This is a transcript of the Facebook Live session that was held on 11th July. The link to the talk is here.
Good to see you all. I'm glad everyone is here. My name is Mugdha Pradhan and I am the founder of Thrive Functional Nutrition Consulting. I'm a functional nutritionist myself. And I've been doing this series of FB live sessions, webinars called Own your body and this is the third one out of those and what we're going to talk about is lifestyle diseases.
So, before we start, I have kind of outlined the flow of how this would go and so that you just know where we are when we are talking about any particular topic. So the first question is why this topic? Why am I even speaking about lifestyle diseases? Right?
So if some of you have been following me on Facebook, then you know- health is something that I'm really passionate about. We have been doing really amazing work at Thrive in reversing a whole lot of lifestyle diseases, a whole lot of chronic diseases. And, you know, the point being it's so easy to reverse things like high BP and obesity or diabetes or PCOD, it's really easy to reverse most of those diseases.
And most people struggle with those or they become dependent on the entire pharmaceutical industry to manage those diseases. So, this is why I'm talking about this. The thing is that we only have one thing that is really our own, and that is our body on this planet. And this body is a gift. It's a gift that we get to experience our life and what happens is a lot of institutions actually try to take away our autonomy from our body?
So that's the reason why I wanted to talk about this that, you know, ultimately a human being should have ownership of their body. They don't need to outsource that to pharmaceutical institutions or the government or doctors, who are really not there to solve that problem, but who are there to just kind of put them on medication after medication, a human being should actually be doing that. And that is the reason why we are talking about this topic.
Now what I will talk about is what really are lifestyle diseases right. So what would you categorize as a lifestyle disease, where any disease that happens to you as a consequence of the choices you make about what you're putting into your body, any of those can be categorized as a lifestyle disease. Because every choice that you're making, while you're living a life on this planet, is going to impact your body. And if those choices are in the wrong direction, then those impacts are going to be in the wrong direction. Right? So when we speak of diabetes, for example, everybody knows diabetes is a lifestyle disease, right? But people think diabetes happens because of eating a lot of sweets and that is completely untrue.
Diabetes doesn't happen because of eating a lot of sweet diabetes happens because of many of the root causes which we will talk about. But a lifestyle disease is a disease that you know you are not born with but has happened to you over time because of different factors that you have encountered through living your life. So maybe you have eaten a lot of inflammatory food and that's triggering a disease.
Maybe you're exposed to a lot of toxins and that's triggering a disease. But broadly speaking, what most of us know as lifestyle diseases are diabetes, obesity basically like excess weight; weight gain itself people know is caused by poor lifestyle choices. High BP, a lot of people think that hypertension or high BP is genetic, just because everybody in your family had it, you also should be suffering from that and that is completely untrue. So high BP is completely driven by lifestyle and the choices you make.
Dysfunctional thyroid, a lot of women especially think that because their mothers had a thyroid problem and because their sisters have a thyroid problem, they also would be ending up with a thyroid problem. And that again is something that I would want to bust as a myth. Thyroid also can get impacted by the kind of lifestyle choices you're making.
PCOD and PCOS are completely driven by lifestyle. So there is no genetic need for a woman to go through a dysfunctional reproductive system so PCOD and PCOS is another lifestyle disorder.
High BP I have already mentioned; diabetes I spoke off; excess weight I spoke off; there are many other diseases that you know one wouldn't encounter on a day to day basis in terms of why I heard about this thing happening. But there are many other diseases that also are triggered by lifestyle choices like even something like Fibromyalgia even something like IBS and IBD which is Inflammatory Bowel Syndrome and Inflammatory Bowel Disorders both of these also are triggered by or wrong lifestyle choices.
We genetically are not designed to have diseases genetically, our entire body is designed to heal all the time the body wants to heal, the body wants to recover. That's, that's the design of the body. So that's what I would categorize as lifestyle diseases. Maybe the dictionary definition of a lifestyle disease might be different from what I'm seeing, but any disease that occurs out of the outcome of the lifestyle choices that you're making is a lifestyle disease in our definition.
So now then I would like to move on to what I've written down here as diagnosed versus undiagnosed, right. And this is really the problem like I've heard so many people talk of somebody who suddenly passed away saying that, you know, this person was so healthy, how come he suddenly had a heart attack? And there is no way somebody will have a heart attack if you're healthy.
In all likelihood, this person had an undiagnosed disorder in the body, which is what caused that heart attack, right? So diagnosed lifestyle diseases, which means that you've been given a label so your blood sugar level is high for a long time you go to the doctor, the doctor says, Oh, your blood sugar levels are high. That means you have diabetes. So you're diagnosed with diabetes.
With high BP you might experience some symptoms, you might go to a doctor, the doctor will check your BP. Then the doctor will say, Oh, your BP is above this, you know the standard 120 by 80, so you have to take this medicine and let's suppress your BP.
With obesity again, you check on a weighing machine or you take your measurement and then because your weight is beyond a certain BMI level now it's categorized as obesity. Likely you are, you have excess weight. So these are undiagnosed, but what I really want to focus on are the ones that go undiagnosed for a very long time.
So for a lot of people before they develop diabetes before they develop full-blown diabetes, they have so many symptoms of insulin resistance, which is the root cause of diabetes, right? So a lot of people experience symptoms, such as for example, somebody who might have undiagnosed diabetes, they would experience frequent urination and a lot of thirsts. They would experience, you know sudden drops in energy like, at maybe 4 o'clock or something, they just have no energy. They feel very sleepy. They want tea or coffee at that time, or people with undiagnosed diabetes might experience jitteriness and shakiness just around mealtime. So if their meal is late by maybe 30 minutes or something, if they're not eating on time, they'll start getting really cranky and anxious and angry. They might get some tremors.
