Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode, and I'm so excited for my next guest, who's joining us from all the way across the pond, she lives in New York. She is a health writer and a registered nutritional therapist and nutritionist. And welcome, Sally Defen.
Hi, thanks for having me.
So tell us a little bit about York. Like, I love that you live there and what got you into your own wellness journey.
OK, so York is a beautiful city in the north of England. We've got just a history. It just walking around the city, just basically walking through a history book. We've got Viking stuff, we've got Romans Medieval, we've got a huge cathedral in the middle, lots of beautiful parks. It's just a gorgeous place to live. Yeah. Lots of little independent shops and things. I've lived here all my life.
So I will tell you, I have a lot of friends who are gluten free and they cannot have gluten here in the United States.
But they say that when they go to France or they go to England, they go, you know, in Germany they can eat gluten and they feel great.
They have no problems at all. So isn't that interesting?
Yeah, but it's interesting. Yeah. Because I thought it would be the same issue wherever I go.
So do you let me ask you, do you guys do you have any problems yourself personally with gluten intolerance and wheat intolerance, but gluten.
Well, I know it would be doing something to me, but I don't get any symptoms from it. So I'm OK with things like barley and rye. But I do avoid wheat. I'm sensitive, sensitive to the the proteins that are in wheat.
So what happens? Like what are some of your symptoms that happen when you personally.
If I wait? So because I've avoided it now for so long, I've avoided it for about five years and I can sometimes get away with just having the old saying if I'm out and there's only sandwiches to eat and sometimes I'll be OK. But other times if I did start to eat it regularly again, I'd get very bloated. By the end of the day, I'd have a little pot belly. I would get very tired. And sometimes even now if I eat wheat, it has such a soporific effect on me. I almost feel like I've been drugged and I just want to sleep. I have to sleep it off. So those are the two main symptoms. Right. And also it just makes me crave more sweet things. It's weird. If I eat some weight, I will be craving more sugary foods a few hours later.
That is true for sure. So in my newest edition of my book, Waste Away, I talk about how people don't need to deprive themselves when it comes to food, but everyone needs to decide for themselves what are there red light, yellow light and green light foods. And what I mean by that is red light means like you. Absolutely kind of like your weed. Like you say, I'm not eating this. I know when I eat it, I feel terrible. And then I have my yellow light foods where I go, you know, I don't feel great when I eat this, but sometimes I'll have it. What are those red and yellow light foods for you personally?
OK, so for me, wheat is definitely a red light food. I could just been saying the other two I guess would be caffeine. I can't go anywhere near caffeine. I stop drinking it many, many years ago. And now even if somebody accidentally gives me a decaf today, I will know about it. And the other one would be most dairy products as well. So I can get away with a little bit of butter and I use Burset in cooking. But if I tried to drink a glass of milk or something like that, because I'm a bit lactose intolerance, I would get a lot of digestive symptoms and also some indigestion from it as well. So I really try and steer clear of that.
Yeah. In the same way. So if you had to pick your top three nutrition tips for listeners, what would they be and why?
OK, I think my number one tip would be to to relax and chew food properly. So make time for eating and look at your food, smell your food, sit down and chew it properly because a lot of people skip that phase. And that's a really important stage of digestion. That's a Sephardic stage that involves all the head farseeing food, smelling the food, even hearing it being cooked. I think just taking time to enjoy your food, relax and chew it properly, because that can alleviate many, many digestive symptoms impartially, sometimes wholly just by relaxing and chewing food properly. So that would be my number one tip. And a potato would be to start to tune in to how you feel after what you've eaten. So rather than just blithely eating everything that you normally do and you kind of just plowing on through no matter what your symptoms are, maybe try keeping a food diary for a couple of weeks and just noticing if. Many of your signs and symptoms tie in with certain foods, because once you tune into how your body feels after eating certain things, it opens up a lot more information for you. And you can make much more wise decisions about foods, your food choices. So that would be mind imitated. And then the last one, I think, would be to buy the best quality food that you can. We get so used to food being cheap that we think it should be cheap and it shouldn't actually it should cost a fair amount of our wage package if we're buying good quality food. And I know it depends on what your income level is, but I think to find the best that you can, because we only have one body and we're going to give it the best nourishment that we can if we want to live a healthy life. So maybe be investing as much as you can in good food.
