The Dr. Lam Show

The Ideal Diet, Body Cleansing Foods, and Appropriate Snacking

Dr. Lam

For a diet that works, you have to design one that fits your body and lifestyle. Today’s episode will go through the 5 principles for the ideal diet, great foods for detox, and whether snacking is appropriate or not for adrenal fatigue.

1:21 - First Principle - Find something easy to follow
2:10 - Second Principle - Eliminate Food Sensitivities
5:05 - Third Principle - Get Good Bacteria into Gut
8:20 - Fourth Principle - Eat Fiber
9:30 - Fifth Principle - Eating Whole Foods
10:55 - Great Foods for Detox
13:40 - Binders for detox
15:15 - Eating Organic
16:20 - Snacking
18:20 - Timing of meals and snacks
19:10 - Best and Worst Type of snacks

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Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:

Are you sick of fad diets, about being told that you should eat this food or that food and struggling to stick to the rules? Diets are huge business in the modern world and not all of them work. Often, they can be hard to stick to, and can be even dangerous for your health. Today, we'll be going through five principles for the ideal diet, body cleansing foods and appropriate snacking tips. Welcome to the Dr. Lam Show. I'm Dr. Jeremy Lam. I am an internal medicine doctor and I'm Board certified in anti aging and regenerative medicine.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

I'm Dr. Carrie Lam, sister of Dr. Jeremy Lam. I am also Board certified in family medicine, anti-aging and regenerative medicine.

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:

So let's dive in. There's so many fad diets out there, that come in, come out. Some of them are good, some are really tough. What's the first thing that we should do to find the right diet Dr. Carrie?

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

The most important thing about our diet is something that you can work around, that is easy for you and realistic for you to keep up with it. If you have adrenal fatigue, you don't want something super complicated or very limiting, because you need a lot of nutrients in your body that's easily accessible and easily absorbed in your gut. So stressing about a diet is not going to help your adrenals. Many people come to me worried about their weight, and they want to go on a diet, but unless you get to the root cause and get the stress out of your adrenals, you're not cannot lose that weight. So for an adrenal fatigue sufferer, find something that's easy to follow stress free, and you'll be grateful for the less amount of stress that your adrenal is have to go through.

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:

Next is to figure out what your sensitivities are, especially in adrenal fatigue. Many people have food sensitivities, that can stress your body without you even knowing about it. Some people are sensitive enough to figure out what type of food they're sensitive to, but if you cannot, then it's just easier to get a food sensitivity test. We recommend that for some of our patients. If you're not able to get that test, then you can do a food elimination diet and find out about your food sensitivity that way.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

You're right. If you don't know what food you're sensitive to, the best way to start is by eliminating the big five culprits, which are gluten, dairy, corn, soy and sugar. The reason why these are the big five culprits is because the government heavily subsidizes farmers to produce more and more of these types of crops. Therefore, farmers have to produce more genetically modified crops to produce more wheat berries or more corn in their crops. These genetically modified crops are probably the best and highest yield foods but may have more pesticides or hormones or toxins which you want to eliminate, to see if they're inflammatory to your system. So if you try to get rid of these five, you can do it for a month and see how your symptoms are. And then after you eliminate, you can slowly add back in one at a time and see if your symptoms come back. And that is a good way to find out you sensitivities to these food.

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:

You'll be amazed at how many patients initially say they eat that all the time and not have any symptoms. And then we advise them to cut these things out and later they realize they didn't know and actually feel better. You don't know you may be reacting to these foods unless you try to eliminate them and see how your body feels.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Yes, things like the skin rash has gone away or feeling less bloated when I stopped eating bread. Or I have less brain fog or diarrhea when I stopped eating dairy. You're right, we have many people who don't know what they're going through until they actually eliminate certain food. So what's the third principle for getting an ideal diet.

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:

The third principle is to make sure you get good bacteria and starve the bad bacteria, inside your gut. The microbiome is very important to our body and how it affects, our brain, inflammation or immune status. Microbiome is the gut bacteria that lives inside our intestines, stomach and colon. They survive, by digesting the foods we eat. We can add good bacteria in our gut, through nutrients like fiber, fermented foods that are high in probiotics. So taking a supplement or probiotics will give yourself the good bacteria. Starving the bad bacteria means staying away from processed foods, because that feeds the bad bacteria. Sugar feed the bad bacteria as well, so you want to stay away from high sugary foods.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

