Welcome to The Wellness Transcription Podcast, the podcast that combines the power of Christian
values with evidence based nutrition, fitness and lifestyle content. I'm your host,
doctor Patrick Early. Join me each week as we explore the intersections of Christianity
and wellness, offering you insights to help nourish your body, mind, and
soul. Whether you're looking to improve your physical health or simply strengthen your personal
relationship with Jesus, We've got you covered. Stay tuned for inspiring discussions,
expert guests, interviews, and practical tips to help you live the life God
calls us to live. Welcome back to another episode of the well In the
Transcription Podcast. This is I think the fourth time I've tried to record this
episode on how to navigate nutrition content on social media. The last two files
I've actually tried to upload on this topic have gotten corrupted. I'm still trying
to hammer out all the kinks here on the show, but we're figuring it
out, especially as we get into the videos and editing and reels and stuff
like that, so hopefully this all goes smoothly moving forward. I appreciate you
guys being here with me today. I think we've got a really good episode
to kind of get started on the new year on how to navigate all the
nutrition stuff that's on Instagram and spacebug stuff like that. And I want to
give you guys the tools today to really drift fact from fiction and use some
of these red flags and tactics that I look out for that help me determine
if the information that I'm listening to, whether I understand the material or not,
is something worth listening to, is evidence based, is there bias to
deal with here, or is it simply just not true at all. After
we go through each of those tips, we're going to go over some buzzwords,
common buzzwords you may hear in the wellness space that may or may not
actually mean what you think they mean, or they're just not a lot of
validity to using the word and the context that they're usually used. And then
lastly, I'm going to give you guys some tips that I use personally as
like a litmus test for people who I should follow in the end to determine
if the information is good quality. Before we get into all of them,
I'm also going to give you guys a brief background on me. I haven't
really done this, but I'm not going to do like my whole life story
or anything like that, just a simple kind of establishing credentials type moment here.
So I graduated pharmacy school. I'm in twenty twenty one. While I
was in pharmacy school, I became pretty apparent that I was interested in nutrition
as being a former athlete in college, it was something that was very important
for how I performed on the field. And then I felt this kind of
eagerness to learn more about nutrition as I was in pharmacy school. I didn't
want to be one of those pharmacists who just knew about pharmacy and who isn't
really well rounded in supplements or nutrition and information and stuff like that. And
I wanted to be able to provide my patients with resources and information that was
evidence based and that it would allow me to be able to do that.
So I decided to get a master's degree along with my farm d so I
could better suit or better use that information and knowledge in practice, which I
do today. I currently work in an independent pharmacy that kind of does a
little bit of everything. We do compounding long term care management, regular retail
stuff, and then we also do a lot of nutrition and wellness consults as
well. And then because of the wellness consults and the nutrition stuff, I
get to do what I enjoy doing every single day, which is educating patients,
helping them answer their questions, helping sift back from fiction from what they
have heard or may have heard on social media or in the news, that
kind of thing around nutrition. So I'm blessed to be able to do them
in a manner that makes it easy for myself and my patients. But my
goal here with the podcast is really to just be as evident space as we
can. We're gonna meet in the middle. I'm gonna help educate you guys
best I can. I mean, I'm gonna stay in my lane. So
if it has nothing to do with pharmacy, supplements or nutrition, I'm probably
not gonna talk about it other than faith, which is a big part of
my podcast. If you listen to the intro or any other episodes, Christianity
is a big part of my life something It's the foundation that I build kind
of everything off of, so that we're gonna do a lot of episodes on
that and kind of trying to tie the two together. So that'll be interesting.
It'll be kind of an interesting concept to kind of tie together as those
two kind of issues go not necessarily hand to hand all the time. So
we're going to continue to do the best we can. This is a learning
progress, a learning process for me, and hope you guys get something out
of it. So let's dive into today's episode and we'll hopefully keep this one
under an hour. So I'm gonna try not to ramble too much. So
okay, So the episode title for today's chair how to basically separate fact from
fiction as far as as nutrition information on social media goes. So the first
bit of the episode, we're going to dive into some nutrition tactics on social
media that should make you skeptical. A lot of other practitioners or certified coaches
will use some of these tactics, and a lot of times what this tactic
is really trying to do is essentially pigeonhole you into following them and getting established
with either working with them, buying a supplement that they may benefit from,
that kind of thing. But these tactics I've personally seen happen time and time
again on social media, and I want to explain them in a way to
make it easier, so you can then use them to kind of use as
a litmus test to determine us these people are worth following or if they're giving
good evidence based mission. Okay, so number one is kind of to a
double edged sword, so I call it be aware of the I know everything
expert. There's a handful of these. I'm not going to name the ones
that come to mind simply because I just that's not My goal is to bash
these people. I don't know them on a personal level, so I don't
feel like I can call them out directly. It may that may change.
But a lot of these guys claim to have the answer to everything, to
know the secret that all your physicians are healthcare providers. They've gone through years
of academic training and schooling to help you understand and to help people heal.
They'll have they'll seem to always have the answer. It's usually cutting edge ish
type language. And then the claims they make are very broad and all encompassing.
People tend to do this the I know everything expert where I know all
expert. They'll tend to make black and white health claims, like pretty broad
black and white health claims. They'll tend to simplify disease dates down and then
they'll use very highly emotional and non specific language and usually tie that in a
very dumbed down mechanism that they then extrapolate out to allow to sound like they're
smart and that they have the inside knowledge on something. So in order to
better explain this, I would say, let's use an example. So a
lot of times in the low carb community, especially ones that are in the
keto space or even the carnivore space, they'll all talk about how if you
eat carbohydrates at any type of carbohydrate, they'll say they're fattening because carbohydrates increase
insulin levels. When insulin levels are elevated, or stat burning as most people
refer to it as, is inhibited. And because of that, they'll then
take that mechanism and say, if you eat carbs consistently in your diet,
insulin is always going to be elevated, and then you're only going to be
able to store fat and not burn it. So that's essentially the mechanism that
they've dumbed down, when in reality, glucose metabolism denovo lipogenesis as well as
fabcination of really is fast and complex, it's multifactorial, it's going on all
the time. In the relative rates of each of these processests will determine if
there is weight gain or weight loss, and a lot of that is really
tied into energy balance more than anything or more than just a specific carbohydrates food
itself. I plan on doing a deeper dive into the carbohydrate model of in
one model of obesity, antibunking that in depth. Hopefully we'll do that one
soon. But again they'll use this very emotional language, they'll sound like they
know what they're talking about, and then they'll basically take this mechanism that has
some nuggets of truth, but there's a lot more context and nuance involved and
it's way more complicated than it is or that they're making it out to be.
