Antinutrients and extreme diets get a lot of air on talk shows and social media, but do they stand up to the test of supporting a healthy body?
Maybe?
In this episode, I’ll give you both sides of the story regarding food compounds that many recommend avoiding.
More importantly, I’ll offer you a framework to consider when you think about how to nourish your unique body for your life stage and the goals you want to achieve.
Listen now and take some of the fear out of food hype.
Referred to in this episode:
#322 How to Manage Oxalates After Breast Cancer
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Read the full transcript:
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You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills and the insights and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life, that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started. Hey, there, you're listening to
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Episode 351. And I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And this is our Tuesday terrain talk. This is where we talk about the stuff that you can do to support your body's ability to achieve optimal wellness. Where can you take control over this? What should you know? What do you maybe need a little clarity on? You know, recently, last week, I read a book called the carnivore code. I hear a lot of good talk and good information from reputable doctors about a carnivore diet. And of course, I have a lot of thoughts about that, as you probably do, too. Like who could just eat meat, my husband probably could just eat me, I actually think he would be thrilled to just eat meat. I think the only thing that he would miss if he could only eat meat is cheesecake. But for me, that's really hard to wrap my mind around. But I still want to understand the science behind it. Why is this touted as being a great diet? So I was listening to the carnivore code. And I got to tell you, sometimes I was listening to it, I listened to a lot of audiobooks. And sometimes I listen to books. And I think, whew, man, you gotta be careful who listens to this book, because this could really scare someone really overwhelm someone. And sometimes also, you have to really listen to the terminology being used around the science that's being touted. So for instance, you could probably imagine that in the carnivore code, there's a lot of talk about why you shouldn't eat plants in specifically about plant compounds that are often referred to as anti nutrients. And he goes into a lot of depth on specific anti nutrients. And it isn't that that's not true. It isn't that the science is bad. But there are some things where you have to listen to this was done in an animal study on rats. And when we gave rats 10 times the amount of a lectin that someone would ever eat in one day. The rat died. Let's say that's hypothetical. I'm not saying he said that in the book. But you hear some things like that, right? You hear people speaking on social media platforms, and and I don't know, maybe they had a good experience. Maybe that's what healed them. I hope so. I think it's wonderful. I think that there's like we could use food as a tool to heal. I mean, that's what I like to think of food in many factors, right? It's it's a joyful, it's tradition, traditions. I love to cook. It's a it's a gift of love to people, but it's also a tool to support healing and wellness. And different foods, I think are beneficial to a body at different times, at different stages of life. And for different purposes and different goals. I'll give you an example. I was speaking to one of my friends, who she's got four handsome athletic sons, and they're totally in a biohacking. And right now they're totally into the carnivore diet. So mom and dad are on the carnivore diet with them, and everybody's doing good. And they've lost some weight and they're getting jacked. And all of these good things are happening. And we were talking about the difference between grass fed grass, finished meat and grass fed grain finished meat. And my friend was saying that at our local butcher, he was saying to her, I would never sell grass, finished meat. Grass fed a grain finished is the way to go. And she says what do you think about that? And I think he's a butcher selling delicious food. And so he wants to fatten up his animals before they go to be slaughtered to sell fattier juice your cuts of meat because fat gives food a good mouthfeel fat is very satiating and full of flavor, right. But for me, I'm talking about grass fed grass finished because my goal is to reduce inflammation. Now this butcher may be feeding his animals, organic grains to fatten them up and finish them off. I'm not sure. But for me, I'm looking for grass fed grass finished because it's going to have the lowest amount of omega six inflammatory fatty acids right? So if I buy a grass fed grass finished ribeye is gonna be a little more lean than a grass fed grain finished ribeye. But it just depends on what's happening in my body. What my goal is with my body. What is the situation? Do I have a disease Am I in a chronic state of mind of any acute state, there's so many things to balance when we think about that. So I don't think one food is bad or wrong. I think that we can look at food with some moderation we can understand the truth about it and what the animal is being fed and how that changes the food. But I really think we've got to take some other things into consideration before we demonize foods. For instance, let's talk about anti nutrients. You if you're have a breast cancer diagnosis, you're trying to dig into food, you're gonna hear a couple of different schools of thought, right, you're gonna hear vegan plant based is the way to go, you're going to hear get into a