Loading summary
Transcript78 lines
- [00:02]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. Welcome everyone to a very special week and a very special guest. Talking about a topic that is critically important, important dear to us, to the brain warriors way. We are here with Dr. Uma Naidu who is a board certified psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School. Professional chef. I love that. Cambridge School of Culinary Arts and nutrition specialist. This is the combination of the future. She is currently the director of Nutritional and Lifestyle Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital where she consults on nutritional interventions for the psychiatrically and medically ill. Director of Nutrition Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital Academy and has a private practice in Newton, Massachusetts. She also teaches at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts and speaks frequently at conferences at Harvard for GOOP audiences. I got to do that. That was super fun. Blogs for Harvard Health and Psychology.
- [01:34]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Thank you for inviting me.
- [01:36]
Tana Amen
Yes. I can't believe this idea of actually working with people with mental health and using food and that is actually your specialty is so amazing. And I remember when we did many years ago, tried to what we did, plant food and nutrition into one of the largest chemical addiction recovery programs in the country and what a battle it was. Like what a battle it was. And yet the people actually really understood it. They got it. They got, oh, if I eat well, I'm going to make better choices. But it was really hard with the organization. It was crazy.
- [02:11]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Wow. But to have Massachusetts General Hospital, so great. That's great.
- [02:14]
Tana Amen
How exciting.
- [02:15]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Dr. Naidu, talk to us about how you became who you are. I mean, Tana and I think this is a brilliant combination of specialties. How did that happen for you?
- [02:30]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Well, first, let me just say if I can take a second, that it's such an honor to talk to both of you and it's really just wonderful to be here. I've been excited about this. So thank you for supporting the book and for hosting me. My story goes back to my family. As a good psychiatrist will tell you, I actually grew up around a lot of food, nurturance and love. Large extended family and sort of food connection began there. Also had many physicians in my family. So although we loved delicious food, there was a focus on trying to eat healthy and understanding that connection. And for me in residency especially as I learned to cook. I always baked, but I learned to cook then. It was the stress relief at the end of the day for me. I looked forward to putting something together, experimenting with spices, making mistakes, whatever it was. But to me, that was what I looked forward to. So I began to really think about it more deeply. As I saw patients and as I began to learn about psychiatric medications and prescribing, I felt a real need to also understand the side effects. And there's this particular moment that I talk about in the book where a patient is pretty upset with me. In my community clinic where I was first a resident and came in, in Boston, we love Dunkin Donuts coffee and came in with this large coffee and was complaining about the weight gain from the medic I had prescribed only a month before. And I listened to him. And for me, the penny dropped in that moment because I looked at his coffee, which is a 20 ounce size, and I said, well, tell me, let's call him John. Tell me, John, how much of cream and sugar is in that? And he said, oh, just like this amount and those number of sugars. When we broke it down, it was more than a quarter cup of cream and probably eight sugars. And he drank this every day consistently. And I said, well, it was sort of the beginning of a certain change and shift in my thinking because I made the connection. I started to talk to him about that, but then I began to be much more observant about this in my patients as to whether they were taking medication or not, what were they eating, what were they doing in terms of lifestyle, mindfulness, sleep, it all seemed to matter. And over time, the language filled in for me that this was actually nutritional psychiatry, that it was including mindfulness is sort of an integrated. It's almost like integrated psychiatry using a functional model. So always looking for the root cause and trying to figure out what it is that you can help to make a change. Because we know that the diagnostic criteria just do not cover enough people and there's so many individuals who do not fall into that. So I really started to explore it. And then I had the opportunity, through some good mentorship, to start my own clinic and see these individuals in an ongoing way and in a long winded way that was how it came to be.
- [05:27]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Well, I just think that's spectacular and so important. I remember for me, I had an autistic child. I'm also a child psychiatrist. And when he went on a gluten free, dairy free diet, in a week he picked up 50 words. And I'm like, oh, that probably matters. And I've come to believe probably it's third of the psychiatric patients we see, it's their diet. And if you get your diet right, your brain, because your brain is an organ, just like your heart's an organ and if you don't eat it right, you won't feel right.