The other aspect of undiagnosed diabetes is sweet cravings, right? So sweets don't cause diabetes, but because glucose is the primary source of fuel for the body. If you are diabetic, your body's ability to use glucose is impaired. So, energy production gets impacted and at that time, what happens is you will start craving for sweets right so craving for sweets, having energy drops, needing tea or coffee a lot, feeling really irritable and anxious and angry, and getting this jitteriness just around mealtimes, especially if they're a little late, excessive thirst, excessive urination. All of these are signs of undiagnosed diabetes.
When it comes to high BP, often people don't know that sometimes they have headaches. Sometimes they have palpitations. Sometimes the feeling of anxiety itself can be triggered because of blood pressure changes and they just think that something happened there was some stressor in the environment.
But at least diabetes we have far more significant symptoms to be decided; high BP goes undiagnosed for a really long time. When it comes to heart health diseases it's one of the biggest. Yeah so like I was saying with a heart also a lot of heart conditions actually go undiagnosed. Because with heart the thing is there are no predictable symptoms. You can't say that the pain in my chest is the heart problem. So with heart, it is very hard to predict that you could have clogged arteries, you could have blocked arteries and that is what is going to trigger a sudden episode back.
You know, if you have drops in energy if you feel like when you're when you climbed up a few stairs and then it was very hard for you to catch your breath, something that shouldn't be that difficult. Or you instead of walking slowly, you walked a little faster than a normal pace and then you became out of breath, then that is an indication that probably your blood circulation is not as optimal as it should be.
And we've seen in a lot of people when they come to us with high homocysteine levels, and you know, the doctors have given them a clean certificate about their heart health. And then we ask them about the symptoms that do you have trouble with when you're climbing stairs? Do you have trouble when you're walking at a faster pace, and then I guess how did you know that because we saw your homocysteine levels are high.
So with heart, it is harder to predict than it is with diabetes. But one thing everyone needs to learn is that all of these diseases are interlinked, right? So every single metabolic dysfunction has an impact on another part of your body so you can't just be diabetic and your heart is functioning absolutely well. Or you can just have a high BP and then your heart is absolutely stellar. It is impossible for that to happen because the body is one unit. So if one thing is going wrong in your body then it's impacting another aspect of your body for sure.
Okay, that's why it becomes important to talk about these lifestyle diseases, the ones that cause what we call as metabolic dysfunction. I'm just quickly going to share my screen.
So, why is this so important from the Indian context is chronic diseases are a leading cause of death in India even before COVID came right even before Coronavirus came. Coronavirus isn't even killing that many people but even before this entire fear of Coronavirus came; India was the world leader in diabetes, it ranks third in obesity. And if you look at the threat, do you know, just the causes of death, compared to other things like global warming, bird flu, terrorism, and all of that; obesity, heart problems, and diabetes are the biggest killers.
And that is what I spoke of even and I posted on Facebook that, you know, even with people with COVID-19, the highest comorbidities are people who have an underlying health condition, whether diagnosed or undiagnosed, which explains why a lot of people say that this person was healthy and he still died of COVID.
The root cause for that is this person probably had an undiagnosed health problem like maybe there was a very high vitamin D deficiency, or maybe that person already was insulin resistant and didn't know about it and when they contracted the virus, things just went So then it resulted in a fatality.
So, this is last year's data India makes 77 million diabetics every year this number keeps going up. And I think Indians genetically are programmed to manifest diabetes more than anything else. That's why we are the world leader in diabetes. And people even if you don't know if you've not been following the COVID statistics, the biggest comorbidity for COVID-19 is with people who have insulin resistance and diabetes. The biggest right so, the chance of you surviving COVID-19 if you have poor blood sugar management and very high levels of diabetes just becomes higher, which is why it's important that you understand that you first have to fix your internal health dysfunctions, and only then will you be able to deal with any kind of immune system attack that comes from different pathogens in the environment.
And so, chronic diseases were and still are a leading cause of death in India. India is the world leader in diabetes and ranks third in obesity, we have to do something about it. We have to take control of our own health. And I mean even before COVID this was the projection right that the disease burden was going to cost India $6.2 trillion by 2030. Now with COVID, it's even become worse.
So this is why it's important for us to talk about this. And we spoke of what undiagnosed diabetes will look; as we spoke of what undiagnosed high BP might feel like; we spoke of what undiagnosed heart conditions might feel like obesity rarely goes undiagnosed because it's very easy for you to see. It's a very visual phenomena right to gain weight. You can see on a weighing scale that you gain weight. If you are gaining excess fat around your midsection, your pants are not going to fit you. They are going to be tighter. You have to open up your belt a couple of notches. So obesity, it's not that hidden as much as the other ones are.
But when all of them are put together definitely are bigger killers than this entire COVID pandemic. And that is what we really need to focus our attention on. That is what everyone needs to be still talking about, instead of diverting our attention to sanitizing ourselves and wearing masks and going out, right? So what are the root causes of these chronic health dysfunctions?
So I'm just going to show you this slide and then I'm going to stop sharing my screen. The number one root cause so what we do at Thrive, is we analyze the blood reports to see what is really going on in their body. Right. So I take you through a few cases that we worked on. But let's say somebody comes to us with diabetes, what we do is we ask them to get their blood test done. And then we ask what is really creating diabetes in this person's body? Is it liver dysfunction or Is it insulin resistance?
