The Doctor Cooks

Gut Health

This article originally appeared in the Kansas City Wellness Magazine.

A patient told me the other day that she just couldn’t eat the things she used to and stay healthy, but that was okay.  It was worth it to feel good.  I offered another perspective.  The way she used to eat was simply abuse.  I commended her for no longer mistreating herself and her body commends her with good health.

I tell every patient that diet is the foundation of health.  One reason is that 70% of our immune system is in our gastrointestinal tract, or gut.  From the time we are born, our immune system is “trained” to distinguish friend from foe by the food we eat, healthy bacteria we call normal flora, as well as parasites, viruses and bacteria we think of as pathogenic. 

The normal flora is an amazing part of our immune system.  Dr. Jeffrey Bland, a nutritional biochemist, calls the flora a bioreactor, capable of converting molecules in food to substances that are hard to get any other way.  For instance, soy is converted by the flora into equol.  Equol inactivates dihydrotestosterone, a hormone which stimulates prostate growth and can lead to prostate cancer.   However, one study showed that only 30 – 50% of the participants had the intestinal bacteria to make equol.  Hops, a grain used to make beer, are converted by the flora to make the strongest plant estrogen known, 8-PN.  In one study, only one-third of participants were able to make 8-PN.  8-PN shows promise in preventing estrogen stimulated cancers.  These people aren’t genetically gifted.  They just have healthy gut flora. 

The gut flora is established during the first two years of life.  Patrick Hanaway, MD, a researcher in the area of digestion, immunology and wellness, says that vaccines, antiseptic birth conditions, psychological stress, antibiotics, and even antimicrobial herbs challenge the formation and maintenance of healthy flora.  In the US, lack of breast feeding and introduction of solid food sooner than our gut is able to tolerate from an evolutionary perspective creates imbalances that weaken the immunity of most children. 

The introduction of commonly allergenic foods like wheat, soy and cow’s milk products are particularly problematic.  Processed foods, particularly sugary and salty foods are as well.  He finds naturally fermented foods critical tools for restoring balance.

Many of us think of yoghurt as a good way to restore gut flora.  However it is thought to feed the existing bacteria, not introduce new ones.  Plus most yoghurt today contains little healthy bacteria due to commercial processing methods.

Better options are kombucha and kefir.  Kombucha is a fermented drink made from a Japanese mushroom.  Kefir is traditionally made from goat milk.  When it is made from fruit it is called water-kefir.  Both kombucha and kefir are commercially available in health food stores or can be made at home.  Kombucha mushrooms and kefir starter kits are available on the web.

Power of Food

This article originally appeared in the Kansas City Wellness Magazine.

Here’s a story about how Leann learned about the power of food.  Leann came to me so fatigued she spent most of the day in bed.  A battle over a family business had sapped her of her health.  I counseled her on the SOUL approach to eating—seasonal, organic, unprocessed and local, advised her to stop all dairy products and wheat, meditate and practice hatha yoga a little every day and prescribed her some bioidentical hormones. 

One year later, Leann was well enough to take a job in France.  She spent a year working in the countryside, where food is still grown on small farms with little use of chemicals.  Leann shopped for food daily, just like the locals.  She ate mostly fresh fruits and vegetables.  When she ate meat it was mostly duck, the traditional food of the area and beef from Argentina on rare occasion.  Argentinean beef is grass fed, instead of grain fed as is U.S. norm.  The meat of grass fed animals is leaner and healthier overall.

Within a few months, Leann’s shoulder pain disappeared completely.  She lost weight without trying.  It wasn’t long before she started to feel overdosed on her bioidentical hormones and began lowering the amounts she took.   Then due to a mistake on her visa renewal application, she suddenly had to return to the U.S.  Before she left France, she was taking only small amounts of the hormones I had originally prescribed to her.

Within 12 hours of her arrival in the U.S., her shoulder pain returned.  One and ½ months later she began to feel depressed.  That’s when she showed up in my office.  She denied feeling stressed, since she was being paid while her visa application was being straightened out and her life was otherwise going well.

“It’s the food,” I surmised, with anger and amazement.  “There is something wrong with our food compared to the food in France!”

“You think so?” asked Leann.

