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S2E1 Limiting Variables: your personal health experiment
100 Plays1 year ago
Well hello! Welcome back to EBTL :)
Today on the pod we are diving into the incredibly important concept of *limiting variables*
Consider claims being made by diet culture, wellness culture and conventional medicine for the best solutions to our problems… often times we can either feel like everything with our health is in our control, only to be followed by guilt, shame, and burden when what we change never works or that we can’t handle or afford everything we need to apply..
Or conversely, we otherwise can feel complacent and quick to jump on medications or blame symptoms on things like "getting older" …
This episode is breaking down what you can do to figure out what you need to prioritize to get empowered with your own health by becoming your own n-1 experiment. Enjoy!
theresemartinezrd.com
Please remember nothing you hear on the EBTL podcast should be taken as medical advice. Please consult your healthcare providers before making changes to your health.
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Transcript
Introduction & Purpose
00:00:00
Speaker
to Hello and welcome to Eating Between the Lines. I am your host, Therese Martinez, and I am so happy to have you here. If you want to untangle yourself from diet culture conditioning and get appropriate, actionable options to nourish your unique life and body, I'm going to dive deep into the nuanced spectrum of health to help you figure out what to prioritize in your journey without getting trapped in the extreme ideology of health optimization or total complacency. I am here to help you apply the science effectively, not rigidly, and get you feeling better in your body and mind. Here is how to eat between the lines.
Seasonal Reflections
00:00:46
Speaker
Well, hello, welcome back to eating between the lines. It is good to be back. I am your host, Teresa Martinez. I am excited about this new season with the pod. I took a very much needed break over the summer. I just kind of needed some space from podcasting, from some work stuff. And I don't know, coming into the fall, feeling pretty motivated and excited to get back into some valuable content creation for y'all. So I hope everyone else had a wonderful summer. It always goes by way too fast for me and I am still clinging on for dear life to these warm days, but
00:01:30
Speaker
forecast does say we are going to get down into the sixties coming up. And so in any case, I am trying to embrace fall and you know, it's my birthday month, September. And so fall is also beautiful, but I just have a hard time because it comes before winter and it's like,
00:01:52
Speaker
Just knowing that, and especially in Spokane, winter is sneaky and you just never know when it's going to come and stay, right? It's like they can be some cold days. And if I were to have confidence that the cold days would be fleeting and it would get back to being a little bit nicer and warmer, then I would probably be okay with the colder days, but you just never know if it's going to be cold and then it's going to be cold forever. And.
00:02:20
Speaker
That tends to be my issue with the fall, but in any case, it's gorgeous. It's beautiful here in the Pacific Northwest. It's my birthday month and we are getting back into the podcast. And so I am super stoked about the topic today.
Diet vs. Lifestyle Solutions: A Balanced Approach
00:02:34
Speaker
We are talking about my favorite concept. Oh, favorite might be tough, but one of my favorite concepts that I tried about all the time with patience, limiting variables.
00:02:49
Speaker
So there is a lot of talk around the impact of nutrition and lifestyle on the interwebs, right? There are many claims around how changing nutrition and lifestyle, like with workouts, morning routines, supplement routines, sleep routines can impact health, longevity, et cetera. And some are pretty widely supported and others are more anecdotal.
00:03:15
Speaker
And any, which way I want to bridge the gap from the extreme stance that you can solve all problems with diet and lifestyle and supplements versus the alternative approach of not holding yourself accountable at all with what can be in your control and opting for solutions like pharmaceuticals or complacency, like hands up, it doesn't even matter kind of situation.
00:03:43
Speaker
Okay, so let it be known, there can be dangers and considerations on both ends, hence. giving you tools to figure out what actually makes sense for you.
Minimizing Variables for Effective Health Interventions
00:03:55
Speaker
I'm not talking so much about evidence around these claims today, but more so to the concept I utilize when working with patients to create more clarity around the what is working and why and how to treat yourself as your own N1 experiment to avoid getting lost in the weeds.
00:04:18
Speaker
You know, get into a situation of taking a hundred supplements and hoping something works out. Right. I feel like I've talked about that example before, but I honestly have been there so many times where I will have had a symptom or a condition and just been like, all right.
00:04:34
Speaker
Cross my fingers, hope something works out and just take the supplements or do all the interventions all at one time and just kind of expect to get better. but So limiting variables. If you have ever attempted any kind of experiment, first thing that comes to my mind is second grade science class.