state of ketosis, which you can get into a state of ketosis on a plant only diet, but it's going to be a little more challenging, right. So there's lots of ways to get to a metabolic state that you want to get to. And some will make it easier. And some, we'll make it more challenging. But even within the scope of foods that may be recommended in a certain diet, not all of those foods will be good for you. Because you are a special unique human being with a special unique gut microbiome and a special unique genetic makeup. And this has a huge impact on the way you absorb and use the nutrients in food. So that being said, food itself is unique in that it's going to have different balance of nutrients, depending on where it was grown, how it was grown, what pesticides were used, what fertilizers were used, was it grown in season, or was it forced to go out of season is hybrid? So lots of different variants, right? We don't do we really want to think about all that when you go and pick up a peach, probably not. So what about this idea that anti nutrients that are plant compounds have to be completely avoided. I think another thing that we have to think about when we're considering food and what's in food, is that when someone's doing a scientific study on something, they're isolating something, and the way that a nutrient works, when it's isolated, can be very different than the way a nutrient works. When it's taken in the whole food form. We've got to remember that. So for instance, let's talk about a few anti nutrients. So anti nutrients are plant compounds, and they can interfere with the absorption or the utilization of nutrients inside your body. So some common anti nutrients are things called phytates oxalates I recently did a podcast on oxalates, tannins and lectins. You probably heard of one or all of these things. phytates so let's go through them one by one phytates are or fight against. It is something that you're going to find in seeds, nuts, legumes, which are beans, cashews, peanuts, grains, and phytates can bind to minerals like calcium, zinc and iron so they can reduce their absorption in your digestive tract, which is why they're called anti nutrients and why some different platforms or people say stay away from them. But phytates have another side to them as well. And studies have shown that phytates have strong antioxidant properties that they can help protect cells from oxidative damage. Some studies have shown they can reduce the risk of chronic disease, they can inhibit the growth of cancer cells and induce programmed cell death or apoptosis. In some various cancers including breast cancer, prostate and colon cancers. phytates have been shown to help prevent kidney stone formation because they inhibit the crystallization of calcium oxalate. So think about it if there's a lot of oxalates in spinach, but there's also phytates in spinach. Is there a balance there when you eat the spinach and you don't just take a phytate or an oxalate out of the spinach phytates have been shown to contribute to bone health by reducing bone reabsorption, which is that process where bone is broken down and minerals are released into the blood. So this can help in maintaining bone density and preventing osteoporosis. phytates have been shown to help regulate blood sugar levels because they slow the digestion and absorption of carbohydrates. And this can lead to fewer blood sugar spikes, which is something really beneficial if we're dealing with people with diabetes if we're dealing with controlling and regulating glucose levels because of a cancer in process or reducing risk of cancer or just achieving overall metabolic health phytates have been shown to help lower cholesterol levels, especially LDL, low density lipoproteins, which we call the bad cholesterol. And they've been shown to have anti inflammatory effects. So when we hear they have the anti nutrients that might block the absorption of some minerals that we might want to have, but then they also have all of these other great effects. Do we really want a limit to eliminate these from our diet? Or do we want to realize that food is sometimes more than just the sum of its parts, but it's still may not be for everybody, and I'm going to touch on that. We talked about oxalates. I'll link to the podcast I did on oxalates, too, but in the show notes for this episode, the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash 351 is where you can find those are linked just below are you listening to or watching this podcast, but oxalates also have been known to bind to calcium and form calcium oxalate, and some people who are very susceptible to kidney stones can have a real issue with that, because the most common type of kidney stone is a calcium oxalate formed kidney stone. Tannins are another anti nutrient, they're in tea, coffee, wine fruits, you know, if you're a wine connoisseur, you know the effect of attendance on a wine. And they've been shown to inhibit the absorption of things like iron and other minerals and affect protein digestibility. But they've also been shown to have strong antioxidant properties. Some studies have shown that tannins can reduce oxidative stress and lower the risk of chronic diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease, and even neurodegenerative diseases. They also have anti inflammatory properties, and we all want to reduce inflammation in the body. So this can be helpful in managing conditions like arthritis, and other inflammatory diseases. And we know that a lot of disease is rooted in inflammation, I can go on because tenants has been shown to have anti microbial activity anti cancer potential, improved digestive health and regulate blood sugar lectins This is another one you might hear a lot of people say I have anti lectin