So, we found that in almost every case of blood test that comes to us there are always underlying deficiencies and a lot of you might be aware of vitamin D deficiency, like a lot of people get their blood test done and they know that they are deficient in vitamin D, but there are other nutrients also B12 is there, especially people who are vegan are super deficient in B12. So B12, vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, protein, there are so many nutrients that our body needs as raw material to function optimally.
Like for your pancreas to make insulin, it needs chromium. Chromium is one of the minerals that's required in a lot of enzymatic processes. And if you're deficient in chromium, then your body's ability to make these enzymes and all of that is going to be impaired. So in our analysis, we found out that deficiencies are often one of the underlying root causes, why people get sick.
How to find out if you're deficient or not?
It's really simple. You get your blood test done. And we’ll know, Right? What do you do once you find a deficiency? I'll come to how to fix these lifestyle diseases but deficiencies are one of the root causes that we have found out. That creates problems for people when it comes to health.
Then the next one that we've seen as a root cause for people's health to go downwards is toxins. So when I say toxins and when I'm putting this image of a drum with skull and crossbones on it, people don't understand that toxins are not just in a factory. So when I say toxins, even when we do our blood tests and when people come to us and we show them that there are toxins in the bloodstream, they are like where did they come from; how come so many chemicals are there in my body?
What people don't know is the food that you eat, If it is not organic or if it is not pesticide-free, it's going to release a lot of toxins in your body. There is a particular toxin, there's a particular pesticide called glyphosate, that chemical has been used in a lot of pesticides and glyphosate remains in the soil; it enters into the animal's bloodstream also that eat that plant; that's been sprayed with glyphosate and it goes into your blood and it creates a whole lot of health problems, right from genetic mutation to even creating cancer.
So toxins come from the food that we eat if you're eating non-organic, conventionally grown produce. Secondly, toxins can come from the household care products that you use. And this is why, in fact, the next FB live that I'm doing, I'm doing it on toxins and I'm partnering with Adrish who is doing phenomenal work in ensuring people live toxin-free lives but toxin and personal care products and household products that you use.
So You know if you're using Harpic in your bathroom for example, if you ever look at the ingredients that are there in Harpic, you will see that it is actually poison because you know if accidentally consumed or keep away from children is there and if accidentally consumed call up the Poison Control Center, all of these things are written because it is poison.
So we are using these things like harpic; we’re using domex; we're using these things like bleach in our house; we're using all these antibacterial soaps. All of these are loaded with poisons and toxins and every time you apply it on your skin, every time you apply it on your face, every time it's around your body, your body's going to absorb a lot of it. These toxins come in and start messing with your cellular integrity. So we have cells in our body, right so these cells are getting damaged by toxins. A lot of toxins go and replace nutrients in your body.
So if you're somebody who is using aluminum for cooking very often right, what will happen is that aluminium will leach into your food and it will go and replace zinc in your cells. Now zinc is a nutrient that is essential for again a lot of cellular functions. But if aluminium is going in and sitting there, then zinc has no place in your cell and then you're going to become zinc deficient again then you're going to present with some or the other lifestyle disease.
The same thing happens with you know, your non-toxic cookware. So non-toxic cookware has so many carcinogens that get released when the heat is applied to it. So all these carcinogens now become part of your food, and then it's going into your body and it's going to create disease.
I was speaking of bleach, a lot of bleaches, you know, your floor wipes your domex and all of that they have a lot of chlorine in them and chlorine is a halogen. It's a molecule that can compete with Iodine that is what your thyroid needs. So if you're using a lot of these highly chemical-based products then these are going to replace important nutrients in your body.
For example, if chlorine is replacing iodine then it is going to create a thyroid dysfunction in your body because Iodine is a very important molecule that your thyroid needs to make the thyroid hormones. So that's how toxins can impact your health. They can cause genetic manipulation, they can cause cellular dysfunction, they can replace nutrients.
And, you know, you just lose health in the process. So why do you even need something like that to clean your floor? Why do you even need such toxic products like there are so many shampoos with things even that I can't pronounce? Right, like if you look at the shampoo bottle, you'll see ingredients that look right out of a chemistry lab, and you're putting that chemistry lab on your head or on your skin on your scalp, which is the most absorptive surface and that is going to get absorbed into your body and then your liver has to work. So hard to get rid of those toxins.
So be very careful about the products that you use; that is on your body and in your household because all of them are going to become part of this beautiful body that we have. So deficiencies, how to find out if that's happening like this toxin also we can find out from a blood test if there is a toxin overload. And the best way to fix that is to, you know, eliminate these toxins from your body and your environment completely.
Then the third root cause that we often find in our analysis when it comes to people's health is pathogens; so pathogens need no introduction. Especially now with Corona, everyone has become aware of viruses and bacteria. We have seen so especially in cases like, you know, chronic acid reflux where people have acidity issues all the time where they've been given antacids for a long time where everything they eat triggers acidity. We found a Particular bacteria called H. pylori that is responsible for it.
For women who have a tendency towards fibroids and cysts, we found that there's a virus called the Epstein Barr virus that creates a lot of dysfunctions, even in cases of fibromyalgia. We've seen it's the epstein barr virus that creates that health problem. So the thing with pathogens is, these exist in our environment, all the germs that we are going to be exposed to will always be a part of the environment, there is no hiding from them unless you're living in a sterile container like a lab rat, if you are going to be interacting with nature with the environment, you are going to be exposed to a whole lot of bacteria, viruses, fungi, in fact, the human microbiome. So there are studies being done on it; And what they found is like, you know, a human being is mostly 90%, viral bacterial DNA and just about 10% poor human DNA. So given that, we share our microbiome with so many other entities and other beings on this planet, it's impossible to not be exposed to a pathogen.
