't challenge.
ali:They don't stress the body. And so for a healing protocol, I find them to be absolutely essential on their own. And then when the body is resilient so for instance, if I'm watching calprotectin as a marker in inflammatory bowel disease, Once I get calprotectin levels in an area of 60 or under and we're in a remissive state, we'll start to then challenge plant matter. And then I would listen to that individual. I might even use an MRT test, which is a blood test that, looks at inflammatory mediator response in the body.
ali:So it's not like an LCAT IgG panel. It actually looks at cytokines and prostaglandins, basically, the fancy words for inflammatory chemicals that your body manufacturers to battle something. And so I'll use that as, like, a GPS for the individual to guide them on what plant matter is going to be less inflammatory and then what they would likely do best with. But I don't have a direct goal. Like, for some people, incorporating just chopped scallions, and some cilantro and, you know, shaving in some ginger root in, like, a quarter of a teaspoon is a great entry point.
ali:And that's fine for some people. That's enough of a plant based stressor or, you know, driver of antioxidant capacity. For some individuals, I'll say, how do you feel about bringing in tea? Let's play with rooibos. And so it's just kind of where everyone's at.
ali:And there's some people that will do very, very limited and or lots of seasons with no plant. And then there's some that will do, you know, a higher amount where they're getting five cups of, you know, veg on a day, and and they're doing alright.
harry:So your fear there is that if you're not getting those, anti nutrients in your diet, then the response to those anti new anti nutrients becomes less resilient?
ali:Well, you're not you're not challenging that pathway.
harry:Right.
ali:Right? And so, you know, it's it's a pro you're provoking to yield the response. Now can you make glutathione from other ways? Yes. Like, we've seen, for instance, cold plunge can help to support glutathione stores.
ali:But in the diet, we know that that that's one of the biggest areas. Specifically, turmeric and broccoli sprout are some pretty big drivers there.
brett:It's so interesting how you said glutathione is like the, it's like this apex. What what were you describing it as?
ali:Master antioxidant. Master antioxidant.
brett:And I guarantee you almost a % of the population has literally no idea what it is Yeah. Including myself. Yeah. But then we over index. I'm like, everyone knows what vitamin c is too.
brett:And, like, vitamin c is down here. Yeah. Glutathione is up here.
ali:Yeah. I know.
brett:I just sometimes wonder, like, why do we just why do we hyperfocus on, like, nickels and don't pick up the dollars? Like, I just wonder about that sometimes.
ali:I know. I know. I I don't know if it's just marketing. I mean, vitamin c was really one of the first vitamins, and and I won't hate on it. I think vitamin c is fantastic.
ali:But vitamin c by doctor Linus Pauling, the Linus Pauling Institute, he really came up with this concept of orthomolecular therapy. And, you know, he studied vitamin c and scurvy. Like, it was the first, you know, micronutrient deficiency intervention. Mhmm. And I think that's why vitamin c probably has this, like, all sun hero response just because it's hit the books earlier as a micronutrient and as an intervention actually to resolve clinical, you know, insufficiencies or significant symptoms.
brett:You had this amazing post earlier that we were talking about, and you were saying, essentially, it was we need to we need to stop eating food made by men. We need to eat food made by God Yeah. Which we think is incredible. Like, it's perfectly in line with our nutritional and just philosophical perspective in general. Would love for you to just unpack that for the audience because it was so good.
ali:Sure. So, you know, when I think of a food, we have to first consider, are we eating real food in the beginning? And so, you know, we discussed on my podcast, like, avoiding the middle or the center of the grocery store. Well, all of that is chemical shitstorms. It doesn't matter.
ali:And I don't wanna down nay say any, brand friends of mine. But, you know, it doesn't matter what the product of the week is. Even in the health fears, you know, sphere, there's a good, better, best spectrum. We try to avoid the seed oils. We say, okay.
