Food as Medicine

Speaker 1: [Music] that's nutrition or nutrition science broccoli good or bad red wine good or bad coffee good or bad keto good or bad I don't care about any of that I care about how that food performs inside of each individual's body and that's what makes it functional bringing us back to those three Roots the genes digestion and inflammation our digestive system we have to take the things in and process them to get the fuel to ourselves we're all going to do that differently I'm Melanie bar welcome back to the shilp podcast your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave I'm here to talk about everything from Having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech innovation I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges I live in the city now but I grew up in a town of a thousand people I've navigated major life leaps a senior level corporate career worked in professional sports and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business technology family and making meaningful connections with you and the Sheil it Community I also love a good workout and dose of self-care magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy way so turn up the audio open your favorite Notes app grab your favorite drink and here we go welcome to the Sheila podcast thank you for joining us Andrea every transformative path begins with a pivotal moment can you share yours and what led you to functional medicine yeah so really the biggest pivotal moment was when my late husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor when I was just 7 weeks pregnant with our first and only child that was back in April of 2000 so quite some time ago but at that time I really began to recognize the gaps in our medical system and I wasn't even in the field it was just through the experience of being a patient and a caretaker so that really helped me to see that people are treated like their diagnosis not like the person or the human that they are and and everybody with the same diagnosis is treated the same so that was my first wakeup call before I went through years of putting myself back through school and recognizing this was my calling and identifying further gaps and ways that we could fill them I'm so sorry that you went through that and it's always interesting when you go to a doctor and we do need medicine for certain things but when they don't say exercise diet the things that also help us along the way with our health can you speak to that I like to think of Health through different lenses and functional medicine if people aren't familiar with it is really rooted in three primary tenants I'm just going to start there so we're all on the same page and when I talk about these three primary tenants it doesn't mean that everybody who calls themselves a functional medicine doctor or nutritionist is practicing this way but at its roots the three primary tenants are a therapeutic partnership meaning that both the patient and the provider are experts in the room they have different expertise that we're looking for the root causes which means we're asking why is this happening not just what do I do about it and that we're taking a systems-based approach and for me that Embraces the systems biology as well as the systems thinking and when I say systems biology think what we know today the gut in the brain are connected the hormones are connected to the liver because the detoxification happens there so just understanding that we're not a bunch of allies that everything in our body is actually connected so those are the three primary tenants of a truly functional practice as it was designed back in the 1990s by Dr Jeffrey Bland who is a systems biologist I've then created systems that allow us to think into the very comp complex cases that more and more people are experiencing today or living with today chronic unresolved health challenges and so one of those systems that I like to think about answers your question Melanie and I think of it as three Roots many branches so if we think about a tree in the middle of the field and we were just talking I live in Oregon Spring is going to bloom there's going to be incredible wild flowers and every so often in the middle of a field you'll encounter a magnificent tree and you can imagine if you approach this tree and it's the middle of spring and yet there are leaves that are turning brown and falling off or branches where the bark doesn't look healthy that you'd feel really moved to support this tree to come into its magnificent self now what we do in medicine tends to be getting the ladder getting the sauce sawing off the branch or picking off the leaves so that we don't have to actually address the deeper issues that are causing those branches and leaves to manifest in that way so I like to remind us that any sign symptom or diagnosis is a branch on our tree whether that's cancer or diabetes or Hashimoto or lupus or hair loss or migraines or restless legs or whatever we think of as a sign a symptom or a diagnosis and the lists are many are branches where I want to remind us to go is down through the trunk down to the roots and I've identified three that are always present in any chronic health challenges but most importantly to the soil so those three roots are the genes our genes digestion and inflammation but the soil the terrain that nourishes those roots is where we as patients have the most influence over the expression of those branches instead of looking for the gene or the root or fixing what's wrong with us if we take a broader approach and I can talk about those circles of influence or the soil we actually have more opportunity to heal and be empowered in our own healthare it's so interesting and there's a lot of conversations going on today about what goes into our food so I'm sure you're having those conversations and my son had a cold the other day and I went in and tried to get Ibuprofen sometimes that opens up his Airways and I went into Lazy Acres and the man said we don't have that here which woke me up to thinking okay we're going to talk about something more natural and so he showed me an array of things and it helped my son feel better so quickly yes now and ever since that moment I thought okay now instead of going to CVS or somewhere else where there are times when things are needed I think about going