From Ethics to Health: Dr Munish Chawla

hi I'm Manish chawla from lifestyle docs I'm a physician I'm board certified in Diagnostic Radiology and lifestyle medicine in 2012 actually February 1st 2012 I became vegan along with my wife my wife had been vegetarian all her life that when we got married shiva's vegetarian and I was an omnivore but slowly slowly you know first I took out red meat because I knew it wasn't very good for me and then I had taken out chicken and most other animal products but I loved Seafood I loved shrimp I loved fish especially sushi so we would go to Japanese restaurants and you know she would order the vegetarian sushi and I would get you know one of the better rolls I thought at the time and you know I knew that this was something I needed to give up but I just enjoyed the taste too much so in August of 2012 I went to a 10-day Meditation Retreat something clicked during that Retreat and one of the things that uh that I learned there that were all sort of seeking temporary Sensations so the sensation we have on that tongue of that Sushi is so temporary you know it's a few milliseconds maybe a second or so and for that why do I want to torture sentient living beings so during that meditation this clicked so when I came home we went out to a restaurant I didn't tell my wife this so I said okay this is the high for meditation I don't know but I get back into my regular day job and other stresses you know maybe I'll feel differently so we'd been out a couple of times to different restaurants and then finally she said at the third time that I'm noticing that you're eating what I'm eating that you're not really getting the sushi or you're not getting you know the animal products so then I told her I said I don't think I'm gonna do that ever again and so I told her that I don't want to torture other living beings just to satisfy my taste buds you know for a second or two so this was in August of 2011. and at that time we were we both became vegetarian you know soon after was it she already vegetarian she was already vegetarian so a friend of ours had become vegan she was originally vegetarian also and she had told us about all the animal cruelty in the dairy industry at that time we were not ready we had young kids we said you know the kids need their calcium so we you know she stayed vegetarian and but now I said okay we need to really look into what our friend was talking about cruelty in the dairy industry and it takes just one video on YouTube to just okay so so for doing this for compassion reasons then we've got to take the dairy out to was that video Dairy is scary I have no idea I can't remember the video that we saw just you know made a connection for us that if we're really trying to be compassionate trying to live our values that dairy's got to come out to can I say you were a little reluctant or no okay and so you know she had been a lifelong vegetarian and she was on board she wanted to go vegan but she wanted to do it a little bit slower so we said okay we're New Year's coming up this is you know maybe October November at this point in January 2012 we're going to slowly transition you know all the dairy products the desserts the yogurts other things we're doing we're going to start phasing them out when she was going to turn 40 in may we would be completely vegan so we started this process in January and you know by the third or fourth week we were all done we said you know we don't need those products anymore we were just having such a wonderful time then we we probably went vegan a few days earlier but then we said okay made a commitment February 1st 2012 it's going to be our vegan anniversary so from that point forward we have not taken any animal products knowingly so you know we've you know really been good about that and the more we do it the better we feel about it then we learned about you know we were Physicians and this is kind of funny we didn't really know the health benefits of plant-based nutrition before this so we became vegan for ethical reasons we said this is you know if we are truly being compassionate to the world that this is what we need to do and then we started looking at the health benefits and a little later the environmental benefits so we came even more and more committed to this lifestyle you only had the one friend that was vegan we only had the one friend it was the couple that went vegan together so did you have any other social help with that it could be kind of lonely it can be it can be lonely and you know but my wife and I For Better or For Worse were not very social people we just had a few friends and even before pandemic we didn't socialize very much and the socialization we did was mostly around my parents and our kids left you know if we are just kind of left to ourselves on a Friday night we'll take out our favorite book and sit in the study she'll read her book and I'll read my book and we feel like that's a wonderful evening so we're not very social people so it wasn't a the social issue was never never a problem for us prior to going vegan you were already kind of moving in that direction without even thinking about it yeah because yeah it sounds like you gave up things systematically before you even made the connection maybe is that true yeah yeah even before that meditation before that meditation I was aware enough as a physician that red mead processed Meats these things are not very good for us but I taught Fish and Chicken low-fat Dairy were very