DIET & Food Intolerance In Functional Medicine

Are you approaching healthy eating from the right mindset? The goal is not to eliminate all foods, but rather be able to eat EVERYTHING! Mindset is everything when trying to heal...

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Mentioned:
https://drhoustonanderson.com/histamine-intolerance/
https://drhoustonanderson.com/food-sensitivities-super-sensitive/

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Transcript

Transcribed by a functional medicine robot. Please forgive any errors. 
0:00  
Welcome to the functional medicine and natural healing Podcast, where we share the secrets to upgrade your digestion, improve your hormones, restore your immune system and detoxify your body. I'm your host, Dr. Houston Anderson. Now let's get started.

0:16  
The following discussion is for educational purposes,

0:19  
only not intended to diagnose any disease or disease process, always discussed medical treatments or interventions to your personal position. Welcome back to the functional medicine and natural healing podcast. This is Dr. Houston Anderson. And I'm excited today because we're gonna we're gonna label this podcast, the McDonald's podcast. Now, you're not going to hear a lot of functional medicine doctors talking about McDonald's because it's something that in general, we're going to recommend against, but But today, I want to talk about it more philosophically, as to what are you trying to accomplish from your visits with your functional medicine doctor?

0:55  
And so there's a lot of ways to approach a visit with a functional medicine doctor, and we'll get into those, maybe I'll kind of jot those down for a future episode. But the McDonald's concept is, is why was it that when you were five years old, you could eat McDonald's, and now when you're 35 years old, 4555 or 65 years old, you know, one trip to McDonald's, the msgs, the food, the toxins, they make you sick?

1:22  
So that's the question I want to pose at the beginning of this episode. And then let's kind of go through some of the things that are happening in the diets of functional medicine. So one of the most common things happening right now in functional medicine, is what I call the race to zero. And that race to zero essentially, is this, if you avoid all foods, you're not going to have any digestive problems or any inflammation. So if you were to go into a water fast of healthy water, or even a dry fast without any water, you would probably feel better. Why is that? So? So that's that's something to note there. But but but what you're going to notice about all functional medicine diets, they have these things in common. So you're going to eliminate foods in general. So I don't want to talk about whether these are good or bad, right now, I'm just going to kind of put kind of this this general concept. So if you're like me, and you've been dieting for, you know, or changing diets, or trying the latest trends, or try your best just to stay healthy, right? For the last 2030 years, then you've seen some of these things come and go. Probably the most famous one that everyone knows of these days, that that is really gone, but is actually kind of back is the Atkins diet. So the Atkins diet was around forever. And then people got concerned that it could be unhealthy. But now we have the carnivore diet, which is comparable. Obviously, some few a few changes in there. But But now we have more research that might say that the old Atkins or the carnivore diet is is more healthy than we thought it was. So I just want to talk about some of these other diets that that go on and functional medicine. And and always bring an awareness because this is one of the things that makes a lot of my patients sick. A lot of my patients remain sick, because they're not able to get past this concept. And it's somewhat of a psychological concept, even as much as it is an actual physical concept. So these diets, what do they do you eliminate foods from your diet, right, let's choose a few diets, the Paleo diet, right, you're going to eliminate pretty much all grains from that diet, you have the fodmap diet where you're going to avoid certain specific sugars and, and specific fruits and vegetables, depending on the type of sugar content they have. Then you have obviously the carnivore diet where you're avoiding pretty much all sugars, you're gonna have fats.

3:41  
But But you're a very high protein diet. But in that carnivore diet, you're also going to be essentially grain free because there's no grains in in your proteins and your meats.

3:53  
If you look at like keto diet, which is really hot right now, the keto diet is is mostly grain free, it's going to avoid almost all your food allergens that are possible in the general population, minus dairy. So it might be a high cheese diet.

