¶ Intro / Opening
Welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm your host, Justine Reichman. With me today is Dr. de Mello. Welcome, Dr. de Mello.
Hello. It's so nice to be here with you.
It's great to have you. I'm so excited to do this 3 Part Series to talk about the impact of food and our health. The first one, this one being about gut, food and our health. So if you can, for those not familiar with you or our audience who hasn't had the pleasure of meeting you, would you introduce yourself, your name, your title and your speciality?
My name is Dr. Edison de Mello. I'm an MD, PhD, and the Founder and Chief Medical Officer of The Akasha Center for Integrative Medicine here in Santa Monica. And my specialty is integrative medicine. I don't know if you know what integrative medicine is.
I know that there's a lot of different definitions, and I know that people float the term around a lot. So for this purpose, I'd love to hear your definition.
¶ Food and Gut Health
Well, for the purpose of this clinic, or in this clinic, the way we look at integrative medicine has actually two tiers. First is the definition of it, which is East meets West. So I love to say that we utilize the technological advances of Western medicine, which is amazing, and we combine it with the wisdom of the Eastern approaches, acupuncture, nutrition, meditation, this incredible wisdom that they've had for years in treating
people. At Akasha, we take a step further. And because there's 14 of us over here providing services from different angles or different specialties to our patients, we also like to integrate our visit. What that means is that when I see a patient, and if that patient might need an acupuncture, the acupuncture is next door, and have her come in the office next door and join us right there at the visit. Or the patient may need a nutritionist and she happens to be in the
office, so ask the nutritionist to join in. And if they're not here, we call them on the phone, and we integrate with the patient. So the idea is that you feel really held in the space. I love to say that in integrative medicine, in an institution like this when you see one of us, you get 10 of us.
I love that, and it feels really holistic. I hate to use the word holistic, but it looks at the whole area, everything that could be problematic, and include different modalities to integrate, because as single modalities, they do one thing, but interdependently. They can connect and then work together to support it in a different way. What I'd love to circle back to is the impact of food and our gut, and how we can leverage eating well to be well to live our best life.
Well, how many hours do you have to see?
I got this on personal level because this truly does interest me.
Well, I love talking about how food and emotions affect our guts.
I think a good place to start is maybe about, what are some of the common issues associated with having bad gut health?
500 years ago, the father of the modern medicine, which was Hippocrates, said, you are what you eat. And that has always been true. And more so today as we become overly populated, and we have to feed 8 billion people. And so there's an intrinsic connection between what we eat, how our health develops, and how we feel emotionally. And so case in point is if I ask any of my patients when they come in and they say, I have a headache. I ask them, what do you think the
headache is about? If they cannot really pinpoint what it is, I ask them, what they ate the night before? Or what they ate two days ago? They usually make a connection between something that they ate and the headache. Your gut and your brain are connected like a highway of information back and forth. It's called the gut brain axis. And so when your brain is hungry, it sends a signal to your gut and says, I'm hungry. Prepare for landing.
¶ Mindfulness and Food Insensitivity
Can you share maybe a story with us of what you don't name the patient, obviously, of somebody that had this experience that came to you connected the food to their headaches, or their muscle aches, or whatever. And that by changing their diet and listening to these, they had a really positive impact, and it was life changing.
Absolutely. So there was a patient who was about 50 years opening to see me and didn't feel happy about anything in his life, even though everything was going really well from an outside perspective. But internally, he felt off, and he couldn't pinpoint anything. Because the way he ate at the time that he came to see me was the way he ate when he was in high school, and when the way he ate in college. And he was very, very invested in eating those
particular foods, and so he felt really bloated at the time. He felt that he couldn't sleep. Well, his emotions were really off. There were a lot of peaks and valleys. I had him do a food diary just to see if he could connect the two points, or the several points that would lead us to a diagnosis. He was usually initially quite resistant. But as he started to connect those dots, he indeed became very interested in telling me that when he ate this food, his symptoms got worse.
And this patient eventually lost 40 pounds and became really, really happy with himself when he's able to improve his relationships with himself and the world. But the point was that he arrived at that decision, at that kind of aha moment himself, by just simply writing down how he ate, and the time between what he ate and his symptoms.
I find it amazing because I know that if I eat too many strawberries, I'll start to get nauseous, and I'll start to feel it on my tongue. This weird thing. And so I don't eat a lot of strawberries, and I just pay attention. I noticed that when I pay attention to those, this is not even through a blood test or a food diary, this is just me paying attention to what I eat. I like chocolate. But when I eat chocolate, I also get that sour taste in my mouth. I'm like, okay, so maybe I
shouldn't eat that. And if I eat too much sugar, I get post nasal drip. Now, everyone listening knows a lot about my health issues, but my point is that it's easy if we're being mindful about what we're eating to recognize some of these little things.
