Harvard Nutritional Psychiatrist Shares the Key Foods for Incredible Mental Health | Dr. Uma Naidoo

but gluten had an association with elevated anxiety as did sugar as did sweetness what's up everybody i hope you enjoyed the episode brought to you by our sponsors at athletic greens to receive a free gift with your first purchase visit athleticgreens.com impact enjoy the episode hey everybody welcome to another episode of health theory i am here with dr uma nedu i am so excited to have you i am thrilled by the very notion of what you do which is nutritional psychiatry which i didn't know existed but i'm excited that it does um welcome to the show thank you so much tom i'm so excited to be here and talk to you yeah this this one really is um something that i'm doing backflips for when i started i was doing all mindset stuff and um i started doing health theory this show and people are like why is the mindset guy talking about health and my thing is if you don't understand that the brain and the body are connected then you are in for a world of hurt you've got to really understand how to how to make those work you're a trained psychiatrist when did you come along to the nutritional element and what exactly is nutritional psychiatry sure so the way that i came to this was that i grew up in a family that was all about love and food and nutrients and a lot of cooking and so it was always you know fond of food and want to know more and it was also a family a physician so i knew i was headed to medical school and um i always just wanted to know more about food and when i began to have conversations with patients in residency so i sort of brought or tapped into my background and really raised in a household where there was meditation mindfulness practice understanding of the mind-body connection ayurvedic principles and i didn't use those specifically but i really brought that mindset to practicing with my patients and i began to say things to them like well if you're taking this medication are you doing any form of exercise are you doing any kind of movement what what are you doing what are you eating and it it grew at the interest grew and i began to have more of that conversation so that existed in the way that i was practicing but separate to that my my my passion trip was to culinary school that was just because i went you know because julia charles is my food hero and i wanted to be like her so uh i i wanted to learn more and that kind of fitted together in a cool way with everything else yeah it's the i think your book in um some other countries is called the food mood connection exactly yeah so the food connection in in the uk and a few other countries that that to me is so important for people to understand you know we've got obviously depression and anxiety been skyrocketing for decades and originally it was like a question of well are we just getting better at diagnosing it but it really hasn't changed it seems like it really is going crazy and what i loved about your book is that you're you're going through some of the disorders that you would normally hear a psychiatrist speak about um that's normally you know depression anxiety ptsd ocd i mean just like the list goes on and on um and normally it would just always be medication and so the fact that you give like really specific prescriptions for things you can eat or avoid eating that's really really powerful um so when we talk about this stuff beginning to skyrocket let's get right into specifically with anxiety so i suffered from debilitating anxiety at one point in my life unfortunately uh for as much as i should have recognized there was probably a huge dietary component i came to that very late so i understand how brutal generalized anxiety can be what are some of the major triggers and then how do we begin unwinding that sure so i think that for anxiety one of the things i often start talking to people about is the foods to avoid generally i talk about a whole foods um diet and ask people to incorporate foods rather than give them up but in anxiety um we notice there's a correlation with gluten so you know it's always about the source of your source of the gluten you have if you're having a shelf-stable loaf of bread from the supermarket that sits on your counter for three weeks and looks perfect you have to ask yourself that's not that's not the bread we're speaking of here but gluten had an association with elevated anxiety as did sugar as sweetness can we get into the bio mechanism like what what is going on why are those is is everything going to come down to the epithelial lining of the gut and this is a leaky gut problem or is it something else you know the mechanisms tend to differ and we go through that in the different chapters of the book but that i think that that the overall um major mechanism that runs through every single diagnosis is the gut brain axis the preponderance of inflammation that these these substances drive like sugar and as the leaky gut and the intestinal permeability gets set up there's also the dysbiosis that is happening because the bugs are just not getting the right foods that they need to thrive so you have dysbiosis being set up then they're not able to form things like the short chain fatty acids that they need and the butyrates to to really help the gut thrive so sugar is one of them artificial sweeteners is another stevia