#15 - The Real Science Behind Fixing Your Gut Health With Dr Gabrielle Fundaro

🎙️ Unlock the Secrets of Gut Health with Dr. Gabrielle Fundaro!

In this episode of Youthful Aging Secrets, Dr. Gabrielle Fundaro unpacks the mysteries of the gut microbiome and its vital role in overall health. From the truth about gut diversity to debunking pseudoscience myths, this episode is packed with actionable insights to enhance your well-being. 🌟

Topics Covered:
👉 What gut health truly means
👉 The surprising parallels between your gut and the ocean’s ecosystem
👉 Why “more diversity” isn’t always better for your microbiome
👉 The dangers of pseudoscience in health
👉 How to build a healthier relationship with food
👉 Dr. Gabrielle’s groundbreaking Trust and Nourish Method

Dr. Gabrielle also shares her personal journey, including overcoming an eating disorder and redefining what it means to live a balanced, healthy life. Whether you're curious about gut health, fighting misinformation, or seeking tips for sustainable wellness, this episode is for you!
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Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Trailer
• 1:29 Introduction
• 3:09 Understanding Gut Microbiome
• 10:02 What Is Gut Health?
• 11:42 The Role of Gut Diversity
• 20:36 Impact of Antibiotics on Gut Health
• 27:42 Trust and Nourish Method
• 44:30 Realizing Changes in Appetite with Age
• 45:42 Struggles with Caloric Tracking
• 53:55 Behavioral Focus Over Weight Tracking
• 56:28 Spotting Pseudoscience in Nutrition
• 1:04:30 Controversial Nutrition Questions
• 1:23:01 The Impact of Stress on Health
• 1:32:48 Supplements Vs pharmaceutical drugs
• 1:40:19 Debunking Detoxes And Cleanses
• 1:40:58 Gut Health During Pregnancy and Menopause
• 1:46:56 Behavioral Tips For Better Gut Health
• 1:51:55 The Vegan vs. Carnivore Diet Debate
• 1:54:24 The Importance of Social Connections for Longevity
• 1:55:45 Conclusion and Where to Find More Information

Transcript

Gabrielle Fundaro

[00:00:00] What if your gut holds the key to better health? The gut microbiome is as important as the ecosystem of the ocean. We don't know how many different species live in the earth's water systems. We have not yet been able to identify all of the species like groups in the gut. So what is gut health? I actually ended up coming up with what I call the three D's of gut health.

[00:00:25] And that's digestion, disease, diversity. If you compare yourself to another person who lives in another country, you will not look the same. Is focusing on the skill doing more harm than good? They're making positive lifestyle changes. Their health markers are improving. Blood pressure's gone down, cholesterol markers.

[00:00:43] Those are all improving. Does the weight matter? How pseudoscience? It can take a lot of thinking. scientific literacy to spot the peddlers of pseudoscience. There are people with credentials who are operating so far [00:01:00] outside of their scope that they may not even know they're wrong. Is someone selling you a problem?

[00:01:06] So you'll buy their solution. Do you have an unhealthy relationship with food? I struggled with an eating disorder since graduate school. I thought if I'm going to be in the food industry, Fitness world. I need to look the part or people will not take me seriously and it was having a profoundly negative impact on me Check out episode 15 with Gabrielle Fundaro at youthfulagingsecrets.com

[00:01:29] Ricardo: Welcome to Youthful Aging Secrets. I'm your host, Ricardo Vasquez, and today's guest is Dr. Gabriel Fundaro. Dr. Gabrielle is a leading expert on the gut microbiome and its role in metabolic diseases linked to obesity. She is a former assistant professor of exercise science at the University of Georgia and spent four years coaching with Renaissance Periodization, which is one of the world's largest and most respected evidence based diet and strength programs.

[00:01:58] Ricardo: She developed her own coaching [00:02:00] framework, redefined what gut health really means, and founded the groundbreaking trust and nourish method, which is helping people achieve their health goals without obsessively tracking over macros, which was inspired by her personal journey, overcoming an eating disorder.

[00:02:16] Ricardo: In this episode, you'll learn what gut health actually means. Why our gut resembles the ocean's ecosystem, the surprising truth about gut diversity myths, why energy balance matters more than any single macronutrient, how to spot pseudoscience aka bullshit, plus we tackle controversial topics such as seed oils, artificial sweeteners, GMOs, chemophobia, and much more.

[00:02:43] Ricardo: Before we dive in, be sure to grab your free gift in this episode's description. Also, I need to ask you for a favor. Please hit follow, leave a quick rating or review. And if comments are available, I'd love to hear from you. These actions are called trust signals. They tell platforms to share this [00:03:00] podcast with more people like yourself.

[00:03:02] Ricardo: It only takes a moment, but it makes a huge impact. I can't do this without you. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Let's get it.

[00:03:09] Ricardo: Hey, Dr. Gabriel Fundaro. 

[00:03:11] Ricardo: Who are you and how did you get to where you are today?

[00:03:17] Gabrielle: I love the existential questions right in the beginning. Who are you? Um, uh, But no, I am a real, , human person. I have my doctorate in, , human metabolism and I studied the role of the gut microbiome in metabolic diseases. Linked to obesity and kind of the standard American diet. That was 10 years ago now.

[00:03:39] Gabrielle: , and I have my bachelor's in exercise science. And so after grad school, I went on to teach, at a university in Georgia and I was an assistant professor for four years in exercise science. And I really shifted my focus more to sport, nutrition, anatomy and fizz. And in my last year of teaching, I was brought on to [00:04:00] the Renaissance periodization team as an RP coach and after a year of trying to do both at the same time, I decided I was going to have to pick one and stick to it because it wasn't going to be feasible for me to do both, , as well as I wanted to, and I had fallen in love with coaching and the type of connections that I was forming with clients.

[00:04:19] Gabrielle: And seeing, how they were able to take, the information, , and the coaching that I was providing, and really grow from that. And so I ended up resigning instead of going up for promotion and tenure and went the self employment route. I traveled and spoke internationally for about a year and a half after that.

[00:04:39] Gabrielle: And I was with RP for, I want to say, close to four years. And then in the last year, I really started to have a shift in my values and philosophy around coaching and what I wanted to help clients with. And so I ended up going my own way and focusing more on, weight neutral, focuses and focusing more on, [00:05:00] a comprehensive approach to wellness.

[00:05:01] Gabrielle: I developed a comprehensive coaching framework as well. It was back in 2019, 2020. I was still talking about gut health. I was about like a 50 50 split. split of, podcasts and talks about gut health versus behavior change. And that was really, that's been my MO for the last few years.

[00:05:18] Gabrielle: But in the last year, again, I decided that I needed to really focus on one area. And as as much as I know gut health is very popular, I wasn't my philosophy, I think I had mentioned before when we chatted, I'm very conservative in my interpretation of the literature. Yeah. And I knew that I wasn't giving people like the exciting information that they wanted about how to like, optimize their microbiome or, like special foods to eat or things like that.

[00:05:46] Gabrielle: And, there are very few strong recommendations that we can make. And I decided that my passion and my ability to really make a meaningful difference still would lie in, helping people avoid being [00:06:00] taken advantage of by diet culture and fads and whatnot. Also in the health, the gut health space, but more so in terms of body image relationship with food, things like macro tracking and, the constant pursuit of the leanest possible physique.

[00:06:14] Gabrielle: And so that's what I've been. More focused on in the last year. 

[00:06:18] Ricardo: Were you always interested in the gut microbiome or gut health the idea of diet and eating how did you find your path into that world?

[00:06:27] Gabrielle: No, oddly enough, like I never did sports. I was not athletically inclined in any way when I was younger. When I went away to college, really it was probably like the, unfortunately it was like the start of my body dysmorphia and disordered eating patterns. that brought me into the gym and started to draw my attention toward nutrition and weight modification and physique.

[00:06:50] Gabrielle: And I actually started college as a music major. I wanted to be a music therapist and I had been singing and focused on, on music for all of my [00:07:00] educational career. And even like an undergrad, my scholarship was based on my application around music and what it meant to people. But after my first semester, I wasn't really in love with music theory and I had really taken a legging to the gym.

[00:07:14] Gabrielle: And I was really great at biology, which was a surprise to me because I was brought up with a lot of negative messaging about what women are good at and not good at and science was one of the things that I was not supposed to be good at. So I never even Considered that as an option But I loved it and I loved physics and I thought gosh, is there a thing that I can study?

[00:07:35] Gabrielle: That's like exercising and also biology and there is it's exercise science And in my last year or no my maybe my junior year I think I started to tutor the kids in my anatomy and phys course because it was an advanced Course to get everything done in one semester, like a whole year of anatomy and Phys, and it just clicked with me and I found it fascinating.

[00:07:57] Gabrielle: And so my classmates would regularly ask me [00:08:00] to tutor them, and that's when I realized, wow, I really love educating. Like I, this is, I think what I want to do. I'm doing it for free all the time. Why not? Get paid for it. So I decided I was gonna have to go to grad school to get my doctorate to be a professor and in grad school, I actually started studying skeletal muscle hypertrophy, like the true gym rat science nerd crossover.

[00:08:20] Gabrielle: That's the place you want to be. Like, how can I scientifically get jacked? And along the way, I what I started to our lab was focused on skeletal muscle physiology and metabolism. But a lot of the times we're using a model based on endotoxin. And that was coming from the gut microbiome. And so I started to really get curious about what's like the source of the endotoxin.

[00:08:44] Gabrielle: And if this is causing problems at the skeletal muscle tissue level, is there something that we can do before it binds to these receptors? But we didn't have funding in that area. And so I was just constantly asking my PI, is there something we can do to look at the gut [00:09:00] and the microbes? And lo and behold, after a year or so, we did get some funding from a company that was producing a probiotic.

[00:09:08] Gabrielle: And so that was my initially my side project. But there were some issues with the sample containment in the main project. And we essentially had to scrap that. But thank goodness I had this plan B and I ended up studying the gut microbiome. And I was like, I was the first person in the lab to go that route in a really heavy way.

[00:09:27] Gabrielle: And try to actually take samples from the gut and look at, non muscle tissue receptors and things like that. And so it was just a serendipitous event. And it was when I decided to leave higher ed that Mike is retell recommended. Why don't you start talking about gut health on social media?

[00:09:45] Gabrielle: This was back in 2017 and not a lot of people were talking about it. And I was like, ah, I don't know. And he's don't you have your doctorate in that? And so I thought, okay, I guess I can, Try my best and then yeah, you know a few years later. That's been like [00:10:00] I've been on many podcasts talking about it

[00:10:01] Ricardo: . What is gut health?

[00:10:03] Gabrielle: That's a great question. There's not a real answer for what is gut health. And so I made one up. Because I decided I have the training and experience in this area. But I've been asked that so many times on podcasts. And I know, for, years, I was like, ah, there's not really a definition.

[00:10:17] Gabrielle: I guess maybe people are talking about, how they feel digestive wise. But I actually ended up coming up with what I call the three D's of gut health. and that's digestion. So that's both the objective process of digestion and the subjective. So objective is maybe the imperceptible, but usually it is also perceptible because it leads to subjective kind of symptoms, but the ability of your gastrointestinal tract to break down and assimilate nutrients.

[00:10:44] Gabrielle: And then the subjective experience is how do you feel when you're digesting your food? Do you feel comfortable? Do you have gas, bloating, things like that? The second D is disease. And that refers to either the absence or management of a functional [00:11:00] or organic disease. So a functional disease is one that affects the behavior, the activities of the GI tract without affecting the tissues.

[00:11:09] Gabrielle: So irritable bowel syndrome is an example, a very common example of a functional bowel disease because the tissues appear normal, but there is a dysfunction in the physiology. And then organic diseases affect the tissue, which also then affects the function. And so one example would be inflammatory bowel disease.

[00:11:27] Gabrielle: So in that case, you do have ulcerations and inflammation, and of course that's also going to affect the function. And then the presence of a GI disease can also affect digestion, both the objective and subjective aspects. And then the third D, is diversity, and this is the most abstract, just conceptual part of gut health.

[00:11:47] Gabrielle: And that refers to the actual microbiome. So the microbiome are is the microbes themselves and their genetic material because we can actually look at those sort of separately. And [00:12:00] diversity refers to the richness or the number of different kind of species like groups that we have, and then also the evenness.

[00:12:07] Gabrielle: So the relative proportion. And a lot of times people say, Oh, the more diversity, the better. And if we do a study and then the participants have a higher level of diversity, then we assume that's a good thing. And we think that if there's an imbalance in the diversity of the microbiome, then that person has what we call dysbiosis.

[00:12:27] Gabrielle: And these are actually oversimplifications and misunderstandings of how dynamic and amorphous diversity actually is, because we can measure that in several different ways. We have different metrics. That we can use then to interpret the measurements and we don't actually have a right amount of diversity.

[00:12:49] Gabrielle: We don't have a model for the right proportions of different microbes and the idea that dysbiosis is a root cause of a disease [00:13:00] is created from a really a circular logic problem that we assume that a person with a disease must have dysbiosis. And when we study their microbiome and compare it to a person without the disease, we say, oh, there's a difference between these two groups, and so these people with the disease, there must be something wrong with their microbiome, and so we say that there's dysbiosis.

[00:13:21] Gabrielle: And then because they have dysbiosis, then they have the disease. So I prefer not to use those terms in practical ways as though, you can measure an imbalance or that we know how much diversity is good. So I always like to preface that, that like we can talk very clearly about disease prevention and digestion.

[00:13:40] Gabrielle: We cannot speak very clearly about diversity for a number of different reasons. methodological reasons I mentioned, and also the fact that everyone's microbiome is as unique really is their fingerprint. So to say, if you compare yourself, you're a very healthy person to another very healthy person who lives in another country, [00:14:00] you will not look the same.