00:04:56
Speaker
You will remember the importance of minimizing variables at play so that you can isolate the efficacy of the intervention, meaning I don't want to change too many things all at once because I want to know what to give credit to if it works or doesn't work.
00:05:15
Speaker
I love this concept because it can apply to so many other areas of our life. And when used and understood appropriately, it can empower us to minimize the components in our life that may be impacting our behavior negatively or positively and create clarity on what is actually happening underlying. For example,
00:05:39
Speaker
I am tired today. All right. What might be variables to be tired? Well, okay. We got sleep. That seems like an obvious one. What was the quality of my sleep last night? um Other variables. Was there alcohol? um Am I hydrated? What was my movement? the What has my movement looked like the past few days? What's my stress like? Am I at a certain time of my cycle? What's my nutrition like? Right?
00:06:05
Speaker
being tired actually has like so many variables but these are a few main ones that a person can consider and so we take a look at these and we say okay well hey i'm tired today what might be variables i can minimize to actually experiment and see if i can impact my energetics
Identifying Key Variables Affecting Health
00:06:25
Speaker
tomorrow a lot of times people do this naturally right it's like If a person, you know, stays up really late, it's like, okay, maybe that was why I'm tired today. Now I'm going to control that variable and I'm going to go to bed at a decent time. You know, but there are other variables that a lot of times people don't consider when it comes to energetics and a lot of other symptoms and symptom pictures when we are thinking about our health and wellness. So.
00:06:53
Speaker
If we take a look at these, we say, Hey, what can I control? So many times we start with easy options. It's like, okay, can I control hydration? Can I control not drinking alcohol? Can I have similar exercise on a day to day basis and then see how my energy actually gets fixed or increases or decreases so that I can see what impacts it and how. So others can then look at more complex variables like sleep and nutrition.
00:07:22
Speaker
that can also be broken down into other interventions, but sleep and nutrition are just, they're honestly just complex, like I mentioned. And then there's just a lot of other tiers underneath those versus like hydration and having it be a little bit more black and white as a limiting variable.
00:07:40
Speaker
But you get the idea, right? So once we start minimizing variables, we have less things to quote blame, and then we can figure out what is impacting us more or less. But if we are always all over the place with everything, we have no idea why our energy is low.
00:07:57
Speaker
we start blaming things like, quote, getting older. I hear that all the time. And that might be true and absolutely part of some of your symptoms, but this is like what this whole episode is about is like, can we limit variables? And then we can have clarity with what is actually contributing to these symptoms versus just saying and blaming something on getting older. You can also see with some of this too, I like, nutrition research is so challenging because
00:08:30
Speaker
Nutrition is so unique to the individual, right? So a lot of times nutrition research is studied on a population-based level. So a lot of times there are many generalizations and it gets so much criticism because of how it doesn't apply to absolutely every individual. And this has just been on my mind lately. So I'm just on a little tangent right now, but I want it to be known that there are a lot of variables when it comes to nutrition. And so some people will see that and be like, well, how can we trust anything? And we can still trust population based studies to a certain degree, but this is why it is then important to get individualized help and to also understand how to do this yourself and be your end one experiment because you have unique needs. Okay. So.
Dietary Variables and Misconceptions
00:09:27
Speaker
Nutrition is a lot of experimentation. It requires controlling variables we can to truly gain clarity on efficacy of changes, meaning if I am trying to eat healthier, and so I just add some protein to my meals or snacks, yet I am eating sporadically, skipping meals, eating out.
00:09:46
Speaker
cooking sometimes at home, and just responding to hunger cues versus creating more intentionality around meal composition and timing, grocery staples, nutrient density, I may find I am running in circles, confused with why I don't have the results I want with my health. Because I'm adding protein. Why wouldn't I be feeling different? There are many ways people can eat and remain healthy or unhealthy, right?
00:10:15
Speaker
And so it's not the fact that just being sporadic and spontaneous with intake is going to be the demise to your health. It's just highlighting the fact that, hey, you have a lot of variables when you are spontaneous and sporadic, when you aren't intentional with the composition of your meals. That doesn't mean you need to get obsessive. That doesn't mean you have to follow X, Y, or Z calories or grams of protein carbs or fats. That's not, that's not needed.