And then they'll just basically say, yeah, see, your doctors just
want you to eat a lot of carbs. The you know the typic dant
an American diet is hard high in carbohydrates. We have an obesity crisis is
increasing, so ergocarbs are the problem. So as you can see, this
one's kind of a harder tactic to kind of nail down. But when you
really dive into the research and look at these mechanisms, you'll understand just how
complicated they are, again dumbing it down to a very simplistic mechanism that they
then extraplay out to make these broad health claims of curing all disease with diets.
Kind of crazy. So that's the first one to look out for,
and it's also the hardest one to distinguish the rest of the These are pretty
easy as far as I'm concerned to pick apart. So the second one,
as they'll refer to a single group of foods, a macronutrient, or even
a specific food ingredient as toxic or inflammatory. Now, they won't provide any
evidence or context as to what toxic or inflammatory means. Are we talking about
acute toxicity? Are we talking about acute inflammation? Are we talking about chronic
inflammation? Very rarely is any context use. It's just they'll just label the
food ast toxic or inflammatory with no evidence at all or context as to what
they mean by that. And all this is a scare tactic to scare you
from buying a certain food or following them to them by their supplements that help
with inflammation in toxicity. So usually they're coupled with detoxes or supplements that are
completely unnecessary, and oftentimes it's really just attactic to scare people. So be
wary or skeptical when people just start labeling different foods or ingredients and then just
tagging everything with a toxic inflammatory this, and they just be aware of that.
That's a big red flag. And unfortunately a lot of people with large
followings on the social media platform use these languages, use these terms interchangeably,
and I don't think they really know what it means. It's important to distinguish,
really the differences between acute and chronic inflammation. Acute information is usually localized.
There's a local inflammatory response, there can be pain associated with it,
but in reality it's localized to a certain tissue and as long as it's not
overboard of causing other problems, it's a necessary process that your body needs to
heal from injury or deal with some sort of issue at a local tissue site.
Now, chronic inflammation is a different story. These are systemic blood markers
of inflammation that are elevated chronically over long periods of time, and then those
are usually associated with autoimmune conditions and other disease states. That oftentimes require more
medication management or proper nutrition management to really kind of tackle, as well as
coloric restriction to kind of deal with. So it's very important to provide texting
nuance when you use these terms. Toxic is crazy, because anything can be
toxic at the high enough dose. That dose makes the poison, so to
speak. And even if we're dealing with toxins or poisons. I've even had
a poison control expert on here a lot of previous episode that kind of we
dove into this topic a little bit. I mean, it's just really interesting
how oft up people throw these terms around. And then it also, lastly
on this point, makes it to where there's unnecessary fear around things that aren't
toxic or inflammatory. But it also can kind of take the focus off of
products that are more likely to have issues with toxicity, especially when you're talking
about medications or supplements that may not be regulated as much or the dose is
kind of more narrow as far as the therapeutic window goes. All right,
So that's number two. The first two are a little bit trickier, but
number three, the has got a lot of these practitioners and pages that kind
of do the first two topics pretty well. The first two red flags well,
they'll also use these phrases like we need to have reset your metabolism or
by my metabolic reset program because your metabolism's broken. If you feel slug issue,
you can't wait recently, And it's really just a tactic to scare you
to think that their program is very unique or individualized, and a lot of
times it's just a marketing tactic. You can't hack or reset a metabolism if
your metabolism was truly broken, and you would be dead. That's how that
worked. Metabolism is extensively complex. There's thousands of enzomatic processes and all these
metabolically active tissues that are constantly going on. And to suggest that you could
hack reset whether your metabolism is broken, it's just crazy. And the fact
that you're just going to try to sell people the answer to a problem that
they don't have is a big red flags. That's red flag number three,
Red flag number four. They're not going to provide proper evidence or citations when
they make health claims. This is extremely important. The larger or the more
broad or expansive the health claim, the more burden of proof is needed to
back up said claim. So you really have to have your evidence in check
and make sure it's good quality in the right patient populations. Anytime you make
a health claim and hold myself, I tend to hold myself to this standard.
I know a lot of other healthcare practitioners do this, but if I
make a health claim, I'm going to back it up by citations. If
I don't, then if someone asks for those citations, I have to have
them ready to go and be able to explain it how those citations are relevant
to the claim that I made. Unfortunately, a lot of these accounts,
if you press them to use evidence or ask them for their sources of information
because you may be curious or you may know that they're actually not being accurate
with their information, a lot of times they'll say, oh, well,
the research is out there, just google it. Sometimes they may cite a
study if they can find one, or if they're really trying to cherry pick
a study to fit their bias, they'll usually cite a cell culture study or
an animal study looking at a specific compound or ingredient and showing how it's dangerous,
when in reality, when you look at human randomized control trials, meta
analyses, systematic reviews where you look at large populations over large periods of time
that are randomized and controlled for other variables. You just don't do these negative
outcomes with these ingredients or food groups, so to speak. So just be
really skeptical when people consistently refuse to provide evidence or citations when they make health
claims. And unfortunately Instagram is kind of Instagram and TikTok are rife with health
claims. They'll make them all the time, and they'll just bear rarely do
I see quality evidence cited. So that's point number four, Red flag number
four, Red flag number five. They'll also say that calories don't matter,
or they'll tell you to count chemicals instead of calories, or if you can't
pronounce that ingredient, you shouldn't eat it. And we don't really need to
worry about calories because calories are important, whether people realize it or not.