The pathogen basically means a bacteria or a virus that is going to do more harm than helping your body. So why do we say we've seen diseases because of pathogens? The thing is your body, actually, your immune system is here to maintain a balance between the good guys and the bad guys. So if your immune system is compromised, because of deficiencies or because of toxins, then the pathogens can get an upper hand and they can start creating diseases. They are always there as a signaling mechanism more than anything else, the pathogens don't come to a kind of devour you, right?
They're not there to completely eat you. We live a very symbiotic relationship with them. So every time a pathogen load goes up, it's basically an indicator to you to tell that, hey, something's wrong. So it's creating an increase of this kind of bacterial growth, please fix that issue so that the balance can be maintained again, and we've always seen so with pathogens, we don't really do anything to kind of eliminate them, right, we just bring the body back into balance. So with the food that the body needs, the nutrients that the body needs, eliminating the toxins that are feeding the pathogens, removing all the triggers for that pathogen overgrowth is how we been able to prevent a health problem arising from a pathogen, but what kind of health problems do we see from pathogens?
The most common are these digestive issues, right? So anybody who's going through a digestive dysfunction, your IBS, IBD, acid reflux, GERD, all of those are typically caused by a pathogen overload or imbalance in the microbiome. So that is what symptomatically we know is creating an imbalance in our blood tests also from the WBC, from your CBC, we can actually make out if there's an infection in the body, right?
Because if these guys are imbalanced and your infection markers will never go up. It's only when the pathogen overload is so high that now the body is experiencing an infection, then your WBC and your blood test markers start changing. So through your blood tests, we know if you have a pathogen overload or not.
We've seen pathogens trigger liver dysfunction. So hepatitis, which is inflammation of the liver, we've seen pathogens trigger that so viral infections can cause a dysfunctional liver. Where else have you seen it? I spoke of fibromyalgia right where we've seen it's the epstein barr virus that primarily is creating a lot of the symptoms of fibromyalgia.
Otherwise, as I said, the cysts and like, you know, the PCOD, PCOS kind of manifestations that you've seen there. Also, we've seen that once the pathogen overload comes down, along with deficiencies being fixed and toxins being removed, that person's reproductive system actually starts recovering on its own. So that's when pathogens come in and create disease. Most people are very afraid of a virus right now and what everyone needs to understand as if the body is in a state of balance there is nothing that the coronavirus can do to you.
I personally have been exposing myself to the environment because I know what state my body is in right. I get my blood test done every three months so I know that my deficiencies are all fixed like I don't have deficiencies except for the protein one which I spoke off in my last week FB live when it came to plant-based nutrition. But I know what my health is like internally and I want to then stand the test of time right so I'm saying that if I'm healthy then I should not be getting an infection. And it has been proven since March I have been out; not socially distancing with people; minimally using a mask like if a store won't let me inside without a mask only then I wear the mask but otherwise, I personally prefer not wearing a mask because I like breathing air. I have been hugging people. I've been shaking hands with people, my house help comes home. She comes from whatever area she lives in. And it's been four months and I'm still alive without getting a sniffle.
Right, so I know what it takes to have a body that stays in the balance whether or not you have the biggest pandemic of the century going around. So, that is very important to know that pathogens can harm you only if the rest of your body is in a state of imbalance. Pathogens can do nothing to you if your body is in balance, nothing will happen it will just come and go and be like Ah, this place I can do anything. Oh, it will feel like you know the party is like not happening at all. They will just go away. So pathogens can't really do anything to you unless your body's not in a state of balance. But if it is in a state of imbalance then pathogens can trigger the disease. That's what we've seen in our cases so far.
All right, the fourth root cause of people, you know, experiencing different kinds of lifestyle diseases and this is what most people know about. People don't know about deficiency; people don't know about toxins; people don't know about pathogens as much as they know about how food creates lifestyle diseases.
And when I say food creates lifestyle diseases, I'm referring particularly to a category of food that I call us frankenfood because, like Frankenstein's monster, right frankenfood is not real food. It's food that's made using different components of real food and then it's sold to you as this is food. So for example, this orange juice comes in a tetra pack. You look at the ingredients. I don't know I don't care how much it's natural and all of that but it's mostly just orange pulp with a few flavors and colors and it gets sold to you as added Orange Juice.
The worst frankenfood I think is Maggie because Maggie is nothing like food. Like I don't even know what they used to make Maggie but Maggie just tastes good and that's why people eat it. But if you actually try to understand; what is food in this; what is going to give me nutrition in this? There is zero, there is nothing.
And coke sodas, right? Sodas are just sugar and water and air and flavor and incense and that is it. And then people are addicted to these things. And these are frankenfoods because these things when you put them into your body, they actually create so many diseases. So we'll go more into that a little bit when I explain the purpose of food, but frankenfood is one reason why people get sick. So if you're eating, like sandwiches and burgers and pizza and especially the store-bought stuff, and then you're eating Maggie and you're drinking soda.
There is no way nobody's going to create health, you are going to end up with diabetes, you're going to end up with excess weight, you are going to end up with high BP; you're going to end up with digestive disorders. If it's not happening now; it's going to happen over time. But I can guarantee you like my master's degree in nutrition, I can vouch that if you're eating this kind of food, it is going to result in some kind of a chronic health problem.