“You bet!”  I exclaimed.  “You need to take additional hormones to offset the load of hormones and hormone-like chemicals in our food and in our environment.  Your body can’t do it on its own.  Our food is too processed overall.”

Leann is already feeling better by increasing her hormone doses.  And she is now committed to eating 100% organic plant foods and pasture-fed, chemical-free animals. 

This story is an amazing illustration of the power of whole clean food to heal us.  But it also makes me angry because whole clean food is a human right we don’t get in this country.  As another patient asked me the other day, “Why is it so hard to eat healthy in this country?   Total junk food is dirt cheap and everywhere!”

Exercise your human right to whole clean food.  March is CSA sign-up time.  CSA stands for community supported agriculture.  The members subscribe for a fee and the farmer in turn delivers just picked fresh produce every week.  Learn more about CSA at www.thedoctorcooks.com.  The Farmers Community Market at Brookside opens mid-April and the KC Organics and Natural Market at Minor Park opens in early May.  Both markets specialize in organic produce.  You’ll feel better for it!

The Elixir of Health (toasted sesame dressing)

This article originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Kansas City Wellness Magazine. 

Lately I’ve been inundated with phone calls and information from people selling the latest health elixir. Most are exotic fruits unknown to the Western world until recently.  They offer all sorts of testimonials, from eliminating fatigue to curing cancer to even making your child like his vegetables!  They are rich in antioxidants that detoxify, repair and heal our cells.

These elixirs are a sort of health colonialism.  It takes effort to eat healthy life sustaining food in this country.  It’s not readily available.   Just look at the school lunch program.  So instead of fixing the problem, we economically invade other countries, seeking their wealth.  Perhaps the next wars won’t be over oil, but over antioxidants!

So instead of reaching for the latest potion, increase the antioxidant potential of your diet in other ways.  It’s so easy right now to buy local, organically grown food picked the day before it is sold.  Most food travels 1200 miles to reach your local grocer and loses nutrients with every mile.  It takes a head of local lettuce two weeks to look and taste like grocery store lettuce.  Eat more fresh vegetables.  Drink a glass of fresh vegetable juice every day.  Plant a vegetable garden—it’s not too late!  Plan to grow kale, lettuce and other cold weather greens in a cold frame this winter.  Do your part to achieve antioxidant independence!

Have you seed President Clinton lately?  He looks, well, rather crusty.  He’s had heart problems and I suspect his cardiologists have him on a very low fat diet and cholesterol lowering drugs.  Interestingly, heart disease rates continue to increase in the U.S. despite the popularity of low fat diets and cholesterol lowering drugs.  One reason for this is the disease of dryness.

President Clinton has disease of dryness.  Dry cracked skin and nails, dry hard stools, scanty perspiration, dry dull eyes, neuro-muscular problems like Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis, and heart problems like high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries are signs of imbalance with disease of dryness.

Quality fat is the elixir of health for people with disease of dryness.  President Clinton’s heart problems would improve and his youthful glow would return if he enjoyed more healthy fats such as ghee, coconut, olive, flax and grape seed oil as part of a higher protein, lower carbohydrate diet.  Sautéing in oil is preferred over deep fat frying, where high temperatures decrease the nutritional value of the oil.  President Clinton, always a bit chubby, will lose weight by increasing the fat in his diet.  Fermented foods increase the digestion and absorption of fat in the body.  The President can enjoy naturally made yoghurt and buttermilk, pickles, sauerkraut, vinegar, sour-tasting fruits and other fermented foods.  People with dryness generally lack minerals.  Sea vegetables are an excellent source of minerals.  Warm oil massage can also bring balance to people with disease of dryness.  This advice goes against the conventional cardiology wisdom but it works wonders if you have disease of dryness.

Ohsawa brand Sea Vegetable Salad is a medley of five colorful sea vegetables.  Mild in flavor, it’s an easy way to introduce sea vegetables, and their wealth of life giving minerals and antioxidants, to your diet.  Sea Vegetable Salad is sold dried, as are most sea vegetables.  Properly stored they keep indefinitely.  Ask for Ohsawa brand Sea Vegetable Salad at your local health food store or order at www.goldminenaturalfoods.com or 1-800-475-FOOD (3663). 

Soak a handful of Sea Vegetable Salad in water for 10 minutes, drain and serve topped with a simple vinaigrette or this Toasted Sesame Dressing.  Remember, three parts oil to one part vinegar makes a simple vinaigrette. 

