Becoming Your Own Health Care Provider
Video Transcript
Welcome to the new health series Your Health Is No Big Thing—It's a Million Little Things. This series of health discussions will focus on the nutrition of REAL FOODS and the ways you can change your food choices to improve your health. These 13 short videos will focus on FATS in your diet, based on the best research published in highly-regarded medical and scientific journals. My intention is to introduce you to new nutritional science so that you can make healthier choices in your daily life. Those little choices every day add up to improving your overall health and well-being. In other words these choices really matter.
My name is Susan DeLaney, and I am a naturopathic doctor with a practice in Carrboro, North Carolina, for the past 34 years. Naturopathic doctors attend four years of medical school where we train as general medical practitioners with a focus on health, wellness, and prevention of chronic disease. Real food and healthy nutrition are the foundation of your health and of the way we practice medicine.
Now is the time for a cultural shift in how we think about our health and who is actually in charge of it. Really, you are already your own primary health care provider—not to be confused with your primary care doctor. This is most noticeable when you are sick. You are usually the one to decide when to go to the doctor. Having aches and pains with sniffles may be tolerable for a few days, but after a couple of days with a fever, unable to get out of bed, and coughing up green mucus, you decide to go see your doctor. When you experience pain in your abdomen, at first you brush it off as gas or eating too much. But when the stomach pain persists and wakes you up at night, then you decide to call your doctor. Anytime you decide that you need treatment beyond home care, you are acting as your own primary health care provider. In the same way, you can make small decisions every day to improve your health because your health is not always a big crisis thing. Good health is a million little choices that really do add up to how you feel and function and find joy in your life.
Now is the time to start taking personal responsibility for your health. All health care should be a team effort with you as the team captain. Others you may want on your team: your primary care doctor, possibly a physical therapist, chiropractor, massage therapist, or yoga instructor, maybe a psychotherapist, and don’t forget the dentists—they’re important too! As team leader, you can include any specialist you think might help maintain or restore your health.
The foundation of our health is the food we eat and the nutrition that it provides—or not. My job as a naturopathic doctor is to provide people with scientific information to help them make healthier food choices. Unfortunately the information most of us receive from the press, government agencies, and even our medical doctors can be inaccurate. Nutritional information from the food industry can be biased because they want to sell you their products, which are often refined, processed, and infused with additives and food coloring. These food-like products are wreaking havoc on the health of the American people. Some of what I will be sharing with you about real foods is the opposite of what you have been told for the past 50 or 60 years, things like “Don’t eat eggs” or “Saturated fats are bad for you” or “Red meat will cause a heart attack”—none of which are true.
Historian Daniel Boorstin wrote, “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.” Much of what we now think of as nutrition gospel has actually been debunked by solid, recognized scientific research. So as we explore together the subject of using food to stay well, please understand that some of the ideas we hold dear are either inaccurate or completely false. Please try to stay open to ideas that may be very different from what you have been taught, ideas that now have solid science to back them up.
Let’s begin this adventure with a research project on the controversial subject of fats and the health benefits that they confer. Dr. Wendy White at Iowa State University studied the effects of different salad dressings on the absorption of water-soluble nutrients such as beta-carotene and lycopene from the vegetables in salad. Beta-carotene and lycopene are found in yellow, orange, and red fruits and vegetables. They are antioxidants, which reduce free radicals that can damage your DNA. They are our friends.
Dr. White divided her study participants into three groups. Each group ate the same salad but with three different dressings: One group used a no-fat dressing, another a low-fat dressing, and the third a full-fat dressing. Every hour, for 11 hours after eating, the team drew blood from the participants to measure the amount of nutrients their bodies actually absorbed from their dressed salads. Her results showed that the people in the no-fat dressing group absorbed no water-soluble nutrients. That’s like zero, none! The people in the low-fat dressing group did better by absorbing some of the nutrients. The best absorption of water-soluble nutrients came from those eating the salad with a full-fat salad dressing. Her take away message was, “If you eat salad with a no-fat dressing then you can kiss your beta-carotene good-bye.” So while many people are being told to eat no-fat or low-fat salad dressing to reduce their calorie intake, they are also reducing the very nutrients that their body needs to stay healthy.
Maybe now you can imagine yourself as your own primary care provider. Each small choice you make on a daily basis is a step toward becoming an active participant in your own health care. With people like Dr. White on your team, your first lifestyle change might be to start eating your salads with full-fat salad dressings so that you are getting all the nutrients you can from your vegetables. Better yet, make your own salad dressing with olive or avocado oil. What a great start!
Until next time, this is Dr. DeLaney reminding you to eat real food!