was found to have even though stevia and erythritol if you are going to use the sweetener separate to all of this may be better options but in anxiety it was not um processed vegetable oils i've come out really fast before we move off of artificial sweeteners so i have a feeling that a big driver for my anxiety was artificial sweeteners i was drinking uh three large monsters a day plus two or three diet cokes and it helped me get lean it was amazing because it filled me up the carbonation and the sweetness and it allowed me to intake a lot less calories um but i think that was a big part of it what is going on what is it about either those specifically diet sodas or artificial sweeteners in general is what what is this sort of dysbiotic response sure so so the the one of one of the things is that there's an elevation in the level of sweetness so a tiny packet of a sweetener is super sweet so in one way it's impacting your brain because you are now expecting this super sweet flavor then the actual substances are gut disruptors and the third mechanism is that they are not and that's why i mentioned stevia and erythritol they have a better mechanism related to insulin and so so in addition to the brain problems that things like artificial sweeteners set up for us by driving anxiety they disrupt the gut and our brain gets used to this hyper hyper sweetened taste because often patients will say that you know that you know you want me to you want me you talking to me about not having sugar-sweetened beverages so i'm going to have the diet soda of some kind but what noticed is that sometimes they want they crave more sweet sweet foods and often those foods are carbohydrates so we talk about almost trying to either heal your gut or help your gut along so that the bugs in your gut are working for you and not against you and you know sugar basically sweeteners just just are doing the opposite of what we need them to do sugar on the other hand has an actual there's actually an actual correlation between depression um several trials linking depression and sugar intake the added sugars and also related to the level of anxiety so you know sugar works in a slightly different way in the sense that initially you might have this you know good feeling someone has a bowl of ice cream and like i can't understand why my doctor tells me not to eat this i feel good what's wrong with her you know but the truth is that you know over time what happens is that if it affects you your neurons you know the sugar is not good for us it may make you feel emotionally good in the moment but it's really not good in the longer term so you know i think what what i feel people have not made the leap to tom is that we talk about um with nutritionists and we talk to our doctors about you know i have a family history of diabetes how should i be eating but we don't link use of nutrients or food with our emotions and i do think that that's that's the gap that i'm hoping to fill with this book and sharing the information about the stuff to avoid okay so in our avoid list that we just went through um specifically as it relates to anxiety and a little bit depression but we had gluten can be problematic we've got artificial sweeteners we've got sugar what are there other sort of major things or those like are big to avoid that processed vegetable for anxiety processed vegetable oils is that okay so give me an example of where that hides i think people will be surprised how many things have that exactly so you know it might be that a restaurant look they they tend to be oils that are less expensive so in the restaurant industry and in fast food chains these are the oils that that they use and reuse and it sets up a huge level of information about it because what changes is it flips the ratio of our omega-6 to our omega-3 fatty acids and this is not good for us because what that does is drives inflammation in the body here's a great example i have a few clients who travel a lot for work and contrary to what you might think during during the pandemic they start to have a lower level of anxiety and we noticed this specifically and i i was puzzling me at first and then i realized you know just taking more and more information and asking them i realized that they were eating more meals at home so even though they had been trying to pursue a healthy diet following the guidelines and they had had an improvement in anxiety they had a significant improvement by eating meals at home because they know you know the oils i'm going to suggest to them uh yeah extra virgin olive oil you know avocado oil and one of the things that people don't realize that is super helpful in conditions like anxiety is to up your fiber game um because fiber fiber-rich foods break down in your body i mean i don't need to tell you this stuff breakdown you know in a more complex way and more slowly so you don't have you know think of the the sugary doughnut and you know people have this sugar crash and they first they have a sugar high then they have a sugar crash it's all about insulin bouncing all over the place when you include simple things like having more fiber your your instrument is even your blood sugar is even so people who have anxiety don't have these highs and lows other things about anxiety are things we we know caffeine can drive anxiety but it's the amount of caffeine it's how your body