That's very true. You can take a supplement or probiotics that we recommend. You can rotate different probiotics, because taking the same probiotic will give the same type of gut bacteria. So using different brands or eating different types of fermented foods, whether it's miso, kimchi, pickles, pickle juice, sauerkraut will put into rotation to your everyday diet to feed your good gut bacteria. We know that gut bacteria is known as your second brain as it produces many byproducts needed for making neurotransmitters. And so, it is very important to your mood, your personality, and even the way you react to things. So having a good gut, and good gut bacteria is very important in your diet, along with staying away from the bad foods, like sugar. If you have taken antibiotics in the past, it wipes out both good and bad bacteria, even if it was a short course. Also your gut bacteria can change, after a trip to a foreign country and eating different food changes your gut bacteria in one meal. And that change can cause a lot of differences in the way you're feeling. Some people have food poisoning, and diarrhea and others can tolerate it a little better. But if you've taken antibiotics, it can take time to rebuild gut bacteria. So it's important to eat foods that are high in fiber, whether it's chia seeds, vegetables, or prebiotics, which will feed the good gut bacteria and probiotics, which are the actual bacteria.

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:

That leads us into our fourth point, which is to make sure that we need to eat a lot of fiber. Especially important is to keep things flowing with your intestine and your bowel movements. That way, you're able to flush everything out, make sure that you're detoxing properly, and getting rid of toxins that are in your body. So make sure you get enough fiber, so then you don't get constipated.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

And the fifth point is to eat as whole as possible. Do you want to talk a little about that? Dr. Jeremy?

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:

Yeah, to eat as whole as possible means, that you want to know where your food is coming from. We often ask our patients, where does an apple come from? They will say, obviously, it comes from an apple tree. But where does apple sauce come from? Where does apple pie come from? We don't know what extra ingredients they use and how they process it in the factory. That's not whole food. So you want to make sure that you're eating whole and make sure you know where your food is coming from.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Indeed, know where your food comes from, that's our fifth principle. So choosing a simple diet that you can adjust, avoiding foods that you're sensitive to, eating diet that is great for your gut bacterial balance, eating more soluble fiber, and eating as whole as possible are the five principles to having an ideal diet. And this will help improve your gut, help you on the path to adrenal recovery, and a happy, healthy life. If you'd like help finding the ideal diet for you, you can always give us a call at the Dr Lam Clinic at 714709 1004 for nutritional advice. And we'll be able to get you on a gut program that will be specific and individualized to you. So, now that we've covered how to stick to your diet, we're going to look at some foods that are also great for detoxing, and we call them body cleansing foods. Dr. Jeremy, what are some things that can help you detox in a gentle way in foods that you can eat.

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:

So the first things we always recommend are greens, like spinach, kale, broccoli, and lettuce. These greens, can help cleansing your body, because they're packed with powerful antioxidants that are good for detoxing, and help clean the free radicals that cause damage inside your body. And so it's really good first thing in the morning, to get any green juice and just drink that and your body is onto a good start.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Some of my favorites are spirulina or chlorella, those are sometimes found in powders, you can take. Even spices are actually greens that are full of antioxidants, like mint, peppermint, basil. And so cooking more with these and adding spices, can get you those phytonutrients to clean up those free radicals inside of your body. But just so you know, green juices are very powerful as a detox and so if you are sensitive to detoxes, be careful and start low, and go slow. Don't just drink lots of celery juice without control or supervision, because green juices can also detox your metals, heavy metals, especially true if you are congested and full of heavy metals in your body.

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:

For people with Adrenal Fatigue, you have to be careful because detox is good, but in some cases, it can be too much for the body to handle, making it worse, You need to have a strong constitution to be able to handle a detox. If your livers are congested, you keep trying to add some supplementation, you do some detox to get uncongested, but sometimes that an backfire as your body canno handle it. So it's very importa t understand your body and see help if you're not able to hand e these detoxes. That's telling s that something else is g ing on with your body that yo need to address.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

So other than detoxing with greens, like cilantro, or chlorella there is another thing called binding, which is a form of detox. Binding helps the toxins get bound and excreted out of your body. So one thing that is a really good binder is pectins. Pectin is a polysaccharide, very unique, that can bind with many biotoxins like mold, infections or from detoxing metabolites. You take it orally, and it helps to bind to toxins and excrete them in your stool. So binding is very similar to fiber. You can find pectin in apples, bananas, pears, beets, cabbage, etc. We love talking about fibers because it's important. Is there another, another compound or juice that you like to use, Dr. Jeremy?