¶ Allergy and Intolerance Test
When you connect, when you notice what you're noticing, you realize that your taste buds have a different agenda than your mind and gut. They're not connected in congruence all the time. So what you like, what it tastes good in your mouth, it's not necessarily what your gut or
your brain needs. And everybody in my experience who comes in with gastrointestinal issues or emotional issues, we talk about diet and I ask them, can you tell me if there's a connection between what you're eating, and your feel, and your symptoms? Initially, they may be resistant. But if we stay with it, they will eventually arrive at the conclusion that some of the foods they are eating are not good for them. And when we talk about our body having a language, it has a language. It
communicates with us in a language called symptoms. The question is, for those of us who have cared for a child, when a child is crying, an infant is crying, he or she's trying to communicate with us. Our job is to interpret that language and to turn it into something that can help this child's needs.
Whatever those needs are, the body is no different. If you listen to your body and you connect with what is trying to say to you, 90% of the time, and this is my observational studies, you will arrive the conclusion that I may like chocolate when my body does that.
Yeah, it's true. It's true. And so I'm curious, because there's a lot of, I've taken them myself tests for intolerances and allergies, things that I would have never imagined. I didn't eat eggs. I ate eggs and I would get loaded like two days later. Not the first day I would eat it. And then I was like, that was good. Maybe I'll make two today, or maybe I'll eat something. And it's gluten free, but it has egg
in it. I'm like, why did that not make me feel well? And I didn't know it until I took the test that it was this item within the recipe, because eggs are hidden. They're awfully often hidden. So what is your take on the intolerances and the food allergy where everybody's taking these tests and how they intertwine with what we're feeling?
Great question. I think those allergy tests are essential or vital. When you have any symptoms, they are hard to decipher. Somebody breaks a leg, you know that the pain is coming from there, right? When you come in with gastrointestinal symptoms, it's very abstract. You don't know what what's happening. You know that your body's talking to you. You're trying to listen in some cases, but then you cannot connect the dots. So there's an incredible place for those
allergy tests, but they also differ quite a bit. When you look at online, for example, there's a number of them. I prefer the ones that are very specific to looking at how your mitochondria, which is the little tiny energy center in your cell. How the mitochondria is responding to those foods? Because sometimes, there's very little to doubt. There's sometimes that you can do what's called a prick test where you go in and you put little Titan pricks in somebody's back and
look for a reaction. The problem with that is that it's operator--
There could be human error.
It's operator guided. There's also people who sweat a lot. People have oily skin. We don't know what you ate the night before. I think that those tests were very good when we didn't have better technology and better science. Today, I go to the tests that I believe are more specific, such as a blood test, looking at mitochondrial allergy. Or even sometimes, saliva test combined with a blood test.
Wow, there's so much to unpack, and so many different ways to look at these issues when you have a client that comes in. Are there any challenges with communicating that food can be an effective way to consider prophylactically dealing with these issues or even treating them?
Yes, another great question. Interesting. The answer is yes to all patients. The intensity of the resistance varies with age. Certainly, if you have a teenager like I did the other day, somebody with inflammation in his esophagus when he eats some food, some other foods, for me to tell this kid not to eat, his preferred food is his cereal, which has 30, 40% of sugar, it is much more difficult for him to comprehend than it is from somebody who is 30, 40 who have
had more symptoms because the person has lived longer. But everybody has a resistance to it because we have a relationship with food. And sometimes, we're very, very focused on the foods that we like. And because our taste buds are trained to those specific tastes. And also, we can talk about that in another time if you want. But there's also something called the food industry that is doing everything possible to influence
your taste buds. It's true. So when you go to a supermarket, I'm talking to this kid about not eating junks, but then you walk at a supermarket where a junk food is, and then you walk around the supermarket resisting every step of the way, you're resisting the urge to buy those sugary foods, those processed foods, and then you have to go the very end of your journey is that the cash register, and then what is in the cash register?
Sugar.
There you go. So that alone tells you that it's a whole industry that benefits from the fact that we eat junk food.
So how do we address this with our clients? With the community? How do we educate people so that they can make better choices for themselves and understand the impact and gravity of food on our health?
¶ Tailoring Dietary Advice and Personal Needs
I think you're doing this with this incredible series that you're creating. I think the more we talk to
Somebody said to me on another part of the people, we bring to their awareness. But the better, we podcast, he's also a doctor. I think he's a neurologist. He also have to be realistic. If you have a teenager like I did who is an athlete, who is 15 and loves his sugar and gives him said, in his opinion about making a better choice, because the fuel for him to run faster, I have to give him something
else. When I say, don't eat this. And so I say, can you not everybody's going to make the best choice, or they can't, decrease it by 75% and then see how you feel? So decrease by 75%, eat it for three days, all that food, all the regular food, they've been eating the cereal, the sugar cereal. And for two and it's not attainable so they're going to fail. But if we days, see if you cannot eat that, and then tell me how you
feel. It's all about what helping people walk a path where set people up for success by saying, okay, well, what would they can see the difference. you have eaten if you weren't eating this. Is this a better choice than that. It's a better place to start. It's more accessible.