I love the fact that you said in my book I talk about slowing down and savoring the food. And I would say that that is something that even though I've interviewed all these women and that is what they say of just how slow they eat, I would say that is so, so important. I still to this day, like so if you look at a spectrum, like I used to literally inhale my food, like, I mean, like, you know, just like as fast as I possibly could, because I do everything fast. I talk fast, I walk fast, I move fast. And so even still to this day, you know, I've gotten so much better.
I mean, I eat so much slower. I really savor my food, but I'm still not where I need to be as far as I'm still eating too fast and I'm still not savoring and chewing my food to the level that that I have seen people who have great digestion and really have mastered the art of savoring.
I don't feel like I'm I've mastered that.
I'm so much better. But I'm definitely and I love that. That was your number one tip. So tell us a little more about your about nutrition and York, like what is its core mission and how do you gear it to meet each individual's client's specific needs?
OK, so my my own kind of mission has always been about empowering people, sharing the information that I've learned so that they can make good choices themselves. They can have that knowledge to take charge of their own health and actually feel that they're doing something about their health, because quite often people feel powerless, especially when they've got chronic health problems. They feel that they're at the mercy of the medics when actually there's so much that we can do with food. So it's always been a big issue for me to be empowering people and sharing the knowledge. And so I started my clinic ten years ago. So it's been in practice 10 years. And after a while, I then joined an education team, a supplement company, so that I could help people to train to do this and carry that on. And I do a lot of education work now as well. And it's part of why I enjoy writing as well. So if people can let somebody get to see a clinician one on one, then they can read things, you know, you do. But you're podcast that's reaching a lot of people going on the radio or anything like that just to spread the message. And people will pick up tips along the way and that inspires them to start their own journey as well. And I've had several clients who worked with me one on one and then gone on to become a student on the college course where I work. And they've trained to become practitioners themselves because I've just enjoyed the benefits. I've seen how transformative it can be changing what you eat and doing the nutrition in terms of how I kind of tailor it to each client. My business is transitioning a little bit now and I don't really do a lot of work one on one work now. And when I did, it would be very much about finding out what someone's aims were and really personalizing my recommendations to see them and their lifestyle so that no two clients would be getting the same recommendations. It would be unique to that person. And now with doing a lot more workshops and writing work and things, when people join my Facebook group that are two simple questions, I ask them to answer. What interests you about nutrition and what do you find challenging about nutrition? So then I already know what problems people are facing, so I can then tell them I'm content to help them overcome those challenges. And just talking to people at workshops and finding out what they're struggling with and trying to point them in the right direction and give them the resources that they need.
And so talk to everyone I know we talked about gluten. What exactly for people who don't know, why is it so hard for people now to struggle, why they struggle to digest gluten? And what does gluten do exactly when we eat it? Can you talk about that for a second?
Oh, yes, certainly. So gluten I'm the main source of gluten for most people is in wheat because a lot of people have a wheat have. Diet without bread, pizza, things like that, and so the weight that we have now is very, very different to the wheat that was grown even kind of 50 years ago, because it's being crossbred and hybridized and altered and it's got a different protein content. It's much, much higher and gluten. And this is to support the breadmaking industry because a higher gluten content is one of the ways in which that they can break bread faster so they can get a loaf of bread onto the shelf faster rather than having to stick with the traditional long fermentation time that you have to do with traditional heart making techniques. And we as humans, we're not equipped to handle that level of gluten. The gluten is there was a storage protein for the grain and it is very tough to digest. And that's because it's better nourished the grain. It's not that bad and the ratios are told. So we don't really have the enzymes and that digestive system to break that down when we eat gluten and it has this effect in everybody is that it increases the permeability of the lining of your gut. So it stimulates most unwilling to be produced, which increases the permeability, the gaps between the cells and not intestines. So then we get things passing through into our bloodstream that we shouldn't have passing through. And this is one of the ways in which various autoimmune diseases can be triggered. And if you have good digestive health and that permeability is repaired fairly quickly. But so many people don't have good digestive health, they've got imbalances and my got microbiome and their integrity is compromised. I'm pretty constantly. And if you've got this drip, drip feed of gluten coming in all the time and not good permeability, never really get in chance to be dealt with properly. And then this can kind of, in the words of one doctor. It just opens the doorway to inflammation if you're constantly eating gluten in your digestion, compounded by just opening the doorway to information in your body.
