Episode 97: Optimizing Gut Health to Optimize Your Immune Function
This episode is all about optimizing your gut health and ultimately optimizing your immune function. This is a time in everyone’s lives where we know we want a strong and healthy immune system, but may not be sure how. What’s more - this is a perfect environment for ‘quarantine snacking’ and emotional eating, which may not be the best for our gut microbiome.. especially if you’re not sure what foods to eat + avoid! I cover all of this and much more, so have a listen if this sounds like you.
In this episode:
Quarantine snacking & emotional eating
Being compassionate with your coping strategies
Gut microbiome & COVID
Foods to eat & foods to avoid right now
Learn More About Gut Health
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The Funk'tional Nutritionist (00:00.43)
Welcome to the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast. I'm your host, Erin Holt, and I'm a board certified integrative and functional nutritionist. I live on the seacoast of New Hampshire and work with clients in my virtual practice all over the world through private consultations and online nutrition and functional medicine programs. Functional Medicine Nutrition is all about diving deep with people to get to the root
cause of their health issues. And that's exactly what I tackle in this podcast. All things health, food, and nutrition. Unpacking current research and almost a decade of clinical experience. I love to bring experts and thought leaders to the table so we can all learn together. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. Thanks for joining me. Now let's dive in.
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (01:01.686)
What's up guys? We're gonna get right into it today. We're talking about ways to optimize gut function and gut health as a way to optimize immune function. I want you to really start to wrap your head around why this is so important if you're not already there yet. And then we're gonna talk about ways to do it. There's so many different things we could talk about under this one category. I'm gonna keep it short and I'm gonna keep it simple. And we're really gonna focus on the food piece.
So talking about foods to eat, foods to avoid, that sort of stuff. I am upstairs in the attic recording in my husband's office. So have like a very damn it. Please excuse the background noise. A very rudimentary setup. And I'm holding a microphone like I'm Christina Aguilera, circa 99. So we'll do our best here. Now,
Since we're talking about food, somebody did ask me on Instagram to touch upon the COVID-15, you know, the play on the freshman 15, everybody's home and eating all the food and gaining all the weight, right? That's what the joke is all about. Personally, I don't see that kind of stuff in my feed. I've invested time in cleaning up my feed. Anything fat phobic, anything over the top diet culture, it's already gone. It's been purged.
So if you're seeing a lot of stuff like that and it's making you freak out, then get rid of it. There's also another question about how to keep you and your kids from snacking all day long. Now, the answer for us is pretty simple. We don't buy snack foods. We buy ingredients. There's fruits, there's veggies, there's nuts, there's seeds. I'll make energy balls, I'll make baked goods. But really outside of that, consuming food in my house involves some effort.
It's not as simple as walking over to the snack closet. And the rationale behind all of that are the things that I will be talking about in today's show. So we don't have that problem. I don't mean to, you know, make light of it. And this is actually I don't talk about kid feeding very often, because I know what we do is very counterculture and against the grain. I've made my peace with that.
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (03:24.078)
but I find that sometimes in communicating how I choose to feed my family, it can invoke shame in other people and that is never my goal. Somebody on Instagram said something to me. It was either last year or the year before. It was a while ago. And she said, I love following you to see what you do.
how you feed your family and how you eat and how you live. Sometimes I get frustrated with myself that I'm not further along. But in those times, I have to remind myself that I'm comparing my beginning to somebody else's middle. And I just love the way that she said it. It was a good reminder for me too, because obviously there are people that I compare myself to and I get frustrated with myself. Like, why can't I do that? Or why am I not being better in that category or whatever? And it's silly.
We all have our skill sets. And like she said, she was beginning her health journey and she was beginning to switch her family over to more real food. I've been doing this all along, right? So I've been eating this way for 15 years. My daughter knows no other way. She's almost six. This is just the way that she eats. She doesn't know anything different. So keep that in mind. But that's really why I kind of veer away from talking about kids eating. It's I feel like it's really uncomfortable territory for me. I never want to say something that's gonna rub somebody the wrong way, especially a parent who's just out there doing their best. So anyway, I wanted to say that. Now, if you are finding yourself doing a lot of emotional eating or boredom eating or whatever, what I'm going to suggest is that you give yourself some grace.