healthy for us so I slowly started removing those things and you know as per the research and you know this is a big topic so people will say this is healthy this is not healthy but in my mind at that time that Seafood was healthy yeah so I follow a lot of different YouTubers one of which goes by the name of nutrivore he's very into the science and very into semantics when we're talking about what's healthy well fish actually is healthy there's healthier things and there's more compassionate things and more sustainable things I mean would you agree with all of that yeah and you know I would agree with it 50 years ago so 50 years ago I would say fish was healthy because we hadn't polluted our oceans with pcbs with Mercury all this Industrial Waste so now there is mercury in the fish and the pedia American Pediatric Society when women are pregnant they tell them don't eat fish more than two times a week because the Mercury content is so high so these days I don't think fish is very healthy at all at one time I think that would have been true if you're getting you know fresh caught and you know maybe it added something to it but like you mentioned even at its healthiest whole plant foods are still healthier as far as fish being potentially healthy to an extent even for pregnant women because the infant depletes the mother of a lot of fatty acids you think it would be safe for them not to eat fish I think these days it would be safe for them to not eat fish at all because we know Mercury is a neurotoxin and you know Lord knows what other chemicals are in that fish I mean that's the one they are focusing on that's the one they measure so they know there's two high levels of mercury and Mercury is sort of an indicator for Industrial Waste so we know there's other chemicals in there but I agree with you there are healthy fatty acids in the fish but where do the fish get those healthy fatty acids they get them from the algae in the sea so these days there are so many vegan supplements that can give you the healthy fatty acids the Omega-3s the EPA the DHA the DPA you can get it in a clean pill and you know there's wonderful manufacturers with very open manufacturing practices so you know you're getting a good product and you can get the healthy fatty acids without the chemicals without the Mercury and without harming another you know sentient being the RDA though for an adult is only 1.6 grams of ethylenolenic acid it's not even the EPA and DHA for an adult so is it is necessary to supplement can't they just get it from seeds nuts greens that's a very good question so this is alpha linolenic acid it will be converted to the longer chain fatty acids like EPA and DHA but there's a lot of variability on how efficient this conversion is so our body needs ala our body needs EPA DPA DHA all these fatty acids how much we need and is it necessary to supplement and how much to supplement frankly right now at least of my reading of the literature that's not completely decided okay but in general uh I think a lot of folks kind of use it as an insurance policy right there are folks that have been vegan for a while and they get you know at least there's some suggestion that maybe they're getting premature dementia we don't know that this is the direct cause of it but there seems to be some evidence that if you supplement with the longer chain fatty acids like EPA and DHA that's going to reduce that so I look at it as the insurance policy but it's a supplement and this is you know my philosophy on supplements in general it can supplement a healthy diet so it's not a replacement for flax seeds not a replacement for chia seeds for healthy nuts almonds walnuts so we do all of that and we know actually pregnant women are really good converters off the Ala into the longer chain fatty acids but some populations are not very good converters so just as an insurance policy we take an EPA and DHA supplement and second thing I'll add is these days you can actually measure you know how much EP and DHA there's really good lab tests 10 years ago they really weren't reliable lab tests but now they've gotten better and better so you know in one way we're kind of treating a number on the lab thing and that's not my favorite thing to do but just as an insurance policy you know just to make sure we're getting the healthy fatty acids I do take an EPA DHA supplement but I also you know use it get ala from nuts seeds legumes you know flax seeds chia seeds that sort of thing so I want to kind of get the whole gamut you know check your levels if you're doing flax seeds chia seeds nuts and seeds Greens and Beans and your level's okay you don't need the supplement yeah but if you're a little low then he recommends that go ahead and do it and that's that's what we do supplementing because you're low all right so like say the index was zero and you want it over five at least or whatever do we really know if that particular number matters and then right you alluded to that earlier yeah we don't have enough research to know you know we don't have long-term research to show okay this group of vegans did this for 20 years and this group of vegans just did Whole Food plant-based diet is there a difference and there's so much variability even when a lot of folks will say that they're doing a vegan diet and you know that's the Spectrum you know some people are doing Oreo cookies and a lot of vegan desserts and you know processed vegan cheese where others are doing you know 95 percent or