Episode #30: Is Nutrition Really that Important?

Hey y'all!

Brand-new podcast episode coming at you today! This podcast is simulcast with my Facebook page - you can join the fun and get the support you need: here on my FB page!

On today's podcast we discuss:

• The Unconventional Wellness program
• What Your Healthcare Providers do not learn in school
• The need for nutrition education
• How to Get Started for Support!
• The 5-day Sleep Challenge!

As mentioned, here is the link for the 5-day sleep challenge!

https://unconventional-wellness.com/optins9yu2zoh

Here are the show notes for today's podcast:

Frank: (00:00)
Is Nutrition really that important? Well, stay tuned because on this episode, which is episode number 30 we are actually doing episode number 30 today. I talk and some data about how nutrition is vital to our lifestyle, so stay tuned. This is unconventional wellness radio. I'm frank, I'm your host and we'll be coming at you with this content very, very soon. Hey everyone, and welcome to unconventional wellness. Radio is a powerful and inspiring podcasts set to revolutionize and disrupt healthcare. It's trying to put you in the driver's seat and be the force of change necessary for the lifestyle you've always wanted. 

Frank: (00:43)
Hey, what's going on, everybody in unconventional wellness? I am doing a simulcast today, so as I am not only talking on the podcast today, I'm also talking to you through Facebook live, so I just figured it'd be kind of fun, mix it up a little bit. If a, if you're not on my podcast, I do a weekly podcast. I've always told myself I will keep myself to weekly. I may actually increase that time, but if you're not on my podcast, check it out. It's unconventional wellness radio, and I am on pretty much all of the major podcast hosting sites, you know, so you'll find me on iTunes, you'll find me on Spotify, you can find me on Stitcher, pod bean, everything like that. Okay, so unconventional wellness radio. Now, if you're on unconventional on US radio and you're currently listening to this podcast, please go check out my Facebook page. 

Frank: (01:36)
It's unconventional wellness with frank reds on Facebook, unconventional wellness with frank grids on Facebook. And so anyway, I wanted to, uh, just come on here and just thank everybody and tell all of my listeners that I love you guys. Uh, all of my followers, I love you guys and I'm so glad that people are receiving really good content, massive value on trying every single day, working hard to make sure that you have the tools and the empowerment necessary to be able to actually have an understanding of how to live in this really conventional world. Okay? I teach it through five pillars. If you don't know where my five pillars are, what they are is I teach through nutrition. I teach through a, you know, what I like to call functional movement. A lot of people call it exercise and I describe why I call it functional movement. 

Frank: (02:30)
I talk about getting better sleep, removing toxins out of your life, uh, to include him in social toxins. And then I also talk about, uh, how to reduce your stress and anxiety. I myself as a 10 years service disabled combat veteran and also a service trained physician assistant in the army. I have learned how to use very unconventional practices, you know, integrative practices both with, uh, patients of mine as well as, uh, myself because I am a person who suffers from post traumatic stress. I've got chronic back pain, chronic knee pain, a couple other musculoskeletal things. And I told myself I am not going to allow that to be an issue in my life and I'm not going to get sedated with a bunch of medications. I'm not gonna take a bunch of medications for mental health. There are a place for them, but I didn't want them in my life. 

Frank: (03:21)
And so I have developed over the course of the last decade away to be able to help myself and others in really helping to up to, to live an unconventional lifestyle. So those are the five pillars that we talk about. It's a very full, comprehensive, holistic program because usually when we focus on something we just focus on say, like diet, right? Or we just focus on maybe sleep. We don't take in consideration how all of them are just intertwined, interrelated, and super necessary for our health. So I've learned how to really become a master of that trade. Okay. And I know just focus on one thing. I will help perse like work things out for you. I try to make them unique, individualized and oriented to your particular situation so you can maximize your own lifestyle. Because let's face it, as unique as our fingerprints are, that is exactly how unique our lifestyles need to be as well. 