So this is why it is linked with so many different health conditions as well.
And now for you personally, do you eat any kind of bread and what kind do you do? Like some people say, you know, I can do sour dough bread because that fermentation process reduces gluten levels. Or is there anything that you can you do to eat bread or do you avoid it at all cost?
I don't have very much bread at home, and when I do, I go for a wheat free, gluten free loaf. And I have I do sometimes maybe have some salad if I'm eating out somewhere. And that's the only thing that I've got is a traditionally made Salvado. But that's not brilliant for me still, because I have more of a problem with you, the wheat proteins rather than the gluten. So what's the gluten levels are much lower in traditional Salvado. You've still got some of the proteins there as well. So so I would have a lot of basketball, maybe one or two slices at the most, and that would be a one off for me. So I tend to just eat a regular gluten free, wheat free love. I have to say I have tried making them myself and I'm absolutely rubbish at baking and other things that I just don't bother.
Even if the bread machine and I used to get it wrong and it came out like a brick. And so I do buy ones from the store and I just yeah, I don't buy very big ones or I'll keep it in the freezer and just get a couple of slices out when I want to.
So why do you think some people do better talk about the sour dough process of why some people might be able to have like a sour dough bread, but they can't have a piece of regular bread?
It's to do with the fermentation process. The sour dough bread traditionally made only has about three or four ingredients in. And you get the salad starter and that kick starts the fermentation process of the grain. And it's all the microbes that are in that sort of stuff. So it's a bit like when you started to make yogurt, it's the bacteria that then turn the milk into yogurt. With photostatic, you've got the bacterias that are helping to cement the grain and it provides its own natural rise to it as well. And there's been studies done. One study was done in Italy a few years ago where they used the traditional Salvado process on making the wheat grains and it had less than 20 parts per million of gluten by the time it was finished. So it could actually be classified as gluten free in some countries because that was low enough gluten content and that was simply through the Salvado fermentation process. They've not done anything else to it at all. And so it's to do with the time that these microbes take to actually start breaking the grain down and they break down the gluten. So then it's not such a problem for us.
I'm reading it now. The question I ask all my guests take me through a normal day in the life of Sally. Like, what did you eat yesterday? When did you eat it? Did you work out? And kind of what did your day look like?
OK, so yesterday is Tuesday, so I go running. Twice a week, but yesterday wasn't a wedding day, so I did a yoga workout when I got up in the morning, and so I love yoga. I've been doing it for years. On Tuesday mornings, I have a little bit more time. So I tend to do a longer yoga practice, about 45 minutes or something. So I did that first and then I have my breakfast, which was about three or four tablespoons of cooked apple, stewed apple, organic apples. And I have that with some sugar free granola. It's canola that was made with honey and I have some organic soya yogurt and I always took a good town full of nuts as well. So that was all mixed up with the cold yogurt. And then at lunchtime yesterday, it was unusually a vegetarian day for me. I'm not often have kind of a vegetarian meal, but not a whole day. But my friend had made a lovely vegetable curry and a doll I made the day before and I had leftovers. So I had leftover toto with some rice and some rocket and solid bits for my lunch at work and then for tea. We had baked small baked potato with plenty of Sri Lankan vegetable curry with that. And that was my tea. Yeah. And I actually had a cake yesterday. Well, yes, I met a client in the afternoon and did interview and I treated myself and had a plum oat crumble kind of cake.
