New Resources: Podcasts Interviews with Doctors (2 long, 2 short) Explaining the Evidence-Based Benefits of Plant-Based Whole Foods
We’ve been listening to podcasts together while we’re whiling away our days in these Pandemic times. It keeps our brains buzzing, it gets us all on the same wavelength, it allows us to learn together (even 5yr old Q listens along) while our hands/bodies may be working on different tasks, and it packs our minds/hearts with information that will be helpful for our loved ones.
What gives me me hope in dark times? That there is a beautifully simple answer out there to a lot of our health problems, and that simple answer (Plant-Based Whole-Food Diet) would also be the balm to our unraveling environment. What gives me purpose? Knowing that if enough souls woke up to this healthful fact they’d feel better and start healing the earth, and there’s no time like the present to keep harking health and light.
I’m fully aware that I’m not a medical professional, but what I amplify comes from them. The podcasts we listen to, the books I read, the studies I post, they aren’t from impassioned folks with with Literary Studies degrees (<—me) they are from medical professionals who are sounding the alarm that Plant-Based Whole Foods are the best diet for optimal health, and they’re working tirelessly to heal you and/or prevent you from going through a feast of diet-caused diseases.
A doctor trying to prevent you from getting diseases is a doctor focused on health, not money. What do they have to gain? The satisfaction of fulfilling their Hippocratic Oath, seeing other souls live their best lives, preventing unnecessary surgeries as a result of diet-caused diseases, and benefitting from the added side-effect of environmental kindness and souls saved from suffering. (What we all gain —personally and globally— is so much more than what you think you’re going to “lose”!)
Who benefits from you remaining in standstill? Pharmaceutical companies & animal agriculture companies are the beneficiaries of your poor health. The more animal products you consume the more you are complicit in environmental collapse/animal cruelty, and you’re also increasing your (and your kin’s) risk of many diseases, giving you a higher risk of death and pain; the sicker you are, the more money Big Pharma pockets, and you’ll definitely keep your doctor busy if she/he isn’t also working on your diet and just pushing pills in your direction.
Want to avoid taking a sleeve of medications? Want to reverse diseases holding you and your kin back from your healthiest/strongest/kindest lives? Truly listen/read the doctor-lead resources I post, and have your mind opened to the reality that what you eat either heals you or harms us all.
The reality of lifestyle medicine in action: a family thriving on plant-based whole foods, embracing connectedness (we’re all working on different crafts here: Ian is writing, Q is sculpting, I’m hand-sewing face masks, and we’re all listening to the same podcast), and keeping active together (I do most of my daily tasks standing/foot-pumping/squatting/pacing/bopping/dancing/etc and Ian is also usually on the move, so Q can see the importance of avoiding prolonged sitting) and we aim for one physical activity together a day.
I’ll have a separate post soon about Dr. Dean Ornish and Anne Ornish’s book Undo It, but there is so much I want to underline/highlight/color that I’ll need awhile and will dedicate a whole post to it.
Doctor Ornish is a font of clinical information and practice. He proved back in 1990 (30 YEARS AGO, FOLKS!!!) that diet could reverse heart disease and/or prevent you from ever having it, and he’s continued on to prove the same in relation to many other diseases, and inspired a whole cohort of doctors to go out and prove the same.
What makes Ornish’s program so effective, is that he takes into account several pillars of health that lead to “Lifestyle medicine”: eating well, physical activity, mindfulness, staying connected to others. If you want to feel great, you need to be working on all 4 of those and not dropping the ones that seem too hard or out of your comfort zone. (This is why I’ve recently started documenting the amount of physical activity I am doing in a day, and then using that data to see what I need to be focusing more attention on.)
If you’re on the fence and thinking this is all wishy-washy hogwash with no scientific backing, you are quite mistaken and you owe it to yourself to go do a simple search about the health-benefits of plant-based whole-foods, and give this podcast a listen (or go watch his TED talk).
Dr. Danielle Belardo’s Nutrition Rounds podcast is one of my absolute favorite podcasts because she is enthusiastically down-to-earth (just listening to her makes you feel lighter of spirit), yet every interview is an in-depth evidence-based discussion re: health and nutrition, and she interviews DOCTORS so what you’re getting is real clinical, data-backed information about health. This isn’t at all to disparage non-doctors, but I know some of y’all will only listen to professionals, and here you have no excuse to avoid the fact that it is doctors deep in the data saying the same thing as me: plant-based whole-foods are clinically proven to be best for you.
reasons and imperatives behind the most recent research explaining the health benefits of plant-based whole foods (and explanations of the harms associated with animal products)
details on how to start shifting your diet and how the process is understandably slow. Just like I have, they are suggesting you start swapping out one meal a day and grow from there.
lessons on how to make space for mindfulness
explanations on the importance of connection
how to raise a family on plant-based whole foods
I’ve listened to this three times now and would happily listen to it again. Give it a try and find your mind opened and life bettered.