[00:14:01] Gabrielle: And then do we decide that one of you has dysbiosis? So that's where the problem lies with that. But I include that as the third D because it's something that so many people are thinking about when they are talking about gut health. 

[00:14:13] Ricardo: I've never heard that before, that's very interesting. So with respect to the gut microbiome,

[00:14:17] Ricardo: How important is it for you, knowing that, diversity is not something that you can really count on,

[00:14:25] Ricardo: as far as, everybody's different.

[00:14:27] Ricardo: How important is gut microbiome for you?

[00:14:30] Gabrielle: The gut microbiome is as important as the ecosystem of the ocean. If, if, although we cannot name, we cannot identify, we don't know how many different species live in the Earth's water systems, we know that it's absolutely crucial. And it might be that you know we are were making assumptions based on models that we can create.

[00:14:57] Gabrielle: But we don't [00:15:00] know exactly which part is the most important A species dies out. What will the downstream effect of that be? We can make some guesses. We can look at the Great Barrier Reef and say there's an issue here. And even the Great Barrier Reef has a microbiome. And we can say, there are some changes over time to the microbiome and the health of the Great Barrier Reef.

[00:15:19] Gabrielle: And that's probably problematic for the global ecosystem. That's really the best analogy that I can give because we have not yet been able to identify all of the species like groups in the gut. There are over 200, 000 genes that we've identified. There are hundreds or maybe more than 1000 different species like groups based on our estimations based on what we have been able to identify.

[00:15:47] Gabrielle: And we have not yet been able to map the whole genome of the microbiome because It's so large and it's so complex. So when we think about how recently we mapped the human genome and how we still can't hack that, in a really [00:16:00] meaningful way, we are years, if not decades behind that in terms of mapping the gut microbiome.

[00:16:07] Gabrielle: So what is important? But to say that it's important is different from saying, Oh, it's important. And also we can modify it intentionally in very meaningful ways and be very certain that a specific intervention will have a specific outcome that will then affect the host of the health in a specific way.

[00:16:25] Ricardo: Is that why when you travel, they caution you don't drink the water at this particular place or this type of food? Is it because of the diversity in the gut microbiome? If you're introducing new bacteria or things like that?

[00:16:37] Ricardo: Just out of curiosity, because you have to be careful even with something as minuscule as an ice cube. You can get really sick, and

[00:16:43] Ricardo: it's happened to me. 

[00:16:44] Gabrielle: That's actually a great example of talking about how a change in diversity and an increase in diversity. does not necessarily mean that something good is happening. So you are indeed introducing new microbes into your gut when you eat [00:17:00] something that's been contaminated or you drink water that has been contaminated with a pathogenic microbe with a microbe that can cause disease.

[00:17:08] Gabrielle: Now we are naturally inhabited by a number of different potentially pathogenic microbes like C like various E. coli staphylococcus. There are species, there are subspecies within these genera that can cause disease, and the they become problematic when their relative abundance is high enough in your gut that they can overcome your immune defenses and they can overcome competition with other microbes.

[00:17:37] Gabrielle: And that's when they'll start producing what we call virulence factors. They'll start producing the toxins or the compounds that will then cause illness. But bacteria can do what's called quorum sensing. They can take a census and count. Who and identify who all is here. They communicate with your immune system and they're not going to bother wasting energy producing these virulence factors if it's not going to [00:18:00] benefit them in some way.

[00:18:01] Gabrielle: If they can't out compete another group of microbes, they're not going to bother. So that's the case with the microbes that are natural residents of your gut. But there Giardia, for example, that when introduced will overpower your immune defenses and will outcompete other microbes and will produce those virulence factors and you will get very ill.

[00:18:25] Gabrielle: And in that case you need to be treated with an antibiotic because your natural defenses will not be able to resolve that. Now there is a change then in the diversity of your microbiome. It's going to look different because now you've introduced a new species like group. And so you could potentially say, Oh, wow, there's a higher level of diversity here.

[00:18:47] Gabrielle: If you're looking at something like species richness, if you're looking at something like evenness, you might not say that it's more diverse because that depends on the relative abundance of different populations. And if you have a really virulent [00:19:00] competitive group of microbes that can out compete the other groups, then those other groups will die out and then you'll have a abnormally high relative abundance.

[00:19:09] Gabrielle: Now that is to say, like a relative abundance again is relative to whatever you had going on before. So again, we don't have a way to quantify what's the right amount of these microbes? But when it comes to something like an infectious disease like that in some cases you don't need a very high microbial load to get very sick.

[00:19:31] Gabrielle: And when you take an antibiotic, the effects on your microbiome can be very high. in some cases be very significant and can last for a long time. If you're taking a very potent broad spectrum antibiotic, if you're taking one that's not so potent and it's more specific to a, gram positive or gram negative bacteria then the impact will be less significant and probably won't last as long.

[00:19:53] Gabrielle: But in that case, you may or may not bounce back to your baseline microbial community [00:20:00] and whether you do or not may or may not be a problem. You may reestablish a relative homeostasis with a new ecosystem of microbes and the functionality can be improved. be maintained. Because one of the nice things about microbes is they, there's a lot of redundancy.

[00:20:16] Gabrielle: A lot of them can do the same thing. Even if one group dies out, then another group can potentially step in and take their place, which is why it's important not to just look at who's there, but also the the taxonomic diversity, but also the functional diversity of, how many different genes are there available to be expressed and perform different functions

[00:20:37] Ricardo: I don't know if You follow grappling at all, like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, anything like that.

[00:20:41] Gabrielle: Oh, back in the day in college. Yeah.

[00:20:43] Ricardo: yeah, okay.

[00:20:44] Ricardo: There, arguably the best of all time, Gordan Ryan He's a no gi competitor. He got staph infections repeatedly. And every time he would get staph

[00:20:53] Ricardo: infections, he'd go on, really

[00:20:55] Ricardo: aggressive antibiotics.

[00:20:57] Ricardo: He had to go on more and more aggressive ones [00:21:00] because he just kept getting it.

[00:21:01] Ricardo: As a result, he developed severe gut issues to the point where he's semi retired.

[00:21:07] Ricardo: And so he struggled a lot with it. It's very documented. He talks a lot about it.

[00:21:11] Ricardo: Extreme nausea, can barely eat.

[00:21:13] Ricardo: Just a lot of issues.

[00:21:14] Ricardo: He also takes like performance enhancing drugs, which I'm sure didn't help.

[00:21:18] Ricardo: I don't know the connection with that and the gut health and all that, but I'm, from what I've understood is it does impact your gut as well. You would know better. But, anyhow, I was just wondering for a situation where, let's say you get an infection and you need to take antibiotics or you'd be wise to take it, how does one then quote unquote repopulate the good bacteria or what do you do during the course of antibiotics and post antibiotic treatment because I know anytime I've taken antibiotics you feel like shit

[00:21:50] Ricardo: During and after and so it's one of those things where it's solving the problem in the short term But what about the problems that it creates in the long term? 

[00:21:58] Gabrielle: Oh, yeah, absolutely. It [00:22:00] can be difficult with those recurring Infections. You end up with with antimicrobial resistant microbes with, bacteria that have evolved very quickly because within just one generation, they don't have to reproduce to share genes. They can share genes horizontally, like with the bacteria next to them.

[00:22:22] Gabrielle: So if you have one bacteria that has antibiotic resistant genes, it can share them with another bacteria. Now that bacteria also can resist those antibiotics. So I, and I am completely pro antibiotic use as indicated by a doctor. That's part of the reason why they recommend, you have to complete the whole series.

[00:22:40] Gabrielle: You don't finish them early because now those more resilient bacteria have survived and they can then pass on the genes, and you end up with you've made this antibiotic ineffective for yourself and sometimes for other people as well because These genes then can enter the environment.

[00:22:58] Gabrielle: They enter the [00:23:00] waterways and then can be passed on to others. And so that's part of the reason why we have things like MRSA. It's a medication resistant form of staph. Sometimes, like I mentioned, it really depends on the antibiotic that you're taking. And in some cases, people can take an antibiotic and they have no side effects, they feel fine.

[00:23:17] Gabrielle: In other cases, people might experience some GI distress. And the best studied probiotic for that is actually not a bacteria, it is a fungus, it's a yeast called S. boulardii, Saccharomyces boulardii. And that seems to be fairly effective for helping to reduce antibiotic associated diarrhea and also traveler's diarrhea as well for helping to prevent it.

[00:23:40] Gabrielle: Once you get traveler's diarrhea, it's not going to help you very much which is why it's so important to just practice good hygiene. And that's with like being on the mat, everything like making sure the mat is super clean, practicing very good hygiene so that you don't give those microbes a chance to enter a, some little tiny scratch that you can't see.

[00:23:59] Gabrielle: [00:24:00] So you know, you're not introducing them into your food and whatnot. So hygiene goes a really long way. After the fact there's not a ton of research on, there's not enough research on every type of antibiotic and, looking at all different baseline microbiomes to say, Oh, this antibiotic is definitely going to have this effect in a person and for this long, which is why I say the effects can last from weeks to months or years.

[00:24:25] Gabrielle: But in the studies that have looked at intentionally giving a group antibiotics and then seeing what helps them to get back to something like baseline. And probiotics are not necessarily going to be helpful for that because in many cases you're taking, a single strain or even if you're taking something with 10 different strains of probiotics, in your gut you have at least 400 different species like groups that all have multiple strains or subspecies.

[00:24:57] Gabrielle: You're not going to be able, there is no [00:25:00] probiotic that completely will repopulate the GI the microbiome. But you might not even have to do that. Like I mentioned, maybe you can introduce groups that will replace the functionality of a group that was lost. The best practice seems to be actually just going back to the lifestyle that you had before.

[00:25:20] Gabrielle: If you were already exercising regularly, eating plenty of fruits and vegetables and whole grains and whatnot. If you're already doing the things that are linked to not only a more diverse microbiome, but also measurable health outcomes. That seems to be the best approach to get you back to basically what you had before.

[00:25:40] Gabrielle: There is, I wish I could remember his name, it's a researcher, it might be Colin, oh my gosh, the name escapes me. But he has said something to the effect of you have the microbiome you deserve. You have earned the microbiome that you have because it, although it is influenced heavily by species and by geographic location, it's very heavily [00:26:00] influenced by lifestyle factors.

[00:26:01] Gabrielle: So whatever you're doing beforehand, if that was linked to positive health outcomes, do that. Probably don't take a huge amount of probiotics because you don't know that it's going to be beneficial. And if you're not having anything like antibiotic associated diarrhea then there is actually no evidence based probiotic to take just to repopulate the gut.

[00:26:23] Gabrielle: It doesn't exist yet. The other option is, and I am actually not recommending this, but this is the other thing that people have done is an autologous fecal transplant. That's a fecal transplant from your own stool sample before the antibiotics. But these fecal transplants are processed. It's not something that you just make in your blender at home.

[00:26:44] Gabrielle: In the same way that, fecal transplants from other people can help to treat things like C. Diff. Those are processed in a medical facility and are made as safe as possible. So it's not something that we would want. It's not a DIY thing because you can introduce very harmful [00:27:00] microbes and become very ill in the same way that you wouldn't want someone's stool sample to be in your food.

[00:27:05] Gabrielle: Don't take it as a supplement. Mhm.

[00:27:10] Ricardo: So yeah, okay. 

[00:27:11] Gabrielle: Mhm.

[00:27:12] Ricardo: So don't eat someone's shit, basically, in a way.

[00:27:15] Gabrielle: Yes. Yes, exactly. That's exactly it. Yeah, 

[00:27:17] Ricardo: There's these weird cults now, like they talk about drinking your own urine

[00:27:20] Ricardo: I don't know man, what's 

[00:27:22] Gabrielle: Yeah, especially after letting it like ferment, because

[00:27:25] Ricardo: And they're, these guys are quote unquote experts, and they have millions of followers, 

[00:27:31] Ricardo: and they're talking about urine therapy and

[00:27:33] Gabrielle: Yes, they will inject it. Yeah, they'll Yeah, it's the creativity of the of humankind knows no bounds. 

[00:27:42] Ricardo: I did a little research into your work, of course,

[00:27:45] Ricardo: and I just want to segue into the trust and nourish method.

[00:27:50] Ricardo: You have written a lot about that. I want to know, 

[00:27:52] Ricardo: what is the trust and nourish method?

[00:27:54] Gabrielle: That has been a recent naming of a process and an approach that I've [00:28:00] had for several years now. I mentioned that, and I really started to move away from macros based physique focused coaching in about 2019. I had struggled with body image with with an eating disorder since graduate school.

[00:28:15] Gabrielle: And I mentioned to earlier, like I started macro tracking when I was 18 or 19, and it became the norm for me. And I tried many different diets, and I was constantly in pursuit of, like the leanest possible physique because I thought if I'm gonna be in the fitness world, if I'm gonna be, a personal trainer I need to look the part or people will not take me seriously.

[00:28:35] Gabrielle: And so I was really internalizing all of these messages without realizing it. And it was having a profoundly negative impact on me. And I went through treatment for the eating disorder, all outpatient and when I got to my mid twenties, I was in a very good place. And then I decided to do a physique show.

[00:28:52] Gabrielle: And so around 27, my eating disorder rebounded in a big way. And I noticed, at the same time, [00:29:00] like a couple years after that, I was starting to work with clients and I noticed that they were sharing a lot of the same concerns and the same thoughts that had been troubling me for so many years.

[00:29:11] Gabrielle: And at the same, like all, there was a culmination of factors. I was also seeing a lot of people have discussions and debates about intuitive eating at the time. And I don't know if it's an ADHD thing for me, but if someone's going to argue something I want to know where did you get your sources from?