ali:We'll let the avocado oil in on this, or we'll let this and that. And we're always making these qualitative adjustments. But when I'm talking about what is a whole food or what is God food, I look at these defining principles of, can you imagine it growing first off? Are all of its edible parts still intact? What's been done to it since harvest?
ali:And, you know, when you start to kind of think through these processes, you can start to really simplify what you're putting in your mouth and then how you can become intimately involved in the process of making food into recipes and creating these, synergy balances of flavors, but also nutritional density. You know? Adding that lime juice to your bed of lettuce greens is going to aid in enhancing from your spinach and and such your iron absorption. You know, not getting the heme biological iron will get from an organ supplement, but there's a synergy of connection of flavor dynamics and how things work, to enhance nutritional density. And so I think that when we're eating whole, real foods, we tend to not only get more nutrient density, but we tend to avoid a lot of the things that are still unknown in our food industry.
ali:So I mentioned seed oils earlier. I think that this is a really kind of new buzz worthy area in the last year and a half. You know, I think that because probably gluten has had its holiday, we're always looking to kinda like demonize something. But I think that we just need to really get back to the basics of single ingredients that we put together in our own kitchen. And I think that God does it the right way.
ali:So if you look at, for instance, you know, how an animal is made and the idea of snout to tail nutrition, if you eat too much ground meat, you're gonna get high levels of methionine as a amino acid profile, and this will actually drive homocysteine value up. That's that marker of that vascular inflammation I spoke about earlier and also a marker of Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline. And so, you know, we wanna balance out the methionine of the meat with glycine. And what is glycine rich food? Glycine comes from the hide and the bone and the organs.
ali:And so, right, when we get back to actually rendering our own lard, when we get back to having collagen and using that hide like ancestors used to, when we get back into cooking down those bones into broth and then consuming the vital organs, we're balancing out that ratio as God intended again of consuming this whole beautiful beast.
harry:Right.
Speaker 4:And
ali:so, you know, we can even think of it like you would think that ground beef is a whole food, but is it? And so that's why I'm a really big proponent of preparing your foods and buying as close to the source and, you know, not eating boneless, skinless chicken breast ever, but bone in skin on, that has less edible parts removed. Right? So you can kinda check yourself through that process. And I think that the closer we get to the natural design, there's just such innate wisdom there that we're just learning to tap into.
ali:I mean, we know micronutrients. I know things like glutathione, but, I mean, we're not even talking about things like terpenes. And, I mean, these, like, fourth level nutrients out there in the phyto compound kingdom and the animal kingdom, that we're just starting to learn about, like, anandamide. I don't know if anyone's talked to you guys about that in the beef world. So anandamide is an a cannabinoid compound.
ali:We're all wired with an endocannabinoid system. And, we naturally make CBD. Right? A lot of listeners are probably familiar with cannabidiol. And so, you know, we naturally produce CBD.
ali:We put CBD out naturally in our breast milk for breast fed babies. Again, that's what helps their immunological process, their pain management, their hunger, and, their their actual intake of calorie. But, we tend to, like, segregate and think that this is foreign
Speaker 4:substrate.
ali:Well, an anandamide is in the cannabidiol not the cannabidiol, excuse me. It's in the endocannabinoid family. It's highest in red meat in the diet, and it gives us a bliss factor. There's an anandamide meat high. I
Speaker 4:don't know. I've experienced it right now. We're like, we're all like musing on
ali:we're all thinking of our favorite steak, experienced it right now. We're like, oh, we're all, like, musing on we're all thinking of our favorite steak. We're like, you're right. That does make me feel good. But there's actually, you know, a neurochemical response that we get when we eat red meat.
ali:But again, I think again, that's that's God food. Right? And again, it's it's perfect design. We don't have to know the word anandamide to know that you feel good, that it reduces anxiety, that it makes you feel that bliss space.
Speaker 4:And
ali:so that's why I think the closer we get to the source and the less we humans, we silly humans, try to mess with the process, the more nutritionally dense and the more optimal whole body health is.
harry:I love the way you speak about food. There's something about it that just reminds me of, I mean, this concept of thinking about food in the God framework makes me think of it as this connected system where we need to understand all the different parts and how they play off each other. And then you contrast that with what we have today, which is this very mechanistic way of thinking about food from a top down. It's protein, fat, carbs.