diet, right, just avoid all lectins. And you're gonna find those in your lagoons, grains. And some vegetables and lectins have been shown to bind to the gut lining and interfere with nutrient absorption and also cause digestive discomfort. And if you're somebody who eats beans, and then gets bloated and gets a lot of gas, you know what I'm talking about. So that happens to be affecting your gut, right? Maybe those lectins. And that specific anti nutrient or that specific food isn't good for your body and your gut, and is a bad for everybody depends on the goal. Again, if we're talking about lectin, and we're talking about consuming them, and legumes and grains, and your dietary goal is carb restriction and keeping your blood sugar as low as possible, then the food itself is a food that doesn't serve that goal, right? Because lectins have been shown to have all kinds of great properties, antimicrobial cancer prevention, immune system modulation, even help with weight management, because of their influence on the metabolism of fat and carbohydrates. So how do you decide what to eat? How do you not go bananas listening to all of this conflicting information? You know, we had a really good discussion about this in one of my member groups over the weekend on a coaching call. And I think that we have to consider several things. One, you have to consider as I've talked about a couple of times here, what is your dietary goal? You know, a lot of people go to these extremes of looking at every everything inside of food, every anti nutrient, how do I get rid of oxalates? How do I get rid of phytates? How do I get rid of that? And they're still eating processed food? So where are we at like in the spectrum of healthy eating before we even start worrying about getting to the level of biohacking, you know, with our food? Where are you at? Where do you where can you start? without overwhelming yourself and feeling fearful and terrified of food? What a terrible thing to be stressed about everything that you eat. So one thing is where are you at on the spectrum of healthy eating word you have the lowest hanging fruit, where can you start working on food to get rid of highly processed foods, ultra processed foods, sugars, all of that kind of stuff that's going to spike your blood sugar or can you start with that? The second thing is, what is your state of health? Are you a healthy person who's looking to adopt just healthier eating habits overall, that fit into your lifestyle because they've got to fit into your lifestyle? Or are you someone managing a chronic disease? Are you someone who wants to be able to lose weight? Are you someone who wants to be able to gain weight? And you know sometimes when you're looking at food as something that can be used to manage a chronic disease and If you're underweight, then there's another skill that has to be balanced, right? How do you eliminate some foods from the diet and still get enough calories into the diet to maintain or even gain weight? That's something that has to be balanced and really looked at. So again, what is the goal? What is the condition of your body? I talk about therapeutic ketosis, because I have the stage for cancer diagnosis. So I know that staying in the state of therapeutic ketosis keeps my blood sugar's low as possible, and has a ton of metabolic benefits. But nutritional ketosis is something that's a little easier to achieve, and also has a tremendous amount of benefits. If I was someone who had had a cancer diagnosis, and currently had no evidence of disease, let's say that I didn't have stage four, maybe at a stage one or two or just a local cancer, what hadn't spread through the system yet, then is nutritional ketosis good enough, or is just carb restriction. There's so many things to look at that I think before we start to look at food and get really afraid of food, we have to just know ourselves. You know, I do metabolic health coaching. And that involves truly understanding someone's metabolism. And you might think that the more I get into the metabolic approach to cancer, the metabolic approach to health, metabolic health coaching, that I would get on some kind of a platform about this is the way to do it. Right, this is how you do it. But the truth is that the more I look at people's metabolisms, and people's state of metabolic health, the more I see how amazing it is to stay in curiosity, the more I see how every single person is so different, it's fascinating. And then I think about food. And this is what I'll say a lot of times to my clients, because they'll ask me, Is this food bad? And I say, how about we stop with the food being bad? And how about we ask, is this food serving me? And when I'm working with somebody, and we're looking at, does a food work for them? Well, the labs told the story, right, their genetic report their nutrition genome, tells a story, it tells the story of how their body utilizes nutrition, it tells a story about what nutrients would be good for them, and what nutrients maybe don't support the way that their DNA is actually structured. And then sometimes you see that and a person isn't showing the symptoms of what the DNA might point to. And that's great, because that means those genes haven't been turned on. So how do you know if you're experiencing this? The symptoms, right, of your of your genetic makeup? We know that by our labs, so we can look at labs and say, Are there signs of inflammation going on in the body? Are there signs of leaky gut? Are there various signs, we can look at labs and blood tells a lot about somebody? So when it comes to how serious do you want to be about food, I think that you really have to evaluate your own personal state of being, meaning your goal, meaning your state of health, and meaning your state of