close to 100 percent Whole Food plant based diet so we don't have that long-term comparison you know we have that robust data with vitamin B12 you just need to take it so you know these essential fatty acids our body needs them so we don't have the data to say definitely this is something valuable and in fact I do know the studies about heart disease and about the supplementation from these fatty acids and it does not appear to help heart disease you know people opposing this idea this philosophy they think that we are trying to do something unnatural but if we did it in the most natural way the most whole plant food way that was completely raw even I'm not suggesting people do that but we might absorb more of those fatty acids we might get more B12 naturally do you feel the same way about that okay so B12 as you know but maybe you know some of our listeners don't know it comes from bacteria it doesn't come from plants or animals it's in the natural world so when we were living even let's say 300 500 years ago when we were living off the land when we were living naturally when we had access to well water when we were getting our produce from the garden that we grew in that wasn't doused with pesticides that we hadn't you know completely nearly wiped out the microbial life of the soil there was plenty of B12 in the vegetables plenty of B12 for everyone so B12 is not something that is sort of a deficiency that vegans need to correct B12 is something we're lacking because of industrial agriculture because of our Modern Life so something we have to supplement because we don't grow organic regenerative vegetables anymore we're all eating commercial industrialized food even the whole food plant-based people you know most are not growing their food they're getting it from the grocery store so that is why we need a B12 supplement but if you lived a holistic life you don't even necessarily need to be raw vegan if you lived a natural life pastoral life you know 500 a thousand years ago when the ground wasn't you know just completely Laden with pesticides there's plenty of B12 in the natural world that you would get from the food that you eat that you would have plenty of it but in current today's society you just have to make sure that you're getting enough B12 and some people you know they're raw vegans or whatever they want to believe uh they can get you have to be really really careful okay because these days you can test levels and if your level is low I mean this is you know being deficient in B12 you know we're talking uh anemia we're talking heart disease we're talking dementia at a young age I mean it's major neurological and hard things that happen and the last thing I want vegans to be on the evening news that this person didn't get enough B12 and they're in the hospital because of you know a heart condition or some other strange condition so you know check your levels if you can if you're industrious enough and you really work hard at it and you can get it through natural means even in today's toxic industrialized pesticide Society more power to you but check your levels and if you're low it's okay to take that supplement yeah and of course it's worse we may as well say mentioning that everybody's at risk not just vegans yes yes and I'm really glad you kind of followed up on that point and people were saying that you know if you're eating animal products you don't need to supplement with B12 now the American College of Physicians for age 50 and over so part of the B12 it has goes through a reaction in the stomach uncoupled with acids different things that it's made available bioavailable and as we age some of that bioavailability is lost so even omnivores they should supplement with B12 after age 50. and one more point these days livestock is supplemented with B12 so you're not getting it from you know the healthy grass that the animal was eating that had lots of B12 because we've destroyed the healthy grass we've destroyed the healthy prairies so whether you want to eat an animal that's supplemented with B12 or you can skip all the horrible things that animal cruelty you know cruelty towards your own body eating these animals the all the cholesterol the saturated fat all the chemicals you're going to be ingesting all the unhealthy things that are in these animal products and if you're choosing to get your B12 that way you're still not getting it naturally because the animal has been supplemented with vitamin B12 so you know our advice is skip the middleman entirely if you can do it with a healthy natural lifestyle great but check your levels but if it's low take the vitamin B12 supplement do you ever get into any of your own gardening or help with Community Gardens or is there any incentives around here that are doing that because of veganic farming is a fantastic no-till it helps keep the microbiome of the soil is there anything about that that you get into or fascinated with or would like to share my mom used to Garden for the longest time and I wasn't too interested but this is one of the blessings of the pandemic that you know we had a little bit more time so this I have to give credit to my wife she said you know we've been kind of thinking about doing some gardening why don't we start so we have started a little garden this is like second or third year and you know we have some herbs we have some greens we have some okra so real simple vegetables it's a small garden and I'm even more excited that you know our non-profit peaceful