Yeah, that was well I have if you go to my site, go to Chantel Ray dot com slash recipes. I have the best granola recipe.
It's made with a little bit of honey, but it is to die for like anyone who's made it. And you have to follow the recipe exact because you have to take the granola, take it out of the oven and then put it back. It's easy to do, but you have to follow it exact. And I'm telling you, it will be the best granola you've ever had.
So try that because I make my own. And if you can beat my then I'm obsessed with granola.
I love it. Well, let's jump right into the listener questions. This first one is from Cori in Stafford. Hi there. I love the podcast and the book question, though I have adrenal fatigue and really struggled with 16 hour fasts, even got debilitating headaches several days a week for several weeks. Then I heard from two different nutritionists that they don't recommend fasting with adrenal fatigue since it adds more stress to your body. Just wondering what your take is now.
Have you do you personally do any fasting at all yourself?
And the most I will do is a twelve hour overnight rest. Yes, that's it. And certainly for someone like me with the adrenaline take, I definitely wouldn't recommend anything longer than a twelve hour fast at because it's simply putting more stress on your adrenal glands that you've got adrenal fatigue. They're already massively overworked, but if you're fasting for a long time, it can be that your body's needing to try and produce more cortisol to mobilize and be stored sugars in your muscles. And if you've got adrenal fatigue, it's already struggling to produce enough cortisol. So please just give you a adrenals arrest and maximum 12 hours and do the overnight so that you're already resting as well, but no longer than that.
Yeah.
And I think that what what she needs to do is really try to get down to the root cause of what is going on with the adrenal fatigue, because for for me, I have literally seen people who have had adrenal fatigue and they you know, I believe intermittent fasting literally improves people's hunger and fullness improves their blood sugar, affecting hormones. It helps it has so many benefits of it. But you have to, like, get your body to adjust. So it's like if you go from if you already have adrenal fatigue and now you're doing longer, fast, your body is you're right.
It's going to put it into a stress state. But I believe that you can work your way up to it. And I believe that the fasting can can help you. So my suggestion for her would be maybe bring bring your eating, make your eating one no longer, but then slowly start decreasing it and the debilitating headaches that is probably caused from some sort of food sensitivity that she's having. So I would really dove into what is that food sensitivity that she's having? Because the I don't believe that the the headaches are causing if she's eating.
You know, she's only doing a 16 hour fast, that's not going to get her to a debilitating headache, but that's got to be a root cause of something else. So we have to figure out what that root causes could be.
And it certainly could be to do with inadequate magnesium levels as well, because you adrenals need a lot of magnesium to function on one side of magnesium deficiency instead. So look into that as well.
Yes. So let's expand on that just a little bit, because I personally believe I have a little bit of a magnesium deficiency as well.
Talk about what your favorite part, your favorite magnesium supplement would be and how they would take that.
OK, so there's a few and I think it depends on the person as well. So magnesium citrate would be one that I would generally start with. And if someone has very good digestion, then a capsule would be OK. Sometimes the people I say don't have very good digestion and magnesium is a little bit of a diva when it comes to being absorbed. It likes the microbiome to be in balance before it will be properly exposed. But if he's got IBS or anything like that, then maybe look at a transdermal form of magnesium, first of all. So using Epsom salts in the bath, that can help at a magnesium spread. So there's quite a few good transdermal magnesium sprays that can be used. And so you're absorbing the magnesium through your skin. First of all, that can be used alongside its habitat as well as a lower dose tablet or capsule just to try and get magnesium in through two different avenues, as it were.