[00:29:30] Gabrielle: What's the real answer here? And so I started to read more about it and actually went into the literature. And that's when I started to learn more about the issues with physique based coaching and really Helping people, helping quote unquote, assisting people in changing their bodies so that they will like their appearance more and conflating that with actually improving their body image or actually improving their self esteem and self worth.

[00:29:58] Gabrielle: Those are not the same [00:30:00] things, but that's what I was marketing. That's what I was selling and that's what I was doing and I was running into the same issues. And I started to learn more about the benefits of intuitive eating and just weight neutral approaches in general. And I wrote a few articles with one of my good friends just out of the I had a, I don't know, I was just on a mission to be like, I want people to actually know what they're talking about when they're having these debates.

[00:30:24] Gabrielle: I want them to see that there are benefits to weight neutral approaches, and there are risks to intentional physique change. And then I was invited onto the Iron Culture podcast to talk about it, because Eric Helms has spoken about this with physique competitors for years, and has highlighted the issues with, especially, normalizing macro tracking and this really extreme approach for everyday people like the moms that we're working with and whatnot.

[00:30:52] Gabrielle: And I started to see this marketing as being somewhat predatory. We're trying to make sure that [00:31:00] women feel bad about their bodies, especially postpartum so that they will want to work with us to change their bodies and then they'll feel better about themselves. The issue with that is it's conditional.

[00:31:10] Gabrielle: It's based entirely on whether or not they like their appearance. And the appearance is going to change and if we're getting them to these very lean physiques with unsustainable methods They will not sustain them and because of our kind of set of cultural beliefs in the u. s That influence cultural beliefs in other parts of the world We look at a person who has lost weight and say that is a successful good Person like they have good character traits and abilities that's a person that I want to be and we look at a person in a large body or someone who has gained weight and we say that person is lazy, that person doesn't care.

[00:31:45] Gabrielle: That's not a person that I want to be. And so instead of looking at weight change as a normal physiological response to energy balance, we look at it as a measure of someone's character and worth and we internalize those beliefs. And I didn't [00:32:00] want to contribute to that anymore. And I went completely away from that type of coaching.

[00:32:06] Gabrielle: And I moved toward the only, and I haven't even done this very much, the only type of intentional weight loss that I agree to coach is for a weight class athlete that is in a good place with their relationship with food. for whom a weight modification would absolutely have a positive impact, would give them a competitive advantage without having, potential negative impact.

[00:32:28] Gabrielle: But even my approach to weight modification is a risk management approach because it, It's like a contact sport. There are risks inherent to the pursuit of intentional weight loss, and we can do our best as coaches to try and mitigate those risks and not contribute to them even more. So the trust and nourish method came from approach that I called RP eating like RPE.

[00:32:51] Gabrielle: Eating that I named back in like 2021 for a kabuki education week talk and then a piece that I wrote, I think for barbend talking about [00:33:00] how you're using R. P. E. in the gym. You have the ability to interpret your internal signals and use that biofeedback to adjust your training either within one session or day to day.

[00:33:13] Gabrielle: And Mike Tushar was the person who really developed this. He's out of reactive training systems. And he faced a lot of the same kind of backlash that I did. People are like, Oh, you're just, training based on how you feel that day, like emotionally. And it's no, that's not it at all. You are still making informed decisions.

[00:33:30] Gabrielle: Evidence based decisions. But you're doing that without an external yeah, you have to 85 percent today or you have to eat, like track on your app that you ate 120 grams of protein. In this case many people who are in need of more. I should say many people who have been tracking for years.

[00:33:49] Gabrielle: already have a Rolodex of macro information in their heads. You know the sources of protein and energy dense carbohydrates and so on. [00:34:00] If macro tracking is feeling like a a crutch, a compulsion, an obligation, and is reducing the quality of your life, then it behooves you to move away from it. And you have all of the knowledge that you need.

[00:34:12] Gabrielle: All you're doing now is learning to interpret and respond to the internal cues and the performance cues and the sleep and energy levels that you have and using that information to modify your food intake. And you're also addressing things like the emotional triggers for eating. So in the same way that when you're using RP in the gym.

[00:34:34] Gabrielle: You're saying, Oh, man, my gym crush just walked in like I really want to max out right now, but you don't because you know that, oh, man, you know that like that heavy double felt extra heavy today. It's not a good idea for me to just randomly go for 10 above my max just because I want to impress someone.

[00:34:53] Gabrielle: It's the same thing with food. Things taste very good. Sometimes we have the desire to eat the whole sleeve of [00:35:00] Oreos. But we decide not to because we have practiced the art of pausing and saying, Hey, I can have these Oreos whenever I want. I'm going to eat some right now. And then if I want some later, I can have some later.

[00:35:11] Gabrielle: I don't need to have them all right now because I can have them whenever I want. And I don't have the guilt associated with breaking specific food rules are not hitting my macros because this is an intentional decision that I'm making based on my own self awareness and nutritional knowledge. And so the although I had originally called the R.

[00:35:29] Gabrielle: P. Eating and I developed core skills, I realized The core skills go beyond that, and that's why I call it trust, as in trusting yourself and nourish. You are then nourishing yourself, like you in many ways, because the first core skills are based on identifying your internal signals and your non hunger triggers for eating.

[00:35:48] Gabrielle: The next two skills are about meeting your overall needs more effectively and eating in a way that's not just satiating, but also very satisfying. So it goes beyond just the food and the [00:36:00] training to being able to identify what am I feeling? What do I actually need right now? And if food is not the answer, what is going to be more effective for me? 

[00:36:07] Ricardo: What about somebody who does have a healthy relationship with food

[00:36:12] Ricardo: and their focus is hypertrophy. That's my situation right now.

[00:36:16] Ricardo: And, for me, I know I don't get enough protein.

[00:36:20] Ricardo: And if I don't track it, I'm not getting enough. So actually this is a two part question. Number

[00:36:25] Ricardo: one, 

[00:36:25] Gabrielle: Mm 

[00:36:26] Ricardo: Why is it that I'm still building muscle? But I'm not getting the quote unquote recommended protein, grams per body weight, 

[00:36:35] Ricardo: I don't eat that much, but I'm still gaining.

[00:36:37] Ricardo: So why is that? Which makes me think is this bullshit? Is it too high? And then the second thing is if somebody has a healthy relationship with food and they're trying to, Gain weight or lose weight, do you then say, okay, it's okay to track your macros because you clearly are not somebody who's getting overly stressed out about it.

[00:36:55] Gabrielle: I love that question. Yes, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, to your first question, [00:37:00] although protein intake matters to some extent, Overall, energy balance matters more because the role of the carbohydrates and the fat, and they play many roles, obviously, we need like carbohydrates for intense exercise, but it's those macronutrients spare the protein.

[00:37:17] Gabrielle: So then you don't have to use that protein as an energy source. And then you can use it for tissue building, muscle or whatever other tissue. So you're using those amino acids toward tissue building. The other thing is the, there are definitely studies that say, Hey, if you eat three grams of protein per pound of body weight, you might be able to gain a little bit of extra muscle more than if you're eating like two, two grams per pound of body weight or one.

[00:37:45] Gabrielle: But how meaningful are those differences really like on the grand scheme of things? And also there are certainly going to be people who are outliers who have a genetic predisposition to gaining muscle mass in the same way that there are [00:38:00] people have a genetic predisposition to gaining more or less body fat when they're in an energy excess.

[00:38:05] Gabrielle: So if you are in a positive energy balance, even if you're not eating the, 1. 7 grams of protein per pound of body weight in your case, you're eating enough because you're in that energy balance. That protein is still being utilized for skeletal muscle hypertrophy. And is it some kind, is it like BSE?

[00:38:26] Gabrielle: No, I wouldn't say that it's completely nonsense, but the more research that comes out, the more we see, wow, you can gain muscle at a huge range of frequencies and rep ranges. And, you can see people who are like, Jacked on accident, just because they like they work out six days a week and, they just work out to failure.

[00:38:46] Gabrielle: It doesn't necessarily mean that it's the best approach for everyone. It just, I think, drives the point that our bodies are very adaptable and they will adapt to the stimulus that we provide to them. And so if you are training really hard and [00:39:00] you're in an energy excess, then your body will adapt to that.

[00:39:04] Gabrielle: to that. It will respond accordingly. And there are a lot of different ways that you can create a strong enough stimulus for that to happen. And when it comes to maintenance, you need even less frequency and less volume. And then to your other question, I want to make it clear, even though I'm anti promote, let's see what I would say that I'm anti Marketing the idea that liking your appearance is the same thing as improving your body image.

[00:39:31] Gabrielle: It is not. But I'm not anti macro tracking. And when we look at for whom macro tracking is problematic, it's for the people that already have a level of body dissatisfaction. So they already are unsatisfied with their physique or their appearance. They are using macro tracking to reduce or control their weight.

[00:39:53] Gabrielle: And These fact, these, this data, this satisfaction is coming from some amount of [00:40:00] internalized weight stigma. So they have a fear of gaining body fat. The gaining of body fat means something bad about their character. It means like a personal failing and they also have beliefs about the controllability of body weight that you know, these are the people like calories in versus calories out and they really have a hard time recognizing the complexity of weight.

[00:40:23] Gabrielle: control weight and weight modification. So those are the folks that are most likely to develop some eating pathology if they start using macro tracking or calorie tracking. One study that people love to throw around and say, ah, macro tracking is not a problem, was done in a group of college age people who had never tracked before who were not trying to lose weight and had not tried to lose weight in the past.

[00:40:50] Gabrielle: So they didn't have any level of they didn't have risk factors to begin with. They weren't dissatisfied with their physiques and they were using macro tracking just retroactively. Just oh, this [00:41:00] is what I ate and that was it, and so macro tracking in that case, when a person doesn't have any sort of history and I've worked with clients like this that are like, no, I just, I don't really know what's in food.

[00:41:11] Gabrielle: I want to learn more about, the sources of protein and I'm curious about what I'm eating and. I can use this as a tool to modify, and then I know when I'm done. I don't want to keep using macros forever. This is just an educational tool. And then they feel comfortable not using it anymore.

[00:41:27] Gabrielle: And there are people who can modify their physique, and not experience high levels of body dissatisfaction. In the same way that, we can get a tattoo or dye our hair they look at it in that way. Oh, I'm modifying my physique, I'm getting ready for a show, and now the show's done, and then I'm going back to my normal life.

[00:41:42] Gabrielle: That's it. How I looked at that time didn't mean anything to me about my character. I know that I'm the same person regardless of my body fat level. So in those cases, I say have at it. If that's something that you find useful and enjoyable, and it's a form of self [00:42:00] expression. By all means and even if a person, if a person says, I want to intentionally lose weight for because my doctor told me or for health purposes.

[00:42:10] Gabrielle: This is another question that I get a lot, what if I'm working with a client who has overweight or obesity? A, you don't have to track macros or weight to improve health markers. You can track health markers, engage in healthy behaviors, and then track health markers again. Okay. The other thing is if a person is fully informed of the risks of intentional weight loss with macro tracking and weight tracking and whatnot, and they say I don't think that really applies to me.

[00:42:36] Gabrielle: I understand the risks. I know what red flags look for. I'm going to let you know if I start feeling really like neurotic about the numbers. That person is an adult, they have bodily autonomy, they can make an informed decision. The issue I think is that a lot of people are not able to make an informed decision because they are told, use macros.

[00:42:54] Gabrielle: It worked for me. I didn't have any issues with it. Like everyone should be using macros. Without a screening of that [00:43:00] person's potential risk factors and without letting that person make an informed decision because they're not going to know what the risks are, they're going to think oh, yeah, macro tracking, like everyone's supposed to do it.

[00:43:11] Gabrielle: And then it's prescribed without an exit strategy. And so that person then becomes really reliant and they only trust the macros and they forget or have never learned. How to eat in ways that are based on their internal guidance systems, because, they came from already a disordered relationship with food. 

[00:43:29] Gabrielle: So those are, that's where I think we, it's not anti macros for everyone, but it's not pro macros for everyone either. It's prescribing them or recommending them in a way that recognizes that person's needs. previous history, allows them to make an informed decision, has an exit strategy, and that we also have other options to provide if macros are not appropriate for that person. 

[00:43:52] Ricardo: That's a great answer. I agree with that. I, it's because I don't, I've never struggled with that.

[00:43:58] Ricardo: So for me, I've gone through periods [00:44:00] where I'm weighing my food, like everything is planned and I'm

[00:44:02] Ricardo: not freaking out about it. I'm just doing it because it's almost like in a science experiment for myself.

[00:44:07] Ricardo: And then one day I'm like, fuck it, I'm done. I'm done.

[00:44:09] Ricardo: with that. I'm going back to and I literally don't give a shit.

[00:44:12] Ricardo: I just, I've just always had that relationship with it.

[00:44:16] Ricardo: But I have friends and family who are not like that.

[00:44:20] Ricardo: Where they're, like, we're eating and I see them like weighing things. I'm like, what's going on man?

[00:44:24] Ricardo: And they're like freaking out. I'm

[00:44:26] Ricardo: like, oh okay, this is a problem. 

[00:44:28] Ricardo: I'm okay with letting go or doing it. One thing I've noticed is as I've gotten older, is my satiation is easily met now versus before. And I don't know if I paid attention to it before,

[00:44:41] Ricardo: but I don't get as hungry, and I cannot eat as much as I used to eat.

[00:44:46] Ricardo: I I get full quick.

[00:44:48] Ricardo: And I try to eat before I'm stuffed, cause I don't like that feeling.

[00:44:51] Ricardo: But I, before I used to go to a buffet, eight plates clean that

[00:44:54] Ricardo: like no problem now one and a half. And I'm already like, Oh my God, I can't eat. And I [00:45:00] have no issues putting on weight or even dropping it, like maintaining what I feel comfortable with.