Planet Foundation we have made wonderful Connections in the third Board of Houston and there are lots of Community Gardens there and one of them is Alabama Gardens and we have kind of hooked them but hooked up with them and we haven't done anything formal just yet but one of the uh summer camps that the kids who were attending this community center they wanted to expose them to Community Gardens they wanted to expose them to plants to Nature so other non-profit funded for their summer camp and they were able to go to Alabama Gardens so and the other thing we're doing we have we've adopted the garden at one of the elementary schools Blackshear Elementary School in Third Ward and as part of our monthly activity as walk with a dock before we used to walk in a local park but now we do walk with a dock at this Garden at blackshire elementary so that's been really rewarding getting our hands into the soil and doing it as a community so other peaceful Planet volunteers show up so it's a wonderful event we do once a month so that's the extent but looking into veganic gardening we're not there yet everybody I know that's vegan including myself and everybody I've interviewed we're all vegan forward in a way and that we're like we're all trying to take it to the next level learning constantly and I have yet to meet like the perfect vegan but we all embrace the the term and it seems like you have no problem using the word vegan correct yeah do you tiptoe around that word ever you know when we are in a social situation we let people know that we're vegan okay but I'm also a physician and I'm going to tell you a little bit about lifestyle medicine and we may we can go there next so when I'm talking to my patients I tend not to use the word vegan I use plant-based because one of the things and you know maybe this is a personal issue of me I don't want them to think that I'm pushing some sort of agenda on them I want to kind of stay strictly scientific that this is what the evidence shows that this is the best diet for us this is the best lifestyle for us so when I'm talking with them I try to get them to remove as many animal products as they'll do I'll try to get them to remove as many processed foods as they'll do so I want them to you know be compassionate to the animals be compassionate to the environment and be compassionate to themselves because you know eating Whole Foods eating you know vegan foods but prepared healthfully this is the most compassionate thing you can do for your body and mind so when I'm sitting in front of my patient I'll use the word plant-based I won't use the word vegan because I don't want them to nothing to detract them from moving this way of improving their health and by improving their health they're improving the Animal Welfare they're improving the health of the environment so you know if I can get 100 patients to go 90 vegan let's say I think you know that's a better way to do it than get five patients to go a hundred percent so that's that's my personal philosophy that you know I just want people to be compassionate to themselves to the animal to the Earth and however that message resonates with them I want to make it available in that in that way yeah and eventually they they may decide oh I can I can just do this I can be vegan yeah yeah but you don't want it you don't want to overwhelm them because that would be the the end that's like not the end but necessarily the beginning of a like a whole nother level for them right and you don't want to overwhelm them either right exactly but what's cool is you're not patronizing them either yeah um a lot of a lot of Physicians think their clients aren't going to be able to make Lifestyle Changes yeah and and but you're you're willing to take the time to help them and this might be a good opportunity to segue into lifestyle medicine so how did you eventually come to Lifestyle medicine yeah so you know for 20 years I practiced Diagnostic Radiology I was a busy radiologist at a hospital you know 24-hour ER and my wife is an internist and she was doing her own thing I was doing my own thing and then you know when we became vegan just the universe opened up for us and that's when the health benefits started popping up and my wife was following one of her Facebook friends and she posted that she became board certified in lifestyle medicine so we looked into that what is this lifestyle medicine or actually I should say my wife looked into it so this is the exciting part I'm going to kind of rewind kind of where we started we learned that there's a medical specialty which recommends that 95 plus of your calorie intake should be whole plant Foods it recommends daily exercise it recommends healthy tools to manage stress and just be you know for mental health emotional health it recommends you know being part of a loving Community having support connections relationality as one of the pillars of Lifestyle medicine it recommends staying away from cigarettes really and Other Drugs and really limiting alcohol and also it recommends getting a good night's sleep so these are something you know all these things make common sense you know if I sleep I can see the next day I can function better if I'm not stressed all the time you know my health is better my heart rate's High my blood pressure seems to be lower if I eat better or not eat you know so much fried fruit or processed stuff and processed Meats I seem to you know feel better in my body so I think most of us know that