It might not be apparent, especially if you're younger, maybe you're somebody in your 20s or you're looking at 25 and you're doing this, your body's very resilient, right, like I said, the body's entire innate nature is to heal and repair all the time. So your body's gonna try and deal with this abuse for a very long time, but at some point is going to give up and that's when you're going to be diagnosed with a health dysfunction.
So frankenfood, fake food for that is not really real food. That is going to definitely trigger health problems. And we have seen this in so many cases that people are eating food that is not right for the body and that is what is creating disease in their body right. So when I say when people are eating food that's not right for their body. You know we have, all of us are unique, our bodies are, we have this thing called bio-individuality, which means every person's body is unique. So what might work very well for my body might not always work for another person's body. That's why you can never generalize nutrition, you just can't. Each person reacts differently to food.
Like there's one girl in our Thrive who is extremely allergic to sweet potatoes, who would expect an allergy to sweet potatoes, right? But she needed hospitalization when she ate sweet potatoes. So each person's body reacts to food differently. And then it's important to know what it is that your body needs. So this understanding is also what we help people with because your body has a feedback mechanism. You eat something which is going to create some kind of a feedback loop for you. So like in my case, when I eat these you know bigger beans like Rajma and Chhole; it gives me a lot of digestive discomforts. And I try to fix it by taking enzymes. I try to fix it by doing so many things and I realized that No, this food is just not working for my body if I eat it in large quantities, smaller quantities are okay.
So each of us has this biofeedback mechanism, right for some of us rice might make us sluggish. Right? Rice Shouldn't right? Like rice is actually absolutely okay. A lot of people avoid rice, especially diabetes people, they avoid rice because they're afraid that it will trigger the blood sugar spikes. It might not be the rice that's doing it. It might be the dietary fact that you're eating that's creating insulin resistance and that's making your diabetes worse. So understanding what is it that your body needs and which food works best for your body are what ultimately create health. Okay, so eating that frankenfood category of foods is definitely a No-No like Just a No- No, so we are still at root causes. Let me just see there's one last one. I think that I want to show you. This if I start talking about this one I never stop, but I'll keep it short. This last one right stress is one big reason why a lot of us get sick.
So you could have zero deficiencies, you could have no toxins in your body, your immune system could be absolutely working like a stellar, super Mercedes Benz kind of level of maintaining your body's balance. You could be eating the healthiest foods, but if you're stressed, due to many things happening lately due to life events, or due to how you perceive and respond to stress or due to the relationships in your life. Maybe you're living with a lot of passive-aggressive people, maybe your boss is really an asshole. We don't know, right? So a lot of times that mental stress itself starts triggering a lot of dysfunctions in the body.
And how that happens is; We all have this system called the adrenal system. So your adrenal glands are right there above your kidneys. And their job is entirely to continuously keep prepping your body in response to the environment that you're in. So if you're in a highly relaxed environment, like if you're getting a massage and listening to calm music, your body feels different. Versus you being in an environment where somebody is yelling at you, and like, you know, you're being bombarded with emails, and things are just going wrong and you're, there's no electricity, your Internet's not working a situation like that your body's going to be at a different state, right? It's going to be, you're going to be sweating a lot more, your heart is going to be racing a lot. So that is your body's natural response mechanism to keep you prepared for whatever stimulus is coming from the environment.
And what happens so this is an evolutionary mechanism. It will evolve when you're not ancestors were like hunter-gatherers and they were foraging for their food. And if they went to someplace and there was a tiger there, they would have to quickly decide whether to run away from the tiger or whether to kind of fight that tiger or hide, right. So the body would need to prep accordingly in response to that. So that adrenal system is an evolutionary mechanism and it's supposed to switch ON and switch OFF like our ancestors would have had opportunities to go to their caves and relax after tigers encounter and tell each ‘Hey bro, don’t go there; there’s a tiger around the lake.’
But in our day to day life now we don't really get that opportunity right. So what happens with us is we are facing one tiger after another. We are facing a tiger for finances; we're facing a tiger for time; we are facing a tiger for energy; now with the lockdowns and people not having househelp, everybody's doing their full day's work and then they also have to take care of the house and like their kids and their spouses and it's just never-ending, right people don't seem to be getting time off at all. So this kind of stress then starts impacting other organ systems.
So your adrenals first go, once the adrenals go then goes to your thyroid, your thyroid and your pituitary. So the entire chain of events in your body starts creating more and more dysfunction. So we've had one case of this person, whose blood sugar levels are optimal for a while and then every time she experiences a stressor, her blood sugar levels just shoot up, right, nothing else changes, the diet is on par, she's taking all the supplements, everything is great. But the stress that comes from the external world immediately triggers a blood sugar level to go up because the body says, Oh my god, I have to be prepared. Let's release some glucose so that we have more energy to fight and deal with the stress. So that's how stress can create disease.
We have many real-life examples where we've seen that happen even with BP, if everything else is taken under control, and then Stress is the only thing that's impacting that person we've seen BP shoot up. So stress is the fifth root cause of why people can get sick.
I have planned on sharing a few case studies, but let's see if we have enough time for that. So I'm going to talk about this guy. His name is Amit. He came to us because he had severe acid reflux, and he had high BP, and he was on acidity medications for nearly 12 years and BP medication for 10 years. And all that we needed to do in his case was we had to find out his root cause right. So what was really happening in his case was his liver enzymes were short, his liver was completely dysfunctional. He had other things as well. He had an H pylori infection, but then as we started fixing these root causes, right. So this is what we saw in his blood test as he started fixing these root causes. His BP started stabilizing. We had to treat his acid reflux with an antibiotic with H. pylori because it was just not responding to herbs. And once the H pylori infection went away, his acidity disappeared. And he couldn't believe it that he had taken acidity medication like antacids, EPI’s twice a day for 12 years. And he didn't need to anymore, right. So that was just gone. And then his BP also started stabilizing. So he went off all his medications once we started resolving his root causes.