[00:45:06] Ricardo: I want to see my abs and stuff. But I'm just wondering what that is because I, when I was Behemently tracking, measuring everything. I would get to 7 o'clock and I'm like, there's no fucking way I'm gonna eat another 1500 calories right now, which is what the math said. I'm like, there's no way I'm done right now.

[00:45:24] Ricardo: And I would just be like, forget it, I guess I missed it today. And I almost never hit my caloric needs according to whatever app I was

[00:45:32] Ricardo: But I was still gaining weight,

[00:45:34] Ricardo: like healthy, it seemed to be muscle.

[00:45:36] Ricardo: And I was still making progress in the gym

[00:45:38] Ricardo: as far as lifting more, So like progressively overloading, et cetera.

[00:45:42] Ricardo: Why is it that I can't eat as much. And whenever I use these calculators, they don't seem to align with how I'm feeling. And I just cannot eat that

[00:45:52] Ricardo: much. 

[00:45:52] Gabrielle: Yeah. No, I definitely, I relate. I feel as I've gotten older, I'm going to be 38 in a few months. I don't, I think [00:46:00] part of it is I don't, use food as entertainment really anymore like back in the day, especially because I was oscillating between like extreme restriction and then, the weekends were like eat whatever I want and I would eat so much and sometimes I would feel really uncomfortable but it was like, oh, like that's the whole point.

[00:46:16] Gabrielle: That became very unappealing once I got to a point where I was like I can eat all these foods whenever I want, like it actually feels way better to eat until I'm satisfied and then you know, Like I can go back and eat more later if I want to. So I think that's part of it is like the, maybe the discernment that we have, over time of being like, Oh, actually I'm paying more attention to what's comfortable.

[00:46:37] Gabrielle: I'm slowing down in my eating. And then I wouldn't say like in our age, we're not having the metabolic slowdown yet. But, as people get into their 60s, 70s then there is usually a loss of some skeletal muscle mass, especially if they're not training and then a loss of a reduction in metabolic rate and they tend to eat and require a little bit less.

[00:46:59] Gabrielle: So that's, [00:47:00] I can't speak to everyone, but like I know in my experience, I do also tend to I feel full. The other thing is, when I was tracking, I was obviously almost always tracking to lose weight. And so I was always trying to be in an energy deficit. And so I always felt like I was thinking about food.

[00:47:16] Gabrielle: And I was always a little bit hungry. I never felt really satisfied. And I wasn't eating meals that were intended to be satisfying. I was eating a meal that was intended to fit my macros. And I was often avoiding the foods that really, that were what I really wanted because they didn't fit my macros. I've talked about this, it's like the eating around what you really want cycle, where I So many times would want like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or some Reese's peanut butter cups.

[00:47:43] Gabrielle: Like those are my favorite candies. And back in the day I would not allow myself to eat those things. But instead I would eat a bunch of cereal or like overeat. Like I would eat a lot of rice or something else. It was like, Oh, I can't eat that, but I'm going to eat this other thing instead.

[00:47:57] Gabrielle: That other thing was not what I wanted. It [00:48:00] wasn't satisfying. And so it never felt like I hit the spot. And so I could eat and eat and still not feel. And now I know the amount of food that I need to eat and I know what is going to be satisfying. So like I eat I eat a pretty routine variety of foods and I eat pretty much the same amount every time because I know eating this amount, I'm not going to be hungry again for another few hours.

[00:48:26] Gabrielle: And I can just go on about my day and I don't know, I don't track anything. I make sure that I'm getting like a balanced plate at each meal. 

[00:48:34] Gabrielle: So now I know what amount and like what a variety of foods on my plate are going to be satisfying. And I like to eat vegetables and I like to eat I have a, standard rotation of foods. But I don't track anything. And I do, like I mentioned, I still know like the amounts of protein and protein is the one macro nutrient that I'm more cognizant of [00:49:00] because I'm getting older now, and I am thinking about like maintaining muscle mass and bone mineral density.

[00:49:06] Gabrielle: But the solution to that is not how I'm going to track macros for me. It's Oh, what's another source of protein that I can have as a snack? Like a drinkable yogurt or I'm going to have sometimes I, when I go to class, I take a protein shake with me because I'm going to be gone for, five hours and it's something that's powdered that I can take with me easily and have in 30 seconds and then go on about my day.

[00:49:30] Gabrielle: But it's not in the same I don't have the same preoccupation with it that. I used to have, and so now I can use it as my awareness as a tool. The other thing, so with the apps, the apps are based on they're algorithm based, based on averages.

[00:49:46] Gabrielle: And so it takes your weight and age and estimated activity level and says this is the amount that I think you're supposed to be eating. And so the other aspect of the trust and nourish method is based instead of [00:50:00] looking at macros, it's based on wellness tracking and wellness tracking in whatever, mode you want to do it.

[00:50:07] Gabrielle: I'm going to drop that. I do have a tracker for it but it's based on how you feel. So you've made such a great point there Hey, I'm trying to follow what this app is telling me to do. Okay. A, most of the time I can't do it because it's an uncomfortable amount of food. So I'm not even following it.

[00:50:22] Gabrielle: And B, if I did, I'd feel terrible. So do we want to like blindly follow what the app is telling us? And it's only telling us like what to eat based on a few factors. We can't put anything into the app. We can't say, Hey, this was a lot of food. Like I didn't feel very good. I'm really tired. I'm tired. We just have to do what the app says.

[00:50:44] Gabrielle: And of course there are some that are adjustable based on your your weight change, over time. You can say oh, I want to eat a little bit more, a little bit less. But I've switched the focus to how are you actually feeling? You ate this meal, and you could do this even [00:51:00] if you still wanted to track macros, if you're trying to off board.

[00:51:02] Gabrielle: You eat your macro planned meal. Now, like, how hungry were you beforehand? How full were you after? Why did you eat it? What were your energy levels like? How satisfying was it? And then looking at other factors your sleep quality and quantity, because sleep quality can absolutely be disrupted if we're overtraining and underfueling.

[00:51:20] Gabrielle: Motivation to train, because sudden lack of motivation to train is another sign that we're overreaching or underfueling. And digestion as well. So We are, instead of just like passively entering our information into the tracker and following its guidelines on just what to eat, we're actually paying attention to how are we feeling and then making adjustments based on that.

[00:51:44] Gabrielle: If you want to have more energy, Or if you want to improve your digestion or your sleep quality, that's the stuff that you actually want to pay attention to. And that you actually, you can still track your meals. You're still reflecting this is what I ate and about how much. But there's such a stark difference there [00:52:00] because now you're saying, Hey, I'm actually going to decide how much I want to eat and then I'm going to keep track of all of these metrics that really matter.

[00:52:08] Gabrielle: And then I find the right amount. For me, like for you, it's not eating, you're not going to eat that extra 1500 calories a day, so you really made the decision on your own already, but now you can't accurately like you can't really track because, oh, I didn't do the macros like, today I didn't do what was prescribed, but you did what was appropriate for you in that day.

[00:52:28] Gabrielle: So that's why I'm another reason why I think it can be so helpful to move away from macro tracking and start looking at the actual, your actual day to day experience, like the quality of your life from a wellness standpoint.

[00:52:44] Ricardo: Yeah, for me, it's about health and longevity first and foremost.

[00:52:48] Ricardo: That's the primary focus, so for me to walk away and say, you know what, today I don't care if I don't hit, I'm not obsessed with the goal outside of that main goal. What works for me now [00:53:00] is I prioritize fiber and protein. and it was protein first, now it's more so fiber. So when I'm picking a meal or creating something, I look at, okay, what's my fiber? What's my protein? And then my carbs and fats, this is just me. I

[00:53:15] Ricardo: just let it fall as they may,

[00:53:16] Ricardo: whatever it is. If I have a salad with more olive oil or

[00:53:20] Ricardo: whatever, if I want more rice, but it seems to be working for me.

[00:53:24] Ricardo: And right now I'm just in a quote unquote bulking phase,

[00:53:26] Ricardo: so I'm not really, Looking at how much I'm eating, I'm just eating and

[00:53:30] Ricardo: I feel hungry. But when I do want to get like shredded, which I just like the idea of the competition aspect with myself,

[00:53:37] Ricardo: then I will be more strict on looking at the calories

[00:53:41] Ricardo: And how much I'm taking in more on a week basis

[00:53:44] Ricardo: versus a day to day, I look at my week 

[00:53:46] Gabrielle: Okay. Yeah.

[00:53:48] Ricardo: and then I see how more so just by pictures,

[00:53:50] Ricardo: how do I feel and what I look like the

[00:53:52] Ricardo: scale, I don't really care too much about either.

[00:53:54] Gabrielle: Yeah. That's the thing. I've talked about this with working with clients who have overweight or obesity or have been told they [00:54:00] need to lose weight, if they're healthy behavior, if they're making positive lifestyle changes and their health markers are improving, like they have, their blood pressure has gone down, their cholesterol markers, whatever, those are all improving.

[00:54:15] Gabrielle: Does the weight matter? The weight is what we use usually as a proxy. And we assume that if a person's losing weight, then they are becoming healthier. We don't that's not necessarily serving the people that we're working with, especially if someone already has a troubled relationship with food and history of dieting, tracking macros and tracking weight can exacerbate that.

[00:54:39] Gabrielle: So if we want to be able to help this person, especially if a person like doesn't have access to a food scale or, a bathroom scale, or do we say Oh, sorry, I can't help you. Like we can't actually improve your health unless we can track your macros. That just doesn't make sense.

[00:54:52] Gabrielle: We want to focus on that person's behaviors. So weight doesn't have to be monitored. If we want to [00:55:00] help someone improve their health, then we help them improve their health. And even if they're like, I want to intentionally lose weight for like joint pain or whatever it is, then we still don't have to track weight on a regular basis.

[00:55:12] Gabrielle: What we're tracking then is again, healthy behaviors and then joint pain. Are you feeling better? That's fantastic. It could be that you are feeling better because now you're exercising more. And so you, your joints are adapting to that. And so you have less joint pain. So weight in and of itself is not something that is super important.

[00:55:34] Gabrielle: It's just something that we have easy access to monitoring and it's something that we use as a proxy for all of these other health markers. Because yeah, a person can't go to the doctor, every week and get their blood drawn. But if you're using evidence based practices that are linked to improved health outcomes weight is not a behavior.

[00:55:54] Gabrielle: A weight will change us as an outcome. What you can actually focus on are behaviors. And if you're promoting [00:56:00] these behaviors, then you can be relatively sure that health markers will improve as well.

[00:56:05] Ricardo: I love that. And behavior is one of my favorite words as of late. I read the book Atomic Habits

[00:56:12] Gabrielle: Oh yeah, 

[00:56:13] Ricardo: it's one of my favorite books.

[00:56:14] Ricardo: And it really changed my perspective on even setting goals. I no longer really set goals.

[00:56:20] Ricardo: I more I guess I set goal of the behavior.

[00:56:23] Ricardo: So I look at what are the behaviors that are going to get me to A, B, C, D or whatever.

[00:56:28] Ricardo: How do we spot pseudoscience, or I read one of your posts. You said science versus science fiction,

[00:56:34] Ricardo: which I really liked. I thought that was cool. I'm going to borrow that, by the way. I'm

[00:56:37] Ricardo: stealing that. 

[00:56:38] Gabrielle: Awesome. Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:56:39] Ricardo: You out, because I've never heard that before. But yeah, how could somebody arm themselves with the knowledge to be able to spot pseudoscience? Pseudoscience or science versus science fiction to know like that bullshit meter.

[00:56:50] Gabrielle: absolutely. It's. It's tougher now, especially because you have, you said, Oh, we've got like these experts, like these gurus who have, a million and some followers and they will use terms [00:57:00] that sound scientific and it's hard to ask them like, Hey, do you actually know what that term means?

[00:57:05] Gabrielle: You won't know that they're just using it even though they don't know what it means unless you actually know what it means. And we and it really can take a lot of scientific literacy sometimes to be able to spot the Very skilled peddlers of pseudoscience. And we can't necessarily rely on credentials anymore because there are people with credentials who are just operating so far outside of their scope that they may not even know that they're wrong about what they're saying.

[00:57:39] Gabrielle: And I don't know if that's worse or if they know they're wrong and they're doing it anyway for the money. Both of those things are bad, but the ways that we can spot pseudoscience, another quote that I have, maybe you can use this one too if you like it, but is someone selling you a problem, so you'll buy their solution.

[00:57:55] Gabrielle: So someone saying, Hey, there's a problem, like gut health is the big one. There's a problem with your [00:58:00] gut. Your gut is imbalanced. You have leaky gut, you have dysbiosis. I have a protocol to fix that. What they're usually doing is they're relying on fear. So fear based marketing is a big one.

[00:58:13] Gabrielle: And then they're also using scientific jargon that does not have a clear definition, something very ambiguous, like chemicals, toxins. Inflammation, those are all things that are like, Oh, it is a thing, but it's not just one thing, it is a set of different aspects that come together to form, or it's a classification of many different things.

[00:58:38] Gabrielle: So that's one big red flag. Another red flag is that they will often be claims that are not testable. You say they're unfalsifiable. So someone can say I'll use gut health again. You have an imbalanced microbiome. There's no way because we don't have a reference ranges for what like we do with, LDL cholesterol.

[00:58:59] Gabrielle: We don't [00:59:00] have that for the microbiome. We have consumer based stool analysis tests, which are problematic in their own right, but. Those are not scientifically validated, but they look scientific and they give numbers and the person can say, oh, you have a gut imbalance because we can't say that you don't because we don't have an actual reference range by which to compare you.