We're in the midst of a collective trauma. So however you need to take care of yourself is how you need to take care of yourself. There's no script for this. There's no playbook. And being hard on yourself for however you're handling this time is only going to make you feel worse. It's going to make you feel worse both mentally and physically. Self-compassion actually lowers inflammation in the body. We're going to talk about why lowering inflammation is key right now.
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (05:45.39)
So try your best to be kind to yourself. You can observe your behaviors. You can witness your coping strategies and you can do it without judgment. And if you're realizing that something isn't serving you, can attempt to change those patterns and those behaviors. When I was younger, I had ways of coping with stress and trauma that included emotional eating. It included binging and purging.
It included disengaging from reality, just spending days on end, lying on my couch, watching TV, staying up late, sleeping in, you know, to the middle of the afternoon, disconnecting from people, kind of cutting off my social ties. I did a lot of partying, lot of alcohol, pills were all involved. And you know what? I have zero judgment about any of it.
I did the best that I could with what I had. And when I knew better and I had the resources to do better, I did better. I'm very fortunate to have done a lot of internal work at this point in my life. So I now have other coping strategies that serve me better. Meditation, yoga, breath work, movement, exercise is absolutely without question is my antidepressant and I say that as somebody who has been on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications, exercise for me is so important. So it has nothing to do with trying to mitigate the COVID-15 and has everything to do with taking care of my mental health and putting my mental health first and starting to question what makes me feel good and what makes me feel bad. I know that for me,
If I start to watch a lot of TV, I can get very easily depressed. I can just sort of spiral. So I'm spending time doing other things that doesn't involve sitting on a couch watching TV because that's a coping strategy for me that doesn't really serve me. I'm reading more books and just really doubling, tripling down on the self-care.
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (08:02.894)
strategies that I share with you guys all the time. Realistically, I am spending, I would say, three to four hours a day on self-care because it's so important right now because I don't want my mental health to crumble. Scott just said to me, I had a little bit of a tear fest yesterday. It was short-lived. It was about 30 minutes.
I had to get the tears out, move through the emotions. And last night, Scott said to me, it's like we're in week four of this and you had your first breakdown. So I think you're doing pretty good. I was like, yeah. And it wasn't even that bad of a breakdown. So this stuff is really working for me. And I just encourage you to figure out, you know, to observe how you're handling this situation. Don't judge it. And if you realize something's not working for you, then you can change it. So that's a little love note.
From me to you, do what you need to do to get through this time. Now with all of that said, I am going to make a real case for food as medicine today. I've talked a lot about the supplements. I've talked a lot about specific nutrients, right? I've talked a lot about bolstering the immune system via X, Y, and Z. So it's done and dusted.
I'm not going to continue to just regurgitate the same stuff over and over again. I know people are looking for it. I did a poll like, what stuff do you want to hear? Everyone's like, immune, immune, immune. I'm like, OK, cool. So that's been done. So now we're going to hit it from a different angle. And I'm going to do some smaller episodes covering different topics and how we can support the immune system.
supplement free and I'm not saying don't take supplements or supplements are bad, but we're gonna we've done it, you know, like I've done it. So we're gonna do something else. I want you to think about the fact that lifestyle are more powerful than supplements. And there are really profound - today we're going to focus on the food piece. They're really profound ways to protect yourself in your immune system using food as medicine.
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (10:21.206)
Now, immune health is something that requires daily investment. It is not a set it and forget it. It is not a pill. It's not a natural supplement. It's not an herb. It's not a pharmaceutical. It is daily practices. So today we're going to focus on the food piece, but there'll be many or a few more to come. Different little things you can focus on in your life to bolster your immune system.
Especially important for the immune system is the gut microbiome. So the microbiome are the collection of bacteria and stuff that live in your large intestine. A robust gut microbiome makes us more resilient to viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens. Okay, so we know this to be true. The more robust and the more diverse your microbiome is the better you can withstand bad stuff.