Calories in, calories out, and energy BALLACE is the main driver for weight
loss, regardless of what type of diet you follow. The science is pretty
set on that. There's tons of evidence to suggest that's the case. How
a lot of these fringe diet culture or fringe dieters, like in these low
carb or high carb or vegan communities or cornivore communities, a lot of them
tend to ignore the fact that calories matter regardless of the diet that you're doing,
and if you're losing weight on a diet, ultimately you're eating less calories
than your body is expanding and determining what you know. Just because you follow
a corniboar diet you're in a chloric deficit, doesn't mean the calories don't matter.
It simply means that specific diet you're following is allowing you, whether you
realize it or not, to maintain an energy deficit over time. And when
you do that, you will lose weight. And that's pretty standard. But
just it's kind of shocking to me how many scientists, more health experts,
physicians, even other pharmacists or nutritionists will say that calories really don't matter.
We've kind of we've kind of gone past that science has expanded and it's these
more fringe mechanisms and carbohydrates are bad those types of things, when in reality,
calories aren't sexy. There's nothing really inherently interesting about them. It's important,
and it's complicated to truly track your calories, and we can't be perfect
with it, but we can get pretty close. But it's a lot of
work, and a lot of times people are looking for that, they're looking
for something that's maybe easier to do. I don't have to worry about it.
It's kind of a shortcut, or they're trying to get a certain goal
met quicker thereast can Calorie counting can be daunting to a lot of people,
especially people with eating disorders. So if someone who's interaxic who used to count
calories and freak out over even small, minuscule numbers that aren't a problem.
I would never recommend them counting calories to lose weight because they could easily spial
out of control. So basically, the whole point I'm making is that calories
do matter. You don't have to count them, but if you choose to
count them, or if you have success with counting them, they are important
and they are the ultimate driver of weight loss or weight gain, regardless of
what diet you tend to follow or stick with. So that's red flag number
five. They simply will say calories don't matter, and they just will refuse
to accept that as fact number six, the sixth thread flag is my favorite.
Personally, I would say this one and number eight are my favorite.
That we'll get to bit. They'll appeal to conspiracy rather regularly. Now what
does this mean? When someone appeals to conspiracy, they typically will use language
like something like this. They'll say, this is the one weight loss secret
that the big food industry doesn't want you to know about, or this one's
all too common as well, this is the one supplement that big pharma doesn't
want you to know about. That the secret to achieving weight loss in the
body of your dreams. Basically any type of I have this secret to corrupt
evil corporation doing a vague thing. All it really is a tactic to kind
of draw you in and get your money. Usually a lot of that language
is coupled with selling some sort of supplement or tie program that is not inherently
unique, but it's simply just you know, they're playing to people's opinion of
these industries that, don't get me wrong, a big pharma, big agriculture,
big government industries, especially in the medication space as well as the nutrition
or supplement space, and these regulatory agencies have done a lot of corrupt things
over time, and we have to call them out when they do that.
But at the same time, they've also done a lot of things that have
been beneficial to a large amount of people. So it's not always this big
boogeyman, big pharma thing that's not the main driver. There's not always this
like Wizard of Oz figure behind the curtain really trying to determine who stays fat
and who isn't as interesting as that sounds, and I do enjoy a good
conspiracy theory every now and then, but when it comes to nutrition, a
lot of times, all this conspiracy language that people use, it's just simply
a marketing tactic and there's really no weight behind any of the claims that are
made. And again, they're just trying to get your money. And most
of the time, I'm confident by saying that there's usually some string attached or
supplement to buy that kind of allows you to be unique and against against these
big four, big shadowy figures. So that's red flag number six, Red
flag number seven. I do see this one a lot, typically on a
podcast that I recently recently listened to that was the check Up with Doctor Mike.
He had on a wellness pretty popular wellness influencer in former cardiothoracic surgeon,
doctor Stephen Gundry, and in the podcast, which was ultimately fascinating because you
have two evidence based practitioners that work with patients every day basically having a very
civil and civil debate and disagreement with a person who relies heavily on anecdotal evidence.
They kind of fall into that I know all category that we talked about
earlier. But there is one interesting claimmate on that podcast where basically doctor Gundry
says that he can claim any disease with his nutrition protocol and if you just
work with him, he can basically reverse all disease. And they were taken
aback by that claim because it's ridiculous and essentially essentially he stood his ground.
He was pretty that he could reverse all disease and that his program had all
the answers, and it just, like anything, if it sounds too good
to be true, it usually is. And you just can't make claims like
that, especially a healthcare professional who knows better, who knows just how complicated
the human body is, especially around nutrition and medication management and even surgery.
The body is a complex machine that is very resilient, and to suggest that
you can simply claim or that you can simply claim that any disease you can
cure with your nutrition protocol is just crazy. Any practitioner worth their salt should
never make claims like that. It's just not how science works. And you
have to be really skeptical of people in that nutrition Charlatan kind of space that
make these claims that they can cure any disease with nutrition alone. Don't get
me wrong, I'm the one to provide some context here. Proper nutrition can
be extremely beneficial for you. It can prevent a lot of it can reduce
your risk for all cos mortality, chronic diseases like hard disease, type two
diabetes, dyslipidemia. I mean, proper nutrition is a huge lever to pull
in terms of living longer. I'm living free of disease and just living a
better healthier lifestyle. But we have to be very careful to suggest that that
it's all nutrition alone. There's so many other benefits and things that you can
get from medication management properly. Medications, just like nutrition isn't the one hundred
percent the answer, medications aren't one hundred percent the answer. I think our
healthcare system is pretty apparent with that that medications alone really don't cure things.
They don't tend to, you know, they tend to kind of manage symptoms.
But when someone who's extremely sick or in a situation where they need to
get these problems that are control quickly, medications are extremely important. I don't
think anyone's really making the argument that medications aren't useful. But also even people
like myself who went to four years of doctoral training in medicine specifically to be
able to help patients and make sure that everything is dosed appropriately and is say
it's very very I've never really met anyone in my space that says that medications
are the only answer. You don't have to do anything else. So again,
anytime you see that you can cure all disease with nutrition alone, or
even with medications alone, or whatever have you, just be skeptical. That's
red flag number seven. Got three more of these, and then we'll get
into some buzzwords to look out for, and then all will end it on
some tips that I have for you guys. So the next one is my
second personal favorite, and that's when people make videos in the grocery store,
and they'll create fear around misinterpreting nutrition labels or specific ingredients on said label.