that when we practice these six pillars of Lifestyle medicine this good for us what we really found encouraging and really empowering that there's so much peer-reviewed medical research which shows that you get these six things right you can not just be you know healthy and you know we can kind of go into that what is healthy mean you can really Thrive you know now there are studies showing that you eat a healthy diet and practice good lifestyle tools you can actually reverse aging at the cellular level so I mean this is just fascinating research there's so much more exciting news that's going to come more and more as we learn more about this so my wife said okay this is something that she wants to get board certified in also she was kind of learning about this field and then she signed up for taking the lifestyle medicine boards and then she said that I'm gonna you know try to do some of this and see how it works for me and if it's improving her health and then I'm not going to tell you her story but long story short she was studying for the lifestyle medicine board examination and she was telling me in the evening walks we take fairly frequently that such and such you know they cut out meat or they cut out Dairy and I was able to lower their diabetes medicine and such and such patient doesn't need their asthma medication anymore so we had the research you know which was really empowering which was really clear that this makes a difference but when you have an actual patient that you know that makes these changes and reefs the health benefits that's a whole other level of con you know convincing you okay this stuff works so she was all in and I'm kind of looking that you know she's studying for the boards and I don't have much to do in the evenings her kids are a little bit grown at this point so I said I'm going to take the boards too why not I have the time so there was still time that I could sign up for the board examination with American college of Lifestyle medicine so then we both started studying together and you know we both became board certified in lifestyle medicine and then I had no plans at that time to quit my Radiology practice but you know once you know something you want to kind of spread the message so in the hospital that I worked with I started a plant-based potluck once a month and the other thing I'm really passionate about as I mentioned you know after a 10-day silent Meditation Retreat I'm really passionate about mindfulness meditation because it's helped me so much in all my life and everything I mean it's just just a wonderful gift that I've been given that I would do meditation with these guys once a week you know I would set up time during lunch time and we would do plant-based potlucks and you know whoever in the physician's lunchroom you know I would just tell them about the research I said you know just look at it you don't have to take my word for it just look at this article so whoever physician was interested in the lunchroom I would just share the research and that I thought was going to be the extent of it but the more we started doing it our kids were a little bit older bandana was bringing lifestyle medicine into Heart Clinic more and more she was talking about diet you know when someone came in with diabetes you know she was talking about diet and that's not how we're trained so she was kind of converting her Clinic not just to a regular adult primary care but slowly transitioning to a lifestyle medicine clinic yeah for clarification that's not how you're trained until you get a certified in lifestyle medicine right right yeah you know typical Internal Medicine boards or really any other medical specialty nutrition is a sideline we don't talk about nutrition we when people talk about nutrition they talk about vitamin C deficiency or they talk about some deficiency we're not taught in medical science in medical school the importance of a healthy diet which is you know a little bit of a problem but there is definitely good news more and more medical schools are interested in healthy diets interested in culinary medicine interested in other lifestyle factors so things are definitely changing so then you ended up doing this lifestyle right right so then I started kind of doing this a little bit more and you know the universe arranges everything for us when I went to The Retreat everything lined up I was able to go when I wanted to do a little bit more in lifestyle medicine everything lined up the group that I was with a private group we sold our practice to a larger group and it was a good time to kind of make changes if anybody wanted to work less we had that opportunity so I became a part-time radiologist and at that time I started working slowly in my wife's Clinic just you know teaching folks about the six pillars of Lifestyle medicine and if they are tired of taking medication for diabetes or hypertension or even at that time I was basically sticking with sort of bread and butter stuff then I would guide them you know this is the way you can move this is how you need to exercise this is and get rid of these meats other animal products eat more whole plant foods and you can see you know your A1C is going to start going down so I had kind of started that process but I was working you know very part-time but I was enjoying it so much that I talked to Bund and I said you know I've been doing Radiology for 20 years I think I want to switch over all the way and this wasn't a small decision because