Why Food Is A Social Justice Issue with Leah Penniman

Every time we eat, we have a chance to boost our brain function. In medical school, we’re taught the brain is immutable, that we can’t grow new brain cells or change the brain once dysfunction or injury has occurred. Now, we know that’s just not true. The decisions we make each and every day, like what we eat, how much sleep we get, and how often we move are all steps that can dramatically shift the health of the brain for the better. And there’s so much more we can do, too. Dr. David Perlmutter joins me on this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy to talk about an empowered approach to supporting the brain, starting with food first. Dr. Perlmutter is a board-certified neurologist and four-time New York Times best selling author. He serves on the Board of Directors and is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and as a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. His books include the #1 New York Times bestseller Grain Brain, The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs and Sugar, with over 1 million copies in print. He is the editor of the upcoming collection The Microbiome and the Brain that will be authored by top experts in the field and will be published in 2019 by CRC Press. Dr. Perlmutter’s new book, Brain Wash, co-written with Austin Perlmutter, MD, will be published in January 2020.

3 Apr 20191h 17min

Our food and healthcare systems are broken; they are not serving public health and are even putting certain communities at a disproportionate risk. We are up against social, economic, environmental, and political dysfunctions that contribute to chronic disease. Heart disease, cancer, and stroke are the leading causes of death, and premature death at that, in the US. These diseases all have several risk factors in common, like smoking, physical inactivity, and poor diet, which policy often views simply as personal choices. But you can’t make healthy choices if you don’t have healthy choices available. There are social and cultural inputs at play and many reasons we need to begin looking at health beyond the individual and on a community and population-based level. Today’s guest on The Doctor’s Farmacy is the perfect person to weigh-in on these issues. Dr. Sonia Angell is a Deputy Commissioner at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), overseeing the Division of Prevention and Primary Care. Throughout her career, she has overseen nutrition-related policy initiatives, including restricting trans fat use in NYC restaurants, launching the National Salt Reduction Initiative, establishing food procurement nutrition standards for NYC government agencies, and establishing sodium warning labels in chain restaurants and expanding calorie labeling regulations.

27 Mar 201959min

A new study published in the medical journal JAMA says, ‘Eggs are bad,’ but are they really? In this episode, we take a look at the specifics of the study. This particular study is an observational study; it does not prove cause and effect. An ideal nutritional study would take 10,000 people and have them eat eggs for 20 years, then take another 10,000 people, and for the same time period, keep them from eating eggs to see what happens. Of course, this would be incredibly difficult and very expensive to do. This recent study surveyed 30,000 people over a 17 year time period, with each person completed one questionnaire about what they’ve been eating. During the time this study was conducted, eggs were considered bad. We were told not to eat eggs; to avoid cholesterol. So people who were eating eggs were likely people who weren’t otherwise health conscious. It doesn’t mean the eggs caused the heart disease.

22 Mar 201915min

I never get tired of saying it: real food heals. Food has the power to prevent and reverse disease, and the more we know about it, the more power we have to curate a targeted diet to help us reach our health goals. The catch is that we have to choose the right foods, the ones that elevate us, and simultaneously ditch the poor-quality ones that harm us. There are powerful compounds in foods—like curcumin, genistein, catechins, lycopene, resveratrol, quercetin—that have medicinal impacts on the body. That’s why I call the grocery store the drug store; we can literally eat our medicine at every meal. My guest this week on The Doctor’s Farmacy, Dr. William Li, is here to tell us all about eating to beat disease and making the idea that food is medicine second nature. You may also be surprised to find out that angiogenesis, or how the body forms blood vessels, is a common denominator in creating optimal health. William Li, MD, is a world-renowned physician, scientist, speaker, and author of Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself. He is best known for leading the Angiogenesis Foundation.

20 Mar 20191h 23min

Think about walking into a room full of people who are giving off good energy. They are smiling, kind, welcoming—you can feel what they are putting out into the world and want to be a part of it. Alternately, think about a room full of people who are scowling, complaining, angry, etc. The energy in that room does not feel good and you are going to want to get away from it as soon as possible. This is a small glimpse into the powerful energy fields within all of us at work. My guest on this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy, medical anthropologist and psychologist Alberto Villoldo, is here to expand on that notion and what it means to support your luminous body. He is a longtime friend and colleague of mine who has spent decades traveling the world to learn ancient shamanic wisdom. Alberto has made it his mission to learn from the people who sense the spaces between things and perceive the luminous strands that animate all life. Alberto is founder of the world-renowned Four Winds Society and of the Light Body School. In his teachings and writings, he shares the experience of infinity and its ability to heal and transform us, to free us from the temporal chains that keep us fettered to illness, old age, and disease. Alberto has authored several incredible books and his latest, Grow A New Body, was just released.

13 Mar 20191h 1min

As my friend Ocean Robbins says, “When you eat the Standard American Diet you get the standard American diseases.” In fact, poor diet is responsible for almost 700,000 deaths in the US each year, and 11 million worldwide! And the average American consumes 55 pounds of added sugar each year, which we know is a major contributor towards the diabesity epidemic. The good news is that each step towards real, wholesome, delicious foods reduces your risk for chronic disease and increases your ability to feel great. This week on The Doctor’s Farmacy, I sit down with Ocean to talk about the current state of our food system and what we can do to be part of the revolution to create a healthier and happier future for everyone. Ocean is the author of 31-Day Food Revolution: Heal Your Body, Feel Great, & Transform Your World. He serves as CEO and co-founder of the Food Revolution Network—one of the largest communities of healthy eating advocates on the planet, with more than 500,000 members.

6 Mar 20191h

The immune system: we hear about it all the time, especially this time of year as cold and flu season is in full swing. But there’s a lot more to it than just your susceptibility to a runny nose. 50 million people suffer from immunologic diseases, ranging from an overactive immune system (autoimmunity) to an underactive one (immunodeficiency), and many stages in between. The field of immunology is much more expansive than you might think, spreading into neurology, gastroenterology, epigenetics, psychosocial health, and even mindfulness and gratitude. My guest on this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy, Dr. Leonard Calabrese, is an expert in immunology and rheumatology. In fact, he is a Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University and Vice Chair of the Department of Rheumatic and Immunologic Diseases. Dr. Calabrese is the director of the RJ Fasenmyer Center for Clinical Immunology at the Cleveland Clinic and holds joint appointments in the Department of Infectious Diseases and the Wellness Institute.

27 Feb 201955min

If there was something you could do everyday to boost your focus and productivity, feel energized, reduce stress, sleep better, maintain a positive outlook, and support whole-body health, wouldn’t you do it? It’s for all these reasons, and more, that I consider meditation a foundational pillar to good health. I used to think I didn’t have time for meditation but now I know I don’t have time NOT to do it—it’s become that integral in helping me manage all of my other many responsibilities and passions. Since starting, I’m happier than ever, have found the love of my life, and my business is rocking. Today, on The Doctor’s Farmacy Podcast, I talk to my good friend and personal meditation teacher, Emily Fletcher, about meditation for the modern world. Emily is the founder of Ziva, the creator of The Ziva Technique and regarded as a leading expert in meditation for high performers.

20 Feb 201948min