This is also a great way I used years ago to watch a High School. So these people are really unable to have enough money to eat healthy. So what did they eat at? McDonald's. Kentucky Fried Chicken. I cannot come in and tell them, donate a McDonald's, donate a Kentucky Fried Chicken, because it's unrealistic for their reality. What I came to which I did is go to one of those restaurant with them when I was teaching those kids and say, you see the menu over
there? Give me three options for healthier food in that menu that you can eat. And simple things ro teach them how to do an open face sandwich. So instead of having two slices of white bread, which is all about sugar, sugar, sugar, take one of those slices. Kids are indeed curious. So it's about looking at the patient sitting in front of you. Who is that person? And what's the reality of their lives?
And understanding them, because not everybody's got the same access, the same resources or the same will.
And organic food is best for everybody. But look at the price difference.
Yeah. And especially around here.
¶ The Role of Medical Education in Nutrition
In California, it's crazy, right? Whole Foods used to be called the whole paychecks.
There's a lot of doctors out there, and people have different philosophies. And I'm curious if there was one thing that you wish that the average doctor would understand or support around food and the gut. And correct me if I'm wrong, it can be challenging because I think it's a new way of thinking, a new paradigm. And it takes somebody that's open, that's interested in research, that's interested in
understanding and looking at it in an integrative way. Because I've had many conversations with doctors and they talk to nutritionists that are like, just do this much protein, this, this. But they're not talking on specific things. Now, if string beans gives you gas, don't eat spring beans, or something like that. So how do you approach those doctors?
I think our system has failed, both the patient and doctors. We have a system where it says to us that we have to see this patient for 15 minutes. And so that it starts with medical school. It starts with educating the young people going to medical school to become doctors. When I was in medical school, and this was 32, 33 years ago--
Stop it. Stop it.
It's true. The idea there was I only had 12 hours of nutrition in four years of medical school.
I heard that the rumor was it was four hours.
This is a highly reputable school in the Bay Area. And indeed, it's not that doctors are the ones to blame. I think doctors and the patients are victims of a system that says, fast, fast, fast. Let's go. Who is the next person waiting? And I think the idea is to look at your patient, meet the patient, which is one of my favorite taglines. Meet the patient before you meet their diseases. Who is the person, the patient sitting in front of you? What's the reality? What's their
story? If you have a teenager living in a very, very restricted budget, you cannot tell that kid to eat organic. If you have a mother who has four kids and she's a single mom, or has a partner but they both work out of the house to make ends meet, look at her situation, and try together with them deciding what it's best. So we either don't look at patients in the
eyes, and we don't tailor the treatment to them. Or when we do, we tell them what to do, as opposed to what do you think it's best for you right now. Look, I think the best thing that we can do
I think that that's so important to integrate and to really speak for people. Because I think it's very easy to offer all these remedies, but not tailor them. So being able to tailor them, I think, is really, really big takeaway for people. I think it's important for the patients to speak up, to communicate what they're able to do when they're not able to do for ourselves as patients is give ourselves agency, and to see that your practitioner is joining forces with you to
so they could work together. A collaboration. decide on what the best course of action is. When you give it away to somebody to make the decision for you, most of the time, you're not going to follow. Most of the times, not realistic to who you are. And most of the time, the patient will not come back. So when you develop trust with the patient,
you have to develop trust. You need to let them know that you care and that you understand the reality, then I think you know you have a much more possibility of success.
¶ Navigating Global Health
I know our time is coming to a close, so I have one last question. According to the International Foundation of GI Disorders, IBS affects 10 to 15% of the global population. It's astounding.
I don't know if I can do the math, but 8 billion people on the planet, what is this? 800 million people out there with IBS? And by the way, those are diagnostic cases that were diagnosed, right? What about the cases that people walking around that they don't have the means to have a diagnosis?
are there any statistics and that I'm wondering on those folks that you can share that show the difference between those folks integrating a better free food diet versus those not doing it, and how it's impacted their IBS?
Okay, yeah, that's a great question. Again, I wish there was studies that there were clear. There's one study, however, that is very clear indicating that people with mental health issues, up to 20% of those cases are related to food, or get worsened by the food that they eat.
Dr. de Mello, that's a great lead for our next podcast. So guys, you're gonna have to turn into our second podcast of this series. So next week, you can turn it into that. In the meantime, Dr. de Mello, this was amazing. I didn't want to cut you off, but that was a perfect lead for the next one.
I love about medicine, and I talk about integrative medicine, so please stop at any time.
I think it's really important. I think we've broken it down so people can understand that it's not a universal solution. It's a tailored solution.
Yes, indeed. So what a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Thank you so much. Yes. And for those interested in learning more about Dr. de Mello, what's the best way to find out more?
Go to akashacenter.com. It's A-K-A-S-H-A, akashacenter.com. You can Google me.