Food Body Essentials To Reverse Autoimmune Disease

Have you been feeling run down, exhausted, and just plain sick and tired? If so, you're not alone. Millions of women struggle with autoimmune diseases, and the numbers are only rising. But there is hope!

 

In this episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, Dr. Kyrin Dunston welcomes Margaret Floyd Barry to share her journey with autoimmune disease and how she was able to reverse it using the power of food and nutrition. She also provides listeners with practical tips and strategies that they can use to start feeling better right away.

 

Margaret Floyd Barry is a writer and real food advocate whos been in the pursuit of the most nutritious and delicious way of eating for the better part of her adult life.

 

Having seen family members suffer the devastating effects of chronic illness from a young age, Margaret has long had the desire to help others find a better way back to optimal health and well-being. Through years of experience working with the most complex client cases, including reversing her own autoimmune condition, Margaret has established a powerful system for restoring health by addressing the root cause of illness.

 

Today, Margaret teaches fellow practitioners the same proven system she uses to get her clients life-changing results through Restorative Wellness Solutions - a two-year comprehensive functional nutrition certification program for qualified health professionals. With hundreds of alumni around the world, Margaret and the Restorative Wellness Solutions team are actively working to change the way health is delivered. Margaret also runs Eat Naked Kitchen, a thriving private practice that supports clients throughout North America and Europe, and is the author of Eat Naked: Unprocessed, Unpolluted and Undressed Eating for a Healthier, Sexier You and The Naked Foods Cookbook.

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What autoimmune disease is and how it affects the body
• The role that food plays in reversing autoimmune disease
• Which foods to eat (and avoid) to heal your gut and reduce inflammation
• How to create a personalized healing plan that works for you

 

If you're ready to start feeling your best, tune in now!

 

(00:00): It was Maya Angelou who said, Do the best you can until you know better then when you know better, do better. And Oprah famously quoted her as saying, When you know better, do better. You're gonna know some things after this podcast and then you can do better. Stay tuned to learn more.

 

(00:19): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones in our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an ob gyn, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

 

(01:12): Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me today. We have a lovely guest you're gonna love. I know I say that about all my guests because I love them all. Literally they're just amazing people who are passionate and brilliant, and Margaret is no exception and she does so much work to help women. She has a powerful story as to why she's so passionate about autoimmune disease and the nutritional component and reversing it. So you'll definitely wanna hear that she is going to give you a perspective that you probably haven't had yet and we, we really get into some detailed things. So I definitely encourage you to be in a place where you can take notes cuz you're gonna wanna do that. She we're, she's gonna share with you why we are essentially complicated donuts.

 

(02:11): I know right now you're going what? But she's gonna talk to you about that if you've been wondering, well, do I really have to be gluten free and do I need to do it 100%. She's gonna uncover that for you and unpack that. So she's gonna answer a lot of questions that you've got about your health. She's brilliant. She also trains practitioners. She's gonna talk to you about that. She's got some super fun gifts for you. So let me tell you a little bit about her and then we'll get started. Margaret Floyd Barry is a writer and real food advocate who's been on the pursuit of the most nutritious and delicious way of eating for the better part of her adult life. Having seen family members suffer the devastating effects of chronic illness from a young age, Margaret has long had the desire to help others find a better way back to optimal health and wellbeing.

 

(03:03): Through years of experience working with the most complex quiet cases, including reversing her own autoimmune condition, How would you like to do that? Margaret has established a powerful system for restoring health by addressing the root cause of illness. Today Margaret teaches fellow practitioners the same proven system she uses to get her clients life changing results through restorative wellness solutions. Two year comprehensive functional nutrition certification program for qualified health professionals with hundreds of alumni around the world. Margaret and the Restorative Wellness Solutions team are actively working to change the way health is delivered. Margaret also runs Eat Naked Kitchen, a thriving private practice that supports clients throughout North America and Europe. And she's the author of Eat Naked Unprocessed Ed, and Unjust Eating For a Healthier Sexier You and The Naked Foods Cookbook. Welcome Margaret to the show.

 

(04:02): Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

 

(04:05): I'm really excited to have you. For everybody listening, Margaret did an amazing masterclass for some of my women in my virtual program in our nutrition module because she's a nutritional genius and a, a genius in the kitchen. That was fabulous and I wanted to share her with all of you. So she agreed to come onto the podcast and talk about something that she's really passionate about and that is how nutrition and gut health intersect with autoimmune disease. So we're gonna dive into that. But first can you tell everyone, Margaret, as a functional nutritionist, why are you so passionate about autoimmune disease?

 

(04:52): I had a front row seat, unfortunately to what really doesn't work when it comes to supporting people with autoimmune disease. My mom had very severe both rheumatoid arthritis and lupus that she was diagnosed with when I was in my teens. And she went the full on Western medical model. And in some ways she was a medical miracle. You know, like she, you know, the things that they were able to do to manipulate her immune system were profound. And yet the quality of life that she lived was, it was brutal. I mean, it was one step forward, five steps back, two steps forward, three steps back. I mean, just this slow, excruciating process of degradation. And the side effects from the drugs that were keeping her immune system under control were devastating. I mean, I remember one time she got a hangout and that hangout turned into a a three month hospital stay because it turned into an infection that, you know, her immune system was so suppressed by these drugs.