tolerates it it's also caffeine withdrawal i've had people present with extremes of anxiety because they come and saying doctor i'm giving up caffeine and then they have caffeine withdrawal and they super anxious hydration um you know alcohol someone imbibes a little bit too much alcohol on a holiday weekend and the next day somewhat dehydrated can present with severe anxiety hypoglycemia is another one just you know someone who recently in my practice was trying out a type of fast i'm not against the type of fasting i think it always has to be discussed with their doctors but didn't realize that they hit a very low blood sugar level so they were hypoglycemic and had panic attacks so it's it's all it's you know we our physiology is all interrelated you can't do one thing without affecting something else why would being hypoglycemic put you into a panic attack is it so when when i was really debilitated by anxiety one thing that i found was if i was cold then my anxiety would spike hard because the physiological response to being cold and being anxious for me are almost identical and so it almost put it on my mind if that makes sense and so my brain just didn't differentiate between i'm cold or i'm anxious that's a great example actually because with hypoglycemia people haven't have saved skipped a meal or haven't eaten or something has happened they dropped their blood sugar and one of the symptoms of hypoglycemia is sort of feeling nervous or jittery because actually your body is craving it needs to be fed um and what happens is that i've just seen people you know have the spike of anxiety or panic and and what i've said to them is you know are you eating regular meals you know you may be taking other medications for other conditions and and exactly what are you doing are you drinking enough water and it's a similar it's i love the example you gave because it's a similar type of thing the body perceives it in a certain way and the way that the brain interprets that is i'm feeling anxious i'm feeling anxious but actually what the body is asking for is to be fed you know that that that means that we need a nutrient so yeah okay so this stuff all gets super super complicated but when i think about let's let's pretend for a minute that our audience is more they're like you they are diet agnostic so they just want the best when you were describing um hypoglycemia as being a problem i thought okay cool then would a ketogenic diet which i'll call sort of the king of of flatline where your just whole relationship to food is different your relationship to hunger is different because you don't go on that wild ride because your body just dips into stored fat and so you feel pretty even keel all the time is that the most uh anti-anxiety diet or is there something even better i don't think there's something even better but what i will say is some studies that are more recent have shown a correlation between kindergarten ketogenic diets and improved anxiety so i think that if someone is following that diet and it helps the anxiety and they're otherwise you know under the care of a doctor and why do i say that because you know simple things that we tell people to eat like grapefruit can interact with multiple medications through liver enzymes so i'm not saying that globally to say oh you should always talk to your doctor i am saying if you if you're assuming a different diet and you're changing things up you know just run things by someone who knows your overall conditions your medical history and what you might be taking but there's been some good evidence so i would say if it's working for someone and they've noticed a lowering of anxiety definitely try it out and have your doctor review the literature with you okay um you you go through in the book a lot of different diseases and i'm going to jump a little bit out of order because i'm absolutely terrified of running out of time with you because you've got so much great information i want to talk about dementia and the mind diet and what we can do to avoid brain fog cognitive decline like you know if and i'll speak for myself here i very much want to stay crazy sharp until the day i die so what would that sort of ideal cognitively optimized diet look like okay great so so um things that i like people to embrace are starting starting with a turmeric with black pepper um it's a spice that not only hits the high notes in several conditions there's a definite association with cognition so if it's something you cook with or not a quarter t at least a quarter teaspoon a day with a pinch of black pepper paprine activates the curcumin makes it more viable by a very huge percent to both the body and the brain tip right there and for those people who don't cook with it add it to soup or smoothie or tea these are good options for you it turns out that the polyphenols and olive oil became um uh more available when they were used in a sofrito preparation so different cultures have different uh types of fruits what's that sofrito so frito is the base for it could be the base for a gumbo it could be the base but it's basically onions garlic some cultures have chili pepper it's different varieties of that but a particular study showed that this reaction made the polyphenols more available so i say you know if you're going to cook use the use the good olive oil use that gentle simmering temperature