Recent view from a family walk around our rural block: 3 miles of beautiful views, yet sadly strewn with human litter. Plan for the next walk is to bring litter grabbers and a container for cleaning it up as we go.
Another evidence-based doctor I adore is Dr. Michael Greger. He runs a website (Nutrition Facts) that is an absolute font of information. If there is something you want to know about nutritional health and want the added benefit of seeing/learning the evidence behind the information, this is the place to go.
Here’s the site’s description:
NUTRITIONFACTS.ORG is a strictly non-commercial, science-based public service provided by Dr. Michael Greger, providing free updates on the latest in nutrition research via bite-sized videos. There are more than a thousand videos on nearly every aspect of healthy eating, with new videos and articles uploaded every day.
On top of the videos, there are also articles, and podcasts (with full readable transcripts for each podcast).
I’ll be recommending many of these scattered through the future, because they are so dang good I find myself listening to each multiple times over (Ian too), but we’ll start with two.
First, if you’ve ever found yourself wondering where plant-based souls get their protein, this short podcast (12 min) is going to explain:
Where and how you get proteins in plant-based whole foods.
How plant-based proteins are better for us, what nutrients 97% of folks are actually lacking (SHOCKER: it’s not protein, it’s everything you need but aren’t getting if you’re avoiding plant-based whole-foods)
Where and how to get your Vitamin D and Calcium
How Amino Acids (protein) work in your body
And this fun nugget:
“The dietary recommendations of countries that rely on their health departments to formulate them, rather than their agriculture departments [<—that’s what we ignorantly do in America, and thus profits outweigh health], more closely parallel the recommendations of academics, such as Walter Willet, the chair of Harvard’s nutrition department, who, in his “Essentials of healthy eating guide,” talks about picking the best “protein packages,” recognizing that food is a package deal. And so, one of his top three recommendations that we should emphasize is plant sources of protein, rather than animal sources.
See, to the metabolic systems engaged in protein production and repair, it doesn’t matter whether amino acids come from animal or plant protein.
However, protein is not consumed in isolation. Instead, it is packaged with a host of other nutrients. The quality and amounts of fats, carbohydrates, sodium, and other nutrients in the ‘‘protein package’’ may influence long-term health. For example, results from the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study suggest that eating more protein from beans, nuts, seeds, and the like while cutting back on refined carbohydrates like white flour reduces the risk of heart disease.
So, the bottom line? Go with plants. Eating a plant-based diet is healthiest.”
And if the above whetted your appetite for more evidence-based info, I highly recommend listening to his most recent podcast (a little over 14 min) which is a grab-bag of several new studies. You can also read the transcript within that link.
Within 14 short minutes, you’ll learn all of the following and MORE:
Some helpful info on starfruit (personally can’t afford fancy fruit and have never had a starfruit, but if you’re feasting on these guys, it’s worth looking into)
“Excessive consumption of star fruit has been associated with the development of oxalate kidney damage.” Less than a cup of star fruit juice or three whole fruits, they’re not that big, can result in “acute star fruit nephrotoxicity.” “Ingestion of even modest quantities of star fruits can produce” kidney problems; so, it is essential to educate the public to avoid consuming star fruit, “especially on an empty stomach or in a dehydrated state” to prevent star fruit nephrotoxicity.
A whole chapter on the sugar found in breakfast cereals. Added sugars are terrible for your health, and starting a day with a bowl that has an average of 18g of sugar is bad a idea if health is your hope.
“The average portion of Frosted Flakes they poured for themselves contained 18 grams of sugar (4.5 teaspoons, or 6 sugar packets worth). It’s been estimated that “a child eating just one serving per day of the average children’s cereal would consume close to 10 pounds of sugar in a year, nearly 1,000 spoonfuls of sugar.”
A mind-blowing piece about "how elevated levels of pro-inflammatory, aging-associated oxylipins can be normalized by eating ground flax seed”.
“Previously, I’ve explored the potent antihypertensive effect of dietary flaxseed in hypertensive patients. This was a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial where they disguised ground flax seed in baked goods, versus like flax-free placebo muffins, and got an extraordinary drop in high blood pressures. As you can imagine, the flax seed industry was overjoyed, praising the impressive findings, as was I. After all, high blood pressure is the single largest risk factor for death on the planet earth. Yes, we give people medications, lots and lots of medications, but most people don’t take them, as in 9 out of 10 people take less than 80 percent of their prescribed blood pressure pills. Just 8 percent.