 

(06:05): That infection went all the way up her arm and then they couldn't get it under control with antibiotics. And I mean, it was just this huge thing. And that's just one example, but I think a profound one that, you know, something as simple as a hangout was so devastating to her. So that was the, the way that she had to live where, you know, things that none of us even think twice about could be devastating and throw her into the hospital for months. And ultimately she ended up losing her life to side effects from the drugs that were at the same time trying to keep her alive. So it was, you know, at the time I wasn't, I started studying nutrition part way through her journey and very much inspired by her journey. And then I, I just knew there had to be a better way and was really determined that, you know, not on my watch.

 

(06:55): Like I I, I myself actually was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease when I was pregnant with my second daughter. I was, I was diagnosed with Hashimotos and there is no way that I'm gonna let my two girls watch me slowly degrade and slowly die, essentially the way I watch my mom. And so there's, it's a very personal mission for me, not only for my own health and my own family, but for my clients and equipping other health practitioners with the tools to reverse that autoimmune process. Because here's the thing, there is so much we can do to turn around the autoimmune process through fairly simple tools and you know, we're talking about diet and we're talking about digestion and this, that might not be the whole story, but it's a huge part of the story. So I have been very, very passionate about this and made this a personal mission for years.

 

(07:51): Wow. That's an incredible story. And I know some people listening can relate, maybe they've have an autoimmune disease or they've had family members and watch them go through it. The immune suppressant drugs that people are put on for autoimmune disease. Cause that's essentially what is done really can wreck havoc when you get something like a hang meal and get an infection. And I love that this became a passion for you to really help people understand. I mean, it's not common in mainstream medicine that you see people heal from or resolve autoimmune diseases or go into complete remission, but in my world, in your world, we see it every day.

 

(08:37): Exactly.

 

(08:38): And so I love that you're teaching about this. What made you hone in on diet and nutrition and gut health.

 

(08:47): If we think back, and I just, I wanna take a little step back to just, I know that you've talked at length about autoimmune process on your podcast before, but I just wanna make sure that we're all on the same page at just the fundamentals of what's happening. Yes. Cause it really sets the stage for why the diet and why digestion are so important. So if we think about our immune system, it is this incredibly powerful system that has basically two jobs. It's jobs are to protect us from foreign invaders like viruses and parasites and bacterial infections. And the other job is internal housekeeping. And as part of these two jobs, it has an incredibly important mechanism of differentiation. So it's able to differentiate between self and other. And then it's also able to differentiate between friend and foe. And in an autoimmune situation, what has happened is that mechanism of differentiation has gone awry.

 

(09:46): And there's a lot of different reasons why it does that. But the, but what's happened is now the immune system is confusing enemy other for friendly self that it should be protecting and it's attacking self. And as we know, the definition of the disease is based on either the system, the body system, or the tissue that the immune system is attacking. The question is, well let's say from a medical model, it's okay, the immune system is attacking self, Let's slow down the attack, let's shut down the immune system and let's reduce the inflammation. And these are things to help get the individual feeling better. And I'm not gonna say there's not a role for those things. There's, there's certainly a time and a place for both of those things, but that's not actually addressing the most important question, which is why is the immune system making such a bad judgment call basically?

 

(10:38): And at its core, and this isn't oversimplification, but I think it's a really helpful analogy. If you think about any of us, when we get overtired and we're just taxed all day long, not getting enough sleep, just not never getting an opportunity to rest and recover, we start to make bad decisions, right? , I don't know about you. I will say I make bad decisions and I see that around me. You know, and so the immune system is very similar in that if it's constantly being taxed, it's constantly being engaged, it starts to make bad decisions. And again, there's different mechanisms for this, but fundamentally this is what's going on. So the question is, what is taxing and engaging that immune system such that it is not allowed to rest and cover such making these poor decisions? And this the you know, there, there are lots of different answers to that question, but a huge piece of this puzzle is both the diet and the digestive process because the vast majority of our immune system lives in and around the gut, right?

 

(11:46): Let's say it's approximately 80% of the immune system meal who has, some people say, 75 I've heard has high 85, let's just agree on, you know, roughly 80%, the vast majority of the immune system lives in and around the gut. What that means is that if we are eating foods that are triggering inflammation, then that is impacting the immune system directly. If there is any dysfunction in the digestion that is impacting immune system directly. And here's what I will tell you is that even if you don't have overtly sort of expressive immune or digestive, excuse me, symptoms, so you're not symptomatic from a digestive perspective, that doesn't mean that your digestion is working properly. You know, I do a lot of testing with my clients and I've had clients with very severe forms of autoimmune where they're very symptomatic and lots of other things. But you know, I remember one client saying to me, Oh, I could, I could digest pebbles, like I could eat rocks. My digestion is so robust. And I thought, okay, well we'll see. And we did some testing and found some pretty significant imbalances that when we addressed those imbalances, they were silent from a symptom perspective, but it was addressing those imbalances that allowed her immune system to recover and the autoimmune to go into remission. So it's a huge and really, really critical piece of the