This has become an all too familiar practice, and unfortunately people that do this
kind of content are very successful ats scaring the people that choose to watch it.
It allows people, whether they realize it or not, to establish some
pretty disordered eating habits they'll have. You're increasing your likelihood for developing and eating
disorder called orthorexiaunderbosa, or the fear of eating anything unhealthy or anything that you've
deemed as unhealthy. I'm not suggesting that you should eat unhealthy things, but
when you start telling everyone in the store, and you're running around the aisles
for courting yourself, saying that all these foods are going to kill you and
give you cancer, and that they're toxic or inflammatory, and that no one
should ever buy these for their children blah blah blah blah blah, or let
alone eat them. And you even extrapolate that out to where people are talking
about vegetables and fruits and other healthy food items, and they're creating unnecessary fear
and making these crazy claims that aren't supported by any evidence around these foods and
demonizing them. It doesn't help anybody. All it does is allow you to
spend one more time in the grocery store. Who wants to do that?
Two allows you to freak out over little things that really probably in the big
scheme of things, don't matter a whole lot. And then it just creates
more confusion. A lot of times in these videos, you'll see comments time
and time again where people are like, Okay, if this is bad and
that's bad, and then it's bad, what can we eat? Air it?
Just like if you took all of the claims and foods that the people
that do these types of video, if you literally stopped eating anything that they
said was dangerous, you'd probably be hard pressed to have anything left you can
eat. So it's really sad. That's what's getting attention now. On the
flip side, there are people who make grocery store videos. They show you
what recipes to do, healthy swaps that you can do. They'll show you
how to add or take away or healthy choices that you could add if you
enjoy these types of foods, and they do it in a very educational and
safe manner. I think that's great. However, just be skeptical when you
see people in the grocery store aisles that are just creating fear around food labels
and all that stuff. It's just kind of crazy and it doesn't help anyone.
The last point I'll make on this one is I've seen people time and
I've even seen a video where a person went to a random stranger and started
critiquing the food items in their grocery cart and told them and basically was just
bad mouthing everything that they bought for their family. And when this person's just
going about their own business trying to feed their family, and you've got this
crazy person I'm yelling at them essentially and chastising them over the foods they've decided
to eat. It's just not helpful. It's not a helpful practice, and
it makes you look like a complete tool. I please, if you're making
videos in the grocery store demonizing people in the food choices that they make,
just stop. It's not helping anyone. The red flag number nine is this
is even easier to critique, but a lot of these influencers won't have the
proper education, experience, or credentials to give nutrition or health advice. It
doesn't mean you have to have all these letters after your name to make solid
informational videos that people can use and benefit from. But proper education experience in
credentials are important whenever you're making nutrition or health claim or giving medical advice,
So just be skeptical of terms. Not all credentials are equal. I would
say you can have a lot of physicians or nurse them that want to try
I'm in on a nutrition and I think that's great if they want to provide
useful information, but we have to be really careful with the kind of agenda
we're pushing or how we give that information to patients, because they're going to
see you as an authority figure, so you have to do the due diligence
to them by providing sound information that's backed up by science that it's easier for
people to understand. A lot of these influentatually use terms like biohacker or human
biologists, and these labels oftentimes give you the illusion that they have this credentialing
that sets them apart and makes them unique, but in reality, those titles
usually don't hold a lot of weight when it comes to clinical relevance in a
specific area of study, So be skeptical for people who don't have the proper
education of credentials, or if they do have the proper education of credentials,
be skeptical if they tend to kind of go outside of their scope of practice.
Often more often than not, you don't want those people to use their
credentials to then to deem themselves as an I know all expert, who doesn't,
who always has seems to have the right heath and answer for every problem
that you may face, And myself as a healthcare provider, really, if
it has nothing to do with dietary supplements or drug interaction, pharmacy related topics,
or noticing or even other nutrition topics such as disease state management and management
of certain disorders and diseases with nutrition, I really don't talk about it.
If it's outside of my area of expertise, I can refer you to someone
who does know that. Most practitioners should be aware that's something that they can
do. It doesn't mean you don't know as much as the other person.
It just allows you to establish rapport and admit to your patients you may not
know, may not know something, and that's totally fine. And lastly,
the type of people that will create unnecessary fear shamer of prescription medications. And
now this is not a defense of big pharma or pharmacy in general, but
medications are vastly important for a large variety of patients and different patient populations and
disease states. They are a medical miracle that we have smitty medications as we
do. But when you create unnecessary shame around prescription medications, when you don't
have the relevancy to be able to make said claims and you don't have the
knowledge of the particular medications, you're realizing just be skeptical. More often than
people who make claims about certain medications like this will have zero hesitancy around the
dietary supplements. They'll use appeal to nature ballacies quite often. They'll say,
oh, my supplements are all natural, they're safe. If you don't want
these prescription medications, they have all these side effects, when in reality,
depending on the supplement, it may not be regulated or good quality. So
you can also have medical harm that comes across with certain supplements that aren't as
regulated as and or undergone the necessary clinical scrutiny and testing that medications have undergone,
so be skeptical when you see people constantly creating fear around prescription medications to
their use or they always have the natural alternative to something like that. I
mean, I've seen countless videos where people will recommend a natural approach to an
infection where antibiotics are warranted. I mean that's dangerous and it allows people to
kind of steer away from actual medical care and a problem can get worse and
then next thing you know, we're in a much more a much more situation.
So that's the ten red flags. I'm I'm going to briefly remntion each
of these. So Number one, they'll make black and when it health claims,
and they'll speak using these highly emotional and non specific language terms around a
specific mechanism. They'll tend to simplify a very complex mechanism, and then they'll
tie all that into their kind of I know, everything approach to nutrition or
health. So once you figure that one out, it's easier to pick apart.