you know use those ingredients because onions garlic they are great prebiotic foods good for your gut feed the good bacteria why not throw them in and then you know there are also other spices things like cinnamon saffron rosemary ginger and sage that had some good results in a good data in association with just protecting cognition coffee the the suggestion was have coffee but have you know less than 400 milligrams a day because depending on the size of your cup that could be about two to three cups have them early in the day alcohol was not an entirely negative one but at the same time it's all about things in moderation and if i if someone is drinking alcohol i generally suggest red wine because of the reserve resveratrol now do you think there's a hormetic effect to alcohol to me alcohol is so um correct me if i'm wrong this is my understanding so everyone's going to say that there's three macronutrients fourth being alcohol and if if you look at the order in which the body burns them it will prioritize alcohol now my gut instinct is that it's prioritizing alcohol because it's a toxin so why would there be anything other than a hormetic effect meaning for anybody that's never heard that term that a little bit of bad actually gets your body to sort of um push back against it become more robust and stronger so it is a toxin but in a small enough amount it actually can be beneficial think of working out i think there's a great point yeah i think that's a great point i mean i think it could well be that i i what the studies basically showed was that it's not that you have to exclude alcohol it's about moderation and it's the type of alcohol and what i always say whether it's whether it's this area of the book or anywhere else everything in moderation and why do i say that term because most individuals who come to my practice are drinking some form of alcohol so i would rather work with them to use that in moderation and share tips like you know hey if you like cocktails you're drinking a bunch of sugar because this is what simple syrup is it's sugar so here's some tips about you know making that a healthier version drinking less of it and giving them tips to cope with it because that's in my practice of almost two decades now what i find is trying to say to people don't do something is is just behavioral psychology has taught us that's not the way to go so it's about giving people some healthy options within what they're doing and then hopefully over time when they see the benefit of something they start to either tape it back or change the habit that's very different from someone who's struggling with alcohol obviously but you know you also asked me about brain fog and this is where the antioxidant luteolin rich foods came in and and there were studies that showed that if you incorporate juniper berries fresh peppermint sage thyme certain types of hot and sweet peppers these apparently are all luteal and rich foods celery seeds parsley artichokes and dried mexican oregano they actually helped with the brain fog so you know i say to people if you're struggling with that you want to kind of sharpen things up start to in spices you'll find throughout the book and one of the reasons they're one of my favorite things is that they last a long time they salt-free sugar-free calorie free because i'm not suggesting a mix that has added sodium in it but they they hit the high notes on lots of different conditions and so it's worth stocking up on those and it turns out that for brain fog they can certain spices can be pretty useful um what is your take on sodium our body needs sodium so i think that we just have to be careful about the amount that we consume and where we consume it from so i think that being aware of the added sodium and processed foods um you know frozen vegetables can be a great option for people inexpensive so that they get their vegetable boost but if it has a sauce or an added sodium or you know that the added ingredients are what throw it off so our body needs sodium but it's it's the amount of sodium that we consume in our diets that's usually too high what's up guys i want to tell you about our sponsor athletic greens the all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance even with a balanced diet it's difficult to cover all of your nutritional bases especially when we're talking about micronutrients and that's where athletic greens will help their daily drink is like nutritional insurance for your body that's delivered straight to your door developed with a complex blend of 75 vitamins minerals and whole food ingredients athletic greens is a greens powder engineered to help fill the nutritional gaps in your diet their daily drink improves your everyday performance by addressing the four pillars of health energy recovery gut health which is so important and immune health packed with adaptogens for recovery probiotics and digestive enzymes for gut health and vitamin c and zinc citrate for immune support athletic greens is an easy all-in-one solution to help your body meet its nutritional needs their highly absorbable powder is diet friendly whether you eat keto paleo vegan dairy free or gluten free all in a drink with less than one gram of sugar that tastes amazing there are a bunch of people here at impact theory that are using athletic greens and they absolutely love the taste and quite frankly