- [06:06]
Tana Amen
It seems like clearly there are some people who, there are other factors going on, but foods, you know, making your diet clean is certainly not going to hurt it. But make, but cleaning up your diet definitely in many if not most cases is going to help.
- [06:21]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Well, I like exactly what you said and the reason is that it doesn't harm you. If you clean up your diet, you only going to feel better in some form. And for people who question, well, is it this kind of science or that? We went through a lot of research to get to the factors we put together in the book and we looked at 700 articles and we condensed into more than 550. And the only reason I'm saying that is because people sometimes say, go, it's food, it's nutrition, we all eat. It's soft science. It's actually not, as you well point out, there's a real connection. And when you see it live, you see it happen in patients, you know that it's something we need to investigate and explore more.
- [07:07]
Tana Amen
I love this. And you got a picture of a fork on the COVID of your book and you know, interesting, your book's coming out. I have a book coming out in January and I was worried about it because the times are unprecedented. And I'm like, oh boy, all of the post election just chatter is going to make it difficult. And I'm sure you're probably a little bit worried about the same thing. Yours is coming out August 4th. There's just so much going on. It's hard for people to settle down and see stuff like this. But the truth is there's not a better time.
- [07:38]
Dr. Daniel Amen
For example, is that sugar boosts serotonin in the brain, that having an insulin response pushes tryptophan into the brain and you feel good. So the Dunkin Donuts, short term, long term, sad. And so really understanding that. Before we go to the second episode, can you give us four or five just big tips? And then in the next episode we're gonna talk about foods to fight things like depression, anxiety and ocd.
- [08:11]
Dr. Uma Naidu
So, you know, some of these guidelines really come from my belief that it's truly an integrated and holistic model. So it is how you eat. It's mindfulness. I know we'll go into specific foods later on, but it's mindfulness in terms of how you approach your meals. Part of it is framing when you have your meals and how you have them. And I think this is an opportunity, this pause is an opportunity for, for us to reset those things in our families if we're on our own. Whatever your situation might be, because stress eating happens and the stress response as it gets activated, we understand that it impacts how we eat, impacts our sleep. So I would say pay attention to how you're eating and when you're eating. Be mindful of the outside activities and include really healthy whole foods in your diet, whether you plant based or whether you keto, whichever diet you follow. I'm not so much of a promote proponent of a specific diet. I will work with you on whatever the food is that you're eating and try to help you make these tweaks. So things like added sugars, processed foods, preservatives are the big ones. We know that those are not good. The bad fats, we know those are not good. They harm all of the different conditions in different way. Paying attention to some sort of movement. And if you're severely depressed and you're not feeling good, think about something you can do to motivate yourself a little bit until you feel better. And food is one of the things that can get you to that place emotionally as well. As long as you're not severely ill and needing to be in a hospital, we can help you in those ways. So having some form of movement, paying attention to good sleep, hygiene and then mindfulness. So some form of mindfulness that appeals to you. Maybe that's a breathing exercise, maybe it's a short relaxation exercise. Maybe it's listening to music or some sort of sounds or instructions on an app that help you. Those for me are almost the tenants of how I try to work with people to set up a good nutritional psychiatry plan. It also has these pillars of care involved in them as well.