4:08  
And so if you look at all these diets, and even Dr. gundry is lectin diet

4:14  
is even more specific for some people. So if you look at these diets, it's all about avoiding things. So there's there's a couple concepts I want to talk about there. But But my first question for you is how many foods are you going to avoid before you feel better? And this is what we call the race to zero. So as I go to different doctors offices and watch what they're doing and observe what they're doing with patients, I always want to see like, are we doing a race to zero? Are we just eliminating all food together and then blaming all food in all environmental factors like that on why your body doesn't perform optimally? So the question I like to ask is, why is it that the patient became food intolerant in the first place? Now Now, if you're listening to this podcast, and you're any

5:00  
Like most of my patients, this concept is going to make you so angry, and you're going to disagree with it so strongly that you're just not going to be able to understand it the first time you listen to this podcast, but I want you to kind of understand and start thinking, Okay, I'm starting to get it. This is what I call the holistic philosophy. If you're just avoiding food, that's technically still a reductionistic philosophy, which is more like allopathic or traditional medicine, which is not what we're aiming for. So once again, this podcast is to combine holistic medicine, natural medicine and natural healing with functional medicine. And that combination is where I see that people are going to get the best results, you're not going to get the best results by doing a reductionistic mechanistic model using lab tests, that's that still the answer? The answer is doing things from an entire whole person perspective. But using those lab tests to guide you, in what choices maybe you make to optimize? So the question becomes what what made you intolerant to food in the first place, maybe you're someone that that can't tolerate something like ginger, or tomato or acid acidic foods or, or maybe a food that is high in carbs, or maybe starchy carbs, or resistant carbs, all these things maybe you can't tolerate at all. And the question I want to ask in my office is why now as a lay person at home, what do you do? Well, if you know that you eat a strawberry and you feel sick, well, you just avoid that strawberry. That's simple. But when you're looking at your doctor's visits, you want to be able to see if you can figure out why you are intolerant to strawberries. And rather than just avoid foods the rest of your life. You want to see how can I reintroduce foods? How can I How can I become tolerant to these foods again, why am I having these reactions? I get a lot of people in my office that like to think that they have histamine intolerance. And for sure, when they go on a low histamine diet, they feel better. But the first thing I'll tell anyone that comes to my office for that is that histamine is a natural process. We should all have histamine, if you don't have histamine, you're going to die of infection. If you don't have histamine, you're not going to stimulate your immune system adequately. If you don't have histamine, you're going to get ill more often, right? So you have to have adequate histamine, excessive histamine becomes a problem. But but but we can't demonize histamine as it's a standard kind of process that occurs in the body and we need it. It's a very beneficial process for for almost all healing that goes on in the body.

7:35  
So if you were to cut your skin or scratch your skin, you'll notice that it might turn red, that redness is that histamine, it's coming. It's telling all the immune system related cells to come and start to heal, and to bring new tissue and things like that. So it has its role, which we won't go into in this this podcast. But the concept is we we become intolerant to histamine, for example, not because histamine is bad, it's because our system either has too much or it can't process it. So then we want to look into what might have led us to have elevated histamine in the first place. And how do we get back through that, right? And you're going to hear me talk over over and over again, about the gut hormone, immune and detoxification process. Or in other words, that's how I would address that. So if you had histamine intolerance, then you would do gut first, then you would go to hormones next, then you do immune system regulation. Next, all while you're doing detoxification. So I'll put I'll put a chart up on the website, a link in the show notes, so you guys can see what I'm talking about, about the protocol that I like to refer to. And this protocol is not something that I chose not something that I made up, it's something that I noticed was clinically applicable, applicable, based upon how patients responded. So if we just said, hey, let's go go balance someone's hormones, I didn't see the same results.

9:00  
Or if we started with immune balance, but never treated the gut, we didn't see the same results. So we see better results by addressing it in the order that I mentioned, as a general rule. Now, of course, in every functional medicine practice, there should be exceptions to the rule, and you can be that exception, which is fine. You're just going to work with your doctor on determining why you're the exception and how to go from there. So going back to that original question, or the original concept of McDonald's, right, how come you could eat? Why is it that you could eat McDonald's as a child and then as an adult, it makes you sick? Why is it that you could eat deep fried food as a child and have endless energy in it as an adult, you're now sick.

9:41  
How about like the concept you should be able to have a little bit of you know, you know, say farm raised fish or some fish from the sea that have mercury in it. You should be able to have a little mercury exposure you should be able to have the ability to go into a perfume shop or a lotion shop and and see

10:00  
If all that nasty air and all those aldehydes that go in and, and destroy brain cells, but you should be able to have a few brain cell death,

10:08  
few of those cells die inside your brain, you should still be okay. that's the sign of a healthy body, you should be able to pretty much every vegetable carbohydrate and protein that exists in the world without having a reaction assuming that that is unprocessed, unrefined, that we don't have any toxins in there. So that's the thing that I wanted to talk about this episode, this race to zero is where we're just going to start avoiding everything in the world. And, and what I always like to say, and this is easier said than done. So I want to make that clear. It's easier said than done. If you avoid the foods, you may feel better. But what I would prefer is that you are that you don't have to avoid any foods specifically in order to feel well. So it does take time to do that. Sometimes it can take anywhere from six, six months to two years to get someone to be able to re tolerate the food that they're intolerant to.