this is something I really loved I really enjoyed I wanted to do it but it doesn't it's not going to be the same financially we're not there yet in lifestyle medicine as we are but you know some of the other Medical Specialties but you know we looked at our bank account we said our kids are grown we have enough savings for them our house is paid for I'm gonna just slowly transition from Radiology completely and go full time into lifestyle medicine so that transitioned uh as of 2021 December 2021 I have stopped Radiology a hundred percent and I'm just doing lifestyle medicine so in our Clinic you know I'm probably working about 20 hours so still there's not that much demand for lifestyle medicine but again it's perfect because it gives me more time to devote to our non-profit peaceful Planet foundation so all these programs in the third board that I mentioned previously we have a gardening program the other thing over uh non-profit does is it encourages people to really take the tenets of Lifestyle medicine but we actually started this work even before lifestyle medicine we call it the mindfulness program that we make available available to school-aged children we call it the 5m program so the five M's are mindful breathing mindful movement so mindful breathing is pranayama mindful movement is basically yoga mindful Stillness is mindfulness meditation and then mindful eating we'll take plant-based snacks usually fruit or something you can like put ants on a log put sunflower butter in a celery and you know stick some raisins on there so really simple and healthy snacks to the school-aged kids and then the last m is mindful reflection so we call it the 5m program and now we're so happy after working on this for you know literally over a year we're in two schools in the Third Ward that the 5m mindfulness program started this fall of 2022. they started with the fall semester and we have yoga teachers who are trained in the 5m program and they work with school-aged kids you know right now we're doing first grade through fifth grade and it's different grades at blackshire different grades at Thompson Elementary and the yoga teacher of our non-profit supports them so they can go out there and do an hour-long program where they have do pranayama breathing exercises with the kids that they do some yoga then they do some Stillness just you know being present with the present moment just really simple mindfulness meditation then they all eat a healthy plant-based snack and then the yoga teacher encourages them to reflect you know what did you find useful what was helpful did you like anything dislike anything so that happens in an hour and we're just really fortunate that we're now in two schools and there's more schools now seeking us out that they want to bring the 5m or the mindfulness program into their schools so being able to work part-time in my wife's Clinic I'm able to do lifestyle medicine which I really enjoy and the other part that really gives me passion and joy is working on our non-profit peaceful Planet bringing this mindfulness program into schools which would you know otherwise probably not have access to these tools The Retreat that yesterday is this an annual thing are there other other activities too because you mentioned walk with Doc yeah that reminds me of one of the pillars you know yeah right so exercise yeah well not that also community community support yeah and all that yeah absolutely so when I was kind of transitioning over from Radiology to uh lifestyle medicine I was doing more and more we actually got this Clinic sort of built for lifestyle medicine so as part of the healthy ecosystem we try to create for our patients we do mindfulness meditation with them twice a month In This Very Room that you know we're doing this interview in we usually do meditation here and then usually we'll do yoga right afterwards or some other sort of healthy uh whether it's strength training or other movements you know sometimes different styles of yoga and in addition to that we do plant-based potluck so we do that in our Clinic once a month again bringing Community because as you mentioned you know most of the world is not this is not on their radar or certainly not their focus so when we get patients to say okay they see the benefit they're moving this way then they go to their friends or to some neighborhood event and they see the community and they miss the barbecue so this we want to give them that they have Community here so we do these plant-based potlucks so they can see okay I'm not the only one doing this there are other folks doing this and then they make connections so Community you're right is very important when we're trying to move into this healthy diet this compassionate diet and part of that Community is walk with a doc once a month my wife and I we go to a local park and other patients and people from the community will join us and typically we'll do like a five minute talk you know if it's October we'll do heart health or something sometimes we'll call other Physicians but since the pandemic has just been my wife and I mostly so another way to bring people together to make them feel part of a healthy community and we do cooking classes so a lot of patients you know they say okay I see the value I want to do it but I don't know how to cook so we're fortunate to have at least I think we now know three food for life life instructors they've been trained by pcrm on how to make delicious Whole Food plant-based dishes