- [10:31]
Dr. Daniel Amen
She actually has like I just opened the book menu for ideal sleep patterns and lower fatigue. So the breakfast on the go, scrambled eggs in a mug. I love that. I have eggs almost every morning snack. Banana and almond butter over cottage cheese. I like that spicy shrimp mixed spring salad. But also actually really,
- [10:57]
Dr. Uma Naidu
we can actually use food to really build up our armor. So we understand that people are struggling. And so I think that if we can embrace certain foods just to help lower anxiety, that could really reduce our stress levels. And things I like to suggest to people are things like turmeric with black pepper. You can add it to a smoothie, you can add it to any food. If you don't cook with it, put it in your soup, you know, make a tea with it. Or even in a, like I said, like in a smoothie. The black pepper we understand activates the curcumin, which is the active ingredient in turmeric by a huge percent and makes its absorption better. So that's a great, a great and easy tip that if you can purchase that in the supermarket, it's quick and easy to do. All you really need, you know, is a quarter teaspoon a day. You can have more. It's not going to be toxic by, you know, it's a very large range of the amount you can eat. But really you only need a quarter teaspoon a day with a pinch of black pepper. Now with Omega 3 supplements, they've been around for a while and I love people to embrace that through food because I think that, well, you know, well sourced salmon, mackerel, herring, some of those, those types of seafood really contains some good Omega 3s in it. And the cool thing is that you're also going to help out mood symptoms and you know it's going to target anxiety too. So that's always a good way to go. Then the other suggestion is vitamin D. It's been shown in trials to help anxiety. So I try to ask people to do that. But then I also think like you mentioned about how we've outlined it in the book, it's helpful for people to know what to avoid too. And the things are the unhealthy fats. So things that are going to get that ratio of the Omega 6 and Omega 3 out of whack. So you know, the oils that we try to avoid, the highly processed foods, the also foods with gluten for anxiety were found to be slightly problematic. So those are things you want to stay from. And also artificial sweeteners. So a lot of the artificial sweeteners can actually drive anxiety the wrong way. And so I try to give people just a little cheat sheet around some of those to start with.
- [13:14]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Which sweeteners do you like?
- [13:17]
Dr. Uma Naidu
So you know, when I try, try to help people who like super sweet food or have sweet tooth that they want to, want to want to improve, the two that we suggest, you know, if you're trying to come off sweeteners are stevia or erythritol and that's partly related to the mechanism related to insulin. Yeah. So you know, and if you can come off it eventually better because maybe, you know, we might find something wrong with them in the future. As you know, nutritional research changes day by day almost any day. You can find one study for and one study against something But I think these are general guidelines. If you like sweet stuff, try those. And over time, try to move towards more natural sources of sugar.
- [14:02]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Although what you said, I don't think is going to change omega 3 fatty acids, just. That's not going to change so much of nerve cell membranes, colorful fruits and vegetables. Probably not going to change spices like turmeric. I'm a huge fan of oregano.
- [14:24]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Oregano, rosemary. Absolutely.
- [14:27]
Tana Amen
Well, what I love is what you're saying is basically natural foods are medicine. You're using natural foods as medicine.
- [14:33]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Food medicine, absolutely.
- [14:36]
Tana Amen
But when you're talking about some of the less natural forms of sweeteners, I think that's what you're referring to with the studies. We couldn't agree more. We recommend stevia and erythritol currently. And I always tell people, don't be attached to your message. Be attached to the current research coming out, because it changes. So right now, that's the best we know.
- [14:56]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Exactly. That was what I meant. And I exactly want to emphasize all of the other stuff I think that we know is pretty standard, has been tried and tested for years. Exactly. And with sweeteners, we just, you know, we just want to be a little bit more cautious. But I also understand that we're a nation that likes sweet food. You know, it's culturally, this is the nation that eats sweet foods at breakfast. That's not the case in all parts of the world. So I think that just giving people some guidelines is always helpful. Thank you for clarifying that.
- [15:27]
Dr. Daniel Amen
So in the table of contents, you have the gut. Brain, romance.
- [15:32]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Love that.
- [15:33]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Think about the gut all the time.
- [15:37]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Absolutely.
- [15:38]
Dr. Daniel Amen
My patients and people actually comment on it.
- [15:40]
Tana Amen
They're like, why are you talking about my gut? I came here.
- [15:45]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Or depression. Probiotics, omega 3s, and the Mediterranean eating pattern. And so there we are.
- [15:53]
Tana Amen
I feel like you two are.
- [15:55]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Yeah, again. And so when some people hear the Mediterranean eating pattern. Tana and I both love Italy. Almost all of our best vacations are Italy. They have all this pizza and pasta. So I'm getting a sense that's not really what you mean, that pizza and pasta and the local Italian eatery is good for your brain.
- [16:25]
Tana Amen
I'm not sure that's how the locals eat, though, all the time. If you go down to the Mediterranean.