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
harry:Okay. But, like, what what are the proteins? What are the fats? What are the carbs? And you're missing so much by not understanding how all of it actually is connected from the bottom up.
ali:No doubt. And, I mean, that's what's happened when we've when we try to get too smart with our foods. So I don't wanna say, you know, I think I think being well educated with our food approach is wonderful. But when we try to, I guess, quantify would be the thing, maybe not too smart. When we try to quantify our foods, so we're getting into a lot of trouble.
ali:Like, I think as a mother of, like, our school system lunches and, you know, governmentally, we have these pars of, you know, you have to meet this many milligrams of this and and of, you know, your calcium and whatnot. And and then we're getting these I mean, the whole idea of enrichment in the diet, synthetic enrichment in the diet, which started with grains. When we removed the exterior part of the grain and made white flour, we started putting folic acid, a synthetic form of a b vitamin, in our grains. And this is where we really start to see imbalance then in the world of, like, MTHFR, which is this genetic pathway that influences a process called methylation. And we can attribute a lot of methylation issues to neurological conditions, ADHD, etcetera.
ali:And when you get expressed folic acid and you can't methylate it, that can actually create more imbalance, which is, again, why we need the nature made folate, which we would see in that whole grain, not it broken down. But I would say superior sources would be in actually, liver is a rich source of folate, and then secondarily, leafy greens.
brett:What's also really cool about your approach is you could go so deep and detailed into the into the science, like, as deep as anyone I think we've ever ever had on the show. But then you also keep it very simple and practical where it's like, eat god god food versus man made food, which is, like, if someone needs this scientific justification, you can
Speaker 4:do that. Sure. But, also,
brett:to just help it stick with people's brains. Yeah. It's like, just eat single ingredient god foods.
ali:Yes. Yes. No doubt.
Speaker 4:Which is
brett:what we need. Right? It's like we need simple solutions. There's so much misinformation. There's so much confusion.
brett:We're the only species that doesn't know what actually we should be eating, which is so crazy.
ali:I know. I saw someone. I was walking around Blue Hole. We were we were kinda jiving on that, a really lovely park in my area of Hill Country. And someone was walking to their car, and they said to their friend, can you text me how many steps we got so I can plug it into my Fitbit?
ali:And I thought, how sad that we've given the sovereignty of our body to AI to tell us whether we've performed alright today. Like, you know, we're so entrenched and primed to want to see that checkbox or that whatever that text whatever we get. I don't know. I don't have those apps. But whatever that ding is of approval from a machine Yes.
Speaker 4:Right.
ali:To tell us that we've done our healthy thing versus knowing, having an an innate knowingness of what feels healthy in our body and how we should move it. I just thought that was really sad disconnection, and it applies in diet too.
harry:Yeah. It just disrupts our whole understanding of how we're feeling, how our body and brain are communicating on just, like, these basic intuitive levels. I'm curious, you mentioned the locavore
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
harry:Earlier. I'm curious how you layer that into this whole concept of god foods because the global food system obviously lends itself to us being able to get whatever we want
ali:Yeah.
harry:From any part of the world. And in my eyes, food up the street is definitely the best food that you can possibly eat. Yeah.
ali:So, I mean, that would that would extend into that what's been done to it since harvest, you know. Right? So it's been harvested, but it's traveled how many thousands of miles has it been sprayed with anything, and, you know, or treated in any other ways. Now we're looking at, like, a peel added to produce as a code. I mean, there's so many things that are done now post harvest to interfere with what would be a god food.
ali:And the best way to prevent that is to know your source. So I when I started eating meat, I knew not only did I have to eat snout to tail, but that I also had to honor the whole animal by knowing the harvesting process. And that also coincides on a nutritional level with knowing, of course, the diet of the animal. So, you know, ruminants are made to roam and be open on pasture. And so this is, you know, anything that has three multiple stomach chambers.