That's like the most basic way I can say it. Listening, I was listening to the Rich Roll podcast. I don't normally listen to that podcast, but whenever Dr. Zach Bush comes on, I always tune in. I love Dr. Zach Bush. He is a smart guy. He's an MD, but he does a lot of work with farming.
He did a lot of work with end of life care and he, I don't know how to say this, he does a lot of work with spirituality. Like he just sees the bigger picture in a way. And when I listen to him, I'm able to connect so many dots that I wouldn't be able to. He's just brilliant. He's really brilliant and he's kind and he's compassionate and I love him. Anyway, so he popped back onto the Rich Roll podcast a couple of weeks ago and he, in the very long conversation, he shouted out the Chinese scientists who are researching, are people dying? The virus didn't affect most people severely, so what was going on? What made somebody more susceptible to death and to other problems incurred by the virus? And they looked at the microbiome of those that had died.
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (12:47.144)
And what they found was that the collapse of the microbiome, that robustness, that diversity was predicting vulnerability to this virus. So a lot of experts in the field are really saying that we need to treat this situation as a call to action. It is time to create a more robust internal terrain. It is time for us to really focus on the fact that our gut and our immune system and everything going on inside of us is so important, right? It's that whole, it the terrain versus the pathogen? What's the most important? And I've talked about that concept on the show before and I talk about it a lot in my gut workshop. You guys can go and purchase that anytime on my website, but I'm also gifting it away to anybody that signs up for the Carb Compatibility Project. I had to push it off. I didn't have to. I just thought it was the right choice. We were going to start this month and I'm pushing it off until May. So May 11th is the start date. But really, you can sign up any time between now and then. And I roll out a lot of content ahead of time. So you will have access to that as soon as you sign up so you can get the gut workshop. I talk a lot about feeding the microbiome.
We're going to get into a lot of that today, but this is like really more specific how to take the information that I'm giving you today and actually put it into practice in your own kitchen. So just a heads up there. Did I say May 11th? If I didn't say it, that's the start date. But enrollment is open now and will be ongoing right up until the very end. So if you're feeling like you've got some gusto, you've got some, you know, you want to dive into some food as medicine sooner than later, you can sign up. And if you're like, can't even think about that until May, cool. You can wait until May. All right. So again, to remind you, we have to optimize gut health in order to optimize immune health. We know that to be true. It's well established. It's just, it is what it is. 80 % of our immune system resides in the gut. And I know that you've heard that a million times if you've heard it once. But what does that actually mean? know, like, what's that all about?
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (15:09.634)
We have to think about the gut as two pieces, really more. But for today's conversation, it's going to be two pieces. It's going to be the small intestine and the large intestine. The large intestine is where the microbiome lives. Those bacteria that reside there are in constant contact with our immune system. So they help to modulate the entire immune system. They play a large role in T regulatory cells. We'll get into that a little bit.
So we need to have good bacteria thriving in our large intestine. Then we also have the small intestine. And this is where most of our immune cells live. And this is why you hear the immune system, 80 % of the immune system lives in the gut. It's the small intestine, really. Some of it is known as GALT, gut-associated lymphatic tissue. And there's just a lot of stuff going on at the lining of the small intestine. It's like kind of where the magic happens.
And things can go wrong there. So you can get SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. That's something that I work with all the time in my practice. You can get leaky gut. Once you have leaky gut or a permeable barrier system, that opens the doorway up to autoimmunity. So things are getting into the bloodstream that don't belong there, that creates a lot of inflammation and that creates, it kind of trips up the immune system. So the immune system's like,
this isn't supposed to be here. I'm going to tag that as a bad guy. And it's just continuously happening. So the immune system goes into overdrive. And it might be because we're not breaking down our food properly. That can contribute to an entire leaky gut picture. Why would this be the case? One, we might be eating foods that we're sensitive to. Two, we might be under some stress. And when we're under stress, like, hello, right now, we are not making appropriate hydrochloric acid or pancreatic enzymes. So there's some issues with the chemicals, our body's chemicals that we need to break down our food. And what's important to understand is that we must have a healthy enzyme release in order to not react to dietary proteins.