00:10:45
Speaker
A lot of times we can just create better balanced meals and have a little bit more intentionality with our intake and see a lot better results by because we are limiting a lot of variables.
00:11:00
Speaker
so You know, I've seen many different approaches to food intake and how many people can be very healthy following a variety of diets and ways of eating, right? Like I am not some intuitive eating is the only way to go, never track anything kind of person.
00:11:20
Speaker
I'm not against being vegetarian or being low carb or intermittent fasting, right? There's so many different ways that you can eat and you can feel great. I think many times my concern and consideration really is like you don't know what you don't know.
00:11:38
Speaker
So if you're being fed a lot of narratives around this way is the best way and you start following it and you feel okay. Um, but you're mostly just honestly, remedying a lot of the variables that I'll kind of get into in a minute, but, uh, such as, you know, regularly eating, getting more nutrient density and having some more balance with your food intake. It's not necessarily this particular diet. It's kind of.
00:12:08
Speaker
just this shift in the composition of what you're consuming and Sometimes in contrast to you know, when you don't know what you don't know say for example someone that's going vegetarian Maybe they come off of a pretty highly processed food diet and they start just incorporating more whole foods and then they start feeling way better and then they feel like being vegetarian is the best way but then They don't know what it's like to have good, high quality animal products into their diet and maybe they feel better that way. And I'm not trying to push animal products on folks that are vegetarians, but it's just an example, right? Because maybe they do feel even better that way. So it's just another variable. So these are all things to consider when a person starts tackling a certain diet, starts eating in a certain way. Like what is the, what are the variables you are changing? And then also.
00:13:00
Speaker
You don't know what you don't know. So it's important to not get super hunkered into a certain style of eating, especially if it totally takes out certain food groups and feels kind of restrictive. But sometimes that can also work for folks too. Okay. So let's break down some variables when it comes to nutrition.
Psychological and Physiological Influences on Diet
00:13:20
Speaker
So we have two main influences when it comes to what we consume and why.
00:13:28
Speaker
One is psychological. The second is physiological. I would say there could be like one more pillar. This is what I talk about with the three pillars in previous episodes, but third one being kind of your ability to apply recommendations and that can dictate actually, you know, what you consume, but for the sake of the variable talk, let's talk psychological and physiological variables. So.
00:13:52
Speaker
Psychological variables include the wiring that we have established throughout our life around what we should eat, what we should not eat, what is good for us, what is not good for us. And to a certain degree, like I said, the skillset that we have to apply said intake.
00:14:10
Speaker
So psychological variables tend to be a little bit more challenging to minimize because we're super duper wired. We have a lot, a lot, a lot of wiring when it comes to what we believe and why, you know, seeds planted and watered over the course of our life to really dictate our relationship with food, basically.
00:14:32
Speaker
But psychological variables can also kind of parallel physiological variables in certain ways. And so changing one can impact the other. So let me give you an exam example. If we go all day without eating.
00:14:49
Speaker
you know, we can get to the evening and we can feel ravenous and not want to cook anything. And maybe we put ourselves in a situation where we are going to order door dash, or we're going to check if a pantry and just grab the first thing that feels convenient to us. And then we can start feeling kind of out of control with this food and Maybe we post up in front of the TV. Maybe we get a little distracted otherwise. And all of a sudden we are inhaling this food and we get to the other side of the meal and we're like, Oh my gosh, like what just happened? Maybe we don't even stop at the meal. Maybe after dinner, it's kind of like, okay, I'm just going to keep snacking, keep eating. And then we have this narrative that's like, wow, I cannot control my hunger. I am always hungry at night. This is crazy.
00:15:40
Speaker
I need help trying to stop my cravings. But if we actually minimize the variable of getting into dinner ravenous by fueling our self appropriately throughout the day, we have a little bit less vulnerability and susceptibility to that same level of anxiety around the food. This is a huge intervention when it comes to the binge restrict cycle so many people can be in.
00:16:07
Speaker
Whether that manifests as late night backloading food intake leading to skipping breakfast and snacking on foods for lunch and then eating a big meal later and snacking into the night. Right. That's a pattern. I've talked about that pattern before. That's a big pattern I've seen. It's an element of the binge restrict cycle.