 

(13:14): Puzzle. Wow. So much good to what you said, you know, a tired immune system can't differentiate itself from other and makes bad decisions. , I think we can all relate to that, right? With, you know, just all the, we're inundated with information and tasks to do in our daily life and who among us doesn't have decision fatigue and who among us doesn't start becoming overreactive to their environment and not differentiating . Well, really what are the big problems in the small problem? So I, I think that what you're describing with autoimmunity and the gut and immune system, really everybody listening can relate to because it's what we're dealing with in everyday life. And I did wanna highlight what you said about the immune system, 80% around the gut. And I, I don't think most people get that. So I always like to say, right, most people think that their biggest interface with the external environment is their skin, but it's not, it's really your gut. And that's why you're, what I call military is centered around your gut because you're taking environment and putting it inside you

 

(14:26): . Yes. I mean, this is such a profound moment that we don't recognize as such and we just sort of eat mindlessly and don't think about the actual miracle that is happening. I mean, when we eat, what is happening is the outside world is literally becoming us. We are in essence walking food, right? And people don't realize that. And the interface, you know Yes, exactly. The gut is still the outside of the body. We think of it because it lives on the inside that that, but that, that's the external world. I mean, we we're basically a very complicated donut, right? And the donut hold being our digestive process, you know, and it's this big long tube things go in and then, you know, waste matter comes out. But, and in the process, of course there's all sorts of chemical processes to break down the food into its, you know, nutrient components essentially.

 

(15:18): And then, you know, in our small intestine we are harvesting those nutrients. They're, they're crossing that incredibly thin lining. I mean, the lining of the small intestine is one cell thick that is so tiny and it's, you know, it's got this, you know, we talk about them as the, the dis the tight junction. So these cells are lined up. I love your analogy of, of the, you know, the soldiers and the, and you know, I describe that as, as your gut soldiers and gut army all the time. You know, think about the lining of the gut made up of these cells that are standing together are sort of side by side really, really tightly and very selectively. These cells will sort of open up those tight junctions and allow nutrients to pass through directly into the bloodstream. That is the moment where the outside world is becoming us.

 

(16:03): And you know, along those tight junctions, there's all sorts of, let's describe them as soldiers, you know, regulating what goes into the body actually gets, goes directly into the blood and what gets pooped out essentially. So anything interrupting that process is gonna have really significant impact because if the, the lining of the, I mean the entire digestive tract, yes, but let's talk about that moment where the outside world becomes us, which largely happens in the small intestines. Then if there's anything compromising that, and we have irritation, a little bit of a tear, we have what's called leaky gut where those, those tight junctions open up or there's abrasion and inflammation that's getting, that's allowing all sorts of things to get directly into the bloodstream that shouldn't be there. It could be, you could have eaten like the most beautifully digested or grown, organically grown, locally grown , perfectly prepared piece of broccoli for lunch.

 

(17:00): If that piece of broccoli is not broken down properly and gets into the bloodstream and an improper phase of digestion, your bot your immune system, which is, which is basically patrolling the blood and and patrolling that lining of the intestine to see what's going in, what's coming out there. It doesn't recognize it as broccoli or as the key nutrients that you would get from broccoli. It recognizes it as as garbage or an invader that needs to be addressed mm-hmm. and needs to be gotten rid of. So you're increasing a burden on that housekeeping system and on the inflammatory process which, and it's also of course letting in toxins, letting in pathogens, letting in all sorts of things that were bound. I mean this, some of this stuff is destined for the toilet bowl and now it's getting directly into your bloodstream. That is a huge stress on the immune system.

 

(17:47): Right. All right, let's, I just wanna step back for a second and then we're gonna dive into more dietary culprits where you're talking about even that great organic, you know, locally farmed broccoli can be a problem. Well first off I wanna say I want a t-shirt that says I am a complicated donut . But then back to being serious, I'm at a yoga retreat and I've been here several times over the past 30 plus years, but I heard something differently this time I've been here. And that is that they actually call your physical body your food body. Oh wow. I've never heard

 

(18:31): That before. Your food body, body,

 

(18:33): Your food body. So they don't say physical body in and you know, there's so many ancient yoga, yoga traditions. I also took a course on history of yoga and it is super complicated. So it's no wonder your snippets from one, snippets from another and everybody's confused, but they call it your food body. So move your food body onto the mat .

 

(18:57): Wow, I've never heard that before. I love it.

 

(19:00): Right. And so I, that really highlighted for me, we always hear you are what you eat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've heard that since we were kids. But calling it your food body, I challenge everyone listening, start calling your body, your food body. You'll make different food choices because you, it literally is everything. When you look in the mirror, what you are seeing is broccoli, the gluten free mac and cheese I had for lunch. The basal tomato pizza not pizza soup that I had. Right? So that's what you're seeing. But let's dive into dietary culprits cuz that's really one of the first steps. People are like, should I eat gluten? Should I not eat gluten? Should I eat dairy? Should I eat? So what's up with the food we're eating and autoimmunity?

