#361 Organ Meat - How This Nutrient Dense Food Can Support Your Health - The Benefits Risks and Options

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Today, we’re diving into a topic that’s been both celebrated and controversial: organ meats and organ meat supplements.

As breast cancer survivors, navigating our nutritional choices is crucial, and understanding the potential benefits and risks of organ meats can help us make informed decisions.

We discuss how these nutrients can be especially beneficial for those recovering from breast cancer, aiding in energy restoration, immune support, and overall vitality.

While the benefits are significant, being aware of the risks is important.

For those who might find the idea of consuming organ meats unappealing, organ meat supplements can be a convenient alternative. We discuss what to look for in a high-quality supplement. These supplements can provide many of the same benefits as whole organ meats, without the preparation and taste challenges.

This episode is packed with valuable information to help you make informed dietary choices. Whether you’re considering adding organ meats to your diet or opting for supplements, understanding both the benefits and risks is key to making the best decision for your health.

Referred to in this episode:

Work with Laura on your Metabolic Health

Grass Fed Organ Meat Supplement

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Read the full transcript:

0:00
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.

0:33
Hey, there, you're listening to Episode 361 have better than before breast cancer. This is our Tuesday terrain Talk where we talk about all things we can do to support and improve our metabolic health. So our bodies can function optimally. Today we're going to talk about something that comes up a lot lately in my world is kind of gross, in my opinion, because I'll be honest with you, I have food issues. I have issues when it comes to textures of food, near certain things I cannot do when something's supposed to be smooth, it cannot have lumps in it. I think that I'm traumatized from when my mom used to make cream of wheat when we were little, and she just never got it quite right. But I have other issues when it comes to food. And when I was diagnosed with stage four cancer, and I jumped into the metabolic approach. And I started using my labs and my nutrition genome as a guide to understand my health and understand what my body needed. I began working with a certified terrain advocate which I am one now. But while I was going through the program to become one, I hired one to work with me and evaluate my labs my jeans and and helped me out right Give me a planet helped me understand this whole approach. And one of the things that she recommended to me was eating organ meat. Okay, almost gag, just saying it, I know is very traditional. It's very old school. Some people have a thing for their liver and onions. I'm not one of them. Okay, here's one of my food issues. When you go to a restaurant, and they name the body part, like for instance, cheeks, please God, don't ever put cheeks on the menu. Like I literally I can't do it. I think this goes back to when I was I was studying for a food science degree at Kansas State University. And I was working on food science and there was whole semester on meat science. And it was that semester of learning Meat Science, and what happened in factory farms and slaughterhouses that caused me to become vegetarian. I just could not do it after that. And so I do eat meat. Now I do eat animal products. Now I learned how important they were for my health and for my body. But I definitely have that kind of denial thing going on. Right? I'm very careful about where I source things is very important to me that they're sourced, sustainably, and clean and that the animals are treated humanely. but honest to god, I think if I lived on a farm and I had to kill to eat, I would probably starve to death. Right? I don't know, maybe not. You never know until you're in that position. But when I hear food dishes referred to with the part of the animal like there's one thing you say the sirloin steak or the filet mignon, like I get that. But when you start talking about the cheek, or the rum or the Oh god, I can't do it. I can't do it. So when my advocate suggested that I begin to incorporate organ meats into my meal to improve my nutrition, my nutrient profiles, I just, I couldn't do it. I just gagged me. So she gave me this advice. And she said, Hey, go to Whole Foods. They have this meat mix, where it's organ meat mixed with other ground beef, it's grass fed, and you can you know, buy it like you would buy any other ground beef, you can make meatballs with it, that kind of thing. Mm hmm. I couldn't do it. The taste of organ meat is just so intense to me to my palate. I just I cannot do it without gagging. Right. But it is a very nutritious food. And so ultimately, I did find a good source and I was able to take a supplement of grass fed organ meats supplement, so that I could get the nutrition or at least you know, I mean, a supplement is never going to substitute for the whole food, I don't think but I was at least able to get that incorporated into my plant. And I hear more and more about it more and more people talk about organ meats and I want to talk today about why that is. What is the purpose of that what is the nutritional value of organ meat? Why would you turn to them? Why would you want Have some in your diet and how would it benefit your healthy terrain? Okay, so first of all, I talk about using labs as a guideline. And