00:16:28
Speaker
you know, during the week we're really rigid and restrictive and then we binge a lot on the weekends or maybe we restrict a very certain food and then we're around it and we feel out of control and then we binge on that, right? So there's a lot of different cycles of the binge restrict and I think a lot of people associate it just with like, I don't know, some label disordered eating thing and I mean y'all I see this every single day with people that do not have clinically disordered eating and so it's really really common and sometimes we don't even realize how we are putting ourselves into that situation so
00:17:08
Speaker
While there are many contributors of psychological variables when it comes to our food intake, the main ones I'm focusing on today are going to be more physiological, but understand they do work together in addition to the other pillars of health.
Hormonal Impact on Dietary Choices
00:17:22
Speaker
So what are examples of physiological variables?
00:17:25
Speaker
Ah, well, a theme today is going to be that everything is somewhat interconnected. So I have this example of like a physiological variable being energy and energetics, but we have so many other things that can impact energy that it's not necessarily the greatest isolated variable, but it can dictate what we consume. So you know when we are tired, we can have more tendencies to reach for certain foods that might provide a little boost of energy. We might reach for more caffeine. We might tend towards foods that are higher in carbohydrates and sugar because they provide energy.
00:18:05
Speaker
And but not always. I mean, I know when I'm tired, sometimes I reach for more salty, fatty foods, too. But there's nothing inherently wrong with eating food when you are tired. Also, let it be known. But sometimes it can turn into a pattern that isn't favorable and does not serve you. So Maybe that pattern means that you're just not feeling great on a whole throughout the day. Your energy levels aren't stellar and you don't want that. And sometimes the intake can kind of create this cycle of not actually supporting it. Maybe you end up eating more food than you feel comfortable with. Maybe you end up eating less food and just living off of caffeine all day. So there are a lot of different tiers of problems that can arise when we are not actually identifying the variables that can contribute to low energy and we are just going into some of these behaviors of intake. So we want to understand possible places of intervention. So maybe we look at sleep.
00:19:08
Speaker
sleep has a lot of impacts on energy and also hormonal balances and also hunger cues. Okay. So we have hunger hormones and these can be influenced a lot with many different things as well. So this is another reason why, Hey, limiting variables can be really beneficial. So sleep impacts hunger hormones, but it also impacts cortisol levels.
00:19:35
Speaker
And cortisol can drive a little bit more of a stress response, which also means that we might get a little bit, uh, disconnected from our body and that can impact our ability to listen to appropriate hunger cues. And that has a whole other line of different variations of intake throughout the day. Right. And so.
00:20:00
Speaker
Getting adequate sleep is super duper important, not to mention all of the other things that i meant that I said earlier around compensatory behaviors when it comes to low energy and what we might gravitate towards. Movement is another variable.
00:20:15
Speaker
Not enough can impact our fatigue levels and tendencies to snack and graze. Moving can also improve hunger regulation and improve more connection to your body. It can decrease stress. Stress is like this overarching variable that has so many other layers too. And exercise can be a huge, huge influencer when it comes to mitigating certain negative stress responses.
00:20:43
Speaker
And so I don't know, I think movement just really helps create clarity between body and mind. That's like, I don't know, like the biggest thing. And then when you have better clarity, you can just listen to your body more and you can trust your body more. And body trust is a huge, huge consideration and issue. I think with a lot of people when it comes to food intake.
00:21:07
Speaker
So moving can also impact how a person eats when it comes to the stress response that it can influence in the body. So meaning if I am over exercising and not recovering well enough, that can be problematic in the way that my body feels, okay? That's an increased stress on the body. So when people say they utilize exercise for stress reduction,
00:21:34
Speaker
But they are not sleeping well. They are really overworked. They are super stressed with their family life. Sometimes I'm not the biggest advocate for a CrossFit workout in that situation. And sometimes that leads to nutrient deficiencies where we need to support the body's healing mechanisms and recovery in a much more intentional fashion. And so you can end up being undernourished in these times because you are just way overstressed and your body is not recovering.
00:22:04
Speaker
And so exercise can impact the needs, nutritional needs of an individual, which then can impact also what they consume. But many times people are not aware of this. So they just under consume what they need.
00:22:18
Speaker
And that can be problematic and turn into certain patterns as well. So there are, there's so many examples. There's so many layers here. These are just a handful of variables. We have so many. Uh, so just, you know, a few more would include like cycles, sicknesses, health conditions, medications, you know, blood sugar balance. And I want to talk about that more here too.