[00:59:24] Gabrielle: Or, they'll say any kind of thing that's like a general statement about like toxins or chemicals. We can't test that because you can't test every possible toxin, like which toxin and at what level. So claims that cannot be tested. That's another big red flag. Another red flag.

[00:59:40] Gabrielle: If it is like a celebrity, some guy with his shirt off that's usually, he doesn't have the correct credentials or he does have them, but he's speaking about something or she they're speaking about something that's completely outside of their scope. There are some popular, there's a psychologist who speaks a lot about [01:00:00] a specific dietary pattern, even though he has no training in it and he often is not wearing a shirt.

[01:00:05] Gabrielle: So people that are trying to appeal with their fear and, appearance, that's another big red flag. And then finally, if there is, we can, you can find a publication to support almost anything. There are journals that will publish anything if you pay them enough. But It's not enough to have just one publication.

[01:00:25] Gabrielle: It's not enough. It's not enough to have one piece of evidence. You could use that to say Hey, this is a cool paper and this is the finding that they found. And these are the potential implications. But it has to statements have to agree with the body of high quality evidence. What do the meta analyses say?

[01:00:40] Gabrielle: What do the systematic reviews say? If this statement is agreeing with that body of evidence, then it's probably legit. But even that can be difficult because there are areas, like within gut health, where there's a lot of I would say like publication incest. There's like a review will cite another review [01:01:00] that cited another review and they'll recite a bunch of these reviews that cited these, the same group of papers.

[01:01:06] Gabrielle: Well, a review is largely, especially if it's just a narrative review, it's an opinion piece. It's this group of researchers or this researcher that took a look at the evidence and said this is what the evidence says so far. And these are all the potential repercussions, but people will take that.

[01:01:22] Gabrielle: discussion, or they'll look at the abstract and say, Oh so you know, the gut microbiome probably has a huge impact on your risk of breast cancer. No, actually, that has not been illustrated. The randomized control trials were done in animals. They've had a couple of observational studies and from those that very small body of evidence.

[01:01:43] Gabrielle: Now we've had tons of reviews published and the reviews are all Parroting one another because they're all citing one another and then you get, that's translated onto social media as people making claims about having to balance your gut microbiome, for your hormones [01:02:00] and that's not actually what that, that wasn't a, that was a maybe that's like a theoretical possibility, but it's not how it's presented.

[01:02:08] Gabrielle: And that is really hard to spot. That might be beyond what's feasible for most people. But it's another thing just to think about that it's also the quality of research that a person is referring to. But I would say the top would be like, selling you a problem so you'll buy the solution.

[01:02:25] Gabrielle: Using a lot of fear, using a lot of jargon that's not definable, and making statements that are not testable. Those would be the big ones.

[01:02:34] Ricardo: My background is in direct response marketing and I, as a copywriter as well, we had one framework we would use. It's p the pass formula. So it's PAS, it's problem agitate, solve.

[01:02:46] Ricardo: So you identify the problem, you agitate it,

[01:02:49] Ricardo: and then you offer the solution. Now

[01:02:51] Ricardo: there's ways to do it ethically.

[01:02:52] Ricardo: Because of course there's ethical solutions and if you want to get somebody to change their behavior, sometimes it's great, but there's

[01:02:59] Ricardo: also [01:03:00] unethical ways to use it. And, as a student of sales maybe my red flag meter is pretty high because I've skilled in how, influence and all that.

[01:03:09] Ricardo: And so I know people that use it for shady purposes,

[01:03:12] Ricardo: and I know people who use it for good. I think for me, it's where I see somebody. sensationalizing things

[01:03:19] Ricardo: and the solution is something that they stand to gain and

[01:03:22] Ricardo: it's this like broad solution,

[01:03:24] Gabrielle: Yes,

[01:03:25] Ricardo: right?

[01:03:27] Ricardo: It's the carnivore diet solves everything.

[01:03:29] Ricardo: It's

[01:03:30] Ricardo: Your, every disease is because of

[01:03:32] Ricardo: you're eating vegetables or

[01:03:34] Gabrielle: Yeah.

[01:03:34] Ricardo: some bullshit.

[01:03:35] Ricardo: And then when you look, they're selling things aligned with that,

[01:03:39] Ricardo: like their approach to their carnivore

[01:03:41] Ricardo: lifestyle group that they. You sign up for a membership

[01:03:45] Ricardo: And the thing is maybe they believe it and maybe it is truly doing good for them.

[01:03:49] Ricardo: I just don't Think one size fits all

[01:03:52] Gabrielle: Yeah. That, oh yeah, the root cause 

[01:03:55] Ricardo: like followings 

[01:03:56] Gabrielle: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. When people are like, will not be [01:04:00] questioned. And yeah, that root cause, like that's huge in the gut health world and in the functional medicine world. That's this one thing is the root cause and modern medicine doesn't address the root cause they treat symptoms And but the root cause is something that's like dysbiosis completely undefined and untestable But it leads to all of these issues, and has all of these symptoms, but you just address the root cause That's another big red flag

[01:04:27] Ricardo: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so i'm gonna ask you some controversial questions

[01:04:34] Gabrielle: Okay, my favorite 

[01:04:35] Ricardo: While we're on the topic

[01:04:37] Ricardo: Okay, our seed oil is bad for you

[01:04:39] Gabrielle: Oh, gosh. No. The funny thing is, I think that this was, I wrote a piece about this many years ago on canola oil. And canola oil comes from rapeseed oil, which is not a marketable name. And that oil is now I'm going to say right now, I don't remember all of the fractions.

[01:04:59] Gabrielle: [01:05:00] But that oil is high in types of fatty acids that would not be supportive of health, but it is then modified and canola oil is very high in omega three fatty acids. And so when we say That's another example, when we say like seed oils are bad for you, like all seed, all seeds, like every seed, not every seed has the same fractions of oils, and while yes, there are components in foods certain fatty acids in rapeseed oil, or the anti nutrients that we can find in certain nuts, like in the skins of certain nuts or in legumes, If you don't process that food properly, if you don't soak the beans, if you eat the green parts under the skin of the potato, if you just have a large amount of rapeseed oil, those can be harmful to you, but Thanks to the to do industrialization and food processing and food safety [01:06:00] measures.

[01:06:00] Gabrielle: We can modify these things and we prepare them in such a way that we reduce those and then they are edible. This is something we've been doing for thousands of years. There are there's a type of, I want to say it's like poke weed but it's really popular in the south in the U.

[01:06:16] Gabrielle: S. like in rural areas. If you just eat that, it can kill you. It'll make you very sick. But if you soak it, a bunch of times and boil it a bunch of times, then some people like to eat it. So it's an example of taking that, like exaggerating that claim and saying like, all these things are bad for you because yes, you can find evidence that there are certain compounds that at a high enough dose would be harmful to you.

[01:06:41] Gabrielle: But in a realistic setting, you're not eating raw beans like you're not eating raw beans as your, primary source of sustenance. No, the oils that you're getting from the seeds that are available in your diet. Those are not harmful.

[01:06:56] Ricardo: Cool.

[01:06:57] Ricardo: Dr. Layne Norton, he has a saying, I can't remember it now, but it's something like [01:07:00] mechanisms versus outcomes or

[01:07:01] Ricardo: something, where, is that correct?

[01:07:04] Ricardo: So it's 

[01:07:05] Gabrielle: a hundred percent sure but I'm like agreeing with the statement

[01:07:08] Ricardo: where he talks about, look at the outcome,

[01:07:10] Ricardo: not the mechanism, because you could say a grape is unhealthy because of this, and you point out one thing it does, or

[01:07:16] Ricardo: one ingredient within it,

[01:07:18] Ricardo: but he's and he has a funny video where he talks about, really look into this and he goes deep into it and why it's so healthy and it turns out it was what poo contains you know so he's like you should eat shit because it has this and he's so you see you can make anything seem good

[01:07:33] Ricardo: or bad he's but look at the outcome if you eat shit it's not going to be a healthy outcome you know

[01:07:38] Ricardo: so 

[01:07:38] Gabrielle: it.

[01:07:39] Ricardo: Okay so are artificial sweeteners good Or bad And we can even go into the non artificial so I guess What would it be honey, what's another one

[01:07:50] Gabrielle: Oh, sure. Sure. So like, when we have like artificial sweeteners, we have not artificial but non nutritive sweeteners. So an artificial [01:08:00] sweetener is something that would not. naturally exist in nature. It's made from for example, I want to say saccharin or aspartame made from amino acids. So amino acids obviously exist, but they don't exist in that specific arrangement or with sucralose.

[01:08:15] Gabrielle: It's sucrose that has had some of the hydrogens replaced. And so that molecule has modified and is no longer it's no longer going to be metabolized like. Glucose and fructose. So sucrose is glucose and fructose stuck together. It's not going to be metabolized in the same way because the molecule has been modified.

[01:08:34] Gabrielle: So artificial sweeteners, they have been a target of a lot of research over the years. But a lot of the research has been done in animal models and has not used physiologically relevant doses. So amounts that a human would actually eat. There have been a couple that have shown that there might be some modifications to insulin resistance or insulin sensitivity in a very small number of people.

[01:08:59] Gabrielle: We [01:09:00] have one example that this went into the gut health world. There was a group that looked at the effect of, I want to say sucralose on the gut microbiome and insulin sensitivity glucose regulation. And they found within this large cohort that there were five people that did experience some aberration, some change in their insulin sensitivity.

[01:09:20] Gabrielle: And so from those five people, they took a person and they took the stool sample from that person and they did a fecal transplant into five different rodents. And that is, that's a normal procedural thing, like to do a fecal transplant. You're trying to recreate the phenotype of the person in this rodent.

[01:09:39] Gabrielle: And in those five rodents, they saw, oh, there's also metabolic derangement in these rodents. There's also some insulin sensitivity issues. And that was very popular and people said, Oh, Splenda, sucralose causes insulin insensitivity and whatnot. But there are obviously issues here.

[01:09:53] Gabrielle: First of all, we took five people, the only five people that had issues and we took stool samples and we [01:10:00] put one of those stool samples into five different rodents. Is that an end of five or is that an end of one? Because that came from one person. We just replicated it five times. That's like kind of an area that's not clear.

[01:10:13] Gabrielle: We don't know whether that's that's a best practices in terms of statistics. But when you say, oh, N of five, you can't get you can't analyze an N of one. You can't do a statistical analysis on that. But if we say N of five, oh, then we could do an analysis on that. So that's one example of how, much we can modify, like how creatively we can study something to get a result that's going to be published.

[01:10:38] Gabrielle: Because negative results oh, nothing happened, those don't really get published, unfortunately. But when we look at, health outcomes, and people who drink sugar sweetened beverages versus people who drink artificially sweetened beverages, metabolic health outcomes are better in the people who drink the artificially sweetened beverages.

[01:10:52] Gabrielle: When we look at the impact on the gut microbiome, it is minimal to none, but even if there was some impact, [01:11:00] Again, what's the outcome like does that matter in terms of a health outcome for that person because the microbiome can be modified by a lot of different things. The microbiome can be modified by non nutritive but non artificial sweeteners like stevia or xylitol or lactulose.

[01:11:16] Gabrielle: Some of these have a prebiotic effect but and some of them are not necessarily improving like the number of beneficial microbes. They're just. Just being used by like neutral microbes as well, but they also can cause severe GI distress. Like inulin is one example maltitol. Some of these can have a severe laxative effect or can cause a lot of gas and bloating, especially in the case of inulin.

[01:11:40] Gabrielle: So it's not necessarily damaging your microbiome. It's not necessarily causing any metabolic derangement, but it's giving you terrible gas and diarrhea. I would say that counts as Not good. If we want to say are they good or bad? Now, that's not all of them. Aspartame the non nutritive sweeteners usually are not associated with an AGI distress.

[01:11:59] Gabrielle: It's the [01:12:00] sugar alcohols. The ones that end in all. Those are the ones that are usually associated with with gas and bloating and whatnot. 

[01:12:06] Ricardo: I think a lot of those protein bars the amount is so low that unless you're eating like A lot of those.

[01:12:13] Gabrielle: It can, yeah, it depends. Yeah, some of them have, yeah, some of them have quite a lot. Like some of them have a warning on there, don't eat more than two bars in a day. And, and then of course there's going to be, I know one company a client had told me about that they sold a product that contained inulin, which like causes GI distress in a lot of people.

[01:12:32] Gabrielle: That was for your gut. And then they sold another product that was for when you have gut issues. You know that didn't have inulin in it, but it's like they're selling you the literally this is the problem So they can sell you the solution

[01:12:42] Ricardo: I'm not anti pharmaceuticals. I used to be but over the years I've educated myself and I realized that everything has its place

[01:12:50] Ricardo: What I do know is that since we're on top of controversy there are a lot of pharmaceutical companies that have been sued time and time again, and [01:13:00] they have done some pretty unethical things as far as selling something that they know to cause an issue that they have another drug to solve that issue, et cetera.

[01:13:10] Ricardo: So I'm not to say that it's all bad, but, , that's why people have lost trust. How do we find a place where we can meet in the middle, in a sense, where people don't go from one extreme to the other?

[01:13:29] Gabrielle: Yeah, I think a lot of what's lacking in like Western medicine, sort of modern medicine would be the empathy, like the human side of the experience, really listening and validating a person. And I would say the, in my opinion the largest crime perpetuated by pharmaceutical companies would be the pricing of their drugs.

[01:13:49] Gabrielle: They, and yes, they invest a lot into research and development, but having. Lived in and visited other places and now living in, what's considered a third world [01:14:00] country, the accessibility of medicine is so much greater and the accessibility of medical care and the quality of medical care is far beyond anything that I received in the U.