There was this lady who came to us with like she said, she was overweight and she wanted to lose weight. And she said she also had lethargy and depression and all of that and she was in pain like her thighs and calves would ache a lot. So what happened with her is we discovered that her thyroid was really dysfunctional. So once we started fixing her thyroid and there were reasons why they here thyroid were dysfunctional right, as we can see here. There were heavy metals. There was epstein barr virus; she had protein malnourishment; she was deficient in Iodine so there were so many things going on; multiple nutrient deficiencies. As we started fixing that she started losing weight her depression literally went away because people don't know that sometimes that feeling of low life is not worth living can just happen because your thyroid is not working with her lethargy went away; her pain miraculously disappeared at all. Because we found the root cause of what was creating her health problems.
Now, I want to now quickly come to food because we don't have time but most of us don't understand what is really the purpose of food. We use it like you know, a social networking system we use it as a bonding system. Now with lockdown so we have so many chefs and unknown chefs that have come out from the kitchens but people use food as a lot of things other than what it is supposed to be.
People use food to you know, get over their boredom so they will become creative with food and they will feel like food is a good entertainment mechanism. So many American sitcoms, for example, have shown that you know, when there's a breakup, then the girl goes and takes a tub of ice cream from the fridge and starts eating. And it looks really interesting and she feels better. About being misled by the media about what food is supposed to do. So we use food as an emotional backup system. But food is none of that right.
So when you eat something, let's say you eat a mango, okay, that mango is going to get broken down first in your mouth, it's going to be digested by the enzymes that are there in your mouth, it's going to go through your stomach, it's going to get broken down even more in your stomach and it's going to go to the small intestine. And then with all the digestive juices, it's going to be broken down, absorbed and released into the rest of your body. What is going to get released into your body; glucose is going to go there and you're going to get some vitamins. You're going to get some minerals; you're going to get a lot of water; things are going to be released from the mango into your body. Now your cells and your genes in these cells are going to use this information to say oh, this is what has come to me. Can I create health with this right?
So it is literally like, you can actually manipulate your biological software by what you put into your mouth, you can actually change your genes by whatever it is that you're eating, which is why a lot of people when they come to thrive, and after three months, they'll say that it feels like they reverse it right like, they really look like that they are 10 years younger cousin or sister.
Because what eating the right food does when you start giving in the right information into your body when you stop sending in frankenfood when instead of a soda, you want to drink clean, filtered water instead of a sandwich you want to eat may be really well made if you're plant-based then maybe a good dal without oil. Some brown rice or maybe you're if you're somebody who's following a carnivore kind of a diet, you want to eat some clean animal protein.
When you do that, then your food is receiving information about health saying, oh, when I eat this, I can use this molecule and create something good out of it. When you send in junk food; junk food is going to create Junk health, and I'm glad they call it junk food. They don't call it something else, but junk food will always create junk health, eating the right food that is right for your body will always create optimal health for you. So one needs to understand that food is information food is not just calories, right? So every bite you eat, everything that you put in your mouth goes in and tells your body whether you want to create health or whether you want to create disease. So that is the role of food and that is how we actually have been able to make the changes right.
So when I speak of how to reverse any particular chronic health disease, whether it is diabetes, right, so first we find out the root causes. Why is this person diabetic? Is it insulin resistance? Is it a deficiency of chromium? Is it the stress, once we find that root cause out then we start working on resolving the root cause and food plays such an important role here. So eating the right kind of food that is right for your body is of vital importance. It is what sends vital energy into your body.
So when I say vital energy, it's like Pranav right? So it is the energy that heals your body. Eating the right food literally creates this energetic imprint in your body that creates health. And, you know, this is what none of the pharma companies will tell you. This is what none of the mainstream like, they just won't tell you that it is so simple to take care of your health by eating the right kind of food.
In fact, I actually don't know if this will work here. So this is what this drug can do right the screen size might be too small for you to see. But this is just an example of an analysis. So we had so many red’s in this person's report. And after like three months, most of the reds got fixed and they became either blue or green. So they did a couple of things. They were still scope for improvement. The rest of them all got fixed. Right?
So this is actually hard evidence data from somebody's blood test showing that just changing what this person was eating and figuring out what this person needed to eat actually brought about a change in their internal health. So why and how do we get misled by food? Okay, this I want everyone to see. Is my screen visible?
Yeah. Okay. So this is the report that I was talking of. I thought my screen was shared. It wasn't so this is the report where you can see there was a change in their blood test. I quickly want to show you how and why we get misled about food.
Played the video of the Snicker advertisement.
So, what an ad like this does is; somewhere they deeply program you into believing that if you're hungry for having an energy crash, a bar of chocolate is the right thing to eat. We have treated so many diabetes people who have come to us and you know they say they carry candies and chocolates in their purses or keep them near their bed at night because if they have hypoglycemic episodes, they just want to make sure they get sugar. It's the worst thing to do for your body to eat something like this when you're lower energy and show you one more, Okay, so this is another ad and what happens is you know now you might be laughing when I'm showing you these things.
Played the video of Maggie Atta Noodles advertisement.