Managing Blood Sugar for Energy Stability
00:22:43
Speaker
Blood sugar balance is huge.
00:22:46
Speaker
Huge, huge, huge when we think about minimizing variables, okay? So just to get into like a hair of blood sugar 101. i I actually have a podcast about blood sugar, but I want to kind of take note of this a little bit separately here just so you don't have to go and listen to it. So blood sugar, we have a concentration of sugar in our bloodstream. It is regulated in a healthy individual to may be maintained in a certain range. now
00:23:17
Speaker
It goes outside of that range, normally in healthy individuals, and it comes back into the range in normal, normal healthy individuals, right? Like, um, based off of what we eat, based off of stress, based off a handful of variables, but it's a, it's a mechanism that is regulated in healthy individuals just fine. And it is normal for it for blood sugar to fluctuate. Now.
00:23:42
Speaker
When we consume certain foods that can influence this fluctuation, we look at certain foods like carbohydrates and protein as the main macronutrients that can increase blood sugar and therefore fluctuations in blood sugar. Carbohydrates tend to be the most prominent macronutrient that can influence it, but again, protein can as well. So carbohydrates that increase the concentration to the greatest degree include things like simple sugars, uh, in addition to also volume of carbohydrates. So it's not always just the type of carb, it's the volume of carbohydrate consumed and what it's eaten with. Okay. So hence, like my emphasis on balancing meals, but carbohydrates increase concentration of blood sugar to the greatest degree, largely due to the type and the volume of which it is consumed.
00:24:41
Speaker
Now again, our bodies can compensate. They produce insulin. Insulin brings it down. It's a great regulatory system. However, it can produce symptoms. And so with those symptoms, if we have high fluctuating blood sugars all the time, we can sometimes see lower energy levels after certain meals. We can see energy crashes, cravings, brain fog, fatigue, and patterns like lower satiety because we have fullness that is not maintained over a period of time because carbohydrates kind of get in and out of our stomach pretty quick.
00:25:19
Speaker
And so it's not that carbs are inherently a bad thing. It is that we want to understand how to mitigate that rate of rise so that we can have more steady energy levels.
00:25:32
Speaker
So this is a big variable that I see all the time with folks. When we do not have adequate nutrients that can sustain our hunger, then we start to get more disconnected from our body because we, and then we start to develop more and more distrust because we're like, I thought I had a nice breakfast of a whole healthy foods, but it just was really high in carbohydrates and now you're tired an hour later.
00:25:59
Speaker
And now you feel like you can't trust yourself around these foods, but really it just means that you needed more balance. Okay. So there's again a lot of different examples that we can go into here as well, but.
00:26:11
Speaker
That's kind of like a blood sugar 101. So to me, fluctuations in blood sugar are not the problem. The issue I see when people have a lot of fluctuations in blood sugar are the symptoms that come with it and the fact that that also can mean that they are not eating enough protein, fat, and fiber. Also important to recognize that everybody responds differently when it comes to print carb sources, amount of carbs, and all of things all those things too.
00:26:38
Speaker
because there are people that eat very high carb diet, moderate protein, low fat diets that have great eating patterns. it's yeah There's just so much individuality when it comes to what works and what doesn't for us that this is why it's just really important and very beneficial to work with people that can take you through trial and error with different approaches. Now I would also just say that like with those people, I would still start them on a balanced intake and then titrate out from there because we don't really know who responds well to certain macronutrient ratios until we start digging into some trial and error.
00:27:21
Speaker
So limiting the variable would be minimizing the rate of rise of blood sugar and trying to incorporate in more balanced meal options and see how they feel. Not only does this tend to help because of blood sugar balance, but because we are also now getting a better distribution of micronutrients that come from proteins, fats, and fiber.
00:27:43
Speaker
talk a lot about micronutrient density and with patients and find it to be just very, very, very important, not really talked about as much like macronutrients feel like they just dominate protein, especially. And while again, important with considerations around how they can impact hunger regulation and in patterns, micronutrients really get down and dirty into the body with a metabolic function. And so many times people can feel better.
00:28:11
Speaker
when they incorporate the variety of foods because they're getting more iconutrient content. So this is why I like to discuss this topic pretty much at the beginning of my work with any new patient as variables are really, really important to minimize as a foundation. And then we kind of work our way out from there.