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (17:29.248)
Our body, immune system really shouldn't be responding to the foods that we eat. That's not a good setup, right? Like that's not a good scene. But so what we need to do is to break down protein structures into amino acids. So we have proteins, we break them down into polypeptides, we break them down into smaller peptides, and then eventually amino acids. Our immune system will not negatively respond to amino acids. They won't create antibodies.
There's no antibody binding possibility once your protein is broken down into amino acids. But if they're getting into the bloodstream in like bigger protein clumps, so if you've got, you you're eating food, you're not breaking it down appropriately through digestive enzymes, it's getting into the bloodstream. Your immune system is all of sudden confronted with these food particles that it doesn't really recognize or understand. That creates a big time problem.
So we have to, must, have to, have to break down proteins. So if right now you're feeling like a little bit of an uptick in digestive stuff, and maybe it's not something like terrible and it's just sort of like, I eat and I get a little bit of a tummy ache or I feel like food is sitting like a brick, food is sitting more heavy just because you're under more stress.
It's not a bad idea to supplement with digestive enzymes right now, just to give yourself that support. I know that I wasn't going to talk about supplements, but I do want to at least just say this for those listening to who are like, things aren't great. The more you can support the breakdown of foods, the less you're going to react to food. So this is really especially true for those people with the food sensitivities.
So Houston enzymes are the enzymes that I use. The TriEnza is their kind of catch-all broad spectrum digestive enzyme. That's my favorite one. They also make chewable ones for kiddos or I mean for adults if you can't swallow pills, but you can also give them to kiddos. And so I've been hearing that because of the collective stress of the current situation, if
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (19:50.626)
kiddos are getting belly aches, that was always how I experienced stress when I was little, I would get a belly ache. That might be something to consider if they're having digestive problems. I'm not really somebody that's gonna tell you to give your kids a bunch of supplements. It's not my wheelhouse. But two that I think is a good place to start, especially if your child has ongoing digestive issues, a good quality probiotic and digestive enzymes. You really can't go wrong with either of those.
Houston Enzymes is the one is the company that I always recommend, especially for kids. The chewable ones are great. I give them to Hattie, especially when we eat out. I give them to her because they also contain enzymes that help to break down gluten. Excuse me, gluten. So that's important for her. Not that we've been eating out at all lately, but you know what I'm saying. Anyway, you can save 20 % if you use the coupon code HUSTON20 and you can apply that at checkout.
when you go to their website, Houstonenzymes.com and something to consider and just like an extra tool to throw in your back pocket. Now, we want to basically we want to do anything to like bring down the inflammation. When there's inflammation in the small intestine, that that inflammation can travel anywhere because the bloodstream is right there. So it can scoot around in the bloodstream and it and it can just get anywhere. Why this is important from an inflammatory standpoint is how much inflammation you have in your body right now can determine how problematic COVID will be for you. If we look to other countries to learn more about the virus, which we probably should be doing, 99 % of those who died from the virus in Italy had other illnesses. That was released in March. It's been a month since that came out. So I don't know if that's changed. I couldn't find any more updated info.
As far as mid-March, that was the case. And so the previous medical conditions that they were finding, the comorbidities was high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. And so these are really, for the most part, diseases of diet and lifestyle, right? So we know that the way that we eat, the way that we live our life has a profound effect on our overall health. So if we have
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (22:18.442)
underlying health issues, we're going to be less apt to be able to fend off against additional pathogens. So we have to get our inflammation under control right now. Like the virus isn't going anywhere, so we can't control that, right? We cannot control what's going on out there. What we can control is what's going on inside. What's going on inside our homes, what's going on inside our bodies,
the food that's going into our mouth, you know, the food that we're bringing home. All of these are things that are within our control. So if you're somebody that feels very untethered by the big, scary stuff that you have no control over, focus on the little things that you can control that can make a really big, important difference. OK, and this is it really. But, you know, food is a big one.
treated as a wake-up call, right? We're never gonna win the war on microbes. We're never gonna win the war on pathogens, on viruses. They have always and will always be in our environment. Don't get it twisted. They're always gonna be there. So the question is, how do we create a less hospitable internal environment for pathogens? How do we bring down the inflammation? How do we build up the gut?