emotional health. You know, part of the conversation that I had on this last coaching call was so good, because I have these clients who really know themselves and they know, I'll go down a rabbit hole, right? If I start getting into this detail these detailed weeds about different nutrients and things or start tracking very carefully, my brain will go haywire on that stuff. That's so important to know, your mental and emotional health plays a huge role in how you take care of yourself. So you have to acknowledge how your brain works, right? You've got this organ in your head, and it's going to work a certain way. And when you know that, then you can take that into account and work with your brain to find a gentle way to nourish your body in the healthiest form possible. That's what this is really all about. I mean, there are some basic fundamentals to eating a diet is going to support you, right? We know this, we've talked about this 100 times you've heard it 100 times, right. Eat whole food, mostly plants. And if unless you're promoting carnivore, you're not gonna say that right? But plants have a lot of nutrients, a lot of vitamins, a lot of benefits to offer us if they work with your body. So I know someone and plants do not work with her body. Grains do not work with her body. They set off all kinds of bad stuff. Histamine reactions, rashes, gut dysbiosis lots of things. Her body is not open to that. And so I don't care how healthy vegetables might be. They're not healthy for her. Right? So this person is rude. We thriving on a primarily carnivore diet with healthy fats. So it's super interesting to just step back from all of the dietary propaganda and everything that goes on out there and say how the first we start with getting to know ourselves. Because really, those answers are within us. You know, when I have people who say to me, oh, yeah, dairy does this to meat, don't eat dairy, then. Right? Just because somebody says, this kind of dairy you have to eat or this kind of fermented food you have to eat or that kind of plant you have to eat, because it's all the best things in the world. If it's not good for you, and it doesn't make you feel good, then it's not a healthy food for you. So I think that something we have to consider when we hear about lectins, and tannins and anti nutrients and oxalates. Recently, I did a show on YouTube for middle ground. And we talked a little bit about food. I talked primarily about my approach to integrative health and how diet is a big part of my approach to Integrative Health. And I got a couple messages of people saying, well, how do you avoid oxalates? And again, I want to say why why would we drill down so deeply into one aspect of a food unless it was creating a problem for you, right, unless you had data in your labs that showed, this is a problem, and oxalates are building up in your system. For some reason your system isn't processing these, maybe it's the way you're cooking the food, maybe it's the way food is being prepared, because for all anti nutrients, they can be adjusted and reduce, as I talked about in the podcast about oxalates. By cooking, by sprouting by soaking and mixing different foods together. So this is how we take the whole plant into consideration and your whole body into consideration. So for me, again, as I dive deeper into working with the metabolic approach, working with people on their nutrition genomes, which this is like a baby science, right? A lot of times there's confusion, because this month, this is a good food or a bad food. And next month, this is an amazing food and everybody's supposed to eat it. Well, when we stop and think about the fact that the genome itself, right is something that's relatively new. That was in the early 2000s, that people started saying, Oh, here's the genome, like we're decoding this, we're figuring out the genome. And just from that, the science has been growing and burgeoning. And it's amazing, but it's kind of a baby science, right? If it's only been around like nutrition genomics especially, and nutrition itself, nutrition science is not that old of a science. I mean, there's always been a focus on food. In people who are shamans and healers and things of that nature, we've always known food influences the body. But when it comes to food and food science, and how we look at the effect of different aspects of food on our body, that hasn't been around for a really, really long time. So as science advances, and as food science advances, and as nutrition genomics advances, we're starting to see that we're learning a lot more about food, and foods, effects and different components of foods effects on people's bodies. So it is changing, and it is evolving. And now just in the last year and a half that I've been involved with the metabolic Training Institute of Health, there have been different aspects of different nutrients that have come out. And we've discussed them within our forum and said, Oh, here's new information on selenium, here's new information on B 12. Here's how it might support some people, here's how it might not support other people. So discoveries are continually being made is a really fascinating area of science, especially to all of the work and all of the knowledge and all of the experimentation going into the microbiome, the gut and its effect on how much you can absorb about a food and how your body and your microbiome changes with exposure to all kinds of different lifestyle habits. So I guess the bottom line that I want to get across here is that if you find yourself being overwhelmed and being fearful, and thinking that, you know, you listen to a good book, The Science sounds really good and lectins are bad, that we have to think about how it's being looked at, and who that's being applied to.