- [16:28]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Exactly. I love that, though, you know, it's so true. I've understood. And I don't know enough about culinary history. Although I'm very interested in it. The pizza is more of an American food. However, you're absolutely right. Pizza Parlors, huge pasta dishes are what people associate with. That would be really referring to two points about that, and thank you for bringing it up. I use Mediterranean eating pattern because I find that the word diet to my patients indicates they have to give up something, that they have to restrict something or they can't eat. And I'm all about sharing with them how many things they can eat, because then they immediately start to feel better, like they're not going to feel deprived, and there's less of that boomerang effect of let me restrict this food, and then three weeks later, I eat two tubs of ice cream. That kind of effect that many people experience. And it's quite normal when you're trying to do that. So I use that, use the eating pattern just to be more easily explained to my patients. And then second point about it is we're talking about the Mediterranean region. So a lot of the diet actually includes healthy fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, seafood, really fresh, healthy seafoods that are well sourced and they enjoy and then olive oil as the healthy fat that is used to prepare them. So even if they do eat pasta,
- [17:53]
Tana Amen
well, we've taken two Mediterranean cruises, and we've been to Rome and we've been to the other parts of Italy. Other parts of Italy are more touristy and you'll see more pizza and pasta. But when we took the Mediterranean cruises, we really did like, even Greece and all those areas. I remember trying to order something else besides fish off the menu, and she kept shaking her head no. She's like, it's too heavy, it's too hot, it's too heavy. Why is she telling me what to eat? So they give you a salad and fish and olive oil and vinegar, and that's it really interesting, because the real Mediterranean areas, that is how they eat, especially.
- [18:27]
Dr. Uma Naidu
That is how they eat. Exactly. And I appreciate Dr. Amen giving me, you know, an easy question that I could answer there. So thank you. Thank you for setting that up so beautifully,
- [18:40]
Dr. Daniel Amen
typing on my phone. And I know we don't like the word diet because the first three letters of diet are diet. Yet I would call this the big brain. Diet is the small brain. And so I often tell my patients when they go to choose something to eat, just ask themselves this simple question. This is good for my brain or is it bad for it? And ultimately, once they read your book, they're going to have the clear answer to that. But it's also another question. I just thought of it, do I want a big brain or do I want a Small brain. And in large part, that's not genes. That's what you put in your mouth that determines the size, size of your blue jeans. All right, when we come back, we're going to talk more about anxiety, but I want to talk about PTSD and ADHD as well. On busy clinic days or long writing sessions, I take peak energy for clean, steady focus. No crash. It just won a 2025 next year, beating over 500 supplements. Get yours@brainmd.com use code podcast20 for 20% off. Welcome back. We are here with Dr. Uma Naidu, psychiatrist, nutritionist, chef, expert on food and mood and food and energy and food and focus, food and memory, food in your mind. This is your brain on food.
- [20:33]
Tana Amen
And why don't you read the website for that?
- [20:35]
Dr. Daniel Amen
August 4th umanaidoomd.com u m a N A I D O o m d.com the book will be available everywhere. It's published by Little Brown, that publishes many of our friends Mark Hyma and David Perlmutter. We're just very excited to meet you and spend time with you. And if you learn something during this podcast, post it on any of your social media. I mean, write it down, take a picture of it, post it, and then hashtag brainwarriorsway podcast. We're now at eight and a half million downloads. We're so grateful to all of you that are listening, but we want you to get this book. We brain warriors. They're armed, prepared, and where to win the fight of their lives starts with food. It starts with what you put in your body.
- [21:43]
Tana Amen
You know, one thing I want to address with you, too, at some point, maybe we can talk about tips because like you said, you addressed the fact that we are a culture that likes sweet foods. And we talked about the Mediterranean diet. And I remember I got so hooked on the dessert when we were on our Mediterranean cruises when we were in Greece, they have Greek cold Greek yogurt with a tiny bit of honey drizzled on it with walnuts. Everywhere you go. That's what they have for dessert. And it was so much simpler than like our ice cream and our, you know, all these things. Yeah, it had a little honey, but not much. But it didn't have all the processed chemicals and all this stuff. And I got hooked on it. I was just like, that is such a good idea.