the fact that they can get the micronutrients from a whole array of vegetables without having to actually buy or cook them so whether you're looking to boost your energy levels support your immune system or address gut health now is the perfect time to try athletic greens for yourself simply go to athleticgreens.com impact to claim this special offer again that's athleticgreens.com impact to get athletic greens which is all in one nutrition with 75 highly absorbable ingredients all right guys give this one a shot stay in tip top condition and until next time my friends be legendary take care do you know i i'm actually completely unaware but are there studies that um show what happens as you increase your sodium intake because obviously you hear a lot about blood pressure but i've heard that that there's like complexity there that people maybe aren't acknowledging but it's not an area that i'm super knowledgeable about but the number of times that i've sort of encountered sodium in the literature i've walked away going it's really like not that big of a deal to be honest but if i'm crazy now's the time to tell me because i i eat the most salt i think you'd be horrified you know a lot of people like salty food and again it comes down to you know time about a month ago i was treating a woman had come in to see me for consulting she brought her adult daughter along with her and both they each had opposite reactions to the same healthy food and you know this speaks to uniqueness of our bodies and our microbiome which is mostly unique so i'm it would take a lot to shock me i i've you know i've been hardened by years of practice but but i think it really boils down to someone's individual constitution if if your blood pressure is fine if you are otherwise healthy um if you know your blood tests are okay and your doctor's not yelling at you for something um you know i i think that that that's what it is you know is it good or bad uh probably not great but you know is it having any deleterious consequences on your body it doesn't seem like you look great but again it comes back to um you know a person following some guidelines and that's really what the book is about it's it's not for extremes and it's really meant to for someone to pick up whether it's a therapist but you know sharing it with her client um his uh his or her client or person just saying listen i want to be healthy i'm really struggling during the pandemic my anxiety is through the roof i've never had problems before um you know what what can i do something dietary adjustments as as you know from your journey you know you can start immediately you can start making changes and that i feel is empowering for people um for two reasons when a doctor says to you here take this prescription as i have done as well um it's it's disempowering to someone you know you're being told you have to do this and you have this symptom and this is what will make you better i think that that that nutrition and food flips that ratio and puts it puts a person into the driver's seat of deciding hey i can make the choice to go to fast foods today and start to impact my gut bacteria which we know will change within 24 hours or i can say i'm going to aim for that healthy salad i'm going to build it up the way that you know it was suggested to me i'm going to add in those lean proteins i'm going to add in as many colors of the rainbow as i can to bring back healthy phytonutrients and antioxidants for my brain and i'm going to go in that direction and a person can feel empowered to make that decision now they they still may choose the chips the ice cream and the fast foods but that being said that that's gonna it's gonna have the effects down the road all right that that's an amazing example and so i want to dive into that so people can take all the things you've said now and put into how to make that choice in an informed way so we'll get to the salad in a minute because i really want to hear you said to build it up in the way that i was instructed to do so i want to know more about what that is because i the number of people i watch build a salad and i think you might as well go have a twinkie um is a lot uh but so fast food i'm gonna break down why i think you would say fast food is bad and then you tell me if this is what you mean so in the beginning you laid out four things that people really want to avoid and fast food has them all um so one i've heard you talk about which i didn't even know is that french fries at most fast food restaurants contain sugar they contain sugar you don't taste it but the exactly the research and development i was pretty shocked when i came across this years ago that the research and development is is immense for um to to produce hyper palatable foods and by that i mean this is the reason tom that you can't you know at the drive-through you want the bigger size and when you get the biggest size of the fries you want to eat all of them um you know you don't taste the sugar but it makes the it enhances the flavor and it makes those foods hyperpalatable so you know sugar is a big one and my my concept of conveying that is eat the orange skip the strawberry orange juice and that's because people think oh my doctor said oranges are good vitamin c and the labels on the store-bought orange you say that but it's you know another helpful thing is four grams of sugar