for instance, I got off a call today. And the client that I was working with wanted to know like, do I need this supplement? Do I need that supplement, we were looking at her genetic report, and I can't give her that information, or even see what's going on to even put her in the right direction without just referring her to a doctor that can look at this stuff. And she can go to the doctor, but based on won't be able to help her unless she looks at her labs, right. So it's really important to understand where your blood work is at and what your blood work means. So when we're talking about different foods and what to incorporate, and especially before we move on to the idea of supplementation, it's really important to understand your bloodwork. Because just because people say B 12 is important. And folate is important. And iron is important. And vitamin A is important. Does it mean you have a deficiency in it doesn't mean your body needs it, it's really important to figure that out. But when it comes to foods like organ meats, that are super nutritionally dense, and these definitely are very nutritionally dense foods, they can benefit your body in many ways. So I talked about labs, because it's important to understand that if you have certain blood deficiencies, organ meat can be very helpful for you. So for instance, if you have anemia, if you have an iron deficiency, it is never recommended in the cancer population to take an iron supplement from the metabolic approach to cancer. And the reason that is, is because cancer cells have a high demand for iron. Iron is necessary for the rapid growth and spread proliferation and the metabolism of cancer cells. And so if we have excessive iron in our body, it can actually promote tumor growth and metastasis. And in fact, a lot of people who have a high iron level, there's a certain kind of a treatment called ferroptosis, where that high iron is used to deliver kind of chemotherapeutic type of drugs to the cancer cells themselves. And it can be beneficial in that way. So when we look at iron, we always want to think about food, we always want to understand what's going on in somebody's labs. We don't want anyone to have an excessive amount of iron in their body. And I think it's important to realize also that when we're thinking about overall health, for someone who's never had a diagnosis, or maybe doesn't even have a predisposition to cancer, that it may look different than someone who has or has had cancer, because we always have human beings always have cancer cells going on in their bodies, right? We know this, we know that there are always cancer cells and that our immune system usually takes care of them, cleans them out gets rid of them before we have to worry about them. But for someone like me, for instance, who is dealing with a stage four cancer diagnosis, and always wondering, like, is there a cell left out there, right? Is there some random cancer cell or I have one active lymph node right now. So I don't want to do anything to feed those cancer cells. So when we're talking about iron, it's important to think about and understand whether or not you have an iron deficiency. And if you do have an iron deficiency, then I think the food first approach is always always the safest. So some of the symptoms for someone who might have iron deficiency is pale skin, shortness of breath, weakness, fatigue. In Oregon, these especially liver are very high in what's called heme iron. heme iron is the most bioavailable form of iron, and bioavailable means when you eat it, your body can use it. This is another thing that we have to understand as we focus on supporting our body's ability to heal. Just because something goes into our mouth does not mean that our body can use it. So liver also contains significant amounts of vitamin B, 12, and folate, which are really important for red blood cell production, and for preventing anemia. And I see in many people that I work with and I experienced this myself, I have a problem with what's called methylation and methylation without going into it is too deeply is this process by which kind of turns genes on and off, right? So if we've got genetic predispositions to things that aren't great for us, we want to keep those genes quiet. And having an effective ability to methylate in your blood is important in that whole process. So just because you might have high levels of B 12 in your body Adi doesn't mean are in your blood, does it mean that your body is using that v 12. And there are other indicators in people's labs that give a practitioner a clue and an understanding as to whether or not their body's actually using B 12. And is is using it in a functional way. And that applies to the folate as well. So organ meat is very beneficial in that it has large amounts of these vitamins, and we're more likely to use and absorb these nutrients from food in our digestive system more so than we are from supplementation. I'm not saying that sometimes we don't need supplements, but that's up to you and a doctor and your labs. Okay. So another thing that may be helpful organ meats can be helpful with is a vitamin B 12 deficiency, as I just alluded to, and what are some of the symptoms of a B 12 deficiency? Well, fatigue, again, weakness, memory only memory loss, neurological changes. So neurological changes in our population, and those of us who have had cancer, think about neuropathy, right nerve damage in the hands and feet. And we often get this from IV chemotherapy treatment. I had pretty severe neuropathy after my IV chemotherapy treatment. And it was interesting because I