ali:Right? So this is our cows and our bison and our goats, etcetera. And I think that that's a huge role, of course, in nutritional density, but that also helps us to then know our source to make sure that when we are in this I think last I read, you you can look this up, but I believe that 17% of the beef that we consume in The US is coming from China currently. Mhmm. You know, and and and I believe I don't know the statistic on how many of our pharmaceutical drugs, but way over 60%.
ali:Yeah. And so, you know, it's interesting. The more that we outsource and the more mileage that we put on things, I think the less quality product that we're getting. And definitely, the more we allow our food system to be centralized, the less control we as the people have. So the only way that we can maintain sovereignty and ensure that we have access to nourishing unadulterated foods, not even to mention that there's now petri meat that has been approved for sale, to know that it actually is meat itself and not an mRNA chemical ship storm that you're eating named meat, I think we have to shake hands directly with our growers and ranchers.
ali:Mhmm. I'm super passionate about that. And I think that voting with your dollar is huge, but also having that eye contact and that connection. And so, you know, offhand, we keep a deep freezer in my house. We buy quarter cows.
ali:We do direct farm delivery. I have my raw milk delivery dude. And then we work the Farmers market circuit, and we are really serious about making sure that we have direct relationships with those that fuel and nourish my household, because I think that that's the biggest investment in your health is having your your food source secured. And that's the best way to do it is by a handshake and a knowingness. If I know the names of the kids, of the dude who's growing my beef, I'm cool.
ali:You know, like, we're pretty solid. And if I'm disconnected and I just know that it's something at H E B that says grass fed on it, I'm pretty screwed when something happens as far as an outbreak or if there's a pathogen like E. Coli that gets into the factory or there's a burn or whatnot. I mean, I'm totally rendered useless at that point.
brett:Yeah. You are rendered useless, and you also have no way to verify whether it's actually grass fed or grass finished. Like, a great challenge is, like, anyone that's listening to the show, go to the butcher at your local supermarket and ask them if they know the farm that it comes from. I would guarantee you maybe, like, one out of 10 butchers maybe knows the name of the farm Yeah. And they definitely can't tell you where it's from.
ali:Like Right.
brett:We went to we went to a grocery store the other day, like, incredible grocery store, and their meat looked pretty high quality. So I just was like, hey. Do you know what farm that this this beef is coming from? He didn't know. He asked another butcher.
brett:The other butcher didn't know. They asked a third butcher. He could tell me the name of the farm, and then I was like, alright. Where is the farm based? And they didn't he couldn't even tell me the state that it was in.
brett:So there's all these people that are eating meat that's, like, grown, processed, harvested in Brazil, shipped over to The US. They slap a country of USA label on it, and they think it's, like, local Texas beef when it's, like, no. That's from Brazil, China, Mexico, some third party country.
ali:Well, I know in Austin, Salt And Thyme And Dewey are they do. Those those are the two that I know that will absolutely know all of the source or or their employee gets fired. They will. And they even list it, because I know that they've had peeler wagyu at salt and time. Yeah.
ali:But but those are two I know off the top of
harry:my head. Any recommendations for people eating out and trying to eat healthy?
ali:Oh, man. You know, I think it's good, better, best. Right? And and so I really feel like I I don't wanna dumb it down to saying eighty twenty is reasonable, but I do think circling back of, like, white knuckling and putting yourself in a survival mode in a chronic stress state is also not gonna support wellness outcomes. So, you know, I forget where we're going.
ali:I think Suarte after this.
harry:Oh, yeah.
ali:So it's like an upscale Mexican. You know, we here, they use lard, instead of, you know, canola oil, one would hope. You know, and I just eat as clean as I can. I love seeing sourcing on the menu. We try to eat at restaurants that feature local ranchers and growers.