Frank: (04:18)
And so anyway, today's topic that I wanted to talk about was nutrition. Okay. Oh, before I started with that, I want to let you know that I'm going to put the description in the show notes, but I have a three, five days sleep challenge that I want all of you to take. All right, so if you're in Facebook, I'll put the link down below if you are. So just click anywhere around the window or whatever. And then also I will put the link on my podcast in the show notes for you to go get a free copy of my five day challenge. It gives five tips and tricks that you can use to help get better sleep starting tonight. Okay. So I would love for you to be able to go get that. I promised that I will put the link in the podcast and in our, excuse me, on Facebook live. 

Frank: (05:02)
Okay. And so anyway, I want to talk about nutrition. Is Nutrition really even actually that important? Well, I would offer it to you that it actually is. Unfortunately, a lot of people do not, uh, really understand that we are what we eat. It is easily one of the most recognized determinants. Okay. In three different chronic illnesses that plague our society. They're involved in cardiovascular problems. They're involved in cerebrovascular problems, which is of the head and then even some cancers kimbery related to our nutrition. And so like those are like literally like three of the top four things that really caused death in United States. And so it begs the question, why do we not know about nutrition the way that we need to give its credit? Okay. There are many, many different empirical studies as well as taste studies and then even some real determinant science-based evidence that shows that nutrition is crucially important. 

Frank: (06:11)
What we consume, we all absolutely have ramifications in what we are able to do in terms of our health and how to live a lifestyle that is free of those diseases and a free of those issues. Well, I, I've talked about this before and unfortunately our standard American diet is in fact the acronym at which it's described by, which is sad. S A D it is extraordinarily sad. We have more fast food restaurants and quick pick me up food then really probably most of the societies out there. Um, we have unfortunately moved away from the kitchen and we have these delivery services that will prepare food for us. Now don't get me wrong, there are some really great delivery services out there and if you're one that is extraordinarily busy and you need to use something like that, make sure that you're getting one that gives you exactly what's in it, right? 

Frank: (07:10)
So like don't just get one of those like ones that they package up, whatever, put it in there and then you've got yourself, you know, like essentially the TV dinners of the 1950s instead, make sure that you vet the organization, vet the company really, really well. They need to be putting all of their ingredients on there. They need to be putting everything calorie-wise that's in there and chalk full of everything. Those are extremely wonderful to have. Myself and my wife, we use those in the past, but we realized that we wanted to take it one step further. So we tried to carve out the time to bring the social aspect back into our nutrition. Now if you're super busy, if you're single and you need that, great. But if you're like me, um, we wanted to make the decision of making it family oriented again. 

Frank: (08:00)
So there's more often than not throughout the week, at least one meal in the day, we try to actually sit down and have a meal as a family. Now since that, that was our first baby step is like, let's start eating together one meal a day. That way everybody is sitting down at the same table. Of course that's going to be better or worse depending upon, you know, how busy everybody else in the family as, but take baby steps because that's how large movements happen is over the course of months and, or excuse me, of, of hours, days, weeks and months of planning and executing. That's how big changes happen. Okay. And so anyway, we sit down, we have a meal once per day and then we also want him to say, you know what? We want to start creating our food together. And so we started like cooking. 

Frank: (08:46)
And so we realized that not only is that being really beneficial in a sense that, you know, we're, we're, uh, bonding more and more as a family, but now we're also teaching our kids life skills to be able to actually cook on their own. And so, um, call us traditional, call us old fashioned, call us outdated, but it really works for us. So I would urge you to also think about that as well. But anyway, I say all that because a lot of these disease processes are actually very preventable because of lifestyle issues. Now you would think like, why aren't our individuals, who are the highest professionals in our organizations, why aren't they telling us this information? Because we already know this. The downside is, is a lot of our healthcare providers are actually not even trained in nutrition. Uh, they don't have, like my, I myself, when I was going through physician assistant school, I did not get formalized training in nutrition. 

Frank: (09:44)
Like I did not know how to interpret really even the back of a nutrition information that you would find on the package. Like I knew what calories were. I knew what that was. I knew what proteins were. I knew this stuff, but I didn't realize that there was a massive amount of science that is in nutrition education. So even when I was practicing, when I first started, I had to rely heavily on registered dieticians because I had no idea how to do any of that stuff. And it comes to find out that when we counsel our patients, we are supposed to talk about preventative things to them. Every single patient that we see, if you come in for a stub toe, I'm expected to still talk to you about preventative things based on what I know of what you can implement every single day to help your stub toe, but then also help your overall life. 