started doing research and I actually one of my sisters had a client, who was a physician, I don't remember what kind of medicine he practiced. But he was a physician, and he had stage four colon cancer. And he actually called me one day, and we were talking and he was sharing with me some of his insights on v 12. And how it had helped him. And so I started to understand the benefit that B 12 could have with helping with my neuropathy. And when I went to my oncologist after that, I discussed it with him, because you should always discuss with your doctor before you start supplement protocol, especially if you are in treatment. And I was out of treatment at this time. And I was trying to figure out how to heal and how to get my body feeling better, and how to get out of a lot of pain and a lot of fatigue that I was experiencing so many other things, I'll have friggin mess. But when I went to my colleges, I talked to him about two things, acupuncture and be 12. And he said to me, Oh, who's your acupuncturist? Because I was having great success in my in remedying and reducing the amount of neuropathy I had through acupuncture. And he wanted to know and he said, Oh, yeah, acupuncture can actually be really helpful. What's the name of the acupuncturist you're using? So I could tell other people about it because it was a local acupuncturist. I thought it was helpful. Why in the world didn't you tell me I could go and see an acupuncturist and it would help me because I didn't really suffering. Anyway, that's a story for another podcast. And when I asked him about to be 12, he also agreed that it was really important and really helpful for neurological function and that it could help with my neuropathy. So when we're talking about origami, thinking about a good bioavailable source of BH 12 in food, and not synthetic and not supplemented, that could be helpful for you. Folate, another type of V vitamin, if you have a folate deficiency, what are some of the things you could experience fatigue, look at this pathway, right? Iron deficiency fatigue, B 12, fatigue, folate fatigue, and what is one of the things that we suffer with a lot from cancer, and cancer treatments is fatigue, but there can be lots of reasons for that. So what can happen is we hear these things and we think, Well, maybe that's what I have to take to get over the fatigue. But we don't look at our labs and understand our lab levels, and we can be doing harm to ourselves. But food is a different thing. Our body tends to use food in the best ways and get rid of food through urine and feces, through nutrients and of the nutrients and things in food that we might eat that we don't need. Not always, but most of the time, so it's easier on our body than supplements. And so with folate livers and very rich source of folate and folate is very important for DNA synthesis and repair and red blood cell formation. Right and what's one of the things we focus on when we're working on supporting our body's ability to heal is really strong, healthy DNA mitochondrial function, right? So, as cells are regenerating, we want to be giving them all the nutrients they need to rebuild healthy DNA. Another deficiency that organ meats can be helpful with our vitamin A symptoms of Vitamin A deficiency, night blindness, that's going to be an extreme deficiency, dry eyes and an increased susceptibility to infections. So organ meat liver, especially again, is one of the best sources of pre formed vitamin A, which is known you'll probably heard the name retinol, and that's very important for vision, immune function and skin house. Copper deficiency. Now notice with each one of these nutrients, I'm saying deficiency, so I'm not saying that we want to overdo it. We want to be an AW optimal range. And if you have a deficiency, this could help your body rebuild those stores. So copper deficiency symptoms can be anemia. So that's kind of all tied together, low white blood cell count. And again, neurological symptoms. So liver and kidney meat contains significant amounts of copper, which is necessary for iron metabolism, the formation of red blood cells, and the maintenance of nerve cells and your immune system. So he kind of Hearing a theme listen how all these tie together with the formation of different things going on in our body. If you have a zinc deficiency, some of the symptoms can be again, impaired immune function, hair loss, diarrhea, delayed wound healing. organ meats, like liver and kidney, again, are very good sources of zinc and zinc is essential for our immune function. Again, DNA synthesis, and protein synthesis, Vitamin D deficiency. And I gotta tell you, and a lot of clients I work with, I see deficiencies in most of these areas that we're talking about. But you never know until you test some of the symptoms of vitamin D deficiency, which is there's a, there's a difference between low vitamin D like vitamin D not being in the optimal level, and a vitamin D deficiency. I'm really not seen anyone with a deficiency, meaning not even hitting the normal levels or just slightly below normal levels, but you know, not in a absolute deficiency of vitamin D. But I do see a tremendous amount of clients and I experienced this myself to just have very low, non optimal vitamin D levels. Some of the symptoms of those of that deficiency can be bone pain, muscle weakness, and an increased risk for fractures because of course, Vitamin D plays a really important part in our connective tissue and bone healing and repair and development. So organ meat, again, liver, while while it's not as rich as some other sources of vitamin D can be, it