Fully active family. Very, very happy. The family that you want to be like; Everybody is exercising. And then she is serving maggie to her kids. Firstly they are eating without brushing their teeth and then eating dirty things like Maggie and calling it like healthy food. So this is how most of us get misled about food. We watch these ads subconsciously and we get programmed into believing that this thing is a healthy choice.
I have spoken to so many people who say, oats maggie it's healthy or atta noodles; Patanjali atta noodles; it’s healthy, right? So people get misled about what is actually healthy food because of this kind of media managed propaganda, right? So we don't even know what is the right kind of food for us to eat and we eat this stuff because we think we are eating healthy because somebody has been advertising it like that. And that's what's being on our mind. And it leads to disease and then you're left wondering; But I was eating very healthy food, how come I got a disease, right? So this is one way in which disease can be created.
So how to reverse? Always first figure out what is going on in your body. Blood tests are the easiest way to do that, then work on the root causes. And the root cause often tells you what you need to do whether you need to change your eating habits, whether you need to, like bring in some supplements, if you're deficient in vitamin D, or whether you need to, you know, get rid of toxins that have been built up in your body that the root cause analysis will always tell you. So once you find that out, just start working on them. Right. So that is how you reverse any chronic disease. And it's nothing to be afraid of, because you can like we have done this analysis for three months with a lot of people. So that's what I just wanted to talk about.
Now I’ll take the questions that are there in chat.
Q.Does frequent consumption of medicine destroy the gut microbiome?
A. Yes, it does, especially antibiotics. They're like the worst thing you can do to your gut microbiome, sometimes you need them because you could have had a surgery or you could have had an infection that is really severe. And then you need an antibiotic in that case, but they do destroy your gut microbiome. So if you're consuming medicines a lot that not only destroys a gut microbiome, it also impacts your liver function. So then it becomes important to start working on reversing that.
Q. Could you tell us foods to reduce hypothyroid?
A. So we need to first find out what is causing the hypothyroidism right, so is it? Is it due to deficiencies? Is it due to toxins because if it's any of that, then just changing the food is not going to help with the hypothyroid issue. So with thyroid, it's always best to get blood tests done and find out what is really creating that.
Q.Can taking painkillers for periods cause problems?
A. The first thing you need to find out what's creating the pain because periods are not supposed to be painful. If there is pain then it's usually a magnesium deficiency or something else that's happening that's creating so much pain in the body. Periods generally, you know, there is slight discomfort but you're not supposed to experience so much pain that you will need a painkiller. If you're taking a painkiller Yes, of course, it's going to create problems because you know, it goes to the liver for having to process and then there are other compounds that come with it. There are other things that are there in medication that clearly are not good for your health. So always first find out what is the root cause for that pain and then figure out what you can do to reverse that.
Q. A silly question but what about dark chocolate? I have heard many times it's good for health and also for diabetic people. Is there any truth to it?
A. So the thing with chocolate is it usually has sugar and dairy both and both of these are not something that I would advise people to have. Chocolate by itself if you don't have a BP issue it is okay. Because if you do have BP problems and chocolate has caffeine and theobromine, two compounds that can increase BP and there is no evidence to support that dark chocolate is good for diabetic people at all. What is good for diabetic people is finding out what is creating their diabetes and reversing that then you will not be a diabetic person and then maybe you can enjoy dark chocolate without dairy and sugar; you can make with cacao nibs or something like that. But there is no evidence to support the statement that dark chocolate is good for diabetic patients. Yes, chocolate has antioxidants. But you always look at food as a net positive, right? So if all the negatives in that food are making it so bad for your body that whatever one thing that food is going to give to you is not a good thing, then I would consider the food net negative. And the chocolate really becomes specific to each person's health condition because if you have a predisposition towards BP, then that will create health problems.
Q.If BP is normal due to medication we're taking how does it become dangerous as Corona perspective is associated?
A. With medication what you're doing is really suppressing your BP you're not curing your high BP problem. Every pharmaceutical medicine is only suppressing in homeopathy or Ayurveda at least there is a root cause kind of resolution, right? So it also looks at root causes. But most allopathic medicines only suppress the symptoms. So, whatever is triggering your high BP is still a health problem. And then with that high BP, if you do get exposed to the virus and then you know, your body's not able to deal with it, then it becomes a difficult case, right? So always find out what is triggering the BP so that you can get off a BP medication. If BP is normal due to medication, it is just a suppressed case like you know, there's too much noise outside so you close the windows, so it feels like there is no noise but the minute you open the window, again, all that noise is going to come it's like that.
Q.How to reverse pre diabetic condition ?
A. That's really easy. I think I can ping you or if you could just send us your number. We'll help you with that. But pre-diabetic is like it is just a diet we don't even have to put too much effort into. We just look for the root causes. If it is insulin resistance, then that insulin resistance may reverse with the kind of a recommendation that we make with food, and it just really reverses. In fact, we have a research paper that we're publishing sometime next week because we work with so many diabetic cases. And we've actually seen a reversal of diabetes which people can't believe right now even doctors sometimes make fun of me like how you can say diabetes can be reversed, I'm like, I can say that because I have data. So we are publishing our first research paper, where we reverse diabetes in cases with our approach.
Q. Will Himalayan salts cause Iodine deficiency?
A.No, because that iodized salt now which we are getting in the market actually has other additives. So I recommend people not even have that salt because that iodine is not even the most absorbable form. So what we do if we see that Iodine deficiency, we recommend if the person is vegan, then we recommend seaweed and kelp, or dulse flakes, sea vegetables, basically. If the person is not a vegan then we bring in some animal sources for iodine. But switching to Himalayan salts instead of iodized salts will not cause iodine deficiency.