Toasted Sesame Dressing

1 ½ TBSP toasted sesame oil
3 TBSP grape seed oil
3 TBSP umeboshi plum vinegar
2 TBSP brown rice or apple cider vinegar
½ teaspoon mellow white miso.

Combine the above ingredients is a jar or bowl.  Shake or stir well to blend.  About 6 servings.

Lose weight, rid yourself of health problems and end your dietary confusion by living in balance according to your disease type.  Bethany Klug, D.O. is now offering disease type consultations in person or by phone.  Make an appointment by calling 913-642-1900.  Learn more about disease type and restoring health with holistic medicine at www.bethanyklug.com and simple healthy cooking at www.thedoctorcooks.com.

The Right Diet and Lifestyle for You -- Part II (roasted beets)

This article originally appeared in the April 2008 issue of Kansas City Wellness Magazine.

Last month I introduced disease type, a highly predictive method of determining the best way of eating and self-care for you. There are eight disease types, or ways of going out of balance.  If you think of disease as an expression of imbalance, eating for your disease type brings you into a balanced state where disease is least likely to manifest. 

Disease types are divided by metabolism:  fast, slow or mixed.  The speed of your metabolism tells you how much protein, fat and carbohydrate you should be eating.  Protein includes animal protein, nuts, seeds and beans.  Carbohydrates include nuts, vegetables, fruits and whole grains, not just starches.   Then certain foods are emphasized or de-emphasized due to their ability to bring balance or imbalance to the disease type.

Jill sought a disease type consultation due to frequent migraine headaches. They usually begin at her right temple.  On a bad day, they extend behind her ear and into her neck and shoulders.  She can’t get going in the morning until she jump-starts herself with a cup of coffee and a warm shower.  It also helps her clear the thick mucus that collects in her nose and throat overnight.  Concerned about calcium, she eats plenty of dairy products.  She tried the raw food diet and had the worst migraines of her life.

Jill has disease of coldness.  People with this disease type have a slow metabolic rate and often have symptoms that appear or worsen in the morning and during cold weather.  They often feel cold, even in the summer.  Coldness affects the triple warmer or endocrine acupuncture meridian.  People with coldness often have pain along that meridian as Jill does. 

People with disease of coldness need to speed up their metabolism and create heat.  They do best on a vegetarian, even vegan regime, emphasizing cooked foods flavored with warming herbs and spices.  Dairy products have a cold damp quality that worsens disease of coldness.  Milk, cheese, yoghurt, ice cream and other dairy products must be avoided.  Warming self-care techniques, such as certain breathing practices, sauna and warming oils can be helpful.

Roasting is easy and adds deep heat to food, ideal for people with coldness.  Here’s my favorite way to roast beets.  You’ll find them at your local farmers market now.  Don’t throw away the greens!  They are delicious steamed for about 5 minutes.  Toss them with the sliced roasted beets for a real treat.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Do not peel the beets.  Instead wash them and leave about ½ inch of the stems attached.  Place the beets on a large piece of aluminum foil. Fold the foil to make a sealed pouch.  Bake for 1 ¾ hours or until tender.  Allow to cool in the pouch.  Once cool, open the pouch and slip the skins off.  They will come off easily.  Slice and serve sprinkled with tarragon, a warming herb, raw walnuts and a splash of balsamic vinegar. 

Lose weight, rid yourself of health problems and end your dietary confusion by living according to your disease type.  Bethany Klug, D.O. is now offering disease type consultations in person or by phone.  Make an appointment by calling 913-642-1900.  Learn more about disease type and restoring health with holistic medicine at www.bethanyklug.com and simple healthy cooking at www.thedoctorcooks.com.

The Right Diet and Lifestyle for You!

We’ve all seen it.  A friend tries a new diet.  She loses all sorts of weight, finds renewed energy and zest for life.  At her urging you try it and nothing, or worse yet, you gain weight and feel more tired than ever.  What gives?

I recently found a very good answer to this question after many years of searching.  It’s called your disease type.  Traditional healing systems see disease as an expression of imbalance.  Thus, by eating and caring for yourself in a way that keeps you in balance, you stay healthy. 