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:

We have wheatgrass which has been around for a while now but it's very powerful. Once again, it has a lot of fiber and powerful antioxidants to help your body detox. So it's really fantastic if you, put a little shot of that in your morning drink or in your juice and get your detox going. Eating organic healthy foods is also one of the best ways to detox without exposing your body to harsh chemicals or harmful side effects. You have to be careful though, if your diet has been very unhealthy, and now you're suddenly making a big change. When you have adrenal fatigue, even positive changes can cause dangerous levels of stress. So making any changes must be slow and must be done at the right time. So you can give our team at Dr Lams Clinic a call at 714-709-8000 for any help advice or support on your health journey. And lastly, we're going to be talking about an issue that has probably ruined a lot of your diet efforts in the past. Snacking in between meals can really undermine your attempts to eat a healthy diet. But it really doesn't have to. All you have to do is choose the right snacks.

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Who doesn't love snacking, right? So you can snack your way to health. A recent study has shown that 90% of men and 91% of women eat at least one snack a day. And usually stress is the major influencer for our eating behaviors and habits. So with our high stress life, as well as a plethora of unhealthy snacking options available, you go to the gas stations, you see a lot of snacks, there's no wonder why America's Health is declining. These snacks are so easily accessible anywhere you are. You just have to know what are the types of foods that are appropriate to eat and when, because if you're dealing with adrenal fatigue, sometimes we do encourage snacking. Dr. Jeremy, you tell us a little about that.

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:

With adrenal fatigue, the body has a hard time being metabolically balanced. And sometimes we call it reactive hypoglycemia type symptoms. What that means is not that a person has low blood sugar, but it's actually normal. It's the reactive response when blood sugar drops rapidly causing irritability, anxiety, and sometimes crashes. Sometimes cannot sleep at night and waking them up. This is especially more prominent in advanced stages of adrenal fatigue. It's quite helpful in those circumstances, to find some snacks to stabilize the mood, their fatigue, and reactive hypoglycemia. Now, the question really is what kind of snack, what timing and for who?

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

So timing wise, breakfast, if you eat it around six to eight o'clock, then maybe a snack at 10am, which is around two, three hours later, would be good. And then you have lunch around noon, or one and then maybe another stack at three. Then you have dinner at five to six, then a small snack even before bed. So your stomach actually stays full from having to eat every two to three hours. And then you will sleep a little better, your metabolism is more stable. You don't feel like your blood sugar drops and spikes throughout the day. Instead, it stays very level. Also you're not stressing out your adrenals when you have those drops and feelings of anger. Dr. Jeremy, what are some examples of good snacks that you can pick?

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:

My favorites are seeds and nuts because they are high in protein and fat, which are slow to metabolize and have a low glycemic index. Some people may also do vegetables or nut butters, which do help but really the nuts and seeds seem to be the best. Or there's some specific nuts that you recommend Dr. Carrie?

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Well, some people love Brazil nuts, especially if they want to have a little more thyroid support due to the selenium content in them. Definitely stay away from peanuts, because they're usually more inflammatory. Other nuts that I like are almonds or pecans or walnuts, especially if you soak them in water overnight, the tannins come out and you can actually slow roast them or dehydrate them after you've soaked them. They're much easier to absorb and digest after soaking and they taste really good. So I love those types of nuts. However, beware that if you have irritable bowel syndrome or nut sensitivities, then you definitely want to stay away from those types of nuts. Everybody is different. So these are just some examples, otherwise nuts can be a good snack. What are some example of some bad snacks?

Dr. Jeremy Lam, MD:

Well, almost anything you see in the supermarket other than nuts and seeds are less desirable, but they occupy 98% of all the aisles because it's popular, tastes good and addictive. It's easy and tasty to eat anything in a bag, or processed or gluten based or has caffeine in it. It's not going to be good as a snack. So if you feel like you're guilty for snacking, don't feel guilty, because there are good snacks. And we went through some of the benefits of snacking, especially if you have adrenal fatigue, because you don't want to feel those lows and shakiness so it's okay to snack between your meals as long as you're snacking on the right things at the appropriate time, with proper guidance,

Dr. Carrie Lam, MD:

Sounds like it can be simple to do. Following a healthy diet isn't as difficult as the media might seem to suggest. You can eat lots of organic foods, avoid heavily processed foods, eating whole. But everyone can fall off the wagon at any point in time and you don't need to feel guilty about it. Everyone makes mistakes and stressing about it will only make adrenal fatigue worse. If you need help or you need a coach or someone to be there with you to partner and to go through the ideal diet, walking you through the steps of snacking, you can always find us at lamclinic.com or call us for a free at 714-709-8000 and we can go through your diet and the root cause. We hope that you really liked our Dr. Lam show podcast today. Like, follow and share if you felt that it was helpful, and hopefully others will also be able to enjoy the same benefits. We hope to see you next time. Remember, we're always here to empower you to take control of your health.

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