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Questions & Answers

Is The Paleo Diet Appropriate For Athletes?

What are the pros and cons of the paleo diet for athletes?

A couple of books about the paleo diet that I recommend are the Paleolithic Prescription and Native Nutrition.

The Paleo diet was introduced in the late sixties or early seventies by a Dr. Cordain out of a Colorado university. Dr. Cordain studies ancestral ways of eating and concluded that we should still be eating that way.

I’m not a huge fan of paleo diets. We’re not cave people who hunt and gather our food anymore. We have access to foods like nuts and seeds that hunter-gatherers never even dreamed of having.

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Pushing people into a diet that people ate thousands of years ago doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t think the Paleo diet is a good fit for the 21st century.

Nevertheless, there are definitely pros to following a Paleo diet. There are also cons, particularly for athletes. The carbohydrate issue is the big one because athletes need carbs for energy. Once you take out all the starchy vegetables from the diet, you’re left with leafy greens, eggs, meat, fish, chicken, nuts, and seeds.

For vegetarians, the Paleo diet is challenging because beans aren’t an option.

I think the Paleo diet is likely better for certain sports than others. For example, it seems better suited to weight lifting than track and field.

The Paleo diet can also be quite expensive. I also don’t think red meat is something to eat in significant amounts. There is ample evidence that Bacteroidetes bacteria are associated with colon cancer, and red meat encourages the growth of this bacterial strain.

I always tell people to back off the red meat. You’re better off eating free-range eggs, check, and fresh-caught fish.

The Paleo diet may have some blood sugar control benefits to offer people with diabetes. But if you’re a high functioning athlete, you need to be very careful about keeping your carb, protein, and fat ratios at an appropriate level.

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Questions & Answers

The Best Dietary Practices For Gut And Overall Health

The following are some healthy-gut tips that I have shared with my clients over the years.

1. Don’t follow a diet like the paleo, keto, or low-carb diet: I don’t generally recommend that you follow any particular kind of diet. You may look at my Candida Crusher book and think to yourself, “But, hang on a minute, he recommends the MEVY diet.” The MEVY diet refers to meat, eggs, vegetables, and yogurt. However, I never say that people should rigidly stick to the MEVY diet. I encourage modifying the diet to suit your purposes. I’m not the food police.

2. Use smaller plates: If you want to be lean and mean, try and eat smaller servings. Using a smaller plate can help you to adjust psychologically to eating less. And remember that the best exercise you can do is to push your plate away.

3. Focus on the quality of your food, not the quantity: Always be fussy about the quality of the food you’re eating. Even if the best option isn’t brilliant, you can still make the best food choices for the circumstances. Watch out for buffets because it’s easy to overeat, and the hygiene may be suspect. Quality is more and more important as you get older. 20-year-olds can get away with eating a quantity that wouldn’t be a right for a 60-year old.

4. Snack on yogurt: Yogurt can help build up the beneficial bacteria in your gut. It reduces inflammation and inhibits bacteria and yeast. Eating small amounts of yogurt has been shown to boost the immune system as well. Eat sour, Greek yogurt, perhaps with a few berries and some Manuka honey. Don’t opt for yogurt full of artificial sweeteners.

5. Add sprouts to your diet. Sprouts are a fantastic food full of enzymes that improve digestive function while cleaning up the stomach and small intestine. I try and eat sprouts every single day

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6. Try and match up a regular behavior with a healthy habit. For example, whenever my father went out for a drive, he would have an apple. You could try the same thing or design your own healthy association. It could mean having a drink of fresh, filtered water every time you go to the kitchen. Or maybe it would mean always throwing a piece of fruit into your bag when you’re out running errands.

7. Be picky when you go out for food. Don’t sit there and suffer in silence but there is no reason you can’t politely decline to eat food that is going to make your health suffer. Many people have told me that they don’t want to put someone out or embarrass, but I think it’s important to speak up in your own best interest.

8. Don’t eat well for five or six days a week and then have a massive “cheat day” full of fried chicken and soda pop. That’s not a great idea. If you are going to “cheat,” have something small. Small amounts of less-than-healthy food are acceptable. But remember the 80/20 rule, even 90/10 rule, 80 to 90% of what you eat should be very good. A small percentage can be not so good.

9. Not every sensation is hunger. If you feel that stomach growling sensation is most likely the motor reflex that occurs when your body is cleaning out the digestive tract, it’s not actually that your body needs food. It’s good for your gut not to be always peppered with food. It’s the key to keeping your weight down is by curbing and controlling the appetite.

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Questions & Answers

Diet, Cognition, And Mood: What’s The Connection?

Can what you eat make a difference to your thinking or your mood?

I think 2013 was when scientists started to look at the impact of the microbiome on cognition and mood. There are now many studies demonstrating that what you eat can highly influence how you think and feel.

Several parts of the brain are impacted by nutrition. The prefrontal cortex, the cortex, the amygdala, the hippocampus, and other areas of the brain will be affected. I’ve noticed this in patients for many years in my clinic.

I consider gut bacteria to make the difference between feeling good and feeling bad emotionally. I’ve noticed this in the clinic innumerable times. I’ve monitored patients using stool tests and documented a direct connection between the level of dysbiosis, yeast overgrowth, bacteria overgrowth, parasite infections, and how the patient feels.

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As the diet and gut improved and harmful microorganisms were reduced, my patients’ moods would pick up noticeably. Their jobs and relationships improved. Their cognitive symptoms disappeared.
I’ve concluded the nature of our gut flora is directly linked to the functioning of our brain. The quality of food that we eat has a direct impact on the microbial population in our GI tract. As a result, our diet can either leave us feeling terrible or leave us feeling sharp and energized.

Every time you eat something, remember the saying, “People dig their own graves with their teeth.” I read some alarming reports from the United States that most Americans eat less than a cup of fruit per day and less than two cups of vegetables per day. A diet like that will increase dysbiosis and gut imbalance, leading to cognitive dysfunction and mood disorders.

Is it any wonder that the world’s becoming a more depressing, anxious place to live?

Remember, the choice is yours. You decide what you put in your mouth every day. It’s your call. Decide how you want to feel and eat accordingly.

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