[01:14:12] Gabrielle: S. So I think that's a big part of it is there. There's a huge administrative overhead in the medical system. It's very expensive there. There's not enough staffing. People don't get a lot of time with their doctors. And things are extremely expensive and drugs and supplements, anything, can have side effects.

[01:14:33] Gabrielle: And I think that there is a problem with not providing, sufficient informed consent because you have 10 minutes with the patient and What people get in the alternative medicine realm is they have a long time because this isn't covered by insurance. That's the thing is like the doctor gets 15 minutes.

[01:14:52] Gabrielle: That's what's coded. You get a 15 minute session. If you're working with providers that are outside of that system that are not covered by insurance. [01:15:00] insurance not covered by insurance that you spend an hour with them, and they listen to you and they validate you and they provide a level of care that fosters a lot more trust.

[01:15:13] Gabrielle: And then we have things like chemophobia So people are naturally afraid of things that are viewed as artificial chemicals. And a health halo over a lot of supplements. So people think, Oh, this is natural, my, this provider gave me this natural supplement, so it's going to be good for me.

[01:15:29] Gabrielle: And there's also the nocebo effect in the placebo effect. So someone thinks that something's going to be harmful to them, it's more likely to have some negative side effects. And if someone thinks it's going to be beneficial, it's more likely to benefit them. And that's even if they know that it's a placebo, that's even if they like, but that they're told sometimes placebos help.

[01:15:47] Gabrielle: Okay. So the I think it's a multitude of factors that have fostered this mistrust, and this has been something that's been developing over decades, like Carl Sagan wrote about this. Isaac Asimov wrote [01:16:00] about this, that there is a mistrust and skepticism of people from higher education and people from the medical community and, as a whole, like pharmaceutical companies because they seem it's they intellectualism is not very well valued or trusted in the U.

[01:16:20] Gabrielle: S. And that influences other parts of the world as well. And then we also we have, unfortunately doctors, we have physicians who are promoting, known like supplements that are known to be absolute nonsense. So it's we can't trust, like the celebrity doctors. My doctor's not listening to me.

[01:16:37] Gabrielle: I've been shaking these drugs and I still don't feel good. So they go down the alternative medicine route and they get what's been missing. And sometimes they do feel better even if it's just a placebo response. So I think it is important for us as, health care professionals and whatnot, that we provide both the empathy and compassion and the accurate information and allow [01:17:00] people to make an informed decision.

[01:17:02] Gabrielle: Because there are definitely drugs that are Have severe side effects and something like chemo you're hoping that it kills the cancer before it kills you. But for some people that is worth it. Like for some people, they want to be able to take that risk knowingly and for other people, that's not something they want to do.

[01:17:19] Gabrielle: And, I'm fully in support of bodily autonomy. But like I use medications every day and I'm very thankful for the access that they have to them. I'm aware of the risks and side effects. And I also know that there are alternative therapies that can be very beneficial. So it doesn't have to be one or the other.

[01:17:37] Gabrielle: It can absolutely be both in an evidence based way. Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:17:44] Ricardo: has a great post, a blog post, I encourage people to check it out. But I don't remember the name of the actual blog post, but if you Google no biological free lunches, where he talks about people think that, oh, I took a supplement, it's natural, and they think [01:18:00] it's not going to affect their biology. Just the same way that , a prescription drug would, and he's it's absolutely not true. And he shows examples of just common vitamins or things in excess that can really affect your entire system. It's a great post. It definitely woke me up in a sense. I never thought of it that way before that and it led me down a rabbit hole of now I'm very cautious about anything I put in my body, whether it's a supplement or a pharmaceutical, and this whole idea of when people say things like, Oh, it's loaded with chemicals, it's like we, we are, we're

[01:18:33] Gabrielle: Yes. . 

[01:18:34] Ricardo: What are you talking about? 

[01:18:36] Gabrielle: You were also loaded with chemicals. That is 

[01:18:37] Ricardo: Yeah, I've always found that funny when people say

[01:18:40] Ricardo: that.

[01:18:40] Ricardo: So there's this idea

[01:18:41] Ricardo: of Layne Orton talks a lot about it. I think it's it's toxicology 101 or whatever it's like the dosage makes the poison.

[01:18:48] Gabrielle: Yes.

[01:18:50] Ricardo: And so I wanted to get your take on that because my confusion with it is it makes sense when we're talking about individual dosages of things.

[01:18:59] Ricardo: So

[01:18:59] Ricardo: [01:19:00] for example, let's take,

[01:19:01] Ricardo: artificial sweetener or whatever, where it

[01:19:03] Ricardo: becomes toxic could be an amount that would almost be impossible to consume in one sitting or even

[01:19:09] Ricardo: in a 24 hour period. But what about when you talk about somebody who's doing a lot of little things that are quote unquote unhealthy?

[01:19:18] Ricardo: Where does that line draw between the dosage becoming poisonous versus, okay,

[01:19:24] Ricardo: like we say, health outcomes? And how do we know if we're overdoing it,

[01:19:29] Ricardo: Sure, the dosage makes the poison, but If I'm using this type of cookware, that's maybe not the greatest, or it's leaching into my food, and I'm using plastic, and I'm where am I going too far

[01:19:41] Ricardo: with watching what I consume versus, not far enough.

[01:19:44] Gabrielle: Oh, that's such a great question because there are definitely factors that we can look at in terms of how many alcoholic beverages do you have per day? Or how much are you smoking? And so there are population studies that look at the classic influences and like the more [01:20:00] obvious factors, even like red meat or eggs.

[01:20:04] Gabrielle: And these studies suddenly have their limitations and they have their problems because, we can't say, Oh, if you eat an egg every week, you're gonna lose six years off of your life. The media interprets the statistics in a way that they hope is understandable and catchy for the general public.

[01:20:21] Gabrielle: That doesn't mean that they're accurate in their interpretations of, and their communication of the data. It's hard to say with some of the factors that don't have, we have things that have what we call like the LD 50 like lethal dose. We can calculate these based on animal models.

[01:20:38] Gabrielle: So we say like, how much did we have to give to this rat before it died? Okay. Now, based on this group of rats now based on that, We calculate, we might do that with other animals like larger, more, larger animals with a digestive system that's closer to humans, like pigs are very common are very similar to a human digestive tract.

[01:20:56] Gabrielle: In most cases, these are done with smaller animal models because [01:21:00] that's more affordable and more replicable. And then from there, we calculate based on their metabolic rate and their body mass. And other factors, we calculate what would be the lethal dose for a human. And then we set safe doses based on much less than that.

[01:21:16] Gabrielle: So even if they say the acceptable daily limit of this supplement or whatever is like 500 milligrams a day. That doesn't mean that at 500 milligrams a day, you are approaching a dangerous amount. Not even close. So you take twice that, and that's how we calculate the lethal or dangerous doses of a lot of supplements drugs, and multivitamins, things like that, that we can say okay, we're pretty sure like this amount is, you definitely need to stay under this.

[01:21:43] Gabrielle: Sometimes it's not lethal. Sometimes it's okay, you'll get some bad side effects. You'll get, with too much vitamin C, like it'll give you really loose bowel movements. But when we're looking at things like microplastics that's not something that we've been really, that we've been able to detect for a very long time.

[01:21:59] Gabrielle: And so we [01:22:00] don't have enough human years, we don't have enough living years by which we can calculate, what's the cumulative potential damage of something, something like microplastics in your bloodstream or or BPA. And that's they have removed that from a lot of products based on animal models.

[01:22:19] Gabrielle: And so there are some times when we've been able to say, oh, we're going to, this compound is actually harmful. We remove it. But, when you're trying to look at like risk factors in terms of how many little things, if I'm using plastic or and then on top of that, I live in a high pollution area.

[01:22:37] Gabrielle: And on top of that, I don't exercise very much. It would be hard to really, I think, calculate like where you need to start caring, what needs to change. I would say. Stress obviously has an impact. That's one thing I think, stress can be a barrier to people engaging in health promoting [01:23:00] behaviors.

[01:23:00] Gabrielle: If you are concerned about These risk factors has led you to be super stressed and like neurotic about day to day life and you're living in a constant state of fear and anxiety. I would say probably you are, the, there are, the benefits to your concern are not out, like they're not outweighing the negative impact of that level of concern and anxiety.

[01:23:22] Gabrielle: But if it's in, within your power to. exercise regularly, avoid smoking. If you can, if you're living in a high pollution area, when they say, Hey, there's a an air advisory, then you don't go outside, or if you do, you wear a mask, something that can filter the particulates.

[01:23:40] Gabrielle: There are things that you can do to prevent as much as possible. But I think a lot like there can be an empowerment to also recognizing what is outside of your. Eric, your locus of control, like you're going to have a genetic predisposition. You cannot influence that. There are some people who are more prone to [01:24:00] developing Alzheimer's or liver disease or whatever, even if they're living the same lifestyle as someone else and that person is very healthy.

[01:24:06] Gabrielle: Like I have people in my family who smoke and drink, that it's been their entire lives. They're 60 something now. And I'm like. Wow, you are bulletproof like there, you're fine. That's surprising. That doesn't mean that I'm going to Oh, okay, it doesn't matter for me either. I do what I can, but I also try not to make myself anxious, so anxious that I can't just enjoy the life that I'm having now.

[01:24:32] Ricardo: Yeah, with respect to that, you gotta wonder if it's their don't give a shit attitude that contributes to their longevity, because

[01:24:40] Ricardo: any family members I've had, or, family, friends, whatever, that are like now 70,

[01:24:46] Ricardo: 80, still smoking a pack a day, still getting wasted every other day, they

[01:24:51] Ricardo: drink their medicine with a shot of whiskey,

[01:24:54] Gabrielle: They're like 105. Huh.

[01:24:57] Ricardo: They eat like shit.

[01:24:59] Ricardo: They [01:25:00] just consume toxic

[01:25:02] Ricardo: entertainment. They literally do everything what they say don't.

[01:25:05] Ricardo: And they're just like, ah, get out of here with that crap,

[01:25:07] Ricardo: man. I'm here to live my life. And they live to a hundred years old. They're like,

[01:25:10] Ricardo: what the hell is 

[01:25:11] Gabrielle: What's the secret? Oh, bacon. Yeah, bacon and whiskey most days.

[01:25:15] Ricardo: I, taught me that you have to chill out as well.

[01:25:19] Gabrielle: Yeah. 

[01:25:19] Ricardo: I think overly neurotic behaviors is probably not the greatest, 

[01:25:24] Gabrielle: Exactly. Yes. 

[01:25:24] Ricardo: used to be like that with food, everything had to be like perfect

[01:25:28] Ricardo: Years. Now I'm like, I wouldn't say the extreme opposite, but I

[01:25:32] Ricardo: am definitely way different where I just chill out,

[01:25:35] Ricardo: relax. It's what you do most of the time, not every

[01:25:38] Ricardo: single time, 

[01:25:39] Gabrielle: Yeah. Yeah. It's like that. If you want it to be a sustainable, enjoyable lifestyle, then it has to be those things as be sustainable and enjoyable. Like I don't want to spend my days like worrying about how many days do I have left? And then I don't enjoy the ones that I have now because like you can have the healthiest possible lifestyle and fantastic [01:26:00] genetics and still get hit by a bus.

[01:26:01] Gabrielle: That's morbid, but it's like, It's just, part of what has given me as I think brought me back to a more realistic way of existing that I was like, I don't want my whole life to just be tracking macros and going to the gym. Like I want to do other things with my time and I still like to go to the gym, but it's not what my life revolves around anymore.

[01:26:24] Ricardo: Yeah, there if you're familiar with Tony Robbins, I'm sure you've heard of him. He tells a story that there was this doctor, maybe a professor or something about oral health, etc. And he starts smoking a cigar, and everybody's what the f is going on?

[01:26:39] Ricardo: And they asked him, how could you be sitting there preaching about oral health and you're smoking a cigar? and

[01:26:45] Ricardo: he goes, Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar like in

[01:26:48] Ricardo: other words 

[01:26:49] Gabrielle: Yes, exactly. If you're having a cigar like once a year, it's like,

[01:26:53] Ricardo: Exactly it's like, dude just relax 

[01:26:55] Ricardo: Anyhow are gmo's bad for us

[01:26:57] Gabrielle: Ah, I love this question. So [01:27:00] for people who don't know, you have insulin or your loved one has access to insulin because of GMO bacteria. We used to have to get it from animals. We would get it from pigs which we would have to sacrifice them. And it was not as effective. And so now we have genetically modified microbes that will produce insulin.

[01:27:20] Gabrielle: And that has made it much less expensive, much more accessible, has saved so many lives. That's just one example. Here's another example. In the early nineties, eight ladies in Hawaii, the rainbow papaya was being decimated by a virus. And the papaya at that time was Hawaii's number one export crop. Like it was a huge aspect of their economy.

[01:27:49] Gabrielle: And this virus was just wiping out whole farms. And within several years, I don't want to say it took probably close to seven years, GMO papaya that [01:28:00] was resistant to the ring spot virus. Now, there were groups, there were lobbyists who were mostly not the farmers that said, we don't want the GMO papaya here, we don't know it's safety and whatnot.

[01:28:10] Gabrielle: GMOs are tested and tested for safety. Like they are extensively tested. This took, seven years to come up with a papaya. So it's not like they are developed, and then six months later, they're released. But the lobbyists were like, we don't want the GMOs and most of the farmers, most of the people who livelihoods relied on the papayas were like, no, give us the GMO papayas.

[01:28:34] Gabrielle: Like we don't have there's not something else that we can use. And so they did end up utilizing the GMO papayas and it effectively saved that aspect of their economy. There are actually relatively few GMO foods available and there are people like GMOs are only in the US. No, there are GMOs.