There are eight disease types, or ways in which your body can go out of balance.  Everyone has one of them.  Simply put, there are eight ways of eating and taking care of you.  Only one of them is right for you.   This explains why the diet that works for your friend doesn’t work for you.  She just happened to find a diet that keeps her disease type in balance.

Lose Weight This Year

Resolving to lose weight is always one of the top ten New Year’s resolutions.  With 2/3 of Americans considered overweight, it’s probably one of the top ten resolutions abandoned by the end of January.  You can succeed this year by adopting a new way of life that includes healthy eating.  Here are a few books to guide you.

If It’s Not Food…Don’t Eat it is my favorite book to recommend to people who can’t seem to break the junk food, fast food life way of life.  Author Kelly Hayford was once a tobacco addicted junk food junkie.  She is now a nutrition and health coach.  I agree with Hayfords conclusion:  the key to health, energy and a natural body weight is to eat real food.  The rub is that most of what we have come to know as food is far from real.  Instead of nourishing us, it depletes our bodies of essential nutrients, making us fat, sick and tired.  Hayford helps you step out of the fast food rat race and eat for health.  Learn more at www.FoodFitnessByPhone.com.

The premise behind The Paleo Diet is that diseases of western civilization such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer, did not exist until humans began to grow their own food.  Backed up with studies, author Loren Cordain, PhD shows how eating like a hunter-gatherer can help you return to an “ideal body weight, optimum health, and peak athletic performance.”  On this diet, you eat grass fed meats, fish, nuts, seeds, vegetables and fruits.  You won’t find grains, dairy or beans in this diet. The hunter-gatherers couldn’t stop a wooly mammoth long enough to milk it, nor could they gather enough wild grains and beans for a loaf of bread or stew.  This way of eating is naturally low in carbohydrates, yet high in plant nutrients and healthy fats.  Unlike Atkins, who died with severe heart disease, you can follow a low carb approach, lose weight and restore your health.  Learn more at www.thepaleodiet.com.

We’ve all heard of wheat grass juice by now, thanks to Ann Wigmore.  She decided to let food be her medicine and cured herself of colon cancer.  She went on to found the Hippocrates Health Institute, now located in West Palm Beach, Florida.  Her book The Hippocrates Diet and Health Program details the “living foods” or raw foods lifestyle.  Wigmore’s research confirmed that food loses its enzymes and much of its nutrients when heated beyond 115 degrees Fahrenheit, and along with it, its ability to heal.  Raw foods have a special ability to induce detoxification.  As the body detoxifies it repairs itself.  The staff at the Hippocrates Health Institute is accustomed to seeing improvements in a wide variety of conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and chronic fatigue.  Insulin dependent diabetics have normalized their blood sugar and discontinued insulin use within a matter of weeks.  The living foods lifestyle is a big change for most of us, but with 2/3 of Americans overweight, most of us need a big change.  This could be the most significant step you will make in the direction of lasting health, energy and natural body weight.  Learn more at www.hippocratesinst.com.

The Book of Whole Meals by Annemarie Colbin is still one of the best guides to whole foods eating, even though it was written back in 1979.  Colbin, the founder of the Natural Gourmet Cookery School, now the Natural Gourmet Institute of Health and Culinary Arts in New York City, explains how our body seeks balance.  A diet of caffeine, alcohol, sugar, white flour and other processed foods creates wide metabolic swings that are difficult to balance, leading to obesity and disease.  Whole foods on the other hand center our metabolism so we can heal and maintain our health.  Colbin deftly explains the theory and the practice, right down to seasonal menus from which lunch is made from the dinner leftovers. My copy has been rebound and the pages clearly show its use.  Find this book at your local bookstore.

This article originally appeared in the January 2008 issue of the Kansas City Wellness Magazine in my monthly column, The Doctor Cooks.  Look for it in every issue!

Wheat May Not Be the Staff of Life

Bread and grains are one of the most sacrosanct elements of our diet. For most people, including the family I grew up with, a meal is a starch, meat and a vegetable. Dinner just isn’t complete without bread. Yet grains could be the culprit behind your health problems and you might do well to reduce or eliminate them.