and we teach that in our clinic and they do the cooking classes you know my patients come my wife's patients come and folks even from the community come just getting them to see that you can have this wonderful Feast you can make it easily you can prepare it without spending you know hours and hours into the kitchen and it's another way to build a community when they come to the cooking classes so this is all you know part of Lifestyle medicine and part of what we as humans crave right our body naturally wants healthy food our body wants healthy connections with those around us our body you know thrives on getting a good night's sleep so all these things you know we want to create this ecosystem for our patients and outside of that we want to make as many tools of this possible to schools who would ordinarily not have access to these so we also do community events in the spring of 2022 we did an event at a church in the Third Ward this is a predominantly African-American area off the uh of the city and they've welcomed us with open arms and we did sort of a mini event like the one yesterday you know yesterday we had I think uh seven speakers you know talking on nutrition on emotional health you know pranayama demonstrations mindfulness meditation sessions we had gardening tips we had you know full a big lineup you know from nine to three we had like a total of 24 people cooking demos two cooking demos we did yesterday plant-based so it was a very rich and you know a packed day that people got a lot out of it we did a very small version of this at this church in the Third Ward where we did you know a small nutrition session we had a person come in one of our yoga teachers did a 20-minute yoga session and then we catered food from a local restaurant that can do plant-based and this local restaurant will actually if you call them ahead of time and say you want to do it low salt and you want to do it without any oil they'll cook wonderful Ethiopian food with those specifications so they made this lovely spread and we had about 40 50 people come to that event and they just really enjoyed the meditation the yoga the short cooking demo and this wonderful food so we are trying to do more events in the community but mostly our focus is the mindfulness program in the schools and were recently have gotten into gardening like we talked about earlier so that's kind of how my week is spent you know partly doing uh work with peaceful planet and partly doing work with lifestyle docs do you have any quotes you would like to share one of the quotes that this is something this is not original in any means but we have a poster hanging in my consult room it says eat right be fit stress less and connect more so eating right means a Whole Foods healthy vegan diet you know be fit choose whatever exercise whatever physical movement feels good to you and just do it on a regular basis you know stress less just find healthy tools you know being in the 21st century you know we are just surrounded by stress you know not just the pandemic just driving in Houston alone is stressful there's so many demands to your schedule and so just finding healthy tools to be able to manage that stress to be able to really have good emotional health mental health and I would say even spiritual health so mindfulness meditation yoga getting a good night's sleep are all tools you can use to stress less and finally connect more you know having a healthy Community you know the event yesterday the entire event was volunteer run no one you know not one of the presenters not one of the persons who checked in Folks at the registration desk who doing the cooking demos all the people they did it without any cost to us it was a completely volunteer event so just the wonderful Community it you know when you are part of a wonderful Community when you can connect with other like-minded folks you know you can put on these wonderful events and we're just really happy that everything turned out well yesterday so we really appreciate everyone's help yesterday in making this a very successful and meaningful event for us and hopefully for the community is this something that you feel like is Affordable for everyone because some people act like they don't have time to prepare foods and it's expensive to eat this way whether it is or not you know whether it's organic or not any comments you could share in that regard real quick yeah and this is you know one of the questions we get asked frequently people look at organic produce at Whole Foods and they see the prices and they said okay I can you know most people are not going to be able to afford it and you know being vegan being eating healthy fruits and vegetables are of course important and we want people to eat lots of them but if you can't afford organic ones you know get non-organic you can use some baking soda you can soothe apple cider vinegar to really reduce the pesticides and you know other residues that may be potentially harmful so this is what I tell my patients greens are so healthy for you even with all the pesticides you know our body is very resilient we have this liver that detoxifies things so something like Greens and Beans are so healthy for us even if they're not organic and not available in the best most healthful way they are still so much more nutritious than animal products that you're still better off eating them you can take some steps to make them even cleaner you know really wash them well use baking soda those sort of