00:28:35
Speaker
So another example here, say I have someone that comes in and I'm looking at their intake. So I see that they skip breakfast, maybe they have a coffee and for lunch it's a chicken Caesar salad, but it's also maybe a little inconsistent, right? So maybe they have a chicken Caesar salad one day, they meal prep another day, they have leftovers one day, they skip and or they graze another.
00:28:59
Speaker
It's all over the place. And then they might have some balanced meal with their family, protein, starch, and veggie. And after dinner, they're like, man, I have so many sugar and carb cravings. Therese, I need help with my sugar and carb cravings after dinner. How, what are some tips and tricks to stop my cravings after dinner? And I will never help someone white knuckle their way through hunger. I will always back the track up to look at their patterns.
00:29:27
Speaker
Something I've talked a lot about in this podcast is patterns. So then we look and see how we can intervene with their intake to minimize variables. So if I'm looking at this intake, I'm going to say, okay, how can we add a breakfast in and how can we focus on also creating balance in this breakfast?
00:29:47
Speaker
because that's going to minimize the potential blood sugar roller coaster you're going to feel throughout the day. It will also minimize the variables of potential low energy, brain fog, other symptoms that may occur when you skip a meal. Now, I know there's a lot of intermittent fasting people out there and they will say, I have great energy and all of that when I skip a meal.
00:30:09
Speaker
And okay, fine. I will say you don't know what you don't know. And we will titrate out with each individual based off of these foundations more often than not. And so we start with that because even with intermittent fasting, that is a variable. And sometimes people do not do well skipping meals. So we add in a breakfast, we keep it balanced. We keep the volume appropriate and adequate too. That's big. And then.
00:30:35
Speaker
we work on consistency with lunches because being all over the place with intake is a pattern in and of itself. And it can be problematic when we don't really know what a person's actually consuming on a regular basis. So let us get consistent with lunch as well. And then we reevaluate. We say, okay, how are you doing after dinner?
00:30:57
Speaker
And many times, many times this person will say, wow, I have a lot less cravings. And sometimes they will say, I still have cravings, in which case we have minimized variables. And now we can look at this tendency in the evening and say, all right, well, is this, is this such a bad thing to have some cravings in the evening? We don't need to pathologize having hunger and wanting snacks or wanting dessert, et cetera, in the evening.
00:31:25
Speaker
Is this serving you in a negative fashion? Or we can also take a look and see and ask, hey, is this is there something else behind this intake? Is this how you bond with your family? Is this how you wind down? Is this stress management? Are you saving foods for the end of the night because you are restricting them throughout the day or otherwise? What's happening here? And so that's an example of minimizing variables.
00:31:51
Speaker
And so a lot of times when we try to do this in practice, we kind of just start with breakfast. We see how this person feels with breakfast. We work on adequate protein with an understanding that they might need more, they might need less. And then we see how that contributes to their intake throughout the day. And then like I said before, we kind of do that with lunch as well, but we're constantly creating connection back to the body with the interventions that are done.
00:32:17
Speaker
So I'm not just throwing and people through the wolves and saying, Hey, just eat three balanced meals. Go. We start one by one and we kind of figure out what's working and we, we let them see the difference that just one change can make. I remember working with a patient who had like two eggs and a piece of toast for breakfast every morning. And she really, um, in her mind struggled with late night snacking a lot of like sweets and such.
00:32:44
Speaker
And we added one egg to breakfast. So she was eating three eggs and a piece of toast. And she told me, Therese, I had no idea. I had no idea that I could feel this good in the morning. I always thought that I wasn't a morning person and it turns out I was just hungry. And that quote has stuck with me so much.
00:33:08
Speaker
It's so true. It's so true. Sometimes even just changing the composition and volume of food makes a really big impact in the patterns throughout the rest of the day. But this is an example of, again, tackling ah one component, one variable,
00:33:24
Speaker
Checking into the body, seeing how it makes you feel, seeing what's different, rinsing and repeating for a while. I talk also about getting more quote, time under one's belts because any changes you make, any interventions you you make, you need to continue for a while. Not one day, not one meal, not one week is going to give you adequate and appropriate data. We need to understand this on a bigger scale and then that's how we actually create more accurate conclusions.