Bread and grains appeared on the human scene about 10000 years ago. Humans left their nomadic hunter gatherer lifestyle behind in favor of agriculture. They cultivated grasses which evolved into the grains we know today such as wheat, rye and barley. But not everyone fared well on grains. Children failed to thrive and died due to diarrhea with undigested fat and food in it. The ancient Greeks identified this as celiac disease but did not know that it was caused by gluten. Gluten is a protein in wheat, rye and barley. Today, celiac disease affects 1 in 133 people with a wide variety of symptoms including acid reflux, diabetes, headache, hypothyroidism, skin problems and infertility. Former Baylor University gastroenterologist Kenneth Fine, MD believes the incidence is higher because the standard blood test is not sensitive enough. He has developed a more sensitive test available at www.enterolab.com.

Loren Cordain, PhD of Colorado State University blames heart disease, stroke, osteoporosis, cancer and other diseases of western civilization on an overly cultivated diet. In his book, the Paleo Diet and on his website, www.thepaleodiet.com, he recommends a diet of lean grass fed meat, but not pork, wild fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. He avoids grains, beans, milk products and even minimally processed foods like vinegar. People have responded well to this regimen, especially those with insulin resistance and diabetes.

Peter D’Adamo recommends a hunter gatherer diet for people of with blood type O in his book Eat Right 4 Your Type and website www.dadamo.com. The American Red Cross reports that 60 to 70 % of people of Hispanic origin have type O blood and about 45% of other ethnic groups are type O. He goes further to suggest that the blood types evolved in response to changes in the human diet and thus we are healthiest when we eat foods available to us at that time in human history.

Summer, with its bounty of fresh fruit and vegetables, is an excellent time to see if a hunter gatherer type diet could be good for you. This evolving body of research has convinced me that grains and cereals are not needed for human health and may be harmful to many of us.

This article originally appeared in the July 2007 issue of the Kansas City Wellness Magazine, www.kcwellnessmagazine.com.

Lighten-up! It's Spring! (boiled artichokes)

With the magnolia trees blooming on my block and temperatures in the 70’s, my body is telling me “lighten-up!  It’s spring-time!”  I’m hearing people talking about cleansing, juicing and detox diets.  Spring is associated with the liver in both Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine.  Allergies, PMS, mood swings, fatigue, headache, cravings, upper abdominal pain, bloating and constipation are a few signs of an over-burdened liver.  Yet, no laboratory test can diagnose this.  It’s easy though to give your liver a spring cleaning, making you feel lighter and brighter.

One way is to include some liver supportive vegetables in your diet, such as artichokes. Artichokes are known to promote liver detoxification, improve bowel function and balance cholesterol levels.

Relief for Holiday Overindulgence

Did that stomach flu or bad bronchitis visit your house?  The holidays with all the sweets and rich foods create a condition in oriental medicine called dampness, or kapha in ayurvedic medicine.  All the body systems become sluggish and stagnant, unable to fend of the viruses and bacteria we are exposed to all year round.  From a western perspective, the same foods make us acidic.  None of our body systems function well in an acidic environment, plus most microbes love acid.  But there is a way out.  Here is my article from the December Kansas City Wellness Magazine, plus next week I will write about foods that keep us in balance during times of dampness and keep the latest bug at bay.

Was it too much sugar, white flour, caffeine, rich food or alcohol?  No matter what it was you feel terrible!  Of course the best strategy is to avoid overindulging in the first place.  Short of that, plan your indulgences and pay extra attention to eating well in between. Here are some simple food remedies that can reverse moderate holiday overindulgence.  You will find many of the ingredients for these remedies in the macrobiotic section, also known as the seaweed section, of your health food store. 

Food is Medicine for KCK Farmer (bitter melon omelette)

A melon that lowers blood pressure and blood sugar?  Greens that relieve menstrual cramps?  It’s a way of life for Hmong farmer Pov Huns.  “The Hmong are the hill people of Southeast Asia.  They don’t have access to medicines.  The town is ten to fifteen days walk.”

Huns grows bitter melon, known for lowering blood pressure and blood sugar.  Different ethnic groups prefer different varieties, according to Huns.  Koreans like them ripe, Vietnamese like them green.   Chinese like to stuff a green one shaped like a toy top.  The variety does not change the medicinal quality.

“Bitter melon greens are more nutritious than the melon,” says Huns, “They are added to green tea for cancer fighting effect.”