 

(19:46): I wanna start with gluten cuz you started it, you opened the door and that's,

 

(19:49): I started

 

(19:50): . That's an important one. And if you do nothing else, if you, if you're wanting to prevent autoimmune from developing, if you have already received an autoimmune diagnosis, if you have not made any dietary changes yet and you are willing to do only one thing, the one thing really needs to be to the removal of gluten from your diet. And here's why. I mean we could, we could spend hours just talking about gluten in all the different ways that it's triggering inflammation and causing digestive distress and you know, engaging that immune system. I'm gonna focus on one piece of the puzzle here, which is part of just the body's natural process that happens when you digest and break down the gluten protein, which is that it releases a compound in the gut called zen. And we talked about those tight junctions, that line that are part of the lining of the small intestine.

 

(20:43): Zonulin is one of the gatekeepers and zen, when you have elevated levels of lin, it opens up those tight junctions. Let's say you lived in a big old house on a super busy street in like downtown Manhattan somewhere. And normally you keep your doors and your windows closed and maybe you even have, you know, a bellman or somebody who is that gatekeeper at that front door just letting in only the people that you want into your house eating gluten. So that, that's the analogy of what it should be happening in your small intestines. These tight junctions are closed and only opening very selectively to let just what we want into our bloodstream. What happens when you eat gluten is that it releases the lin, which in basically acts like opening up all the doors in the windows of that house, right? And now anybody who's just walking down the street has easy access and so you might still have your bellman and for the front door trying madly running around and trying to only allow in the things that should be getting in.

 

(21:48): But that, that process gets overwhelmed pretty quickly. And so it's the same thing that happens in your gut. Basically those tight junctions just open up and now all manner of stuff can get in there. The undigested broccoli, the the toxins, the things that are destined for the, the toilet bowl, the pathogens, like all of this things that are, should not be getting into the bloodstream are getting into the bloodstream. And so gluten is in many ways the gateway food sensitivity. , you often, you know, one of the ways that food sensitivities are developed is that maldigested pieces of that food are getting into the bloodstream. The immune system recognizes it not as a nutrient but as the, an invader and tags it as such. That's one of the key mechanisms for developing food sensitivities. And so if you have a food like gluten that is just opening up all those tight junctions and letting all sorts of other foods get in at the same time, that is a recipe for really both overwhelming the immune system and priming it to attack these foods regularly down the road as the enemy. And when you do that, if you think about that, if you're eating foods that are engaging the immune system like this multiple times a day every day, well that's a pretty major stressor on the immune system and that is not letting that little immune system rest and recover. And that can be one of the biggest pieces in terms of leading to an autoimmune situation. So right gluten so

 

(23:26): Beautifully

 

(23:26): I just said, so gluten is gone.

 

(23:29): That is gone. Bye bye gluten. But what a beautiful analogy. So gluten is like your friend who runs up and like in college you had that friend on Friday night who went and opened everybody's door and is like, we're having a party in the hall now. Yes. Right. , that's gluten your gateway food, your gateway drug, your gateway party maker. All right, so gluten for sure. Bye bye. Let me ask you this question cuz I know people are thinking this because you and I work with people like this every day. They're like, okay, I get it and I'm 90% compliant Margaret and Kyrin. I don't eat gluten 90% of the time, but I have to have that thing, the toast, the this, the that, the other. And they always wanna ask me, so I'm gonna ask you, Yeah. Is that good enough?

 

(24:21): Nope. And I'm not hardlined about a lot of things, but I'm hardlined about this. You cannot be mostly gluten free. It just doesn't work that way. You really need to have it outta the system completely. Now gluten, it sticks around antibodies to gluten stick around for a long time. I did Dr. Tom O'Brien's gluten and practitioner training program years ago where we sat through hundreds and hundreds of papers learning all the different ways that gluten is challenging to the body. But one of the key pieces is how long it hangs out in the system so it can take up to six months to completely clear it from one ingestion. So you really, you, you can't be mostly gluten free and yeah, I mean there's gonna be times where you get exposed without your awareness. That's just, it's almost impossible to avoid that. And you know, you ask anyone who's celiac where there's an autoimmune response in response to the consumption of gluten and they will tell you how insanely hard it is to be a hundred percent.

 

(25:25): But you really need to strive for that. If you, if you do the, oh, I'm gonna have my co salt on Saturdays, but I'm not gonna do anything other than that. Or like, oh, once a year. It really, it's actually, here's the thing, it's easier to just say I don't eat that. As soon as you open the door to a little bit, that is a very, very slippery slope. And so it's actually not only better for your health, it is way easier to implement just a full on gluten free lifestyle than it is to make exceptions. Because once you have made an exception, it's like so much easier to make the next exception and the next exception and where's the line and you know, well you did it for this birthday party, so why not that birthday party? And it just, it's a slippery slope.

 

(26:14): I have not seen it work and I, I know that there's different personality types. I know some people can do moderation and other people can, you know, I, I get that and yet I have not seen it successfully work for somebody to be mostly gluten free. And if there is autoimmune it's just a hard no. Like you just have to be off, be off of. And and it might be, you know, I've also had clients, I'm sure you've had the same situation where someone goes off of gluten and they might feel a little bit better, but it's not like suddenly rainbows and unicorns are falling from the sky, right? It's like, but this didn't fix everything. You're right. It's not a magic pill, it's often much more involved than that but it is a necessary minimum.