to Lazy Acres and what's on the Shelf there that might be a more natural remedy yes and there is a place like you're saying I'm a yes and so we're talking about yes there's an absolute time for medical intervention and we also need to think about the other things we can do in those acute moments so what you're talking about with your son is an acute moment and what are the opportunities we have when something pops up but it's going to go away next week where functional nutrition really has an even bigger impact is when we're sick and not getting better and there is an increased rate of people particularly women and a younger and younger population who are experiencing these symptoms that just aren't getting better even when they're trying the overthe counter or the medical interventions that's where a practice like functional nutrition as well as preventative care really shines because it looks at things through a different lens and that's where we also are the yes and we need medicine and medical intervention I was not about with my late husband to go through a brain tumor diagnosis he had two surgeries and radiation therapy and two different kinds of chemotherapy while we were doing all the other things what I want to really articulate here is there's a lot of time between our medical visits and that time can also be a time of care we can give to ourselves so there's another Gap there and that we might see our doctor once a year once every six months once every month if we're actually dealing with something but there's still a lot of time a lot of hours a lot of minutes where we can be exercising some agency and do you think that looking at our food and what we're eating and the food we're consuming and then also with activity levels especially I think about my children and making sure that they're off of screens myself included you know that we're being as active as we can be in order to live the health heest lifestyle yeah absolutely again the systems thinking in the soil it includes food movement environment mindset those are factors that we call epigenetic factors those factors influence our genes I think about it as sleep and relaxation exercise and movement nutrition hydration stress resilience relationships and networks all of those things are skills that influence our internal Terrain at the same time there are other factors that influence our internal terrain that are part of our story they're the things we came into the world with our genes our antecedants our cultural backgrounds how we were born when we were born the things that happened through our lives for me you know my husband's illness and death and his illness while I was pregnant those can't be ignored so yes as a nutritionist believe that Food Matters I would love for us to get away from this thinking that it is the be all and all that it alone is the medicine or the thing that's going to make us sick it's also going to be very different for every individual so the difference between nutrition and functional nutrition is looking at the food in isolation that's nutrition or nutrition science broccoli good or bad red wine good or bad coffee good or bad keto good or bad I don't care about any of that I care about how that food performs inside of each individual's body and that's what makes it functional bringing us back to those three Roots the genes digestion and inflammation our digestive system we have to take things in and process them to get the fuel to ourselves we're all going to do that differently in in a nuanced way it's meant to function similarly but we're all going to do that differently so if that paleo diet or that intermittent fasting works for your girlfriend your best friend your neighbor your sister that has nothing to do with you and that's where we take it out of food Theory or vilification and into where there's really an opportunity for healing it's so true and I see that the most as a twin mom because my twins react to different foods different medicines they're very different they're at the same age and you'd think they would be relatively the same they're vastly different the twin studies really have shown us the epigenetic influence on the genes so even though the blueprint is similar or even the same blueprint the way that life has impacted them is going to mean that their expression of their genes is distinct from one another and that what we've seen with the twin studies that the somatic experience of our genes is very different than the inherited experience of our genes and by that I mean the lived experience versus the I came with it experience what do you think is the most overlooked Factor when taking ownership of our health that's such a good question it's an understanding of how much our body has to tell us I think that we live in a culture that is telling us to focus so much outside of ourselves whether it's media media or social media we're constantly especially again as women being fed all of this information about what we should be doing taking eating drinking feeling experiencing how we should look and we've lost touch with the inner workings of Our Own body and the messages that our body can tell us I see my job as a functional medicine nutritionist even though I primarily train other practitioners versus working one on-one if I were to say what the focus is it's helping people to understand what makes them feel better what makes them feel worse that's where we have agency and we start paying attention and bringing that attention inward so it's the attention outward instead of the attention Inward and if someone wanted to take more control of over their health what are the steps that you would suggest it can be really overwhelming and I'm going to make it super simple and it's probably something that people are like yeah yeah I've done that before when I think about health one of the systems I've developed in addition to the three Roots is called the three tiers to nutrition Mastery tier one it's the only one I'm going to talk about are the non-negotiables and the non-negotiable trifecta is sleep poop and blood sugar balance if you were to ask me how do you tend to your health I am tending to my sleep I'm making sure that I'm pooping and that my blood sugar is balanced and I'm not doing that by wearing a continuous glucose monitor or obsessing over calories or macros I'm just making sure