11:04  
So So it's important to know that, but I want you to be able to go to McDonald's, and have the chunkiest food stuff that I would never recommend for anyone to eat, and then leave there and feel just fine. And what that tells me is that your detoxification systems are working great, your gut is working great, your immune system isn't overreacting, for sure, it's going to react, for sure it's going to have inflammation after that kind of diet, but it should come right back down, just like the kids did. Now, a lot of you guys listening to this, I already know, like I said, are gonna think this is crazy. think that it's impossible to get to this point.

11:43  
But it's not, it's about staying consistent with your work in obtaining healing. So I see a lot of people that come into my office and and we get pretty good results here. So so maybe after two or three visits, they feel better. They came in for fatigue, they came in for migraines, they came in for gut problems for chronic diarrhea, chronic constipation, something like that. bloating, and then maybe one or two or three visits, they're 100% better. Okay, great. But did they reverse their original condition. So that original condition of where they became intolerant to a food or they started having that symptom, did not that symptom is not just because of symptoms gone doesn't mean that their health has been restored back to what it was 10 years ago, these processes in them started way earlier, they got sicker and sicker and sicker until a symptom arrived. So on the scale of health, you really got to accept the fact that if you're having symptoms, I think people think so if you're having symptoms, you're further along the path of illness than you think. Or in other words, you can be pretty ill and not have any symptoms. I like to use, I see a lot of females in my office, or a lot of women in my office, I always like to use their husbands as examples. Because oftentimes, the husbands are not really into the diet the way that the females are. And that's okay. It's just something that I've noticed over time, which, of course, this is an overgeneralization for the population. But But you'll notice that some of their husbands, you know, they're eating whatever they want, they have big old guts, they're overweight, they're not exercising, their stress is high at work. And yet, they don't have near the symptoms that their wife has. And so and so would you say that their husband is perfectly healthy? No, in fact, he's already along that disease pathway, he just has progressed a little bit slower than maybe the female, but he's on that disease pathway, if you have the site, if you have the signs, but no symptoms of illness. Yeah, a big gut overweight.

13:45  
You know, things like that, or you know, you have a stressful life, you know, for sure you're on the pathway of illness. But the goal is, then when do those symptoms show up. So the husband that I was using, as an example, might have a big belly until he's 55. And he doesn't have any pain until all of a sudden at 55, he starts having symptoms, or even 60 or 65, sometimes for males, because testosterones, pretty anti inflammatory in males. And so it can, it can help them to feel better for longer. But does that mean that they're healthy? So the concept here is this, just because you got your symptoms reversed with functional medicine, or holistic medicine or natural healing methods, doesn't mean that you've reversed your entire disease process. So I am recommending on this podcast for sure, stick with the program, choose a consistent effort, whether it's to work with a doctor or just constantly be working on your health. Obviously, I prefer that people work with doctors because they can give an outside perspective that we just don't have for ourselves. If you ask any of your doctors, you know, do you treat yourself all the time? And the answer is no. If I were to get really sick, I would definitely not be treating myself if it's something minor. Yeah, definitely. I'm working on that myself because I know a little bit about this health thing.

15:00  
And that's what we want. We want our patients to be able to take care of all of the basic things on their own. And then when it gets more complicated to come in for office visits, but if we look at how we're treating our health right now, if you're a patient or you're a doctor, and you're doing three visits, and you're feeling better, and so you stop spending the money, because there's other things you want to spend money on. I believe that that's a mistake. I believe that you're not going to get well. If you talk to anyone that's been in function medicine for a long time. How often Am I treating myself pretty much every single day I'm experimenting? I'm trying to see how do I stay healthy the longest? How do I feel the best? How do I have zero food intolerances though, maybe three years ago, I was intolerant to every vegetable, and every every grain that exists, but now how do I get to a point of where my body now can tolerate almost anything without necessarily being ill? And if you can figure that out in your life now you can say that you're truly healthy. Now you can say that you're a McDonald's person, aka you can eat toxins, and feel great. And we'll talk to you on the next episode. Thanks

Transcribed by https://otter.ai