But this is definitely the hardest step to kind of get down. Number
two, they'll refer to a single group of foods, a macronutrient or a
specific food ingredients toxic or inflammatory without providing any evidence or context as to why
they're labeling the foods as such. They'll use phrases like how to hack and
reset your broken metabolism, something to that nature. They won't provide proper evidence
or citations when they make health claims. They'll say calories don't matter. They'll
appeal the conspiracy all the time, and they'll claim that any disease can be
cured with proper nutrition alone, and they'll make videos in the grocery store demonizing
those ingredients. They tend to not have the proper education, experience, or
credentials to give nutrition or health advice, and then they'll create a necessary fear
around medical professionals doing their job, or prescription medications or the use of prescription
medications for disease state management. But they'll have zero hesitancy around the supplements that
they may benefit financially from. Or they'll appeal the nature a lot while they
say, well, we need to always take the natural and alternative approach.
So those are the big ten red flags that I use to kind of sift
through the nutrition content that I might be exposed to on my algorithm, on
Instagram, TikTok, whatever platform. You say you tend to get your information
from. Now the next part of the podcast I want to talk about are
some buzzwords that should make you skeptical immediately. I won't dive into these in
great detail, but it's just anytime you hear these phrases, just know that
there needs to be more context and that you shouldn't just accept these buzzwords as
fact. Mainly they're just used to keep your attention and very often, more
often than not, these claims by people that are using these types of buzzwords,
or there's just no evidence or any type of scientific backing to these claims
or these buzzwords that they use all too frequently. So there's ten of these.
The first one is balancing your hormones with food. That's kind of difficult
to do. Certain nutrition protocols and chloric restrictions can have positive effects on hormone
levels, but we can we have to be very specific on which hormones are
being affected, and how are we measuring our hormones before and after. How
do you know that your hormones are getting balanced by this nutrition protocol that you
tend to push if you're not checking those levels most of the time. This
is usually applied to a side effect for people that gets your attention. They'll
oftentimes say, look, are you tired, slug and having trouble sleeping or
feeling low energy? If so, your hormones are out of balance, and
if you try my particular diet protocol and we can balance your hormones and help
you feel better than ever before, it's just a marketing tactic, or more
often than not, these claims are simply not substantial. These programs really aren't
gonna balance your hormones, especially if they don't check for them at all,
or check them before and after. And just know that balancing your hormones is
really just kind of a buzzword more often than not. The second one.
I won't go into too much detail here, but they'll usually use words like
optimize your neurotransmitters or optimizing dope mean or serotonin with my supplement protocol. Just
be skeptical. Again, this kind of goes hand in hand with balancing your
hormones. Optimizing dope mean or serotonin really doesn't mean a whole lot. There
are certain medications that do that. The mechanisms are very complicated and we still
don't quite know them. INTI early, but just using your language around a
supplement to say that it optimizes serotonin better than say an SSR I does.
It's kind of silly simply because no one really in the healthcare space things,
nor do the guideline, say that any type of mental health condition has anything
to do with low serotonin levels. No physician that I'm aware of actually looks
at serotonin levels to diagnose a mental health disorder, and that kind of way
of thinking really kind of died back in the forties and fifties before we really
knew anything about said conditions. So just be real skeptical when you hear them
in terms like optimize your neurotransmitters, because oftentimes it's tied to supplements that probably
don't do what you think they're going to do, and you're just wasting your
money. Number three, the third buzzword is activating ontophagy or mitochondrial optimization or
mitochondrial uncoupling. A lot of times this is just a very oversimplified broad way
of trying to make your program or supplement unique in regards to a cellular function
that occurs in all your cells constantly. Autopogy is more of a cell recycling
type thing where old, broken down proteins in a certain cell are recycled,
or even entire cells are recycled, I mean kind of cleared out, especially
as they get to the end of their life cycle. It's a process that
goes is ongoing constantly. It's happening in your body's right as we speak.
But you really can't do a whole lot as far as supplements and nutrition goes
to really have any great effect on autoplogy levels. There's actually more evidence supporting
the fact that prolonged color restriction and weight loss has better effects on autopogy than
said fasting does. But a lot of fasting programs or apps or practitioners that
are really like fasting will kind of tend to say, oh, it activates
autopogy, and really they're just trying to make themselves stand out amongst the crowd.
And I think fasting is great. I've had a lot of clients and
people in my life who use fasting as a tool to maintain a color to
lose weight, and I think that's awesome. But we have to be really
skeptical by trying to make these fasting protocols unique, by claiming that they have
effects on a tophogy when the research just isn't there to back that up.
Buzz we're a number four chemical free foods, So I'm going to keep this
one simple. All foods, can all objects are made up of chemicals.
So we need to be really skeptical to say that foods are chemical free,
because that's not the case. Chemicals are a part of life. Every pest
thousands of them to a degree that we either can see, we know about,
or we don't know about. So just stay away from people trying to
sell you chemical free protocols or chemical free supplements. It's kind of silly.
The fifth buzz word is going to be a drenal fatigue. I won't get
into too much of this one, but adrenal fatigue is oftentimes applied to these
very broad symptoms that most people have that may be associated more likely with poor
sleep or lack of exercise or physical active or an underlying medical condition rather than
adrenal fatigue. A lot of times adrenal fatigue, as he used to describe
people who are tired, sluggish, feeling a little bit brain fog, or
stressed, the more anxious, when in reality, adrenal fatigue is not a
diagnosable condition unless you have a disease that is directly related to the adrenal glands.
That is very rare. If you do think you might have something like
that, or have a condition where adrenal issues might be something you need to
consider, I highly suggest going to your primary care physician, talking to them,
having them run some basic tests, and if warranted, getting a referral
to an intercronologist. You have specialized training in adrenal diseases mckin, those are
very rare. We're talking about Edicin's disease, We're talking about fiochromocytomas, which
are benign tumors on the adrenal glands, cushions disease, all of these types
of adrenal related disorders are very rare. I'm an arn't as common as you
would think, So just be real skeptical when you hear adrenal fatigue, because
adrenal fatigue there's actually a systematic review dispunking the fact that it even exists.