ali:So I'm a big fan of, Odd Duck, for instance, out here. And they have a nice upscale, concept, Emeran rye, and and they know literally where every blossom was picked and etcetera. And so I try to vote with my dollar and eat out infrequently at more of the higher end, restaurants that really put a lot of their time and energy into working with ranchers and growers. And it's not just lip service on the menu, but that they actually, you know, fulfill that. And then I check and vet with my friends that are the ranchers.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
ali:Like, so do they actually order from you, dude? Because, you know, I've also seen the other where they kind of, like, greenwash. And a restaurant back in Houston, there was an issue where there was a restaurant that said, leeks from Not Branch Farm. And my friend worked at Not Branch Farm. I knew the family.
ali:I'd stayed on the farm multiple times. And one day, Ernest the farmer came with a a big, you know, black garbage bag full of leaks and slammed it on the chef's table because he said, you've been advertising my leeks for a year and a half, and you haven't paid in you haven't purchased an invoice for a year and a half. So, you know, you did that one time to put me on your menu. Mhmm. Here's your leeks for a year.
ali:And he had his son walk in, and they had bags and bags and bags of leeks. And it's just kinda like so we we gotta vet for that as we best we can as a consumer. But I think the more that we ask for it, the more that we demand. I tend to order off menu a lot if I'm not controlling where I'm eating. So I'm like foodie when it's good farm to table.
ali:And then when it's not, I'm like picky isolated order. So for instance, what I mean by that is I'll say, like, okay. I see that you have, bolognese on the menu. Can I get that in a small bowl? And then can I get a side of asparagus?
ali:Or, I'll often order gulf fish because I feel like that's a pretty safe bet, as far as when I'm not sure how the beef or the other meats are as far as quality goes. And then I just ask for cooked in butter. Don't do anything fancy and kinda keep it pretty simple.
Speaker 4:And then I say, I tip really
brett:well, and I'm sorry. Yeah. And it's a good mental model too because there there really is only so much you can control at the end of the day if you're not cooking your own meals. I'm just curious. Like, say you're at Suerte.
brett:You see a dish that looks really good to you and your husband, and you're like, it might have a little bit of seed oils in it. I'm not sure. Are you the type of person where you'll be like, look. I'm just gonna let myself indulge. I'm not gonna stress about it.
brett:My body's super resilient, or will you just try and avoid it and just kinda do something off menu?
ali:I'm the first. I'm I'm the I'm gonna indulge in it, and and Mhmm. I think my body's pretty resilient. Yeah. I will, like you know, and that's why doing something like bone broth to start my day today and tomorrow, is a good thing because you're getting a little insurance policy there, aligning your gut from insult.
ali:And I'm nonnegotiable on gluten, because of the Hashimoto's. And personally, I can I get, like, a razor blade response to gluten where it's not worth messing around with contamination or cross contamination? So I'm pretty, intensive about asking for what's done gluten free. And then once I go there, then I kinda just navigate as best I can. And I figure that all of the nutrient density I'm putting on comes in the wash.
harry:Yeah. You mentioned at the beginning of the show or before the beginning of the show that there's a new virus going around, and I was just curious how you would approach kinda preparing for that as it's still, like, early innings are still stretching.
ali:Right now, there's, like, three or four that are being named, and they're using VOI, virus of interest, as the, term that's being thrown around in the media. And, today, I believe it was, Joe Biden just shared that he's already investing more into this new booster because current boosters aren't impacting these three targeted VOIs. And so when I think of an experimental injection, or a shot or a sorts, because it's not a vaccine, an experimental injection of sorts, you know, that's a myopic approach. So even a a standard vaccine, which is a vaccine, in in the world of these pandemic shots, those are experimental injections. But even as a true vaccine, it's myopic, meaning it's tunnel vision.
ali:It's targeted at one virus. So all virus has been known to mutate. It's not stagnant. That's why every flu season, for over a decade, flu shots have been told to be statistically forty to sixty percent effective. And so they make up their cocktail of what they anticipate coming out, and then virus is gonna virus and mutate and do its thing.