Frank: (10:41)
Okay. So I'm supposed to be doing that with every single patient that I have. And so unfortunately we need a vast improvement in our nutrition education for healthcare professionals. Okay. And that is really important because there was a study that I saw a survey, if you will, that was done and where it said, you know, of these particular amounts of patients, how many do you feel that it was important that your doctor or your healthcare provider of any sort understands nutrition? A pretty large amount of people, 85% of people actually stated that they would like their healthcare provider to know about nutrition. But then let's take it one step further. Of those practitioners that were surveyed, uh, in a followup, only 15% of them actually felt that they were trained well enough to give nutrition information. And so not only are we having a drama in terms of what do we eat in the society realm, unfortunately those individuals that we would go to or we should consider going to, to get better nutrition information, they are not being adequately trained and it's nothing against them. 

Frank: (11:52)
It's just how our programs are set up, is that we really don't talk about nutrition as much as we should in a lot of our, uh, healthcare provider settings. Okay. And so what I'm empty attempt attempting to do is I want to help bridge that gap. I want to help create that integrative approach where we have wonderful modern western trained professionals to understand how to, you know, take care of people, cure cancer, stop heart attacks and all those wonderful things that we can do, but then also really teach and educate the masses in how to understand preventative methods. That way they can not burden the systems, take care of themselves more so, and be able to go see those trained individuals when big situations, uh, arise. So like I'm loved the fact that I am in a society where if I was to get pneumonia, I can go see a doctor, get antibiotics and get better. 

Frank: (12:51)
That's an amazing thing that we have a for us these days. But the fact of the matter is, is that all of these other things that are preventable and chronic, that I can be taken care of, like my prevention against getting heart disease, my prevention against obesity, which can lead to diabetes. You know, these sorts of things are on me. Like, I need to take responsibility of that and then go see my healthcare provider once a year saying like, doc, this is what I've been doing. I've been doing x, Y, and z. This is how I've been eating. This is how I've been, you know, moving and exercising. These are all the things that I've been doing. And the doctor can go, awesome, let's do some lab work, make sure everything checks out, let's check you out. Life is good. That is the ultimate paradigm that we want to achieve in healthcare. 

Frank: (13:37)
That is preventative healthcare. That is the way that we should all aim to be because that is the way that we won't have a burden on the system. Things will not be extraordinarily expensive for healthcare and people will be empowered in order to be able to take their healthcare seriously and into their own hands. And so I just wanted to give you some data reference to this, is that this was in a, you know, the evolution of nutrition being taught in medicine. Okay. So this article I have found, um, it is in the National Library of medicine and National Institutes of health. You can look it up online. So it's one particular article that I am looking at. It's from the American journal of Clinical Nutrition from like 2014 okay. And so it's showing the evolution of medicine and as an really beautiful table that kind of shows like the history of medical education or medical education in reference to nutrition. 

Frank: (14:38)
So it goes back as early as 1963, uh, where the council on foods and nutrition in the Ama actually show that there is a lack of support for nutrition education in medical, uh, in, let's see, actually if you go a little bit further, you got 19%. So in 1977, about 14 years later, there was a survey done in which it showed that 19% of medical schools have a nutrition course. And I know that that number is actually growing because there was a lot of nutrition, uh, courses that are now being taught by registered dieticians. Matter of fact, there's one is, ah, there's one in South Carolina that I learned about where they have a registered dietician who actually has an entire curriculum, uh, that is built into a four year medical program. And it's teaching these soon to beat doctors. It's teaching them how to understand nutrition so they can service their patients even better. 