 

(26:55): Yeah. You know, it's like I tell people, well how would it work for you in your marriage if you are mostly, mostly only slept with your partner and go,

 

(27:07): That is a great analogy. There are just certain things that are a hard line.

 

(27:11): Right? So I agree with you on the gluten, but I wanted everyone to hear it from someone else, another expert besides me. Cuz they're like, hearing you're such a killjoy. All right, so gluten's gotta go. What else though? Because people hear soy, Should I eat soy? Should I not? Cows milk, dairy? Should I have that? Should I not? Mm-Hmm. , what other foods are culprits and what might be some unique foods that people don't even know to eliminate

 

(27:36): If you're just doing this as a starting point and you're wanting to pull out the big sort of the quote unquote usual suspects, gluten, dairy, soy, sugar and industrial seed oils is a really, really good start. So if you're able to take those pieces out, and honestly, I mean each one of these wipes out categories of foods, right? Like if you take out industrially processed seed oils mm-hmm. , you're essentially taking out the vast majority of processed foods.

 

(28:12): Yeah.

 

(28:13): Same thing with sugar. You pull out sugar, it's, it's amazing when you start to read ingredients lists and ingredient labels, food labels, it's amazing where sugar hides, I do a program called the Real Food reboot and it's, we pull all forms of sugar out of the diet for 21 days. And people who go through that are constantly amazed at things like salad dressing, right at their, you know, at maybe like at hummus. Like there's these places where we don't think there's any reason for any kind of sweetener and yet, not in all, but in many of them they're gonna find added sweeteners. And you're also gonna find really poor quality oil. So when I say industrially processed seed oils, I'm talking about corn oil, soy oil, cotton seed oil, sunflower oil, sunflower oil. Those are the, the big heavy hitters. These are highly, highly processed rand and just devastating for your body.

 

(29:09): They're also very proinflammatory and inflammation is is one of the immune processes. Like I said, that's something that's mediated and and sort of managed by your immune system. So anything that is causing inflammation is something that's engaging in fatiguing the immune system. So those industrial seed oils, ugh, they are, they're just, and it makes me a little crazy because even a lot of quote unquote healthy food alternatives, maybe they're gluten free, maybe they're even grain free and you know, but then you, you read that ingredient list and it's like sunflower oil and you're like, ah, you're so close. So let's talk about two of those heavy hitters, which is dairy and soy, because in some cases they're really good to pull out at the beginning, but there are certain forms of them in small quantities that are tolerable for some people. Okay, so that sounds like I'm qualifying all over the place and I am.

 

(30:05): But let's talk about dairy first. And dairy is complicated because there are so many different ways for one to have a reaction to dairy. So some people have straight up food allergies to dairy. So it's a, an IgE that's a immunoglobulin e mediated response, It's a formal food allergy. Others will have food sensitivities. Some of these are mediated by antibodies, I G G I G M. Some of them just happen at a cellular level and they're, they're what we call a type four hypersensitivity, no antibody involvement at all. But they're still triggering an inflammation process. Then you can have people who react to, from a digestive perspective. So there's the lactose issues, that's the milk sugar, the lactose is the milk sugar. Maybe they don't make the lactase enzyme as adults. So they're not breaking this milk sugars down properly and they have severe digestive complaints as a result.

 

(31:02): And then you get into the issue of the fact that the sort of ultra processing of a lot of dairy, that becomes highly problematic. So what I would say is at the beginning, without formal testing and if you are experiencing an autoimmune flare, you wanna pull out just the whole category of dairy. It's just, that's the easiest thing to do. Once you are in remission, things are under control. If you have done testing, that's very helpful. So of course if there's a true food allergy, you wanna stay away from it. If you have a history of food sensitivities, in some cases you can bring that back in, in very, very minimal quantities depending on what kind of healing work that you've done. But you wanna go, you wanna tread easily there and it's a really good idea to retest, to make sure cuz food sensitivities will shift, they can be healed.

 

(31:52): So if you have retested and it does not appear that the sensitivity is active anymore, then you can reintroduce. But I would do, I would be very specific about multiple things. Number one, the most well tolerated forms of dairy will be the higher fat pieces. So, so butter from Pasteur raised, you know, exclusively Pasteur raised cows or ge, which is clarified butter. So that's just the butter oil, again, organic and from Pasteur raised cows that's well tolerated by most people. Next, if you know, another consideration is actually the cow . So one of the things that we do consume in our house is we get, I, you know, I have heavy cream in my coffee in the morning and, but I get, get the heavy cream from an A two cow. There's an A one, an A two cows and it's got to do with the, the breeds.

 

(32:47): And, and this is where I'm sort of pushing up against my, my knowledge of, you know, dairy cows. But I know that the A two one is more of a heritage breed and it has the actual milk that products that come from that animal are much better tolerated by humans than a one cows. A two cows are more prevalent in Europe, but you can find them in the states. But if it, if your dairy is not labeled a two from a two cows, then it's not. If it is, it's typically more expensive and the, you know, the company will, will brag about that on its label. So you can, you can know that by the labeling fermented dairy, you know, a whole milk organic yogurt for example, unflavored would be a much better choice than just like, you know, milk itself. So there's, there's different degrees of this.