- [22:23]
Dr. Uma Naidu
And it's so delicious, you know, and you could, you could have it. I totally agree with that. I love that. And it's the creaminess of the Greek yogurt makes it even better. The drizzle of honey that, you know, you add on the crunchiness of the walnuts. It's all. It's all great brain food right there. You know, it's your prebiotics. It's, you know, honey is sort of glucose. It goes directly to your brain. So that's a great, great food for you. And in moderation, you know, we're not saying have a jug of it. And I like that there's almost an emphasis on healthier options for desserts. And I think that where we sometimes get into trouble here is that. And trust me, I love to bake. I learned to bake before I learned how to cook. But part of my challenge is I try to figure out, is there a way that I can make this cupcake healthier? I made it chocolate cupcake recently with zucchini.
- [23:17]
Tana Amen
Sounds like me.
- [23:17]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Yeah. You know, and with zucchini and other and alternate types of flour to see can I, you know, change it around but have it still look like a cupcake, you know, so it's all those little things. And, you know, this is cool stuff about chocolate, where chocolate we know is a great brain food, but it's the super dark chocolate, and it's. It's really telling people the right kind
- [23:38]
Tana Amen
of chocolate without all the sugar in it. Right.
- [23:41]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Without all the added sugar and fats in it. Right. And it also turns out that the product process of making roasting the cacao beans and the process by which chocolate is made, the super dark form, has fermentation involved. So, you know, it's potentially also a good food for your gut. So I like to recommend super dark chocolate and try to give people guidelines about the types to get, because it requires a little bit of wine taste.
- [24:08]
Tana Amen
They look simple in here.
- [24:09]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Oh, but they're delicious. I'm like golden milk. And, you know, I'm not a fan of dairy because most people are lactose intolerant. And let me finish. A cup of almond milk, a teaspoon of ground turmeric, a quarter teaspoon of black pepper, half teaspoon of honey, and a quarter teaspoon of grated nutmeg.
- [24:38]
Tana Amen
That sounds amazing.
- [24:39]
Dr. Daniel Amen
And it's. It sounds delicious. And it's good for you. So you love it and it loves you back. We never want to be in a abusive relationship with food, but we have to talk about ptsd, because I want to talk about some of these psychiatric. Because that's why people come to see us. Either they're struggling or they love someone who's struggling. So talk to us about PTSD and food because so many people are traumatized today.
- [25:08]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Absolutely. It's becoming so much a part of what's going on. And I have to say it's probably some of the stuff that we're experiencing during this current stage of life or phase of the universe, I should say. And it turns out that there are certain foods we can embrace and that's how we try to frame the list. And I should also say that these sheets at little tables we have at the end of each chapter, there's some overlap because understanding that someone may pick up the book because they have ptsd, someone else may pick it up for depression, someone else may have both. There is some overlap of the foods, but we also looked at the specific foods for a specific diagnosis. It turns out that even half a cup of blueberries a day can help individuals who've had PTSD and help them through it. So including that in breakfast or as a healthy snack would be great. Great. We come back to the Omega 3s. You know, they good in so many different disorders that my attitude about that is if you can eat foods that have omega 3s, why not? You know, it's not going to harm you, it's only going to be good for you. And it also helps symptoms of trauma. It also turns out that vitamin E helps out again. We come back to the turmeric and then the other food we found was that ginkgo, ginkgo biloba had some positive effects. I do try to stick more with foods though. So I tend to give people more of a list that moves toward what foods can you use and what foods can you eat. And then I also ask them to be aware of things like sources of glutamates, because those actually are one of the foods you want to avoid. So if you go into a Chinese restaurant, simple thing like just ask for MSG free food or make choices or go to restaurants that, that, you know, don't have those types of things in them.
- [27:07]
Dr. Daniel Amen
I actually have scans on and off msg. And MSG for vulnerable people disrupts their brain and so does red dye number 40. And so trying to eat whole food, clean food is critical. Play that for adhd.