is one teaspoon because i've said before that our labels in the united states aren't grams but we cook all our recipes are standardized to ounces and pounds so people don't know how much sugar there is what does four grams mean so having that simple understanding of of how to break it down means that if they get a 4 ounce yogurt but it's fruited and it has 24 grams of sugar well would you actually be adding that number of teaspoons to you know plain yogurt if that's something that you eat because certainly the ones with active cultures and well-sourced grass-fed milk um dairy yogurts are definitely something if you eat there you can you can try but you know helping those little things at the tip of their fingers is empowering knowing that there are 200 names for sugar and if you look them up or if you look at the label of something you're buying then there are 200 names for sugar but but literally this is a list you can google but when you look at a food label always you know these are things you can take photographs on from your computer and carry them with you so if you're buying something um you know that that's actually hiding in sugar another another culprit by the way is glutamates um and monosodium glutamate that's another one that not as many names but it gets couched in different ways you talk pretty powerfully about glutamate can you tell people why glutamate matters and what it what sort of disease states it impacts so glutamates are found to really be difficult for conditions like ocd so it's one of the foods that we suggest to people to really be cautious of um when when they have symptoms of ocd because it can really be it can be worsened it can be worsened by these foods and and their glutamines and glutamic acid in foods that we're used to eating that are not necessarily bad foods but when you know that they contain um glutamates that you have to be careful if you have ocd things like parmesan cheese you know oyster sauce tomato sauce miso miso is otherwise a fermented food and super good for the gut but if you're sensitive to glutamates that could be a source that could drive ocd so it's about finding you know you mentioned sodium and salt it's about finding that balance for every person and what the what that's one of the reasons that i put in the book a list of food to avoid because there are things you have to know to avoid as well and for anyone keeping score glutamate is the g in msg correct yes it is where do you come down on animal protein and it probably makes sense to touch on red meat as well versus vegetarian i know that you're agnostic and you can work with anybody on anything yeah but in terms of coming up with sort of the ideal um where do you fall in those two so you know the the so where i fall on those two is that i think um it's about the sourcing and it's the the quantity you know if you can get say you're having beef grass-fed beef is going to be important because if not in the beef industry um cows uh well so so think about when you're little and you saw you know photographs in your in your storybooks cows were eating grass that's certainly what i remember well it turns out that in the industry they don't actually dress they eat sunglasses um but they grained off uh before before slaughter and so the graining off is a process that actually bulks them up and um and and they also given different medications and things which affects the quality of the meat because you know we are what we eat so that if if the cow eats that and we eat the cow there's that that's that chain so that's what is this is this an omega-6 problem what is it that the cows are getting that's one of the problems the omega-6 they gut disruptors because they are fed hormones they're given certain medications for digestion and for other reasons um in terms of how they are bred but also the actual grain is that that is definitely inflammatory what i find is that of the different diets the mediterranean eating pattern has consistently shown the best results for depression and anxiety give a quick breakdown of what that is sure so the you know it's based on the mediterranean lifestyle and the mediterranean region in the world and it's basically a diet that's rich in healthy fats such as avocado olive oil lean protein so whether it's you know chicken or seafood it's very heavy in safe food but but good sources of seafood and then beans nuts legumes healthy whole grains you know chickpeas those types those types of ingredients and it's consistently shown in studies to have helped individuals with mood and anxiety so i think that's important for people to know um is it the perfect guide maybe not for everyone but it's a good guideline um because my feeling about this time is that if people are consuming you know for example there's a study that showed that eating trans fats is associated with aggression so once again we come back to if you're eating these foods you might have problems with these behaviors and if you are or if you get worsening of symptoms you may want to think about cutting back on that um i i feel like it's a stepwise pathway to well-being and mental well-being because if someone's just eating the wrong type of diet how can i how can i encourage them on toward a healthier path because i think it's hard when um you know you either pull out your prescription pad or you or in my version of the work i do in