How do we give the immune system the raw materials that it needs to thrive and to do its job well? It's everything that I talk about in this show since the dawn of time, right? Since the inception of the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast. But right now I'm gonna tell you, foods to eat, foods to avoid. I'm gonna break it right on down for you, okay? We wanna eat whole, unadulterated, real food. This is the food that contains vitamins, minerals, cofactors.
All of the things that are used in the enzymatic pathways. And in fact, I know this isn't, I have a lot more listeners than the folks that are just local to me, but at least here where we are in them, I'm assuming it's gonna be elsewhere, all of the farms, because farmers markets aren't, you know, have been shut down, but all of the farms have come together and they're doing delivery services.
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (24:34.988)
So look into that, Three Rivers Alliance is one. I'm gonna link to a couple local ones in the show notes, because I'm not thinking, I can't think of the names off the top of my head. But you can get farm fresh food delivered right to your door. So you know, think about that. It's a really, really great option. Gotta go whole food first. Food is critical to the health of the immune system. And you cannot out supplement a poor diet. You know, if we're talking about vitamin C and vitamin A and vitamin D, yeah, cool. Take them, but also eat food rich sources of those nutrients as well. That's equally, if not more important. You know, I've talked about Dr. Datis Kharrazian a lot on the show. I really respect him. He's brilliant. Another brilliant guy in my eyes.
He kind of went off on a tangent or a little bit of a rant talking about specific recommendations for COVID-19. He's saying it's all speculation. We don't have enough information to speculate or to determine whether something works or something does not work for COVID-19. Like, we're just all figuring that out right now. A lot of people are, I'll just leave it at that.
I pulled a quote from him because I liked it so much. He says, the immune system is not about one enzyme or one pathway. The immune system is an integrated symphony of movements that's all happening together. You can't understand a football game if you just look at the quarterback. So that's what some people are doing. They're like, well, this one pathway, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So take this one supplement and that will help that. And I get it. We just want, you know, we want to, we want some solutions. And so I get it. I get the the need to want to provide answers, also we don't have them, you know? And like sitting in that murky territory is hard. And one of the reasons that I do respect him and look up to him so much is because he has the ability and the... He's willing to say, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I can't tell you that. I have no idea.
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (26:56.918)
He will say that. And I just think that as somebody that in my eyes was one of the most brilliant guys on the planet, that it's very comforting and humbling to hear him say, I don't know. Like we don't have to have all the answers. Even the smartest of the smart don't have all the answers. Okay, so these are the things that I don't want you to eat. Okay? One, things that you're sensitive to. I know that this sounds like a no brainer. It's like a no duh.
But what I'm witnessing is a lot of people are eating like they're on vacation right now. It's five o'clock somewhere. You know, it's like that kind of mentality because everyone's off their schedule. Things are weird. It's easy to just be like, F it, you know, just whatever. Does it matter? It matters. First of all, it does matter. Food sensitivities drive up inflammation. Gluten and dairy are big ones, so they're just easy examples to use. Not everybody has to avoid them. But if you know that you're sensitive to them,
or if you just simply feel better without them, don't eat them right now. Now is not the time to eat like you're on vacation. It really isn't. So if you know you're sensitive to foods, stay away from those foods. The next one is sugar. Diets high in sugar essentially shut down the immune system. Concentrated sugars will shut down natural killer cell activity for hours. Natural killer cells basically it...
They help the immune system fight off pathogens, right? So we don't want to suppress those at all. So obviously, you know, things like high fructose corn syrup and overt sugar sources, you know, like cereal tends to have a ton of sugar, granola bars, even like healthy foods that have a lot of sugar in disguise, try to stay away from those. Fruit juice, right? That super high in sugar and there's no fiber to counteract it.