- [27:29]
Dr. Uma Naidu
If I could just go back to the point about the red dye. You're absolutely right. Because the other foods that go along with avoiding glutamates and the MSG type foods are actually all the processed foods. Those are things we know that we should stay away from, the high sugared foods and things like that. Then the interesting thing with ADHD is that some of the studies didn't necessarily show show that sugar was the worst offender. But we always want to be a little bit careful about that. Things that did help, we have actually a recipe for a smoothie and what we did is a study that had shown improvement in symptoms of adhd. What they had done in this is created a bar, a breakfast bar for the study. And because it's breakfast bar and usually some of those breakfast bars that we buy commercially could be highly sugared or have different things in them. What we did is we took that study and the information from the breakfast bar and we turned it into a smoothie in the book. So one of the things we suggest is that firstly, breakfast is a really important meal, especially for individuals with adhd and we suggest that they eat something. So we created the smoothie for that reason. Then we give them guidelines around things like caffeine, staying to a low amount. If you do drink coffee, even certain teas, stick to to moderate amounts, stick to the lower end of the amounts because they can make your symptoms feel worse. And embrace foods like berries, cherries, eggplant, onions, kale, green tea. All of that because of the polyphenols that are so good for the symptoms and foods that have vitamin C and vitamin Bs in them. And then the good minerals that we know help us, such as zinc, magnesium, potassium, and those are some of the things that you really want to embrace in order to help your symptoms along.
- [29:40]
Dr. Daniel Amen
So you have adhd. So I looked up the chocolate protein. One cup of unsweetened almond milk, a tablespoon of walnuts, a scoop of vanilla whey protein. We actually make vegetarian.
- [30:00]
Tana Amen
I don't do well with whey. And some of our.
- [30:02]
Dr. Uma Naidu
That's right, it's an easy substitution.
- [30:06]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Vanilla protein powder. That's so clean. But whey protein. A tablespoon of flaxseeds.
- [30:16]
Tana Amen
Love it.
- [30:17]
Dr. Daniel Amen
A teaspoon of organic instant coffee powder. That's interesting.
- [30:21]
Tana Amen
That sounds yummy.
- [30:23]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Teaspoon of natural cocoa powder, coconut flakes, honey and a quarter ripe avocado. That's nutrients in that.
- [30:35]
Tana Amen
So one thing that actually sounds healthier, one thing I would do whenever someone I'd get really early and go to the gym, I just didn't have time to make breakfast. But I knew I needed the energy. So I make quarter caf coffee. I would throw a scoop of protein powder in there, a little bit of MCT oil. But the avocado is healthier. So I would just do. But that would be My breakfast.
- [30:56]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Exactly.
- [30:58]
Tana Amen
It was on the go and it's quick and it was good.
- [31:00]
Dr. Uma Naidu
And some of it, again, we were trying to emulate this bar that was tested in the study. But also we just threw in a couple of extra ingredients that we thought would weigh an extra boost and you can. And the whole idea with the instant, the espresso powder or the little bit of coffee was because you want a little bit of caffeine to get your day going, but it's a way to contain that. So if you've put it in your smoothie, then we suggesting don't have three cups the rest of the day and stuff like that. And I actually really like the fact that you brought that up about the protein powder because we were trying to create recipes that people could feel they could get the ingredients. But I think that there's so many options, you know, with all the recipes, I feel they're easy replacements if you're plant based, you know, you can have a cauliflower steak instead of our salmon recipe or our chicken recipe. There's just an easy way to do that. And the same thing, you don't have dairy. You should just substitute it with the equal amount of your. The protein powder that you is a clean source for you.
- [32:00]
Tana Amen
You know, I love what you said about the substitutions. Like we mentioned the Greek yogurt for dinner or for dessert. I switched it out for coconut yogurt.
- [32:11]
Dr. Uma Naidu
That's a big question.
- [32:12]
Tana Amen
People who are totally dairy or sheep's milk yogurt. Yes, those are other options. So we need you to be thinking outside the box when you are trying to do this. People get really stuck on, oh, I can't do this program because it doesn't fit. Whatever. My issue is if you can just be a little creative and switch things out for your needs, it still works.