nutritional psychiatry i say well you have to eat this so i try really not to do that my method is really about what is it that when you come in to see me are the steps that i think you can you can try and that you feel you can commit to because if you're not going to do them then you're just going to leave my office it's like going to a physical therapy appointment and not practicing the exercises you know your injuries it is not it's not going to get better so so what are some of those early sort of easy wins that people can do i know that it's going to be so specific and so i'm just sort of pitching right to the middle of your sort of average person that comes to see you i'm guessing they have anxiety or they have depression and they're not going to want to give up all the lovely things that they eat so what what are some easy switches or swaps or however you approach it exactly so i like the prebiotic foods because we those are easy to include things like the alien family onions garlic leeks off the top of my head jicama and a few others there's a longer list in the book but those actually just just feed the bugs what they need to thrive so right there um you know i'm speaking about mental health because that's what i care about the most but the truth is by by balancing your gut gut bacteria or your gut bugs because it's not just bacteria in a good way you're also taking care of your immunity which is largely housed in the gut and you're doing your body good because you're fighting down inflammation yes inflammation drives mental health diseases and mental well-being but you're also you know helping the level of inflammation in your body so it's just a good it's a good basic starting point um fermented foods you know kefir [Music] miso kimchi any of those add back a great gut element for you um another thing is eat the rainbow so so why do we talk about the colors of vegetables because by you know gamifying it and i say to my patients how many colors of you know vegetables can you eat in a week or in a day or in you know however you break it down and did you know you know that red bell peppers have some of the highest levels of vitamin c and that's really good for you so so making that um something that becomes a pillar of what they do you know prebiotics probiotics um the color of the rainbow and why and telling them the reason why this helps your gut bacteria it reduces inflammation it adds back antioxidants just simple pillars like and then of course i love to go into the spices and try to introduce them to more interesting flavors but also good good brain benefits i want to go into some of the micronutrients you'd mention at the top you've got magnesium vitamin d which we haven't talked about but i know that you have pretty extensive understanding of the importance of that but talk to me about magnesium what what is the importance can we get it in diet do we need to supplement what what is it turns out that magnesium people are very frequently deficient in magnesium and magnesium is associated with high levels of depression and high levels of anxiety so one of the things i will do is if someone comes in with those symptoms i will check a magnesium level but it's an easy thing to replenish and if someone is super anxious it's best to try out supplementing it while they also up their game in terms of their diet and in chapter 11 of the book that's why we broke down [Music] you know nutrients and then foods that you can find it so it's an easy reference say that you find you're deficient in magnesium or you're feeling anxious it's an easy thing to start to increase in your diet as well yeah oh in fact there's we have to close the loop on that salad thing so salads are something that when i think of okay eat the rainbow amazing advice putting all this stuff together but then you can ruin it depending on what sauce you put on it or what are some of the things so somebody that i um i know well will make a salad but then they'll put like crushed like nacho chips in it uh and so they do things that is like you were doing good right until the end um what should a salad look like so um a few things i'm laughing because it's so true you know in this country like we we think oh i'm gonna get a healthy healthy lunch and then there's there's all these toppings on them which which are like tons of calories right there yeah and not not calories in the good way i mean i'm not one i'm not a big one for counting calories i think it's much more about the whole food but that being said that's an excellent point we need to kind of take a step back from the ranch and uh figure out you know easy easier better healthier dressings to do so i've even taught our medical students this is the way to make a vinaigrette you know uh i have healthy fats an acid that you like you know salt pepper shake it in a mason jar because it's going to save you money it doesn't have all that added sodium and preservatives that and stabilizes that as a salad dressing and sugar that salad dressings have i start with a mixture of greens i try to have people eat a diversity of greens because the folate has been there's a particular bacteria that has actually been shown to be super helpful um in in terms of folate so there's a reason that i ask people to add to add more greens to their diet and i even like people to add things like herbs like parsley um it's another