Fruit is fine. I always feel like that's going to be the next question. What about fruit? Fruit has a tremendous amount of antioxidants, phytonutrients, fibers, things that we really need. So I wouldn't say avoid fruit. I'm just saying really avoid the white sugars, right? And the white carbohydrates, not potatoes, but like refined things in a bag or a box. We also have to pay attention to blood sugar. So eating foods high in sugar
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (29:17.954)
can contribute to higher blood sugars, which can lead to inflammation. If you're looking to audit and reevaluate your relationship with sugar, try the Carb Compatibility Project. Listen, one thing that I've noticed, we're still running Your Hormone Revival right now, so I'm seeing a lot of blood sugar labs. What I'm seeing a lot of is women who are perimenopausal or postmenopausal
with really high blood sugars, high insulin levels, insulin resistance. It's a very common picture. I don't have the time to get into it today, but I'm working on a podcast for it. So if you're in that category of women, it is time, I'm telling you, it's time to audit your sugar intake or your carbohydrate intake and the Carb Compatibility Project can do that. One woman who's in my hormone program and did the CCP last round. She said on our Zoom call last week, she says, I do fine with week three of CCP. I broke the sugar addiction, which is a relief. I've lost half a pound of weight per week. So that's been since January. So she's in it for the long haul. And she, I will say that she does have, she had weight to lose. She's not somebody that just had like, if I last five pounds, right? That was an important thing for her. She had the high blood sugars, all of it. So she's been able to control her situation through the CCP. So it's a very therapeutic style of eating. So highly, highly recommend. Other things to avoid, artificial sweeteners. They are bad for the microbiome. BPA and plasticizers have a negative effect on your microbiome. I know I talk about this all the time, but are you still eating out of plastic? You gotta stop. Take the plastic out of the kitchen. Plastic water bottles for kiddos. Hard no. That BPA and even if they're BPA free because that's the new thing BPA free. It's not new. I don't know why I said that. It's not new at all, but BPA free. People think it's safe. It's not there's still plasticizers in there that are leaching in to your body to your kiddos body. They negatively affect the microbiome, right? So get the plastic out the kitchen.
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (31:44.014)
I don't know how many times I can say that. I always like. Never mind, I'm not going to say that. Get the plastic out the kitchen. I'll leave it at that. And then fried foods, processed foods are pro-inflammatory and they essentially wipe out your antioxidant status. That is not something we want to do right now. We want to eat all the antioxidants.
So let's move into that. What should we eat? A key feature of coronavirus is that it breaks down the epithelial, the lung barrier system. And a high antioxidant status prevents this breakdown. It essentially protects the lungs barrier system. So the more antioxidants you can put in your pie hole, the better. How do you know what has antioxidants? Really focus on fruits and veggies and variety. Like the more variety, the better.
things rich in flavonoids, things rich in color, like deeply pigmented stuff are gonna be your best friends right now. So we're doing a lot of acai, a lot of blueberry, raspberry, blackberries, frozen organic berries, know, a daily smoothie or a smoothie bowl or an acai bowl. I accidentally bought the frozen acai packets, I buy those all the time, but I accidentally bought the sweetened version, I always buy unsweetened.
And Hattie found it in the refrigerator. I tried to make a smoothie with it and I was like, it was too sweet. There's 12 grams of added sugar per packet. It's just kind of a significant amount, especially when you don't eat a lot of sugar. Your palate definitely changes. So it was too sweet for me. Hattie saw the packet when she was like, what's that? I mean, to her, that looked like something like, you know, that's a that's a real treat. That's a real treat. So I was like, you can try it. And so she ate the thing like a freeze pop. So.
12 grams of sugar, like I said, kind of high. the fact that she was getting those like really like all of those antioxidants, those polyphenols that are so important for so many things, including the microbiome, I was like, yeah, the sugar is not going to kill her. So that's a little tip if your kids are into, I don't know, freeze pops by the sweetened acai packets.
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What's the name of the brand? Sambuzan. I'm definitely not saying that right, but I know you know what I'm talking about. They have in their Acai has guarana in it. So just be mindful of that. I don't know how appropriate it is for little kiddos. Per their website, each packet has less than or maybe one milligram of caffeine, which is less than a cup of decaf coffee. But still I just.