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So before I'd say let's go to the outside news on what's good and what's not. Let's go to the inside news about your own body. First of all, is there low hanging fruit you You can clean up in your diet to serve yourself better, right? Let's start with that. Then second thing is what works with your lifestyle. And I highly recommend I know a lot of people have fears about DNA and doing DNA testing and all that. But the nutrition genomics is just a fascinating eye opening exploration into your body. So I think that this kind of loops into supplements as well, because God knows we hear a lot of marketing about supplements. How do you know if you need a supplement? Well, you don't, unless you look at your labs. And unless you're looking at your labs through specific lens, and he know what you're looking for, if we're looking through labs, through our traditional Western medicine, that we're looking at labs, out of the perspective of do I need a medication to treat something is something so far out of the norm, that it's causing pain, suffering or disease in the body, and will a medicine help that, and that's nothing wrong with that, that's a useful way to look at labs. But when we're talking about food, we're looking at labs through a different perspective. So it can tell all kinds of stories and lead people in different directions. And I know people have lots of fears that come up about that it's too expensive. It's not covered by my insurance. Well, some labs are definitely covered by insurance. And you can tell your doctor, something that you want, that you want to see that might help you. And they don't have to be done every week, right, you can get a snapshot, and then and then start making lifestyle adjustments through that lens of what works for your body. And then you can wait a few months down the road. So we can allow ourselves some space to find a way to work with integrative medicine, including nutrition in our lives in a way that works for us that works for us financially, that works. Whereas in our lifestyle, and that works for us from the point of being emotionally and mentally at peace with food. The last thing we need to do is start creating more fear food and dysfunction around food and eating disorders. For people who are trying to use food to support their body's ability to heal, right, that scary stuff does not support healing. So it's interesting science, it's interesting information. I'm absolutely not saying it's garbage, or it's wrong. But I'm saying let's put everything in perspective, instead of taking small aspects and small pieces of things, and making them out to be really big parts of nutrition, when maybe they're not. Now, if you want to know more about your metabolic panels about your nutrition genome, you can check out my website, the breast cancer recovery, coach.com go to coaching and program. And you can check out all the different programs that I have that take a look at your metabolic health from taking your train 10 in your labs into consideration, looking at the story that tells taking your DNA and your terrain 10 into consideration, looking the story that tells or doing the whole shebang, bringing everything together and really giving you a blueprint, which I think is super empowering because it's the importance of as you go through this coaching process, that you learn how to look at your data, that you learn how to understand how to manage your body that you become empowered, so that these outside influences are not so overwhelming and scary. And you can feel confident in knowing what you need and why you need it. All right. It's good stuff. It's definitely worth checking out. But even if you decide not to go that route, I just want you to take that step back and think hey, I'm trying to support my body to be healthy. I've had a breast cancer diagnosis, maybe you're done with treatment, and now you want to heal from the breast cancer treatments. And just think of things in a more holistic perspective and get very, very clear on what your ultimate goal is. How do you want to feel? How do you want food to serve you in your life? And how can you bring that all together? Without judging yourself or beating yourself up or feeling afraid of every morsel you put in your mouth when want that? Alright friends, take care. I'll talk to you soon.
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