does have small amounts of vitamin D. And that is important for calcium absorption, and bone health. Now, when we take vitamin D, and I've done a podcast on this before, we don't want to take vitamin D without k two, because k two helps us to absorb vitamin D into our bones. So vitamin K two deficiency can show up like increased bleeding, easy bruising, bone health issues, and organ meat, like liver does contain vitamin K too. And that can be important for blood clotting and bone health. And that's another thing to be watchful if we don't have the deficiency or if someone's on blood thinners, we don't want to be eating too much of something that might be important for clotting the blood. So we've gone over some of the key nutrients that can help us if we have a deficiency. But organ meat is also very rich and protein. They provide high amounts of quality protein, which is essential, as we know for muscle growth, muscle repair, and maintenance. And protein is very important for the production of enzymes and hormones in our body. They're a good source of healthy fats. They contain omega three fatty acids, which are beneficial for heart health and reducing inflammation and supporting brain function. And they have some really unique nutrients as well. So certain organ meats contain nutrients that are not as prevalent in other foods. So for example, liver liver, as I said, is one of the best sources of vitamin A. And it also contains Coenzyme Q 10. So co q 10. I'm sure you've heard of that supplement, which is really important for energy production and cardiovascular health, and that's naturally occurring in liver. So I want to touch again on the bioavailability. These nutrients that are found in organ meat are highly bioavailable, very easily absorbed and used by the body. So this makes organ meats a really efficient way to ensure that we get an adequate intake of nutrients. And you know what, it's it's really difficult, I think, in this day and age, and I've found for myself, as I've shared so many times on this podcast, I practice intermittent fasting on a regular basis and other fasting and I'll have clients come to me and say how do I get an all the food when I'm fasting? And that can be a challenge? You know, constructing a really good nutrition program where you're getting lots of nutrients can have several challenges. One is eating enough getting enough food. Another is what is the nutrient quality of food, because we know we have a lot of soil depletion issues, so sourcing the food is important. And it's just hard to tell right? It's not like you're not gonna go get your food and then have some kind of chemistry experience in your kitchen to figure out what nutrients are in your food. So really, again, that comes back to watching your labs and understanding are your labs in the optimal ranges in the important things that indicate your overall health and your overall nutritional function and nutritional panels in your body. What could be a downside of eating organ meat other than it's gross, but I'm gonna go and give you some options. If you see grossed out by the idea, I'm gonna give you some options you can check into that something you should be aware of is that organ meats can contribute to gout. So they have a high purine content, liver, kidney sweetbreads, which are, you know, like the heart and lungs, I really even have a hard time discussing that they're very high in periods, and periods are substances that our body breaks down into what's called uric acid. And then high levels of uric acid can lead to the formation of uric crystals in our joints. And that's the pain that people experience when they have gout. So when periods are metabolized, uric acid is produced as a waste product. And too much consumption of Hyperion foods can result in excess uric acid, and then your body isn't able to eliminate them efficiently. So it's not like you want to eat these foods every day all the time. And if you know you have a predisposition to gout, then definitely you probably want to avoid these foods altogether. But if you're overall healthy, and you don't have that issue, some of the things that you can do to manage and to prevent gout and to manage the amount of periods that might be in these foods, is to really focus on your hydration. So make sure you drink plenty of water to help your body always flush uric acid. And the recommendation for that intake is drinking half of your body weight in ounces of water on a daily basis. And the other thing that helps and supports your body's ability to eliminate these substances are keeping alcohol consumption at a very low alcohol, particularly spirits and beer can increase uric acid levels and lead to gout. Maintain a healthy weight, obesity is a big risk factor for gout. So maintaining a healthy weight can help reduce the risk of gout. And some people even have just a genetic predisposition that affects their uric acid metabolism and excretion. So they're not able to effectively get these things out of their body or get them out as rapidly as someone without these genetic predispositions might have. Then if you have problems with your kidneys like renal impairment, if you have metabolic syndrome, and obesity, again, we want to be careful about how much organ meat you take in because those circumstances can contribute to gout, which is super painful from what I hear and something I would never want to see anybody experience. So what if you think it might be beneficial for you to start introducing some organ meat into your diet? Well, one thing you can do is to if it's you could just eat organ meat, right? My