Think about that look into that before you give it to like young kids what I did with Hattie She's almost six. She weighs how much she weigh 45 pounds maybe I don't know but I just kind of observed her behavior and made sure that she wasn't like there wasn't like a big uptick in sort of frantic energy, know what I'm saying? Like like I wanted to observe her because that can be a little bit stimulating that guarana. I don't think there's much in the packet, but I just wanted to be sure she's good. So think about that
Yeah, so we're doing all that good stuff. Pomegranate's a big one. Pomegranate juice, pomegranate extract, pomegranate powder, any like deeply pigmented powders. So like your greens powders, your berries powders, all of that. Those are really great. Chlorophyll, spirulina. You kind of get the vibe here, like those dark, deeply pigmented foods. Dark chocolate, like 80%, 90%, 100%, the cacao.
All that kind of stuff is good. You also want to protect your glutathione status through food. So this will support your overall antioxidant status because glutathione helps to recycle your other antioxidants. So anything sulfur rich, your cruciferous veggies, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage. Cabbage is coming up like, whoa, if you shop at farms, there's cabbage everywhere. Get yourself some cabbage, get on it.
If you haven't rode the cabbage train yet, it is time. Choo choo, it's time. Some things that I like to do with that, I just cut it up and roast it. Delicious. I slice it really thin. So you can use a mandolin. Is that the right? I think that's the right tool that I'm thinking of, or just a sharp knife and cut it really, really thin. Daikon radishes are also coming up in a lot of places as are carrots.
The Funk'tional Nutritionist (36:27.34)
So if you shred those three things together and then make a yummy dressing, sort of like an Asian inspired dressing. So one combination that I really like is sesame seed oil, sesame oil. You know what I'm talking about. Sesame oil, I think it's Olive oil, Bragg's liquid aminos, that like soy sauce replacement.
You know, some type of acid, lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, a little bit of honey that is really tasty. And you can let it marinate. It will kind of soften the cabbage. Cabbage can be really tough, fibrous, so it can soften it a little bit. Yum, yum, yum. And then one of my clients told me that she cuts cabbage so it's almost like creates noodles. So I thought that was interesting. So I've been doing that, cutting it and then
I'm doing roasting it in a cast iron pan with some caramelized onions. So I let the onions cook up first. Then I slice in the cabbage. I'll throw some garlic in there and a ton of olive oil. It is so good. Salt. Don't be scared of cabbage. Eat all the cabbage. Super great sulfur source will help to bolster that glutathione production. Grass-fed whey protein. If you tolerate whey, grass-fed non denatured whey protein helps to bolster your glutathione as well. Get the non denatured kind because it will retain the immunoglobulins. Very important for immune health. Very, very important. So if you can find some of that, that's a good way to go. And then, you know, think about the bile producing foods. I know I talk about this a lot, but that's going to be supportive of the liver. It's going to be supportive of the microbiome. It is there. They're important. And they're the foods that we tend to shy away from. And they're the foods that you can find again at farm right now. So bitter greens like mustard greens. I just housed a bag of mustard greens for lunch, housed them. Those are good. But any type of different greens you can get at the farmers market is going to be helpful. So like just get like four different bags when you go. You know, like this week from Vernon Family Farm, I got bok choy, I got Swiss chard.
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I got baby kale, got mustard greens, I got spinach. It looked like I was hoarding. I said to Nicole, was like, I promise I'm not hoarding these. This is just truly how much my family goes through in a given week. We eat a lot of greens, so get them all in. And then I kind of did it like an ode to the daikon radish. I did a video on Instagram where I talked about my favorite ways to eat daikon radish because I was at the farm store and there was somebody there kind of talking smack on daikons. And I was like,
What? They're so good. I think people are afraid of them. They see them. They're like, what's that? So you can check that out. But basically you can cut them up and roast them. There's a good internet recipe for spicy daikon fries. You can shred them and put them on salad. Watermelon daikon radish looks so, so, so, so pretty. And then you can throw them into that, that slaw that I was talking about earlier and then eat fiber.
So really all of the things that I just talked about contain different types of fiber. So the more veggie matter you can get in your body, the better. I've been trying to post my daily salad on Instagram, just to show like it doesn't have to be boring or gross. I mean, you can really get kind of creative. There's a lot of different recipes for dressings on my website and you know, just you're home. I know you're home.