I don't think the evidence is there to warrant that as a diagnosible condition currently
at the moment, so I tend to not ever suggest that adrenal fatigue is
a thing. Now, if the science changes on that topic, I'll have
to change my opinion on it. But again, adrenal fatigues not really a
thing as far as I'm concerned. Number six is any immune boosting protocol.
Oftentimes these are just buzzwords to make your product unique or supplement unique. I
don't personally like using the term immune boosting because that really technically implies that we're
in the autoimmune conditions category. I tend to prefer to use immune strengthening or
immune supporting. That's usually how it's used in the scientific literature on those specific
topics. So just be skeptical. Immune boosting doesn't necessarily mean a product is
bad or dangerous. It's just not. It's a term that it doesn't really
mean what we'll think it means. Number seven the leaky gut. I'll go
into leaky gut in depth on a podcast by itself, but essentially, leaky
gut is very similar to adrenal fatigue, and then it's used to describe a
lot of different issues, and these symptoms are very vague and non specific.
They usually tie hand in hand with food sensitivity testing and unnecessary testing. The
only time you see a leaky gut, or the more appropriate medical term would
be gastro intestinal permeability would be into in inmplammatory bowel disorders where you have lesions
and chronic inflammation in the gut. I mean damages to the villi or the
nutrient absorbing cells in your intestines. So when you have damage there and you
have a severe condition that causes problems such as colorectal cancers and ulcer of colitis,
chrons, even severe ips where you have a lot of issues there in
some maybe some gut dys biosis conditions such as like SEEDFF and other infections you
can get and you can see increased intestinal permeability and issues associated with that.
Simply to imply that a person who eats something it feels bloated the next day
has a leaky gut and that's the root cause of all their disease is kind
of silly. The science isn't there, and it's really just kind of it's
not useful to suggest that the science really isn't there yet, and we're learning,
but again, the gut and the gut microbiome, we're just scratching the
surface on this area of science. So be skeptical when people tend to be
microbiome experts. Actually personally know a few PhDs that do gut microbiome research,
and they'll be the first people to tell you that we don't know much of
anything yet and it's fascinating and it's gonna be really cool to see where the
science goes on it. But again, if you mentioned leaki gut to people
in this space, they're gonna be like, what are you talking about,
because it's not really a thing yet. So I'm currently not convinced that we
need to worry about it at the moment unless we're dealing with an implammatory bowel
disease. So just keep in mind leaky gut. Yeah, someone's trying to
sell you something or convince you that you have leaki gut. Just be skeptical.
Number eight. Heal your mitochondria. This goes hand in hand with supplements
or diet protocols. There's really no evidence to any of these certain protocols or
foods or anything that you're doing is really healing your mitochondria. There's not a
good test to determine if your mitochondria being healed or not, So just be
skeptical. A lot of times the weakness or this mechanism is used just very
vaguely to apply to a wide host of issues or supplements that someone may be
pushing. So just be skeptical when you hear that number nine are detox cleanses
or reset protocols. Already told y'all kind of my stance on that. I
think they're useless most of the time, and all they do is really the
only thing they're really good for is taking your money. And then number ten
is food sensitivities. Food sensitivities, there's not a whole lot of evidence yet
those are really a thing yet. Now those that science is not settling that
by any means. But a lot of times food sensitivities and food sensitivity testing
is usually measuring what's called an IgG antibody, which is more of a memory
antibody or more than anything else. Essentially, what IgG levels indicate what foods
that you're routinely exposed to and that you eat as a part of your normal
routine and normal diet. If you have higher IgG levels to certain foods,
it's essentially just your immune system going, oh, I've seen that food before.
It's food I don't need to worry about it. Often more often than
non, these food sensitivity testing panels are not clinically validated the lab level.
The labs don't really mean what you think they mean, and then a lot
of these foods that you may or may not eat at all will pop and
say, oh, you're sensitive to it, you should avoid it, and
pretty soon you're doing this overtly restrictive diet and you're eliminating foods that are very
beneficial for your health in the long run, unnecessarily because someone told you on
a test it's not clinically validated more useful in a clinical sense, that you're
sensitive to it. So just be skeptical. If you're concerned about an intolerance
or an allergy which you're entirely different. Go see an allergist if you're worried
about those types of things, or ask your gasteronerologist or PCP if you can
get a referral for some testing in that regard. Briefly, food intolerances are
simply you can't break down certain ingredients, and then when you do that,
it's you have trouble digesting it, and there can be abdominal discomfort, bloating,
diarrhea associated with those things. Lactose intolerance is a prime example here some
where you actually have an intolerance or you can't break down the lactose I mean
dairy products. So if you have that condition, then you need to be
aware of that that you're dealing with. An intolerance. A food allergy is
a direct allergy to a food that leads to some form of serious allergic reaction
or anaphylactic reaction. And again, you can't really use the term sensitive food
sensitivities, intolerance, or allergy interchangeably. They're all separate and they do different
things. So again, oftentimes, more often than not, people will use
these terms interchangeably, whether they realize it or not, simply because they just
may not be educated on what they actually mean. So those are ten buzzwords
that should make you skeptical. They kind of go hand in hand with the
ten red flag tactics that you may see on social media. So those are
balancing your hormones of foods, optimizing your transmitters, activating ontophagy, a chemical
free diet, adrenal fatigue, immine boosting protocols, leaky gut, healing your
midochondria, detoxing your reset protocols, and then food sensitivities. Those are the
ten things that more often than not should make you at least skeptical or should
make you kind of ask for more evidence when claims are made or when those
terms are used. So that's all the negative stuff. I personally look for
those things when I'm going on social media to determine if the information is useful
or not. As a healthcare practitioners easier for me to do this than say
the lay person who's just trying to figure out what works and now to better
optimize their health. But just know it's very complicated, and if you're confused,
seek professional help with these endeavors two people who are properly credential to give
advice. So I didn't want to just give you the red flags and leave
you hanging. We're going to finish this episode up. I'm going to give
you ten tactics and ten things I use as a LEADMINS test to determine who
to follow, what content you could put out there if you're so willing to,
and this allows you to then determine what content or videos you may or
may not want to follow. So these are pretty simple ones. I use
these all the time, but we really need to we really need to use
these more often than to determine who to follow. So there's a lot there's
so many people in this space that utilize these ten principles very frequently, and
I use I follow these people that do that. I'll just name a handful
off of the top of my head. Doctor Spencer Nadalski is great at this.