[01:28:52] Gabrielle: And there's GMO cotton. We don't eat that. That's used for like text textiles and things like that. There is [01:29:00] GMO corn. Most of the GMO corn is actually used to produce ethanol and some of it is also used for livestock, but it's not something that we like get in our food supply. And then there are obviously some GMO I think like soy products And that is, if there is a GMO in the food, then that is at least in the States, indicated on the packaging.

[01:29:23] Gabrielle: But a GMO food is not, it's not like only GMO foods have DNA in them. No, every food, every living thing that you eat contains DNA. That does not mean that DNA enters your body and like somehow modifies your DNA and turns you into that. Like you're not going to become a strawberry, you're not going to become a potato because you're eating these foods.

[01:29:46] Gabrielle: So I think that might be one of the one basis of the misunderstanding is that people think Oh, GMO is like, there's DNA in there. I know there's DNA in all of the food. Some people are also concerned about like the proteins, there are some [01:30:00] organisms that are being, Oh, there's another one.

[01:30:02] Gabrielle: Golden rice. That has been genetically modified to contain high amounts of vitamin A to combat vitamin A deficiency in very poor developing countries who subsist mostly on rice, which is not a good source of vitamin A. And so children end up not developing well, like they end up with rickets and things like that.

[01:30:21] Gabrielle: So these GMO foods are being developed to needs like they're being developed to prevent disease and to ensure that we have enough crops to and to reduce the amount of pesticide that we have to use. Because I think people also confused like glyphosate and GMOs. But if we genetically modify a plant so that is resistant to a pest, then we don't have to use the pesticide.

[01:30:47] Gabrielle: That's the key. We actually can use less of it. So no, GMOs are not harmful. GMOs are extensively tested. A lot of GMO varieties are not yet available because they're still undergoing testing [01:31:00] and most of what in the supermarket is not. GMO. And organic foods also use pesticides, and some of the pesticides that they use, like copper sulfate or Oh gosh, the other one escapes my mind.

[01:31:12] Gabrielle: It starts with an rotenone which I have personally used to shut down mitochondria, actually have lower LD50s. They're actually lethal at lower doses than the pesticides used in conventional pharmacies. So again, we have to not fall for that trap of Oh, it's natural. Like it's better for you.

[01:31:29] Ricardo: Yeah, that's great are you familiar with dr andrea love

[01:31:33] Gabrielle: Yes. 

[01:31:34] Ricardo: She's got a great I don't

[01:31:37] Ricardo: agree with everything, but I have opened my eyes to a lot of stuff and it came from her. She's got a great sub stack newsletter all on GMOs

[01:31:46] Ricardo: and organic. And it was eye opening.

[01:31:49] Gabrielle: Yeah, she's fantastic. And she is she heavily references her content, so you're not gonna see just one 

[01:31:55] Ricardo: Oh, she cites everything, I'll give her that. 

[01:31:57] Gabrielle: Yeah. So 

[01:31:58] Ricardo: she's got some balls on her for sure. 

[01:31:59] Gabrielle: [01:32:00] Oh my gosh. 

[01:32:01] Ricardo: after everybody. 

[01:32:02] Gabrielle: fantastic. Yeah. 

[01:32:03] Ricardo: That's one thing I, really do respect about

[01:32:05] Ricardo: her. She does not hold back and she's got some.

[01:32:08] Ricardo: Yeah, I would love to have the honor of talking to her and pushing back on some things, but

[01:32:14] Gabrielle: Gotta be prepared.

[01:32:15] 

[01:32:15] Ricardo: open to have, Oh, it's all good. She's the expert. Not me. I just have questions.

[01:32:20] Ricardo: I, I'm not somebody who's trying to pretend I know

[01:32:22] Ricardo: everything. That's why I'm doing this. Otherwise I wouldn't be doing it. Yeah that's

[01:32:25] Ricardo: great. And thank you. And my concern with, not even necessarily GMOs or any, anything where a company stands to profit like in large amounts,

[01:32:37] Ricardo: which is fine because I, I'm a capitalist, I do like the idea of getting rewarded for your, what you progress on or you get good at or you produce. My thing is, with respect to studies

[01:32:50] Gabrielle: yeah. 

[01:32:51] Ricardo: Let's say they create something and it has negative side effects and so they don't want to publish those studies, but they want to publish the things that will [01:33:00] positively show the results until they can now sell these things.

[01:33:03] Ricardo: I know , there are companies that definitely do that. I'm wondering how do we decipher a good study versus a bad study? And like you said, I know it's the body of evidence. I

[01:33:12] Ricardo: understand that too. How do you approach that? 

[01:33:14] Gabrielle: What happens when for example, with a drug, they go through different trial phases. So the early phases are done in animal models, and then they will go through clinical trials that are done in humans. Any medication that you get a sheet with the medication, with the prescription at least in the states. And it says here are all the adverse effects, and this is the percentage in by which they occurred. 27 percent of people said that they experienced nausea, 15 percent said dry mouth, 8 percent said whatever.

[01:33:43] Gabrielle: Then there are serious adverse effects. Even if a person got hit by a car and died, they still will report, while this person was taking this drug, they died. So they will report any adverse event that happens during the process of taking the drug. Because maybe, you don't know, maybe they [01:34:00] got the drug made them dizzy and then they, didn't see the car coming and that's why they got hit.

[01:34:03] Gabrielle: So we do have data, like any prescription that you get. Where you don't get that data is with supplements. For So that's the irony here is that like supplements. So when a drug is going to be made available, like it has to go through all these processes and then it's regulated by the FDA.

[01:34:22] Gabrielle: Supplements are not regulated by the FDA. Their marketing is regulated by the FTC, the federal trade commission. So it regulates their claims. But when someone wants to put a new supplement on the market, they just inform the FDA. And as long as there are no new ingredients, that are as of like after 1994 and there's nothing that has been banned, due to death they can just put it on the market.

[01:34:48] Gabrielle: They just write the FDA. This is the product that we're putting out. And then it's the FTC that regulates what they say about the drug. So they can't claim to treat or cure anything, but there is no one [01:35:00] who regulates the safety or efficacy or purity of the drug. Unless that drug has undergone third party or not drug, unless that supplement has undergone third party testing, then that's voluntary.

[01:35:13] Gabrielle: So if you see that they've gone through and I want to say NFTs. See, there's like there are N. S. C. There's a couple third party groups that will test the supplement for purity. So there are no banned substances in it on accident, like to prevent an athlete from accidentally taking a banned substance.

[01:35:31] Gabrielle: But if they don't have that third party testing, then actually It could contain a number of different ingredients that are either in different amounts on the than what's on the label or not on the label. And it might not contain things that are on the label. There was, I want to say in around 2018.

[01:35:48] Gabrielle: There were a number of protein powders that got like they were audited and got fined because they were using [01:36:00] nitrogen to boost their amino, their apparent amino acid and protein content. But it was just nitrogen. It wasn't actually amino acids. So they were just using like nitrogenous compounds.

[01:36:10] Gabrielle: And so that's an example of, that supplement company was using a cheaper ingredient so they could profit more. And the consumers didn't know any better. And the issue is that It usually isn't looked at until after the fact, like someone dies and then the FDA will step in and say, Hey, is this something that we have to take off the shelves?

[01:36:31] Gabrielle: So the scrutiny with which we look at supplements is always much, often much lower than how we look at pharmaceutical drugs, even though the access to information that we have about pharmaceutical drugs is much higher than what we have around supplements. .

[01:36:49] Ricardo: What about corruption inside of the FDA?

[01:36:52] Ricardo: There's you know, there's I know there's corruption and human beings are flawed

[01:36:57] Ricardo: There's some unethical people that work [01:37:00] inside of the FDA or these different organizations that then Corruption pass, to say this is a safe drug, et cetera.

[01:37:07] Ricardo: That's again, and I'm not anti pharmaceutical interventions by any means, that's where my concern is

[01:37:15] Ricardo: and where I haven't really reached a consensus to say, okay, one or the other. So

[01:37:21] Ricardo: I'm just curious what your opinion is on that.

[01:37:23] Gabrielle: Yeah, there have been cases of extremely unscrupulous, unethical practices, from pharmaceutical companies in the past from large food manufacturing companies. A lot of that happens in other countries. A lot of that happened. A lot of that is directed toward vulnerable groups. Minorities, people who have very low income and in as a person with of your upper middle class and whatnot then you are probably at less [01:38:00] at lower risk of being one of these targeted groups because those other groups are often invisible.

[01:38:10] Gabrielle: So it's very easy to cover those things up. But if you have this might be a controversial statement, but if you have an attractive young white woman or white, football player who dies as a result of a specific drug, that is more likely to show up in the news than if you have a poor group of women living in Africa who've been damaged by another drug.

[01:38:37] Gabrielle: And there's probably, there could be more that we don't know about, but there are definitely we can find the accounts of things like the like the Tuskegee experiment issues with the company Nestle and, again, they're mostly targeting people who are vulnerable. And they're doing unscrupulous research with [01:39:00] them or they're providing drugs or there was one an example of an IUD that they were using in with low income women and it was known to cause issues, serious issues.

[01:39:12] Gabrielle: So I think like it's not an impossibility, but I think the reality of the situation is yes, it absolutely exists. But the corruption is probably not in a person pat like saying, Oh, that is supplements. Okay. And I'm like getting paid off by the supplement company. It's going to be the actual company somehow.

[01:39:34] Gabrielle: Going around, like skirting around, like in the example of that supplement company that was like doping their protein powder with nitrogen, they just ended up getting caught. Or in Nestle they ran a huge campaign. To have women use their formula instead of breastfeeding.

[01:39:50] Gabrielle: But it was not in the U. S. This was in poor rural areas in Africa. And they were having these women use formulas better than breast milk. But the women were able to breastfeed. [01:40:00] They just wanted them to use the formula instead. And I think they maybe would not have done that so much in the U.

[01:40:06] Gabrielle: S. where they're like, people might know better. So that's my take on that. It's not that corruption doesn't exist. It's just that I think we need to be more aware of who is actually targeted and harmed by the corruption. 

[01:40:19] Ricardo: So our detoxes and cleanses bullshit.

[01:40:22] Gabrielle: Absolute bullshit. Yes. Like they can be very harmful. Don't bother. 

[01:40:27] Ricardo: Yeah I already know that

[01:40:29] Ricardo: one. That's another red flag, right?

[01:40:32] Ricardo: When people are talking about my detox tea or 

[01:40:34] Gabrielle: Absolutely. Yes. 

[01:40:35] Ricardo: always detoxing, aren't we? Isn't that why we have a liver 

[01:40:38] Gabrielle: And kidneys? 

[01:40:39] Ricardo: Don't we detox even with everything our body does? With like sweat and liver, kidneys,

[01:40:46] Gabrielle: Yeah. Primarily, yeah, liver, kidneys urine, bowel movements. Not necessarily all toxins, like waste products, things that are no longer of use. So yes, we are. And, but especially liver and kidneys. 

[01:40:58] Ricardo: What about gut health [01:41:00] for women that are trying to get pregnant, women that are pregnant,

[01:41:02] Ricardo: and then post birth. And then we can segue into menopause.

[01:41:06] Gabrielle: Sure. This is another really new area of study. They're looking at how the microbiome could potentially influence fertility. They're looking at differences in women who have P. C. S. versus women who don't. There often are differences, sometimes not, but we can't necessarily we can't contribute.

[01:41:23] Gabrielle: We can't attribute fertility challenges to the microbiome right now. There is evidence that the microbiome changes throughout pregnancy obviously can be influenced by the mother's dietary pattern and also circulating hormones can play a role. And then the microbiome of the mother is passed on to the baby during the process of birth.

[01:41:47] Gabrielle: Either the baby is going to pass through the vaginal canal and be inoculated that way, and in that case they're going to be their first inoculation will be mostly lactobacillus And then also bifidobacteria, that's actually more due to [01:42:00] the proximity to the rectum than it is to the vaginal canal. The vaginal canal is populated almost primarily almost entirely by lactobacillus.

[01:42:08] Gabrielle: And so that bifidobacterium is coming from more of like fecal matter but it's completely normal. That's it. That's part of the process and in babies who are born via C section, their microbiome will initially represent or resemble more the mother's skin microbiome and that of the environment.

[01:42:27] Gabrielle: And they are a little more delayed in developing their more mature infant microbiome, but around one year of age, they tend to look pretty similar, whether it's been a vaginal or C section birth. Breastfeeding can also make a difference because breast milk contains human milk oligosaccharides, antibodies, and a lot of components that have not yet been replicated in formula.

[01:42:51] Gabrielle: I'm saying like, I'm fed is best, like whatever you need to do, but it's just that there are some differences then in between babies who are breastfed versus bottle fed. [01:43:00] And there's some emerging evidence that early microbiome could play a role in the development of breast milk.

[01:43:06] Gabrielle: Allergies like both skin allergies and then seasonal allergies in part because that early microbiome interacts a great deal with the immune system of the infant because an infant's intestines are very permeable. So there's a lot of cross talk between the intestinal contents and the immune system.

[01:43:28] Gabrielle: And so there's some thought that perhaps if they're lacking what would be like the usual set of microbes that they might not develop a normally functioning immune system. And there are definitely changes over the course of pregnancy and post pregnancy, but a lot more of the research is looking at, like, how does the mother's microbiome influence the baby?

[01:43:48] Gabrielle: And then looking at menopause, that's also something that's new and it's not, there's not a lot to pull from that. Like they're looking at, how does the [01:44:00] microbiome change during menopause? Not much. Actually it stays pretty stable. Like the microbiome stays pretty stable from the age of three until about the age of 60 or so.

[01:44:09] Gabrielle: And at 60 and above, it starts to lose diversity and become less stable, more like the infant microbiome. But yeah, throughout menopause, it doesn't look like there's there much changes that could that occur or that would be meaningful.