- [32:33]
Dr. Uma Naidu
I really appreciate you saying that because. Because in mental health, as both of you can attest to, when someone comes to you not feeling well, you've got to be able to meet them where they're at. It's sort of one of the principles that we work with. And so given that people eat a wide variety of diets, it doesn't matter what I eat. It's more important how I can work with you to use these principles to feel better. So I love that you said that about the different types of yogurt because it turns out that the non dairy forms of yogurt are actually putting in probiotics now, which is cultures. So it's actually super healthy that way. And I Think people should just feel comfortable to switch out options. Their version, if it says say it happens to say yogurt, and you don't have that. But also the type of milk. It's really only in technical baking recipes where the chemical interactions matter. In that way, most of the savory recipes, you can switch out a lot of good things.
- [33:32]
Tana Amen
Yep, I love that.
- [33:33]
Dr. Daniel Amen
So in the few minutes we have. Laugh. What are some. Do you have a patient story that can sort of bring this together? When you get them to really be thoughtful about their diet, what happens?
- [33:52]
Dr. Uma Naidu
So I think that one of the things I like to bring it back to with my patients is so the first chapter of the book, which is the Gut Brain Romance and the fact that the gut and brain are connected, and we don't often realize that, but they are through the vagus nerve. And the fact that the chemicals and food impacts what travels back and forth to the brain. And a great example of this would be a patient who was an executive who got promoted at work. And over about 18 months, his work was highly successful. But he was eating fewer meals at home, traveling more, eating in airports, and sometimes getting a snack at the vending machine because he was at work, such long hours. And when he was home during the week, he was eating a full dinner because his wife would keep it for him. But he would then feel so hungry that he was getting into the snack cabinet, which was actually meant for the kids. He actually presented to me, believe it or not, not with weight problems or anything like that. He had definitely gained some weight. But he presented to me with severe anxiety. And his gastroenterologist had sent him to me. And I was interested to understand why he was presenting with panic at this stage in his life. And I'm sharing the backstory. When I first met him, he presented with panic. And as I uncovered the history, it turns out his diet had changed dramatically. Dramatically in about 18 months. He was eating a lot of processed food, a lot of fast foods. You know, people don't understand that or don't know that fast food French fries have sugar in them because a lot of research has gone into making them delectable and delicious and wanting you to eat more. So we actually consuming sugar when we don't even know it. And his stress was so high that it had disrupted his. His gut balance for one of making, you know, just to break it down for people. And there was dysbiosis going on, inflammation in the gut. And he was having some recently seeing gastroenterologist. He was presenting with these unusual gut symptoms. But what happened is that he got sent to me because he had panic. And when we sort of really cycled back and understood what was going on by changing his diet over time, slowly and steadily. And he was very good about really sticking with the plan and truly sincerely wanted to get better. Adding back healthy whole foods, you know, fiber rich foods, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, healthy fats, you know, excluding the stuff that was irritating his gut and helping him sleep regularly, helping him cut back on the, you know, from the one to the three glasses of wine, cutting back on that, adding back more things like simple hydration, fresh berries, all of those foods. Over a period of probably about eight weeks to 10 weeks, he was starting to feel better. It wasn't perfect, but it was really a lot. Within a month he was starting to feel the physical symptoms getting better. But over time all of that abated to the point that we didn't. He wasn't so severely panicked that we had to start a medication, unfortunately. And he really wanted to try the nutritional route. And what it did for me is it put together the combination of understanding the gut brain axis and the impact of diet, changing that and a person presenting with physical symptoms to one doctor, but being referred to me for mental health symptoms. But they were all related. So, you know, it was really a learning kind of experience for me, treating him as well and getting him back to a point health. And naturally as this happened, the weight fell off as well. The weight that he gained just fell away and he felt healthier.
- [37:42]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Well, you feel less anxious, you get into your clothes and you don't a
- [37:48]
Tana Amen
lot of your sleeping self loathing. That's a cycle though.
- [37:54]
Dr. Daniel Amen
Yeah. Nobody wants to go shopping for a bigger pair of pants.
- [37:59]
Tana Amen
No. But then it's like this circle because when you sleep better, you're going to make better decisions, you're going to feel better, you're going to lose, you know, and as those things happen, it's all related.
- [38:09]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Yeah.
- [38:10]
Dr. Daniel Amen
How can people find out more about your work? I mean, we know they can. Go get the book. This is your brain on food. Go to Uma Naidu md.com N A I D O O
- [38:31]
Dr. Uma Naidu
Sam.