I'm Lane Norton, who's a PhD. Doctor Id's is great. There's
unless other people that use evidence based nutrition on a daily basis, and all
of them do these very well. Langer Nutrition is another one. The plant
slants, Rob Lapham I think is his name, but but you do that
one. But they all do a really good job of using evidence and using
these ten principles. And I'm about to share with you guys, and i
want you guys to hold me to the standard as well. I don't want
you to think that I'm just like no it all person who's holier than now.
I'm really gonna just utilize the principles that any scientist should. So the
here's the ten things that I use to determine who to follow. The number
one, they'll use proper citations for any health claims that they make. Again,
this goes back to evidence. Guys, if you're gonna make health claim,
you need to cite evidence that's in the proper population, that's evidence based,
and it's preferably done in humans, and it is controlled, and it
goes along with a scientific consensus. So if someone you follow is doing that
frequently and their content is reflective of that, please continue to follow them.
Number two, they'll use phrases like it depends. Now, it depends isn't
a sign that we don't know something. It's simply acknowledging that there's either more
context that needs to be provided, or we may not know the answer,
and then we'll educate ourselves more on it will get back to you, or
we may refer you to someone else who might know. So saying it depends
isn't necessarily an acceptance of defeat or acknowledgement that we're wrong. It's simply saying
that usually more context is needed, and in science, using phrases like it
depends as crucial, especially for the field to continue to expand as it's doing.
Number Three, they won't Their content doesn't try to scare you or make
you feel guilty about your food choices. Again, this pre self explanatory.
If I'm in the if I'm comfortably scaring you to sell you something, I'm
really not helping you a whole lot. A good educator is going to educate
and they're not going to try to make you feel bad about it about the
way you're living your life. They may help you implement more healthy habits,
and they're going to do it in a manner that's caring and that they want
to see what's best for you. But again, they're not going to try
to shame you or scare you. It's just not going to be beneficial.
So Number four, they'll promote them. They'll promote a healthy relationship with food,
and they'll maintain they need to balance a diet overall. And they also
won't tell you to remove entire food groups or macronutrients from your diet. Again,
it's all patient specific. What you're going to stick to, what's easiest
to fit into your lifestyle that also implements healthy habits, and however you choose
to do that is great, And whoever, whatever coach or person you're following,
should encourage that and not try to pigeonhole you into a specific way.
Of eating because it worked for them or may have worked for someone else.
Each person is unique and should be treated as such, so a good content
creator will be doing that. Number five. They'll educate you about your physiology.
They'll use simple terms that you can understand. They won't simply try to
talk in fancy terms and use all this fancy language to sound smart. It's
simply just trying to educate you to provide stuff. It's easy for you to
understand that you can then implement your daily life. So education is key here.
See number six. They'll refer to other experts when they feel like a
topic is outside of their scope. This goes hand in hand with point number
two that I made, where they'll use language like it depends. A good
practitioner should always acknowledge when they don't know something, stay in their lane,
and then refer others when a topic's outside their scope. Number seven. They
won't force their lifestyle or dietary patterns on you, and they'll give you,
guys options. This goes hand in hand with someone who's promoting a balanced diet
and a healthy relationship with food. Just because they had success in a low
carb diet doesn't mean you will and it's up to you on what pattern you
want to choose, and then it's up to that practitioner then help you implement
healthy habits on top of that. But I'm not going to force my way
of eating or lifestyle on you. I think you're an adult. You're able
to make your own decisions, So why would I force you to do something?
Number eight, Your advice is in lign with the expert scientific consensus on
a specific topic. Again, guys, if you're making a health claim,
it needs to be in line with the consensus of what the research is showing.
If you're constantly going against the grain or kind of cherry picking studies or
finding these fringe studies to support your claim, it's very likely that you're not
doing your due diligence, or you have pigeonholed yourself into a line of thinking
and you realize, Okay, I'm too far into this now, I can't
acknowledge that I may have been wrong this entire time. So you just kind
of tend to dig your whole deeper before you know it, you're just gonna
be in too big of a hole to dig yourself out of. So never,
I wouldn't say never, but be skeptical when your opinions are the studies
you're citing are constantly these fringe ones that really go against these large human clinical
trials and meta analyzes. And if they're constantly going against where the consensus is
at, you need to have a better look in the mirror as far as
where you're standing on a particular topic. At number nine, they want cherry
pick studies to fit their a genuine arati if they goes hand in hand with
the point I just made. I can cherry pick and find a study just
to fit just about any type of claim I want to make. But again
it goes back to what does the overall scientific consensus in the literature say.
And literature is not easy to understand. It's complicated, it takes a lot
of training, and I've gone through it. I know what cool quality evidence
is and it's up to me and people like myself too be able to sift
through that and bring you guys to four one one on it that's coming from
a non biased approach that's in line with what the science is at and what
the science is saying. And then number ten, we're not always going to
try to sell you something if I ever try to sell you something. I
am involved with a couple of supplement companies or one in particular, and then
some other endeavors down the line. But I'm going to be open and honest
with you guys. If I actually financially benefiting or incentiviizing some of these products,
I'll be open and honest with you about that. Again, it's up
to you if you want to decide to try them out. But know that
I'm not coming from I'm never going to not admit that to you, guys.