Critique of Health Claims and Quick Fixes
00:33:55
Speaker
All right, so I like to take this idea and move into some considerations around how some approaches in the online space, health space can be misleading and why it's important for you to understand your own variables. So I see this a lot with alternative medicine, wellness culture, diet culture, even conventional medicine, honestly to a certain degree. And
00:34:18
Speaker
They, there are these claims of this supplement, this medication, this diet, this lifestyle will improve X, Y, or Z symptom.
00:34:29
Speaker
And I just like to take a step back and say, well, first and foremost, like no shame. And any, for anyone that like ops for any of these solutions, I feel like most people are doing the best that they can. But what I like to highlight is that, you know, you might not need some of these solutions if you can focus on foundations and variables.
00:34:55
Speaker
Right? So, you know, let's take digestive health. Digestive health can be very complicated. So I do not mean to use this example as a simplification and, you know, negating the many challenges people with digestive health face and how there can be so many attempts with a wild amount of elimination diets and approaches to help remedy digestive symptoms. I also know I see a lot of people and I talk to dietician specialists at nourish with a digestive health GI where often foundations can be extremely, extremely profound. So things like
00:35:45
Speaker
chewing your food thoroughly, eating in a calm, inviting environment, stress management. The connection with stress and GI health is wild.
00:35:57
Speaker
Hydration, adequate nutrition and fiber and nutrients that support digestive health using a squatty potty. These things in addition to movement and adequate sleep, like that stuff actually impacts digestive health and pretty wildly. And there are absolutely supplements that can do what they're supposed to do. And that is supplement.
00:36:24
Speaker
these conditions. And again, I want to reiterate, there are so many digestive health conditions that, you know, need more clinical approaches, but I see a lot of folks that have symptoms around IBS, right? So maybe it's diarrhea and or constipation or bloating. And when we just work on limiting variables, it is crazy how much people find relief, you know, acid reflux and GERD. There's just there's a lot to it. And I know that I've also talked with people that just feel like they have, quote, tried everything. But then when we talk about what they've tried, it's like a supplement here or there or an elimination diet that wasn't really an an elimination diet and it was like for a week.
00:37:19
Speaker
or they took a food sensitivity test and so they just stopped eating some of the foods on there. And it's not actually like the foundational interventions that they need. PCOS is another one I see a lot. um um Foundations with PCOS are largely around blood sugar balance and increasing insulin Sensitivity that means increasing movement and also stress management and regular eating patterns as a way to support circadian rhythm and hormonal regulation, adding nutrient density into the diet to support additional functions in the body. These are foundations. This is where you start and get time under your belt prior to jumping to other solutions.
00:38:08
Speaker
Wellness culture and diet culture hacks of the world find a pain point and make you believe you need X, Y, or Z product to fix it with or without the foundations. I'm not saying that there are not great other approaches, functional or conventional practitioner wise, um, that can alleviate and or positively impact symptoms for the better. Please know that it is just wildly commonplace for people to not have checked off foundations and really looked at the variables they can control and shift for a period of time.
00:38:47
Speaker
People that say they don't want, know why they are in pain all the time. Tired all the time. Can't figure out how to sleep better. There are things that can, interventions that can potentially really work. Have you limited variables? Like truly limited variables for a while.
Experimentation and Personal Health Insights
00:39:11
Speaker
I know I started blaming the same thing, things over and over for a long time in my life. And I finally got to a point where I was like, okay, I'm going to like take these out. I'm going to start changing some of my behavior. And then my symptoms did not change. And this is not to say that ah like to be discouraging by any means.
00:39:36
Speaker
But it is to say that I limited variables and I created clarity that like, oh wow, turns out that wasn't the issue. So I have some digging to do. I think people can also have a tendency to like to have something to blame. Although I do think that may be a whole other discussion. But it can be curious to start some of this experimentation. I would love to know your thoughts.
00:40:05
Speaker
It is good to be back. I hope you guys have a wonderful, blissful, exciting, or, you know, whatever you need, start to the fall. Thank you so much for listening today. If you found this information valuable, please share this episode and give it a review. They truly help a ton. If you want additional support and information, you can head over to my website, teresmartinezrd.com.
00:40:31
Speaker
where you can snag my free guide on how to improve your hunger signals, get on my email list for regular juicy content, or apply for the next round of my signature program, restoring nutrition intuition. Otherwise, Instagram at teresmartinasrd or my Facebook group fed fit and fad free nutrition with teres are always places for more content and support. Until next time.