ali:And sometimes it's a a good match, sometimes it really isn't. What's more important than waiting for this concoction of the pharmaceutical industry to quote unquote save you or protect you is to ensure that your body is robust in its immunological response to any pathogen. So pathogen includes things like virus, bacteria infection, mold, right, any foreign invader to our body. And so I'm a really big proponent of terrain theory or this idea that we need to keep our body optimized and that then it has a more robust shield for any bullet or any dart. We don't need one defensive dart that's supposed to hit said target to be anticipated by, again, the man.
ali:Mhmm. We can take the God approach to work with the natural design of our body, working with both our innate and adaptive immune processes to up regulate a response. And so what I look for as priorities there is blood sugar balance and optimized metabolism as number one. We know that when you have elevated blood sugar response, especially if you're eating refined carbohydrates, it takes your neutrophils, which is a type of white blood cell, on vacation.
Speaker 4:And
ali:so when your neutrophils go off guard, you have higher susceptibility to more severe infection. You don't have that first line of defense of army to combat the infection on the first line of defense, I guess. And so, you know, metabolic, strength is really important, and I would argue that taking it next level to manufacturing ketones is all the better. Ketones actually have been shown in studies to enhance t cell production, which helps with our memory. We've seen people our immune memory, not our brain memory.
ali:And we've seen individuals that had the Spanish flu in 1918, that still had a T cell memory response from natural immunology or infection, right, because their body was armed and remembered. So they weren't worrying about the mutation of the new thing on the block kind of thing. And so if we can prime our immune system to produce T cells and we can be in a state of ketosis, that's excellent. That also supports respiratory function. We know that ketosis even influences inflammasome pathway.
ali:There's an NLRP three inflammasome pathway, and this regulates how severe, when we are infected with a virus, how much oxidative stress is created and how much cytokine is responding. And so I don't know if you heard any of the buzz during the bad season or pandemic about cytokine storms and, you know, this is what was basically making people's bodies go haywire during time of infection. Well, if you're making ketones, you're actually down regulating those chronic inflammatory pathways, which is pretty cool. And so yeah. So beyond metabolic health, that's the first thing you can do to stay primed.
ali:Then I look at making sure your microbiome is robust, because we have toll like receptors in our gut. Our gut has something called the GALT, the gut associated lymphatic tissue. And so all of our lymphatic system of our immune cell production is really heavily managed in the gut. And so having good lacto and bifido strains of gut flora viable, fueling your gut with probiotic rich foods would be huge. And then I get into micronutrients and antioxidants.
ali:And so micronutrient wise, it's time for everyone to get their vitamin d levels checked. Everyone wants to be between 50 to 80 as an optimal range of NG over DL. And, you know, so you might need to supplement with five thousand IUs of d. You might need to make sure getting in the sun, of course, is very helpful. And then we start to look at, antioxidants, and that's where things like glutathione and NAC and, some of those other players like vitamin C come in.
ali:And some antioxidants like C can reduce viral replication. So that's definitely some power in loading that up. And then I mentioned, you know, NAC is an expectorant, so no more mucus and phlegm can reduce severity of cough. And then that glutathione helps with that antioxidant protection over that oxidative stress storm.
harry:Do you include vitamin d in that spectrum between glutathione and vitamin c?
ali:So it's not an antioxidant. Vitamin d is technically more of like a prohormone, but it would be a micronutrient of focus for sure.