things and beans I mean this is like the cheapest thing you can buy this is like the best protein Source you could ever hope to have and beans compared to meat there's no comparison they're like three to five times cheaper okay and whole grains you know rice barley Millet these things are very cheap okay so this is where you're going to get majority of your calories from Beans and other Staples and eating fruits and vegetables eating nuts and seeds you know those are important but it's not going to break your bank and the other thing you can do is by frozen fruit that's so much cheaper than fresh fruit you can buy Frozen greens so if you're really wanting to do this you can do this you can eat healthily whole food plant-based healthy vegan diet on half the cost of the standard American diet okay you can go to Farmers Market you can buy Frozen fruits and Frozen things all those make it very affordable in fact make it cheaper to eat this way than the standard American diet give us a quick rundown what uh what are some of the things you like to eat in a day so my wife and I were pretty regimented so in the morning we'll have rolled oats and in that we'll put strawberries banana apples pears peaches uh whatever fruit is in the refrigerator and we always have lots of fruit and I'll just make a big fruit bowl and my wife literally sprinkles a little bit of rolled oats on it I do a little bit more and then we might put some tahini on top some days put some raisins or Goji berries other days that's part of our breakfast the other thing we do on most mornings is do what we call a green smoothie so this is a smoothie originally by Michael Greger but we've tweaked it to our own liking so it's you know lots of greens small amount of fruit flax seeds chia seeds walnuts whatever you know usually walnuts and almonds are go-to nuts so we make a really rich tall glass of smoothie and rolled oats with you know lots of fruit so that's typically breakfast lunch is usually some sort of whole grain quinoa Millet brown rice red rice black rice and then we make lentils yellow lentils black lentils French lentils Indian lentils chickpeas you know beans of various colors so that's usually dinner sorry that's usually lunch and at dinner time you know we've eaten so much for breakfast and lunch that our dinner is typically lighter so sometimes you know we'll eat a little bit of what we had for lunch some leftovers sometimes I like avocado toast and I'll make that at dinner time other times we'll have mostly fruit just depending on if it was a late lunch so that's typically or just leftovers from lunch you know whole grains and beans something of that sort and edamame is frequently those sort of things you didn't mention the Beyond Burger yeah we don't eat I've eaten it like once or twice it was fine and you know Beyond Burger is a wonderful step down food if that's what you need to move this way but as you know it's not not the healthiest thing for us would you try lab grown meat I have no desire to have meat in any form now I mean I just find that eating Whole Foods is delicious this is a slow Journey you know growing up I didn't eat a lot of broccoli I didn't eat a lot of beans I would get a lot of gas but slowly slowly I stuck with it and I increased slowly the amount of beans that I eat I started eating some of the vegetables raw and now I'm eating more varied vegetables and nuts and raw and cooked all combinations than ever in my life you know one of the physicians Dr bolshevitz encourages people to eat 30 different plant Foods in a week we eat 30 different plants Foods on most days so there's just so much abundance in the vegetable world that it just you know carrots taste sweet to me I mean Apple you know you get it right perfectly you know crisp apple in the peak of the season is just so tasty that I have no desire for lab-grown meat or even cake or cookies I would rather have you know cherries or peaches or something that's you know available in season I mean that's just more exciting and you know frankly more delicious is there anything we didn't talk about that you want to get out there uh I just want to tell people that slowly slowly do things that work for your body this is something that's compassionate for your body this is something that's compassion for your mind compassion for the animals and compassion for the Earth wherever you are just take one small step you know if you can take big leaps at times that's great but we can always take small steps just change one thing in your day maybe you add a fruit maybe you add something to your breakfast or maybe you eat a salad once a week just take one small step something just adds more vegetables more whole grains anything that you like and before you know it you're going to be eating completely different and you're going to be enjoying it and you're going to be better off for it well thanks for sharing now how can people find out more about peaceful Planet Foundation so you can go to our website peacefulplanetfoundation.org we also have a YouTube channel and also we're on Facebook same thing peaceful Planet foundation and I think we're also on Instagram my wife does more of the social media thing but I think we're on Instagram also

Channel: VeganLinked

Views: 6,588

Keywords: VeganLinked, Vegan Linked, Plant Based Doctor, Vegan Doctor, Texas Physician, Texas Doctor, Texas Vegan, Houston Vegans

Id: TDYkrdgrxIM

Length: 51min 36sec (3096 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2023