 

(33:40): In fact in my first book Eat Naked, I did a whole chapter on dairy and kind of went through what's best, what's better, what's, and then what you absolutely want to avoid. So it gets a little bit complicated, but the key rules are that it, you really want to focus on what the cows ate. So pasture raised is really important. Ideally a two cows in terms of their breed and the fattier it is, the fewer, you know, if you don't have as much of the milk sugars and the milk proteins, so butter and ge, that's gonna be less problematic. And then fermentation also helps the digestibility. So something like a yogurt or a C. So that's kind of a deep dive into, into dairy. But if you haven't done testing and certainly if you're flaring, I would just pull it

 

(34:30): Out. Awesome. No, that was great. I, that was everything that people needed to hear. Can we talk a little bit about testing? Cuz you've mentioned it and I know I get a lot of questions about it. You probably do too. Should I get tested what test is best? People are all the time saying, I found this group on for this $79 mm-hmm hair food sensitivity test. Is that good? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. I certainly have my own opinion and there are as many food sensitivity tests as there are types of yogurt in the grocery store,

 

(35:04): Right? ,

 

(35:05): Which is a lot, Every time I go in the grocery, I think the yogurt section takes up an additional two feet. And I'm like, wow, people really love their yogurt.

 

(35:14): I know. And most of it has more sugar than ice cream, but that's a whole aside, right?

 

(35:18): And they're like, oh it's healthy. And I'm like, No, just go get the ice cream y'all. You'll better with that. So can you, we talk about testing a little,

 

(35:29): You bet. I'm a big believer in testing because what testing allows us to do is really dial in the specifics for the individual. You know, there's, there's certain diets that are broadly removing whole categories of foods beyond, far beyond what we just talked about here. You know, like the autoimmune paleo or autoimmune protocol diet, that's a very extensive elimination diet and people have great success with it. So I'm not trying to dis this diet at all, but you know, they're pulling out all grains, all legumes, all seeds, all nuts, all nightshades, eggs. I mean really it's really hard. This particular diet, you know, you're eating vegetables, you're eating certain proteins, you're eating certain fats and even your spice drawer gets affected, right? There's a lot of things that you can't do. You're using more like herbs and like garlic and onions as opposed to paprika or you know, even something like mustard because it comes from a seed is it is excluded.

 

(36:29): So it gets very complicated and very, very challenging. And in those kinds of scenarios I find that what happens is often people are avoiding foods that are not harmful in their body and then at the same time they're still consuming other foods that are triggering an inflammatory process. And that's really what's one of the key things that this comes down to is what foods are either hard to digest. So they're creating extra pressure on the digestive system. And we now know that so much of the immune system lives in and around the digestive system. So we don't wanna add extra pressure to it. And the other way that a food can tax the immune system is by being inflammatory in the pro in the body. So it's triggering that inflammation process. So I'm a big believer in testing because that is going to allow us to really fine tune for the individual what their diet needs to be.

 

(37:22): Especially in the healing phase. It doesn't mean that you're doing this food sensitivity test and you never eat these foods ever again in your life. That is not, that's a common misconception. I know when I very first did food sensitivity testing long ago, long before I became a nutrition professional, the individual is working with, I don't know if she didn't tell me or I didn't hear it and it didn't register, but I did not understand that this wasn't a forever thing. And I will tell you, when I got those test results, I went home and I shed a lot of tears thinking this was the rest of my life. It's not the rest of your life. It's a temporary thing while you do the healing. So I am a big believer in food sensitivity tests. I do not like probably 99% of the tests that are on the market and I don't think that food sensitivity testing should ever be done in isolation.

 

(38:10): And here's what I mean by that. Let's start with that piece. If you do a food sensitivity test, no matter how brilliant the test, you could use a great test or you know, if you're not using a good test, then that's problematic in and of itself. But let's say you're using it a really good test that's very comprehensive and it's going to and very accurate and you remove the foods that it tells you are inflammatory in your body. Well here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna feel better for a a while for sure, cuz you've just significantly reduced your inflammatory burden. But over time you're gonna develop new food sensitivities because you're not addressing and healing the mechanism through which your body creates those food sensitivities to begin with. So what ends up happening is you have somebody who feels better, but then they start to slowly have symptoms recur and the sort of he, you know, this, the healing quote unquote, if it was actually healing or the improvement let's say doesn't last.

 

(39:06): And so then they do another food sensitivity test and they find out a whole new set of foods that they are now sensitive to and they pull those out. And what happens is they get this ever shrinking list of foods that they tolerate, but while their, their symptoms just start to progressively come back worse and worse. So I really believe in food sensitivity testing, but I only do it when it is done in conjunction with well informed gut healing. And what I mean by well informed gut healing is gut healing that is informed through its own testing. So I'm a big believer in stool testing to understand what's going on in that digestive tract so that we can get in there and heal that rebalance the microbiome if it needs to support digestive function, if it's not working optimally, get rid of any opportunist in, you know, organisms that are in there or pathogens, you know, sometimes we can have these low lying parasites for example, not enough to be identified on, you know, a parasite test that you get from your GI doctor, but present and chronic and contr, you know, tiring out is sort of that, it's kind of like Chinese water torture, right?