Q. Which food is okay for anxiety?
A. We know that I can't answer that. But I know bananas help because bananas have tryptophan which is an amino acid that is a precursor for a neurotransmitter called serotonin, which helps you be in a state of calm. So bananas are really helpful when it comes to anxiety but always find what is the root cause of anxiety right because, in so many of our cases, we found that the people who have a lot of heavy metal toxins in their body also have anxiety as a
you know, symptoms. So always find out what is the root cause.
Q. Suggest food or diet for reversing pre diabetic?
A. I can’t do that like this, I really have to look at your blood test to see what is creating your pre-diabetes. Because we don't even know what you're eating currently, giving a diet recommendation like this on a call is close to impossible.
Q.What can be done to find the root cause of high BP?
A. Blood test. That is that simple. So you get the test done then Rutuja can have your number also so I can ping you. Get your blood test done. If it's for you that you're asking or if it's for somebody else, get their blood test done. And then we can figure out what's creating that high BP.
Q.So ghee is known to have a lot of medicinal properties in ayurveda, but recent research is showing dairy and diabetes connection?
A. Yes, So we actually put an article on our blog. I'll send that link as well. I'm just taking notes of things to send. So I'll send that link about how dairy can trigger diabetes and I think Indians are predisposed to diabetes-like every blood test that is coming to us now we are seeing insulin resistance and prediabetes. With dairy what happens is very high in saturated fat. So, if you have a genetic predisposition to diabetes then there is a tendency for your food to deposit this fat into cells and it becomes something called intramyocellular fat. Then that intramyocellular fat makes glucose metabolism more difficult. So we have seen cutting out dairy, even ghee. All of that helps really early in bringing down blood sugar levels, but I'll send you the link to that article that we wrote. It's there on the Thrive website.
Q. For people who don't have diabetes and since our ancient you know, thousands of years of Indians using dairy has been known and our parents, our grandparents, they have not had issues with dairy nor have they had issues with grains like wheat. So now that this whole new research is coming up, obviously the cases are raising for diabetes and a lot of autoimmune disorders as well where people are being asked to cut off dairy completely or gluten completely. What is your take on that? So can you comment on that?
A.Sure. So a couple of things are there right. One is See, it's not like our parents are disease-free. Like our parents' generation; Like I'm generalizing, right. I'm speaking of that generation as a whole, like my uncles and aunts and all of them. They are not disease-free, right? They're not living lives where they are actually technically what I would call disease-free. My grandparents on another hand lived pretty long lives. And, you know, they were like walking until the last maybe the last few months. Yes, they still died of degenerative disease. Others were like the body started giving up.
But it was not the same state that it is in my parents' generation. Right. So one of the things that have changed is our environment has changed a lot. There's a higher exposure to toxins. The kind of food that my grandparents ate was very different from; still, my parents didn't have the exposure to the kind of food we eat and now our kids eat right so like KFC and McDonald's really didn't exist in our parent's generation. So our grandparents really ate more natural whole foods as a part of their everyday life. Sugar was a limited accessory thing right only in case of festivals, they would make something sweet so that in some way explains how they've led a pretty healthy rise and even ghee and always not in abundance. So if you look at Ayurveda because I have done a talk with the Ayurveda practitioner about a month ago, and she is a whole food plant-based she's a vegan. Right. So the question that was like, you know, ghee was there in Ayurveda treatment practice also. So what is the deal with that?
And she said ghee was one of the things that you could carry with you for long distances without getting spoiled, so it was a good source of calories in that time and age where people would mostly go by foot, and you know, they didn't have the luxury of cars and all of that. So, ghee was used as a high-calorie travel companion or it was used as a solvent for like because Ayurveda was all about plant-based compounds. And a lot of plant-based compounds are alkaloids in nature, right? So it needs a fatty base to dissolve. So she said those are the two purposes like he was used and we don't live that kind of life anymore. We live extremely sedentary lives.
And then my perspective of how much exposure to toxins has increased. The food itself has changed, right so wheat was not an indigenous grain, to begin with. In India, we had millets mostly and we had rice. Like the South was all rice; in the northeast was rice; in western-like Maharashtra we had millets and in the north and Punjab and all it was mostly corn and you know the rice there was lesser but wheat came with the British wheat was not one of our indigenous grains and even then that wheat might still have been okay but what wheat has undergone is it's gone through a lot of genetic modification because it's a very high commercial needed crop right like wheat is used in so many industries apart from food; so like even if you go to buy cashew you will have wheat coated cashew; like the roasted cashew right, we call those roasted nuts. So wheat is a very high commercial yield crop and because it's that profitable, they don't want to leave it to the vagaries of nature that it is drought then there is no crop, right? So they've genetically modified wheat, it's become drought resistant, it's become pest-resistant, but then that way it is not something that's going to work well with our genes because You can't be in genetically modified food and expect your genes to not react to it.
So that's why now wheat is a problem. And even if people are eating Ever wheat, I'm still seeing they have issues that are very few wheat insensitive people. And I think it's just a matter of time because something will show up because it's not just gluten and wheat. There is also gliadin which is there in wheat, which can actually cause cell ruptures and cell damage. So it is quite an inflammatory food. And that's why I've seen like, even in our protocols we take people who have wheat and dairy in the first week itself and this can experience what so you might not know what it feels like to avoid it until you avoid it completely. And then you eat it occasionally and you say, Oh, this is what happens when I eat this. But I think it's the life we're living now and the environment that's making these more troublesome for us.
Then Let’s end the session here.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Bye-Bye