Speaker 4:Mhmm. Mhmm.
brett:I would hope that most people would be empowered listening to this too, realizing that there are so many things that you can kind of intrinsically do to improve your metabolic health, improve your immune function. And then you contrast that with the pandemic where no one was talking about this. No one was thinking about improving their underlying metabolic health. It was just like the gimme approach to getting vaccinated.
ali:Oh, it was so frustrating. And and, you know, that that's when you know you can follow the money, when disempowerment is the primary campaign. I mean, that was literally the primary campaign. It was disempowerment. It was go get your shot for free French fries.
ali:It was stay home, don't exercise, let's close the gyms. You know, don't have community because oxytocin and and I mean, there's so many mechanisms of importance of community for whole body health and prevention of disease. You know, stay out of the sun, beaches were closed, etcetera. And then there was stupid news out there, like, we don't know why the elderly is dying. And it's like, well, the elderly dies in higher amounts every viral season.
ali:How about that? How about the fact that they have sarcopenia, which is the fancy word for muscle wasting? How about the fact that the elderly are vitamin d deficient clinically speaking? How about the fact that they're protein malnourished? How about the fact that I mean, you could go on and right?
ali:Many of them have polypharmacy. They're on 10 plus medications in the elderly state. And so there were so many reasons why the elderly were dying at higher impact. And I think that that's, again, disempowerment. If we were able to identify, then we know as fellow Americans that those are the risk factors and we can amend or correct any of those Achilles heels that we're currently wearing.
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
ali:But when we're saying don't worry about those COVID ten pounds, all, you know, health at every size, I I got a lot of flack from that as a dietitian that was saying, I'm sorry that, you know, you know, yes, some people can be healthier in a higher body weight than others, but all foods don't fit. And this is not the time to be saying health at all every size. This is the time to be losing some weight.
harry:It seems like the disempowerment, component of what happened a few years ago, it definitely disempowered some, but it also empowered so many others. It's, like, almost zero sum in some ways. Like Yeah. I see you, and you seem like you're just, like, on fire to get other people healthier. So Yeah.
harry:There it's encouraging also.
ali:It's that pressure that makes diamonds. Right?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Exactly.
brett:It does make diamonds. Yes. Ali, what's the best way for people just to connect with you to learn a little bit more about you, what you've got going on?
ali:Sure. So, on social, I'm at alimiller r d. So it's just a l I m I l l e r r d. And then my main website is alimillerrd.com. That has my functional medicine clinic where you can actually I think I have about a six month waitlist, but you can still sign up to work with me one on one.
ali:I have an awesome functional medicine clinical partner, Becky, who is the cohost on my podcast, Naturally Nourished, who y'all got to meet earlier today.
brett:She's fabulous.
ali:Yeah. So she sees patients as well. And she's my counterpart on the Naturally Nourished podcast and then our Naturally Nourished YouTube channel. So the YouTube, we try to keep more, like, seven to fifteen minute bite sized application stuff, whereas the podcast go a little bit more like hour format, deeper dive. And we have so many resources out there for you guys.
ali:I have an entire supplement line that I haven't spoke much to, but it's fantastic and it's all at aliemillerrd.com. So you can shop by category like inflammation or gut health or women's hormones or immune. And we have different curated bundles of different compounds and a lot of research to back everything up that we carry.
brett:Amazing. There's so many good supplements on that website. I was
ali:looking today. I'm thinking
brett:she's got it all.
ali:I didn't bring you guys any treats. I was thinking that. I was like, I should have brought you a cookbook. I'll I'll come back here. Commentary.
brett:And you have three books that you've written
harry:too. Right?
ali:Yes. So I put out Naturally Nourished Food as Medicine for Optimal Health. That's a cookbook, and that was in 2015. And then, The Antianxiety Diet is a nonfiction kind of deep dive read all about the HPA axis, the hypothalamus pituitary adrenals, and that's that, like, whether we're in sympathetic fight or flight or parasympathetic mode, and it goes through gut health and adrenal recovery and so much more. And then each chapter of that book guides you with a quiz on, you know, if this is your Achilles heel, what do we need to do to get you on track?
ali:And then has some food as medicine recipes. And then the Antianxiety Diet Cookbook came out the following year in 2018, and that is the Food Is Medicine recipes, photographed and in more of a cookbook format.
harry:Amazing. Well, we just wanna thank you for coming on. I know our audience is gonna love this, and we just really appreciate your time.
ali:Awesome. It's been a fun convo. Thanks for having me on.
brett:Thanks, Sally.
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