 

(40:22): It's a steady drip on the immune system. Those things that are just taxing it and engaging it just a little bit at a time every single day. That's the stuff that can be the biggest culprits when it comes to fatiguing the immune system and leading to on an autoimmune presentation. So addressing and healing the gut, but doing it in a way that is well informed because it is very, very difficult to properly heal the digestive tract based on symptoms alone. Because symptoms can be driven by any number of the things that I just mentioned in microbiome imbalance. It can be driven by food sensitivities, it can be driven by a leaky gut, it can be driven by digestive dysfunction, it can be driven by imbalance in the microbiome, it can be driven by pathogen presence. So, and it's normally some unique combination of a collection of those things. And so if you can understand what's happening in the gut, you can be healing the gut and we remove the foods that are triggering inflammation while we heal the gut. That is the magic combination right there. Yeah.

 

(41:28): Yeah. And that, so that was great. Thank you for going so in depth and detailed so people really hear it. Hear it. And what I love that you said is a well, so food sensitivity testing should be done in conjunction with a, well inform yes. Gut healing regimen that includes testing even if you have no symptoms. And I want everyone to hear that if you hear nothing else. Yes. Because there's nothing sadder than I meet someone who's been listening to my podcast for several years and they're like, Well Kyrin, I saw this hair food sensitivity on coupon and I did it and I remove all the foods, but I still have Hashimotos. And I'm like, oh my gosh. I'm thinking to myself, she's lost two years. And I know there's some of you listening who are thinking, how can I do this myself? And I'm offered DIY at when you can. But when it comes to healing your core, which is your gut mm-hmm. , you can't,

 

(42:26): No, you

 

(42:27): Can unfortunately

 

(42:28): No, you can start the process. Have

 

(42:31): You Yeah. Believe that you could just take some supplements off the internet and do a hair food sensitivity test and you're good to go, but you won't. It's not, it's just not the case. Is it Margaret?

 

(42:41): No, I wish it was . Yeah. I mean our lives would be a lot simpler, but it just does not work that way. It doesn't. I wish it did, but it doesn't. And and what I see, and I'm sure you see this all the time, as people who've just spent thousands of dollars on DIY tests and supplements off the internet. And here's the thing, both the labs that sell direct to consumer and supplement companies that sell direct to consumer have very sophisticated marketing. So it is really compelling. Even as a practitioner every once and I know better, like I know better and every once in a while I will see some ad I'm like, Ooh, I hadn't heard of that probiotic before. You know? And, and you start to think, well maybe this is the missing piece. Right? And it's just not that simple.

 

(43:28): Even the probiotics that I work in with in clinic that have fantastic success rates, even those, sometimes they work for an individual and sometimes they don't. Like it's so bio-individual. We have to remember that we are unique people. Every one of us comes with this very unique constellation of health history, physiological strengths, constitutional weaknesses, where we live, what we ate as a child, what kind of stresses are on us, what we eat now, what's our lifestyle? How much sleep do we get, What climate do we live in, what season is it? What grows locally to us? And all of these things come together to create this you sort of unique health blueprint that we have. And it is just not possible that there is like a couple of magic pills out there. It's compelling. We want it, we want it, It just doesn't exist.

 

(44:26): It doesn't exist. Okay. So we're gonna have to wrap up. But before we do, I know people are probably maybe feeling a little hopeless. Okay, I can't have gluten, I can't have dairy, can't have seed oils, I can't have this, da da, I gotta have a gut test and all this. Where am I gonna find the money for that? Okay, let's give a little hope here. Mm-Hmm. , what should I eat? I've just been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and we are gonna offer, Margaret has generously giving you a copy of her first five steps to address autoimmune diseases. We're gonna put the link in the show notes so you can go download that. And so maybe this is you or a friend, you can download it and get started. So you, you'll have all five first step five steps cuz we don't have time to go over all of them, but let's leave everyone with, okay, so what should I eat? What would be a good breakfast, Margaret? What would be a good lunch? What would be a good dinner

 

(45:24): Focus First on actually really clean healthy proteins. Those are going to be part of, that's part of what builds your immune system. It's what supports repair in your body. It also is what keeps you full and satiated and can help blood sugar balance, et cetera. So I want you to think first about the protein. And I am a big believer in animal protein. A challenge with the plant-based proteins is that they're so hard on the digestion. So when we're talking about autoimmune and gut health, if you're leaning on soy and legumes, those can be quite devastating to the gut. So really good clean animal protein. So I'm talking about things like Pasteur raised beef eggs from Pasteur raised chicken pa, the chicken itself, wild fish and seafood, the lamb, bison wild bore, these kinds of things. They're actually pretty wildly available at this point.