It’s not difficult to understand why. “Patients are asked to follow an inconvenient and potentially costly regimen, which will likely have a detrimental effect on their health-related quality of life to treat a mostly asymptomatic condition.” So, they may feel worse instead of better, due to the side effects. The answer, then, is to give them more drugs to counteract the effects of the first drugs like giving men Viagra to counteract the erectile dysfunction caused by their blood pressure pills.
How about using a dietary strategy instead, especially if it can be just as effective? And indeed, the drop in blood pressures they got in the flax seed study “was greater than the average decrease observed with the standard dose of anti-hypertensive drugs.” And, flaxseeds are cheaper too, compared to even single medications, and most patients are on multiple drugs. And it has good side effects beyond their anti-hypertensive actions but not all good. Taking tablespoons of flax seed a day is a lot of fiber for people who have been living off of cheeseburgers and milkshakes their whole lives, and it can take a little while for your gut bacteria to adjust to the new bounty. So, people who start out with low-fiber diets may want to take it slow at first.”
Every single one of Greger’s podcasts will blow your mind right open with in-depth evidence-based nutritional insights, and I highly recommend them all.
Sometimes I get the notion that folks assume I’m some hippy-dippy fool fumbling forward in pure misguided compassion and listening to podcasts about people hugging cows. You’d be right about my focus on compassion, but you should know I am also a soul who saturates herself in science, and I’m deep in data-backed listening over here. That heady flax talk above is my swoony bread and butter. :-) I’m not interested in inches or pounds, I’m focused on learning, longevity, vitality, and environmental sustainability.
Give these 2 short podcasts a listen (under 30 minutes for both!) and have your mind rattled open too.
Small changes that are BIG steps forward in health (and environmental sustainability): stop consuming sugary breakfast cereals, refined carbs, and animal products as your nutritional start to the day. Not only are you ruining your microbiome and setting yourself up for inflammation/mental health issues/cardiovascular disease/diabetes, you’re also harming your endothelium with every serving.
Instead, try whole oats covered in fruits and flax. This was Q’s breakfast this morning: blueberry oatmeal, pink lady apple, golden flax seeds. No added sugar and full of fiber.
Last, but not least, is an amazing hour long interview with Dahlia Marin on Dotsie Bausch’s Switch4Good Podcast. Who is Dotsie Bausch? She is silver-medal Olympian who found herself stronger, healthier, and with faster recovery times after she switched to plant-based whole-foods . When I first saw Dotsie in Game Changers I was a weepy mess of pride for what she’d accomplished, and emotive-relief at seeing another soul who felt similarly better because of this diet, who was out preaching the same plant-based power story. Dotsie and her cohost Alexandra Paul are using their platform to put out a brilliant, inspiring, illuminating podcast interviews about the power of plant-based eating.
Who is Dahlia Marin and who is she to be speaking about nutrition and healing yourself through plant-based whole-goods?
Dahlia Marin is a Plant Based Registered Dietitian / Nutritionist, who has used food as medicine on a whole food plant based diet for the past 8 years to overcome pre-diabetes, PCOS, GI issues, obesity, and Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism, and have a healthy plant-based pregnancy. She is passionate about healing the gut, as it is a key to healing the entire body. She uses her own health story and clinical experience working with clients from a multitude of backgrounds and health conditions to get to the root of what ails them, helping to find true healing and well-being.
Have any of the diseases mentioned above? (Pre-diabetes, PCOS, GI issues, obesity, and Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism.) Have a kid or about to have a kid and wondering how to raise them healthfully? Have you ever struggled with your weight? You need to listen to this dietician-lead discussion. Dahlia is a delight of explanation and information.
What they discuss:
How Dahlia’s unhealthy early lifestyle led to her pursuing a degree in nutrition
Comprehensive explanation of what goes on in your gut (and how it may lead to disease)
The downside to antibiotics (precisely what’s going on and how they set your system into havoc)
How food can help or hinder your gut
How to retrain your gut to digest fibrous foods (and why FODMAP diets are terrible for you)
How to raise an infant, dairy-free
Today’s fibrous filling feasting for a Mama Bear and Cub: stoneground polenta, quick-pickled cabbage, kale & quinoa salad, balsamic tomatoes, and oil-free pesto. (<—made this with aqua faba and oatmilk and once basil season hits —or soon because I won’t be able to wait any longer— I’ll post the recipe, so you can eat pesto all the livelong day.)
There are ample studies, books, podcasts, movies (again, go watch What the Health, Game Changers, or Forks Over Knives all are full of doctors) saying what I’ve said above and more.
Open your mind and give truth and health a listen. The only thing you have to lose is pain, harmful habits, and participation in the ruination of our only planet.
What you have to gain is so much more!