Frank: (15:33)
Okay. Fast forward five more years. Pretty good improvement. Another, uh, educational journal found that 37% of medical schools have a course in nutrition. Okay. Um, over the course of the last, say, two decades now, we have realized that more and more need is being met and it continues to increase. The problem is, is that we are still unfortunately far off that mark. Um, because from 1982 to now, 2010, another survey was done and the 37% dropped by 10%. And now only about a quarter of the schools or 27% have a course in nutrition. And so, you know, we need to realize that this is a vast marketed need. And so therefore, while this is while this is happening, okay. Um, well actually one more piece of data that I wanted to show you before I talk about that is that the United States preventative services task force, right? So like these are the individuals that are full of geniuses. 

Frank: (16:41)
They are the ones that come together every so often they talk about good medical sound medical advice, right? So like they're the ones that talk about like when, what is the age in which a person should get a colonoscopy. Okay. And they give a recommendation for that and they recommend like an a recommendation B c those types of recommendations. Okay. A as of course everybody should be doing it. B is that it should definitely be being done in practice c as like more data kind of needed, but it still could be talked about. That is sort of how they rank things, right? But the u s preventative tasks are the US preventative services task force in 2012 said that intensive behavioral dietary counseling for an adult patients with hyperlipidemia or high cholesterol, high fats in the blood is essentially what that saying and other known risk factors for cardiovascular and diet related chronic disease counseling can be delivered by primary care clinicians or by a referral to other specialists such as nutritionists or Dietitians. 

Frank: (17:41)
So that was given a B recommendation meaning like that should be definitely considered and used in somebody's practice. Okay. And so the need is there. We understand that nutrition is important, you really are a product of what you eat. Okay. And I didn't even take it one step further is being a farmer. I feel like I'm not only a product of what I eat, I feel like I'm always also a product of what I eat and what it eats because now you've got to take a look at, you know, yeah, I'm eating apple. But the question is is how was that apple created in terms of how has it grown on the tree? Was it was a given. Pesticides is a grown organically. Um, how was it processed, right? Like it was actually processed, meaning that did it have a wax, but on there it was a painted to make it look better. 

Frank: (18:25)
Or is it a nice ugly right off the tree organic apple because I have an orchard full of them and they're not good looking at all, but they taste great and I know that at least not one ounce of pesticide has ever touched them. Okay. And so it's this, this, it's needs a paradigm shift to helping you understand that nutrition is crucially important. So hopefully I have made that case. Now the reason why I say that is because we don't want to rely on others. We want to take responsibility for ourselves. And so we need to find a nutritional plan that actually helps. And I'm going to tell you right now, I'm fairly well versed in all of them. I am not a registered Dietitian, but I definitely am a science geek and I love dissecting things like this. And so I have taken the liberty of working on like 10 different nutritional plans in which I talk about in my program unconventional wellness. 

Frank: (19:19)
Okay. And I have a video and notes pages and I've created this document to help you walk through and understand what is the nutritional plan that's going to bring me the best value and the best lifestyle for me because we want to make sure that these are all dependent upon our goal. So if your goal is weight loss, we can talk about that. If your goal is getting more heart health, we can talk about that. If it's better brain health, we can talk about that. Okay. And so I want to be your mentor. I want to be your guide and I want to help you become empowered and understanding what it is that you specifically need because you can see that there's definitely an importance to nutrition. Okay? It is foundational. It is what upon which a lot of our health is absolutely reliant upon. 

Frank: (20:06)
So I left us a poll question, answer it now, if you want to leave me a question about nutrition, leave me a question about a diet plan that you were thinking about doing. I would love to answer those. So make sure you comment below. If you're on Facebook, if not, send me an email, [email protected]. I will be happy to answer those, but best of all is go check out that link because I want to help you get better sleep today. Nutrition is important, sleep is important, okay, and so we'll talk about nutrition. I want you to get better sleep as well. So please go download that free copy of my five day sleep challenge and I will make sure that you either get that delivered right to your inbox or you will it delivered through our Facebook page. That way you can be working towards getting better sleep. So that's all I've got for today. If you're listening to us through our podcast, thank you so much. Leave me a rating, leave me a review, go check out our Facebook page, and we will absolutely be bringing you fresh, wholesome value driven content very, very soon on our very next podcast. So until then, I am Frank Ritz and I hope that you learned something today and I would just wish for you to have the greatest week that you possibly can't take care. Everybody.