 

(46:16): You know, even more conventional grocery stores are starting to catch wind of this trend. Let's call it, I don't know, this movement towards cleaner animal protein. So you can definitely find it and you wanna make you want, this is where you wanna invest your food dollars is in proteins and fats because that's actually where toxins accumulate and hormones and all this kind of stuff. So you really wanna invest your food dollars there. You wanna eat lots of veggies. We could get into the nuances based on what's going on with your digestion. Some people tolerate more, some people tolerate fewer. If you do find that veggies are challenging on your gut, make sure you're cooking them. You know, they, we have this sort of ideal that you should be eating tons of salad. Salad doesn't work for a lot of people. Raw vegetables can be very, very hard to digest.

 

(46:59): So just lightly cooking them, maybe you saute them, maybe you steam them and add some yummy sauces. But that would be, you know, so clean, clean proteins, good veggies, healthy fats that are used appropriately. And I know in that, in that handout, the first five we talk go the length, that's a whole topic in and of itself is how, what fats to use when. But you don't wanna be afraid of fats. They're vitally important; you just wanna make sure they're the right ones. And then healing foods, things like bone broths and fermented foods can be really, really healing to the gut. They probably won't take you the full distance, but it's a really good thing to incorporate into the diet on a regular basis because it's really helping to initiate that healing process. And then, you know, you know, if you're gonna do grains, make sure that they're gluten free grains trying to stay away from those processed foods that are gonna have the, you know, industrial seed oils that we talked about and whatnot.

 

(47:51): But let me tell you, I eat this way and, and we have this idea that eating healthfully means, you know, this sort of dry piece of chicken breast and steamed broccoli without any flavor on it. It does not have to be that way at all. And in fact it will give the links to my practice website, eat naked kitchen.com. But if you go in there, there's an opt-in at the bottom right hand corner and we give you our full kitchen stock. We call it kitchen essentials. It's basically what you should have in your pantry and your fridge. And then the next day we send you a a week long meal plan with recipes that we use in our household with both my husband and myself and the kids. This is all family-friendly stuff. This is stuff that we eat on a regular basis. Both my husband and myself are two young children.

 

(48:36): We have a a six year old and a 10 year old, both of whom are quite picky. You know, I think it's a great tool for you to get started in eating this way. And basically everything that I've just explained in terms of how you want to eat and foods to eliminate all of that's built in. So you don't even have to think about it. You can just use this meal plan as a starting point, use the grocery lists and these are meals that are on high rotation in our household and that the kids love and are delicious and nutritious, and it's not chicken breast and steamed broccoli. Yeah.

 

(49:08): You know it's funny when I have to go to a regular restaurant like just with an American sad diet. Mm-Hmm , everything tastes the same. Yeah, it's fat and it's sugar, but you don't realize that when you eat it because you're looking for the fat and sugar flavor and that's what tells you it's good also salt. But when you eat the whole foods way, like you're describing and I encourage everyone to go download what Margaret's offering. Cause your husband's an amazing chef. Mm-Hmm and I know he has his hands in all of that. But when you really start to eat from a, a whole Foods perspective and you really taste the flavors of the food, it is a reeducation of your palette. But I make things like, well I should share this recipe with everyone and I di I'm digressing, I know, but I make this cilantro and parsley and garlic sauce that you can put on chicken or fish anyway, it's amazing.

 

(50:04): So you can learn to cook this way. And Margaret is a great resource for that cuz she's an expert in it. And like I said, her husband is a fantastic chef. Thank you Margaret for sharing this wonderful information. You are a wealth of knowledge and inspiration. I know that everyone has gotten so much out of this. We will have the link to Margaret's first five download in the show notes. So definitely wanna go there. She's got naked in her book and the Naked Foods cookbook. You definitely wanna check those out. Where else can they find out more about you and interact with you Margaret?

 

(50:40): My main website is eat naked kitchen.com and there are just, there's tons of resources, like 450 different articles and recipes and just lots of stuff for you to dig into there. And then if, I don't know if there are any practitioners in your audience, but if you're somebody who is intrigued by this work and wants to learn how to support others on their journey to health through diet and these more advanced nutrition and testing strategies, I am also the executive director of a company called Restorative Wellness Solutions and we train health professionals in how to work very strategically with diet, supplements and lifestyle to do things like reverse autoimmune.

 

(51:25): Awesome. Yes. I encourage everybody to check that out. Your work with practitioners is great and yes, we have lots of practitioners in our audience. So if you are interested in thinking wow, I might like to work with people, helping them in this area of their life, definitely check out Margaret's offerings. There was so much great content. I didn't get to share some of these wonderful quotes that you shared with me before the episode, but I gotta get 'em in cuz this is one of my favorites from Maya Angelou. Do the best you can until you know better then when you know better, do better. And I know that everybody listening has heard something here today that was new, new to you, inspiring, maybe intriguing. And I wanna ask you to lean into that and ask yourself, what can I do better based on this information, inspiration that I've learned today? And go do that thing. Thank you Margaret for joining us today.

 

(52:31): Thank you so much for having me. It's been so much fun. And

 

(52:35): Thank you all for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. It's been my absolute pleasure to spend this time with you, and I look forward to seeing you again next week when we will dive into another topic related to your hormone balance. Until then, peace, love, and hormones y'all.

 

(52:57): Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

► Claim your free copy of the The First Five steps to address autoimmune disease – or any chronic and stubborn health issue you’re dealing with.

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