[01:44:25] Ricardo: Cool. I love it. Specifically the giving birth naturally versus cesarean birth, et cetera.

[01:44:32] Ricardo: Now, do you recommend for, let's say somebody has a baby through a cesarean surgery or whatnot, 

[01:44:38] Ricardo: do you recommend any supplementation for the mom or the baby post, birth? Is there any studies that show, to help them develop that gut microbiome? Over course of that year.

[01:44:50] Gabrielle: That's, yeah, it's not super clear. I think I'm always very cautious about making any recommendations for these are special populations. I know one thing that has been [01:45:00] popular but is very risky is vaginal seeding. So they'll take vaginal swabs, like vaginal fluid, and put it into the baby's nose, mouth, sometimes their eyes.

[01:45:09] Gabrielle: That can be very dangerous. Yeah, very dangerous, especially with the eyes. And also that's not the entire inoculation. Like the baby would normally also have exposure to like the rectum. Sometimes there is a bowel movement during that process. So that's one thing that became popular of concern, I'm sure, but has been labeled as very dangerous, like not a great idea and doesn't have any proof in terms of its efficacy.

[01:45:35] Gabrielle: There are some formulas that are now starting to add like different oligosaccharides or they're starting to or probiotics trying to mimic what some of what would be in breast milk and then add, probiotics. But again, it's an area that's very limited because it's hard, babies are not a common study subject and in some cases it could be, I've seen, one example where they didn't have a control group.

[01:45:59] Gabrielle: So they were looking at if [01:46:00] a mother's on a low FODMAP diet, does it reduce GI distress in the baby? And over time, the babies got better. But in or no, they did have a control group, but the babies got better in both groups. So then it's if they both get better equally over time, then, it probably didn't make a difference having a low FODMAP diet.

[01:46:15] Gabrielle: Obviously, diet influences breast milk. But yeah, it's like one of those areas that I'm, like I said, very cautious about seeing anything, but the vaginal seeding is known to be problematic and even some of the things, like some of the conclusions that they reached, 10 some years ago, I have been debunked over time.

[01:46:33] Gabrielle: It's an area that again is new. And for example, thinking that, oh, a baby born by C section had a greater chance of developing obesity. They thought it was because of the C section, but it wasn't. It was when they controlled for that, they found that it was actually because mothers with overweight or obesity are more likely to have a C section and then overweight and obesity can be very familial.

[01:46:53] Gabrielle: And so that was the link, not the microbiome, not the C section. 

[01:46:58] Ricardo: I'm going to go into more [01:47:00] behavioral type questions. In other words, what people should stop doing or do to improve their health and gut health

[01:47:06] Ricardo: based off of your expertise. So let's start with stop doing because I think most people can relate to things they do poorly. It's easier to think of the negative for some reason,

[01:47:17] Ricardo: right? What are some, you could say, three worst things that people do that hurt or, are harmful for their gut. And it doesn't have to be three, this is just an arbitrary

[01:47:28] Ricardo: number. 

[01:47:29] Gabrielle: So harmful for the gut, I'll say like in terms of disease prevention drinking alcohol regularly, being sedentary and. It's not gonna be anything exciting and smoking not eating, not eating an adequate amount of fruits and vegetables. Like it's really is the basics because what tends to happen is we do these observational studies where we look at what are the, these people live to be a really old age or these people ended up getting colorectal cancer.

[01:47:57] Gabrielle: And let's look at their habits retroactively, or [01:48:00] sometimes we follow them for a period of time and then we can draw. correlations and say the people who, eat like a Mediterranean or a dash style dietary pattern tend to have much lower risk of developing colorectal cancer. So that seems like a prudent thing to do. 

[01:48:14] Ricardo: So the basics, the things that people know

[01:48:18] Ricardo: not to do or to do. 

[01:48:19] Gabrielle: Mhm.

[01:48:20] Ricardo: Is there any healthy, quote unquote healthy foods that are potentially problematic 

[01:48:24] Gabrielle: yeah, I would say like I mentioned inulin earlier, it's a functional fiber and so it's added to a lot of quote unquote health foods to increase the fiber content and like how perceived like the perception of their healthfulness. But it can cause a lot of GI distress and the same thing with like sugar alcohols like if foods are like sugar free or there's protein bars.

[01:48:45] Gabrielle: There's, a lot of gut health geared inulin so that's one thing that I would say it's not causing damage to your tissues. It's just causing a lot of GI distress and that could make you think something's wrong and, lead you to spend a lot of [01:49:00] money on other supplements to try to feel better when in fact it was just like the protein powder that you've been having.

[01:49:04] Ricardo: So inulin and the alcohol, sugar, so

[01:49:07] Gabrielle: The sugar alcohols. Yeah, 

[01:49:09] Ricardo: Sugar, alcohols, okay. And you mentioned earlier about soaking, nuts and seeds or legumes or anything, you recommend soaking them overnight, kind of thing,

[01:49:20] Gabrielle: Yeah, you don't, 

[01:49:21] Ricardo: them 

[01:49:21] Gabrielle: You don't have to soak like almonds and nuts. Like the things that you get that are already processed, that's fine. Or if you get like beans in a can, you could rinse them to remove some of the excess sodium. But if you're buying dried beans, then yes, you have to soak them.

[01:49:36] Gabrielle: And I mean you have to anyway to cook them. So you, it's part, it's just part of the cooking process. 

[01:49:43] Ricardo: Now, for people that struggle with bloating they're, you hear that quite a bit, people feel bloated after they eat.

[01:49:50] Ricardo: Besides maybe overeating,

[01:49:52] Ricardo: I think that's a lot of it for people.

[01:49:54] Ricardo: Do you have any recommendations on preventing bloating, or what to [01:50:00] do with

[01:50:00] Ricardo: respect to bloating? 

[01:50:01] Gabrielle: Yeah, especially in the fitness space. This is another example of the health halo effect. If it's not the inulin, in your supplements, a lot of times people are trying to, yeah, pursue their leanest physique. And so in order to feel full, they'll eat a ton of vegetables. And more of the, the very like cruciferous like broccoli and things like that because they want to feel full or cabbage. 

[01:50:26] Gabrielle: And those foods are, yes, absolutely nutritious, but they are also very gas producing and above around 70 grams of fiber per day. A lot of people start to experience GI distress, like some gas bloating maybe some constipation. And so if you're like, if you're trying to eat for volume all the time and your solution to that is like you have, a whole pound of broccoli every meal, then that could be contributing to that feeling of bloating.

[01:50:57] Gabrielle: In some people it's a self [01:51:00] reported sensation of bloating, even though it's actually a normal amount of stomach distension, and that can sometimes be associated with body image disturbance. So for some people, it's Oh, I don't like to feel bloated, but really, it's like a normal level of like your stomach is going to be stretched a little bit.

[01:51:16] Gabrielle: You're going to have some distention, but it's not necessarily bloating. So those would be the two most common. And then, foods that are really high in FODMAPs, the fermentable fibers, like lots of fruits, especially like pit fruits with a pit nuts, beans. Wheat lots of vegetables, they can all be gas producing.

[01:51:36] Gabrielle: They're very nutritious, and they're causing gas because the microbes are metabolizing them. If they're eating, they're having a fantastic time. But, yeah, if that's what's going on, if you're habitually eating tons and tons of those foods, then that could be contributing to the bloating.

[01:51:51] Ricardo: Okay, great.

[01:51:53] Ricardo: And I think I have two more. 

[01:51:54] Gabrielle: Okay.

[01:51:55] Ricardo: So there's this whole, vegans versus carnivores, and then all the diets in [01:52:00] between.

[01:52:00] Ricardo: Two, I think I would say, are the extremists,

[01:52:02] Ricardo: are like the extreme vegans and

[01:52:05] Ricardo: then the extreme carnivores.

[01:52:07] Ricardo: What's your take on that? It almost seems to be a cult like following as well.

[01:52:11] Ricardo: They're not open for discussion.

[01:52:13] Ricardo: Quickly resort to insults and

[01:52:16] Gabrielle: Sure.

[01:52:16] Ricardo: almost violence in some 

[01:52:17] Gabrielle: A lot 

[01:52:18] Ricardo: no just, from your perspective. 

[01:52:19] Gabrielle: Vegan diets are often more of a moral decision than they are a health based decision. So leaving that side out, because to them it's moral, it doesn't matter. But when we're looking at the effects from a health standpoint, a vegan diet would be largely more prudent if it is a, a, a, I should say a supplemented vegan diet.

[01:52:40] Gabrielle: So a vegan diet where you have a source of B12. Would be more prudent than a carnivore diet when we're looking at things like long term health outcomes looking at cholesterol levels blood pressure colorectal cancer risk Vegan diet would be more prudent and a lot of times, people on the carnivore diet [01:53:00] are eating like lots of cheese, lots of red meat and bacon and things like that.

[01:53:03] Gabrielle: And then they go to their doctor and their cholesterol is at like 700. And they're like, I don't understand. That is the expected outcome. Based on a lot of data that's what would happen. Yeah, I would say if you're going to pick one for health reasons, a vegan diet would be more prudent.

[01:53:18] Gabrielle: But if it's for a moral reason, then that's the driving force. It's not necessarily, based on the diet. Improving their health. 

[01:53:27] Ricardo: Okay. Now do you have any additional tips or behaviors people could adopt besides the obvious getting in your steps and exercise and don't smoke, don't drink, 

[01:53:41] Ricardo: Is there anything beyond the obvious that you would say people could stop doing or start doing or look at creating habits around? 

[01:53:48] Gabrielle: For gut health or just like health in general?

[01:53:51] Ricardo: Oh, yes,

[01:53:51] Ricardo: for gut health and just health in general, 

[01:53:55] Ricardo: Their health span.

[01:53:56] Gabrielle: yeah, a lot of times people are so interested in fermented foods. But the only [01:54:00] fermented food that has a strong body of evidence for it would be fermented dairy. So things like Greek yogurt, kefi that has been shown to improve cardiometabolic health.

[01:54:08] Gabrielle: So that would be one that I could say if you're open to adding some fermented dairy, do that. Not all yogurt is fermented is cultured. Some of them are like a modified dairy food or something. So just make sure that it's got live active cultures on it. And in terms of just overall wellness, I would say to not overlook the importance of social connection because this is your show is about like longevity and we haven't talked about that, but like one of the key factors is social connection in terms of like quality of life.

[01:54:39] Gabrielle: So that's one that I would say to not let that go by the wayside because we can be so busy and, make like our lives full of trying to, be healthy. I don't know, go to the gym all the time and whatnot. And sometimes it's better for you to go have lunch with your friend.

[01:54:53] Ricardo: I couldn't agree more, and I'm actually in the process of potentially bringing on some interesting guests [01:55:00] with respect to that aspect of things. But yeah, you gotta have fun, and you have to, have, spend time with people that make you feel good,

[01:55:08] Ricardo: and that you can make feel good, right?

[01:55:10] Ricardo: I think it's I think that's one of the, speaking on longevity, one of the common traits that a lot of these people or tribes that live for long had is a strong community.

[01:55:22] Ricardo: And sometimes they were doing everything wrong or some things were questionable, but they had this very

[01:55:27] Ricardo: tight knit community. They celebrate every morning.

[01:55:29] Ricardo: They share food together. This tight knit community, I think there's something to that for

[01:55:34] Gabrielle: Yeah, absolutely. 

[01:55:35] Ricardo: Cause loneliness I think reduces your health for sure. People that are lonely or sad and stuff,

[01:55:41] Ricardo: They take a hit on their immune system for sure.

[01:55:43] Gabrielle: Yep. Absolutely.

[01:55:44] Ricardo: Yeah. Okay. So where can everybody find you?

[01:55:47] Ricardo: I'm going to make sure to include all your links in the show notes, but if

[01:55:50] Ricardo: you could just let us know.

[01:55:52] Gabrielle: So my main IG account is trust_and_nourish. And then I also have a gut health one, which is [01:56:00] currently like in stasis, but it's no_BS_gut health. Both of those are on Instagram. That of course is a hundred percent gut health. And I may wake it up at some point in the future, but so that's where they can find me.

[01:56:11] Gabrielle: And then I have a link tree where they can find links to, I've got courses, coaching the wellness tracker. So lots of resources.

[01:56:18] Ricardo: Awesome. And do you have a direct website or is it more of the link tree 

[01:56:22] Gabrielle: It's more of the link tree. I have a direct website, but I need to buy a better domain name.

[01:56:26] Ricardo: Do you want to share it or

[01:56:29] Gabrielle: I think it's like trustandnourish. kajabi. something.

[01:56:33] Ricardo: Oh, you're using kajabi. Okay

[01:56:34] Gabrielle: Yeah, exactly.

[01:56:35] Ricardo: familiar with kajabi Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, and I encourage people to check out her power lifting, especially her bench press you could literally like Roll underneath it. That's how much of a spine. This is impressive

[01:56:48] Gabrielle: Thank you.

[01:56:50] Ricardo: Yes, awesome All right. Thank you so much for being here.

[01:56:53] Ricardo: I really enjoyed I could talk to you for hours I have more questions, but we'll leave it at that

[01:56:57] Ricardo: maybe a part two at some point

[01:56:59] Gabrielle: Yeah. Sounds good.[01:57:00] 

[01:57:01] Ricardo: Thank you so much.

[01:57:01] Gabrielle: You're very welcome. Mhm.

[01:57:04] Ricardo: Hey, thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please like. Subscribe, comment, share it with someone, write a review. Honestly, it really helps me out. And don't forget to check out my free five health hacks newsletter. You can find it at youthfulagingsecrets.com/subscribe.

[01:57:24] Ricardo: Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you. I wish you good health and I'll see you the next time.