husband loves sweet breads. So whenever I buy my chickens and I'm making my bone broth, I always get him with the sweetbreads, which is the organs. And I take those organs out and I cook them up for him, he loves to eat them. So if you're good with that, and you're good with the texture and you're good without you don't have food, part issues, go for it. If you do think it's kind of gross, you can always take some organ meat and like I was alluding to earlier, you can mix it in with other means you can mix it in with ground beef, make it into meatballs, or just kind of put it into some dishes to kind of cover it up because it is really strong. It's got a really strong dense flavor. But it's if it's an absolute no go for you if you just cannot do it, but you've talked to your doctor about it, you're healthy, you got the green light, you're able to go ahead, maybe you have some nutrient deficiencies that it might be helpful with. There are supplements that if you get the green light, and you're okay to take those supplements might be helpful for you. That's what I do. And I'll link to the supplement that I use in the show notes for this episode. But I just want to talk for a minute about some of the things that we want to consider if you decide to turn to a supplement of an organ meat supplement for your health. And one of those is make sure it is grass fed and pasture raised. We want these supplements to be as clean as possible. And these sources if they're grass fed and pasture raised, they have a tendency to have a higher nutritional quality and they're less likely to contain hormones, antibiotics or other contaminants and we do not want that right one of our terrain 10 areas is toxic burden and we want to keep it as low as possible. And it's also helpful to get a variety of organs in your supplement. So the one that I use has liver, heart and kidney, some other organs, our spleen and pancreas and they can have a whole broad spectrum of nutrients between those different organs. So having a variety of organs in the supplement is something that is beneficial you can look for that. Freeze drying and minimal processing are important things so freeze drying is Really the preferred method because it preserves the nutrients in the organ, without the need for additives and preservatives. And that helps to ensure that those nutrients remained bioavailable, because obviously, if we're going from having an organ of an animal, and we're taking it and freeze drying it and powdering it, put it in a capsule, something's going to change in that process, right. So we want to make sure that there's minimal processing. So we have as much of the natural nutrient profile as possible in the organs want to make sure there's no fillers or additives. We don't want unnecessary fillers. We don't want artificial additives, we just want straightforward simple organ meats in a capsule. some third party testing and certification can be important. A lot of supplements, and I've talked about this on the show before, there are a lot of third party labs that test the supplements for purity and potency and safety. But again, some of those were justifications can be so expensive that they cause the manufacturer to have an exorbitant retail price on that product. So just because they don't have that third party certification doesn't necessarily mean that it's not a quality product, and make sure that you're paying attention to the nutrient label. Right, make sure that it's very detailed that it does list all the nutrients that can be found in those capsules, and that you adhere to the appropriate dosage, because more of a good thing is not necessarily always a good thing. And again, I'm going to repeat it over and over again, as a caveat. Know what you need, know what your body needs, and consult with a licensed health care provider to determine the right dosage for your specific health needs. Why we want to respect your unique individual body first, before we start overloading it with nutrients. And just because something is naturally occurring does not mean it isn't powerful, they can be super powerful, and they can support your house, or they can harm you if your house is not in the state that can actually use these nutrients. Okay, my friend. Well, if you have heard about using automate, if you have heard about the value of it, if it's grossed you out, or if you just been curious about it. I hope that this helps give you a little bit of insight. If you have more questions about it, you can DM me, you can find me on Facebook and Instagram as the breast cancer recovery coach, you can join my free Facebook group, the breast cancer recovery group, which you can find on Facebook, ask questions in there. And if you really want to understand your unique genetic profile, your body your loves what's happening with you from the metabolic approach to health, then come and find me on the breast cancer recovery coach.com my website, check out my metabolic health coaching packages and see if you can get a better understanding of yourself and clear up some of the confusion. A lot of the confusion that is out there in the world that can oftentimes create a tremendous amount of stress and really hold up our efforts of supporting our bodies in the way that our bodies need to have support. Alright, so check out the links in the show notes for this episode the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash 361 Or just click on the links below where you're watching this video or listening to this podcast and I'll talk to you again soon take care

 

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