So utilize the time rather than snacking all day, right? Utilize the time to like make yourself like a really exciting, healthy meal. It will bring joy to your life. I swear. I look at my salads. I'm like, this is fun. This is a good time. So eat fiber because the bacteria in our guts eat fiber. They ferment the fiber. We don't. We don't have the ability to break down fiber. goes all the way to the large intestine. Our bacteria are like, yes, jackpot. They produce short chain fatty acids.
Short chain fatty acids help the immune system to create T regulatory cells, which then those T reg cells in the gut can send messenger proteins out to the rest of the immune system. Remember, like the T said, it is a symphony. It does not take vitamin C for your immune system. It's like, how do we orchestrate this whole symphony to like come together and do its job? T reg cells modulate the immune system and make it efficient in
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coordinating an immune response. They can fight an infection or like help the immune system fight an infection or just keep the system healthy. Can you shut down the immune system when the immune system is going awry? So all important things that the short chain fatty acids do. Short chain fatty acids are also very, very important for metabolic health. So if you have issues with insulin resistance or high blood sugars,
or type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome or pre-diabetes, you've got to get your short chain fatty acids up in here, up in here. So eat your fibers. Then we've got probiotics. You know, probiotics don't recolonize the gut, but they do have positive effects on the immune system for a week, up to two weeks when we take them. But if you eat fermented veggies, so you can totally take a probiotic pill.
But if you eat fermented veggies, you get both the fibers and the probiotics, right? You get them both in the same thing. So now's a really good time to learn how to ferment your own veggies. You can do daikon radish. You can do carrots. You can do cabbage. Make your own kraut. It's very easy. It costs pennies and you know, you'll feel like really proud of yourself. There's this like return to homesteading that shift that's happening right now that I am here for. My hope is to get my neighbor to come on the podcast and teach us all how to start our own garden at home that I've been wanting to do that for like two years, get her on the show. So hopefully I'll make it happen this spring. But you know, it's like, what can we do on our own to, you know, produce our own food is important. So point is you need to feed the microbes in your gut really well. You could revisit episode 78 if you're looking for more info how to eat for true gut health. There's even more tips on how to do this. And again, if you're looking to put more of these things into practice, the CCP, the Carb Compatibility Project will start on May 11th. It is a very good way to support your microbiome and support your overall immune health. We remove all of the problematic foods,
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or most of the problematic foods that people will respond to. It kind of takes, you know, puts the fire out on the immune system while also supporting the gut. Now, I will say if you're currently struggling with ongoing digestive distress, I am now accepting new clients so I can best show up and serve my community during these crazy times, especially knowing just how important a good functioning gut is right now.
I want to be able to help you guys. So my private practice, it's all virtual, right? So that's always been the case. And it's centered around digestive and immune health. It offers stool testing, SIBO breath testing, food sensitivity testing, gluten tests, leaky gut panels, nutritional status, deficiency panels, and more. All the stuff that I was talking about in today's show, we can test for that. And so each appointment will include lab assessments, personalized protocols,
and also a functional nutrition reset plan if that's appropriate for you. So there's different options on my website. If you're not really sure, if you've poked around my website, erinholthealth.com, and you're not super sure where to start, I would recommend scheduling an initial intake appointment. I will review a very extensive health history with you. I will review any labs that you already have, and then we can kind of determine what are the next steps, where do we go from here to get to the bottom of what's going on with you. So check that out. You can fill out the application form on my website. All pricing is laid out for you. There's no hidden fees. There's no mystery fees. I want to be as transparent as possible. So do visit the website, check it all out. And then if you have questions that are not answered on the website, you can email me or fill out the application form there.
And just I'm just going to ask for serious inquiries only. I think that makes sense. It's really for those who are looking to get started this month or next month, April or May. I don't know how long I'll be accepting new clients and its first come first serve with my online scheduler. OK, but I'm excited to connect with some of you guys more around your guts. So I hope this was a helpful episode and I will catch up with you soon.
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Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast. If you'd like to submit a question to the show, fill out the contact form at erinholthealth.com. If you like what you hear, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review in iTunes. Take care of you.