I'm not always trying to sell you something. The best education, most
of the time is free, and that's what this channel is going to be
about. Okay, So that's ten things that I think any good count should
be doing. I'll reiterate these really quick. So that's including proper citations when
health claims are made. They'll use freezes like it depends. Their content doesn't
try to scare you or make you feel guilty about your lifestyle or your few
choices. They're going to promote a healthy, balanced diet and a good relationship
with food. They'll educate you about your physiology or biology using simple terms that
you can understand. They'll refer to other experts when they feel like the topics
out there their scope. They won't force their lifestyle or dietary patterns on you,
and they're going to give you options. Advice is in line with this
expert scientific consentus on a particular research topic or area of expertise. They're not
going to cheery pick studies to put their own agenda, and they're not always
trying to sell you something. So those are the ten things that I think
good accounts do well. If they do that well, I would consider or
I would strongly suggest you continue to follow them and support their content. And
lastly, the last ten tips I'm going to give you, guys are just
some good practices that creators are going to do and that we should continue to
promote them. These are also kind of tips that I think are beneficial for
anyone who's just trying to get started on a healthy lifestyle. We're in the
new year, twenty twenty four just started a lot of people have New Year's
resolutions, so hopefully these ten tips are going to help you, guys,
ease into your health goals, especially if losing weight or getting in better shape,
or improving your nutrition, your diet overall is a goal that you have
for twenty twenty four. Here's ten tips that I think would be beneficial for
you guys and making sure your resolutions come true this year. A Number one,
let's minimize, but not entirely eliminate processed foods. Processed foods are,
unfortunately, more often than not, highly calorically dense, void of nutrients and
fiber most of the time, and are very easy to over consume. Now,
I enjoy processed foods just as much as the next guy, so I'm
not saying you have to entirely eliminate them. But if you eat a diet
high end processed foods, and that's what constitutes most of your diet, let's
try to kind of flip that and make it to where you enjoy them and
you can work them into a healthy diet. But let's minimize those and prioritize
balanced meals with a variety of nutrient it's food options, and then that makes
it even easier to incorporate processed foods that you do enjoy, especially when cravings
hit to where you don't feel like you're having to restrict yourself or that you
can never eat something you enjoy again. So that's number one is let's not
minimize or what minimize, but not eliminate processed foods from where diet. Number
two prioritizing balanced meals already said this one and more nutrient and it's food options.
Number three et plenty protein. Protein is great for satiety. I'm in
curbing your appetite. If you have a large appetite like myself, eating plenty
of protein really helps. So a good rule of thumb is a grammar protein
per pound of lean body mass lean body mass. There's calculators out there that
will help you roughly determine where they're at if if you want to eat more,
you can go to one grain per pound of body weight. But if
you're a male like myself who's physically fit, active, that protein number can
be pretty high. So you have to want to you have to ask yourself
if that's realistic or not. Number four, we want to focus on increasing
our strength. I'm in the gym and focus on building lean muscle. Building
lean muscle and attaining that over long periodtive time is going to be great for
longevity and improved health. And it's one of the biggest levers you can pull
for improving and decreasing your risk for all cause mortality. If you have increased
strength throughout your life, as well as retaining lean muscle mass into your later
ages and later stages of life, it's beneficial. So focusing on that,
whether that be spending more time in the gym or exercising and prioritizing strength training
that you like and if it's your daily routine, I think it's gonna be
very beneficial for you. Number five, we're going to prioritize our sleep six
d eight hours of sleep at night. Good sleep hygiene is gonna be great.
I think that's extremely important. Number six, we're gonna live a more
active lifestyle. However, however, whatever that means for you is how I
want you to do. That doesn't mean you have to go kill yourself in
a gym or work out for hours. You do hours of constant cardio.
Just be more active, get out there, take walks, you know,
just get on your feet more, be outside especially can and then just fit
that into your lifestyle. Before you know, you don't even feel like you're
having to force yourself to be more active. It's just a part of what
you do. Number seven, we're going to foster positive relationships with people in
food. Food is a bonding as much of a community social gathering type thing.
People bond over food and it's a fun thing to do. So having
positive relationships with people in food and a healthy relationship with food, that's going
to make that even easier. Guys, if number eight, seek advice from
healthcare professionals. If your confused are struggling with any aspect of your health,
we're out here to help them. If a provider doesn't want to give you
the time of day, or doesn't you don't feel like they have your best
interests at heart, then you know there's plenty of other providers that are out
there that do care and do want to see you succeed. So that's important.
If your confuser need to help, please ask for help from qualified professionals.
Last two, Start with clear and actionable goals for your diet, especially
in the new year. Don't make these giant, daunting goals that seem like
almost impossible to complete, and before you know it, in a few weeks
you're quitting. Start with small, actionable goals that you can do and then
continue to progress day by day. You'll see tons of progress and I know
you're going to be proud of yourself at the end of it. And then
lastly, this is my favorite one, is focus on what you should add
instead of what you should cut out. It's not always about eliminating things.
Sometimes, if you want pizza or burgers or something that you could easily go
down the street to a fast food joint and get, let's make them at
home, and let's add some stuff to get more fiber and add veggies when
you can. Stuff like that. Making food enjoyable is key, and finding
a good way to do that in a healthy way is great. So I
think those are ten good tips that you can use in the new year to
help you achieve your goals, and we'll rattle these off real quick in the
episode. So that's minimizing and not eliminating process foods, prioritizing balanced meals with
a variety of nutrient it's food options, eating plenty of proteins, increasing your
strength and focusing on building lead muscle, prioritizing sleep, living a more active
lifestyle, fostering positive relationships with people in food, seeking advice from healthcare professionals.
If your computers are struggling with your health, Starting with clear actionable goals
for the new year as far as diet and health goes, and then focusing
what you should add instead of what you should cut out. So I spent
enough time talking. I feel tired of hearing myself ramble. So I hope
you guys got something out of that. I hope this makes nutrition navigation on
social media for you. Know that I'm here to help you guys out.
I'm excited that you listen and give my content the time of day. If
you like and enjoy the video YouTube channels coming soon, support us on any
of your favorite podcasting platforms. Welcome to the Wellness Transcription Podcast, the podcast
that combines the power of Christian values with evidence based nutrition, fitness, and
lifestyle content. I'm your host, doctor Patrick Early. Join me each week
as we explore the intersections of Christianity and wellness, offering you insights to help
nourish your body, mind, and soul. Whether you're looking to improve your
physical health or simply strengthen your personal relationship with Jesus, We've got you covered.
Stay tuned for inspiring discussions, expert guests, interviews, and practice tips
to help you live the life God calls us to live.