green to your diet you know things that diversify the flavor make it interesting to your dandelion greens you know cut up some bok choy into your your salad it's not it doesn't have to just be lettuce spinach is a great option and then the colors the cut i like to go for colors and texture so colors are all the types of sweet and sweet peppers bell peppers are great for you and cucumbers you know super low calorie vegetable great crunch good flavor all of these have vitamins so think about the nutrients and vitamins that you're bringing back and i like radicchio you know different color different texture different taste i love arugula for that peppery peppery bite and and then nuts nuts and seeds adding in you know chickpeas um great source of plant-based protein and we're talking you know quarter cup for the whole salad you can throw in black beans you can throw in white beans you you can build it up even a simple thing if you don't want to make a vinaigrette a squeeze of lemon salt pepper and some lemon zest on the salad is is delicious um the other herb i love to add is basil so you know the more that you can kind of build a salad i had practiced this one once and actually more than once at different patients but the one that i remember is how much how much it helped her diabetes and i'll explain why she was eating she was taking meals to work but she was taking relatively unhealthy meals that were not filling it was impacting her blood sugar her dexcom monitor kept going off she was then reaching for unhealthy snacks at work her break room had you know peanut butter crackers or something and she'd grab that because she knew her blood sugar was was lower but by just by adding in a healthy wholesome salad she would actually you know she'd call me up the next week and she said i'm so full every day at lunch that i'm feeling so much better just from green you know greens and what i'm describing it wasn't anything and she might add a little bit of chicken sometimes she added a small piece of salmon but she really was eating through those greens stabilizing her blood sugar feeling better she lost weight not within a week that took time but it there's a lot to be said for the filling ingredients which are fiber rich which are bringing back those positive ingredients so you know i i kind of laughed to myself in some roles as if i say salad but but i'm saying it for many other different reasons and for important reasons related to brain health what made me rethink about the salad thing is just the notion of micronutrients and making sure that you're getting sort of this wide array of things are there um is there a basic suite of supplements or anything you recommend my entire life i basically tried to avoid it so um d3 is sort of the only thing that i've ever consistently supplemented with um i have recently started doing magnesium in k2 but is there anything else is there a suite of things that you just know the average person isn't getting enough of so you know i think it depends on the symptom i think magnesium many people are deficient in but again uh being a doctor i'm gonna say have it level checked because that's a scientific way of us knowing whether you're deficient or not um i think d3 is a good safe thing to do um because many of us are deficient especially depending on the part of their country and i live in the northeast and i know many of us are deficient um and i think that with others relating to the mental health symptoms for example take saffron so saffron is um has a significant number of evidence for improvement of depression but it's a very expensive spice you use a tiny you know a few threads and say biryani or a risotto or paella so it's not necessarily going to convert to the type of dosing you need that might be an appropriate place where we can get a supplement your book is full of so many things we i mean we haven't even touched on like half the disease states that you go into um this this is incredibly incredibly powerful information where can people find the book where can they learn more about you where can they really drink deeply of your wisdom thank you so much tom so they can find me on social media at dr uma naidu which is at d-r-u-m-a-n-a-i-d-o-o and we're always putting out new and updated information on social media especially instagram and tweeting we try to share studies that are recent and things like that and my website is umanidoommd.com that's umanaidomd.com and that will link you to where you can purchase the book but you can also get it at your local bookstore or wherever books are sold amazing thank you so much for coming on the show guys this stuff is important food and mood being connected like there's just no question about it thank you so much for coming on today by the way if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 389,225

Rating: 4.8799009 out of 5

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, talk show, interview, motivational speech, Uma Naidoo, Health Theory, HT, health, advice, health advice, nutrition, diet, nutritional psychiatry, brain health, gut health, emotions and your diet, food and your brain, brain food, brain diet, anxiety, panic attacks, keto, ketogenic diet, keto diet, sweeteners, stevia, foods to avoid, proper nutrition, alcohol

Id: LtHlw7QJT7Y

Length: 44min 21sec (2661 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2020