I eat fat fiber and prot r at every single meal so non-negotiable Trifecta sleep poop blood sugar balance if you are not feeling good or you would like to be feeling better focus on one of those and just start to optimize sleep isn't a command you might notice I don't sleep as well if I go to sleep at 11: as if I go to sleep at 9:30 this is my issue and I had this last night if I stay up past 10 I cannot fall asleep if I go to sleep at 9:30 I am asleep like a baby and sleep till the morning and then the whole day is off my blood sugar's off I don't wake up to do my workout in the morning all of these things happen so being religious about my sleep by tuning in and understanding what works for me is a GameChanger for how we feel alone if I go to the the blood sugar balance piece again the one tip I would say to people is fat fiber protein at every single meal or snack and if you don't know what those are or what the good sources are I have great resources at the functional Nutrition Alliance that I've written handouts on that can be found online break it down instead of thinking I have to be carnivore or vegan think fat fiber protein at every meal these small steps have a huge impact and they're the Baseline we need no matter where we're going to go next and it's also interesting how our routines play a role I didn't think about if you stay up past a certain point then you can't sleep yeah physiologically it makes sense when you understand how the body works we have a cortisol pattern that when inbalance is high in the morning and it comes down through the day like a ski slope and we want to fall asleep when we're down at the bottom of the ski slope in order to wake up in the morning our cortisol starts that train ride up to the top of the mountain so if that is going up and we're trying to fall asleep we're contrary to where we want to be and I think that for a lot of people who want to savor their time maybe have kids at home that's their best creative self time after 11 after the kids are in you're talking about me but that's like the worst thing we can do for not just our sleep but our hormones at this moment and as we age because our blood sugar is going to get off balance when our sleep's out of balance our blood sugar is Baseline to our sex hormone balance so when I think about the hormones blood sugar is the bottom of the pyramid then insulin then cortisol which we're talking about with the Sleep curve then thyroid then sex hormones and often times we want to jump to the tip of the iceberg but if we don't have those other foundations in place we're likely not to have the results we're looking for you're inspiring me to try to sleep a little more and go to sleep a little early and by a certain time if I'm not asleep I start to think I need to go to sleep cuz I don't want it like you said past this this certain time of night yes especially with stress levels what I find is that if I have anything in the evening or the later afternoon that gets my heart rate going and I have a busy business and I'm doing a lot so something will happen my whole energy level gets raised if I don't pay heed to that moment when my body is feeling tired in the evening and see SE that I'm toast for sleep so it's really seizing that moment like that first moment your body is telling you're tired it might be 8:00 p.m. really listen to that and acknowledge that your body is telling you something because it will start to send different messages in another hour or two it's so interesting to listening that intently about your natural Rhythm yes yeah and we don't all have natural rhythms that are happening as they should there so sometimes we have to recultivated that Rhythm as well so those are all interesting parts of healing that often get overlooked in favor of the quick fix or that Branch again as opposed to Healing from the soil to the roots to the trunk to the branch of the tree we've talked a lot about health today what is one thing that you make sure to do to make sure that you're finding and living your joy yeah so good to think about that I'm a Creator I'm an artist I'm an accidental entrepreneur I went to art school before putting myself back through school for nutrition and all of the work I've done to build my business and so for me in addition to my practices how I eat how I aim to sleep even though there's the occasion where it gets off Dancing I do a lot of things in a day that help me to feel my best cuz I need to and want to but being able to create and explore new ideas and engage with listening to Great podcasts for me my creative Spirit needs to be fed or I am not living my life with joy and purpose and so I have the privilege of having built a business where I've gotten to be creative but as it's grown it's lost some of the creativity and becomes very much about the business end of things so I've had to turn my attention to the next body of work and make sure that I'm creating to be creative but also to live my life with joy and purpose and Mission and meaning and that's why I love to ask this question because a lot of women and I know a lot of our listen ERS are busy running businesses and sometimes we have to schedule that time into like you said be creative and it's interesting you'll go off to do something and then a client will email you and then you'll gain a client as you're off doing something it's so good to remind ourselves to take that time for ourselves and find that fun creative side away from our business side yes and they can be interjoint but yes I think we lose sight of a lot of the small person the little child self that that was like unabashed in how we spent our time I think there's a lot of Clues there for us in what gives us a lot of Joy thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all of your health knowledge please share with us how and where we can find you yes thank you for asking so you can go to andrean noyama dcom that is my personal website it will lead you back to this podcast to any of my current writing and offerings as well as the functional Nutrition Alliance which is the brand and the business I've built to train coaches and clinicians thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello Sheil it.com on our she builted website or at Sheil it on social thank you to my editor Rich draino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave [Music]