Magnesium blastin. It is very good. Basically, if you and I want to support the kind of the calming side of the nervous system. So somebody is very hyperactive or overstimulated, anxious and the magnesium glass. And it can be helpful because it's a magnesium bound to glycine, which is a common neurotransmitter for the brain. And that would be a good form as well. I tend to avoid the magnesium oxide, the cheaper form simply because it can have the laxative effect and the people generally not what they want. But yes, I would tend to go straight guys tonight and also consider the transdermal forms as well.
Yeah. And I mean some of the other things for magnesium deficiency for this lady, maybe she would say, OK, are you fatigued? Obviously she has the headaches. Does she have digestive trouble? Is she having trouble with sleeping? Does she have brain fog or constipation? Then magnesium deficiency might be a big factor for her. What do you think about testing for magnesium, like in their blood levels and doing a magnesium RBC test?
I'm I tend not to do the blood test side of things because your body will keep levels of minerals within very tight parameters within the blood. So it's always a very accurate reflection of what's going on at a cellular level. But I have used the urine test that do like the organic acid tests. And so it's a simple urine sample, one which looks at the metabolic markers and that show how well you are using these minerals and vitamins in your system.
So that can be a good way to look at how your body is using magnesium. Is it functionally being used? Because we do see a difference between blood samples and actually have been used in the system. And V12 isn't a very good example of that. Your body will keep vitamin B 12 within a tight parameters, but if you then check metabolic acid in the urine, that can tell a very different story to what A and B 12 is doing. So I tend to favor the urine test that is more of a function of.
Yeah, and I think it's also a good idea to check people's vitamin D levels, because since my ammend vitamin D depend on each other for function and absorption to making sure they're not just getting vitamin D, but also getting that magnesium. So that might really help. All right. This next one is from Ashley in New London. I wonder where a new London is. I don't know what that is. It says, I have become obsessed with listening to your podcast. Thank you. My question is, my sister's daughter has terrible eczema. She's 19 months and has been food allergy tested, and it all came back normal. I've been trying to help her out by suggesting things like a safer detergent, nonalcoholic lotions, etc.. What can she do to get the root cause of eczema? Ashley in New London.
OK. Yeah, that's an interesting one. I would want to know what kind of food allergy test was done there? Was it a skin test with a blood test? What were they looking at in the blood or are they just looking at a full on the allergic response? Or are they looking at ECG, which is more associated with the sensitivities and intolerances, but equally, because the little girl is under two, I wouldn't always put that much emphasis on that result and certainly wouldn't do an egg test on a child under two anyway because the immune system is still developing. So it's not going to give you a clear, accurate picture.
And I would consider certainly doing a food diary to see what the girl is eating, to see if you can kind of pick up on any thing that inflames it even more. Things get better at some point. And there's quite a bit of research looking at dairy with childhood eczema. So you could even experiment with going dairy free for perhaps a month and see if that makes a difference. And obviously looking at other food sources of things like calcium so that she's not going to miss out on anything. But a lot of the dairy free milk tend to be fortified with calcium these days anyway. So that could be something to consider and certainly discussed with Dr.. That, yeah, the dairy alternatives would be an interesting one, I would do that first and then I mean, those are the things that can be an intolerance and sensitivity that won't necessarily show up on a test as well. So things like histamine foods can often provoke eczema, even salicylate foods high in salicylate that can be linked with eczema as well. And I would start with the dairy because that is quite a common trigger, the childhood eczema. I would keep in mind that there are other things in foods that can cause problems that eczema, but won't necessarily show up on a standard blood test. And in terms of what you could eat to try and easier than it would be very much an anti inflammatory diet and one that's got plenty of the good fats in there as well. So we need lots of you make a three, six and nine to help with the cell membranes, to help reduce the inflammation and support the skin health and things.
I think it's been a while, you know, sweets and vegetables, a patch with all the different antioxidant compounds as well that help to manage inflammation in the body. And so those are the areas that I would start with, really. And it can take time, unfortunately, out eczema. It's not always an overnight thing.
Yeah, I agree. I would definitely do an elimination diet. I would I would get rid of I would try to do dairy, eggs, gluten, wheat, soy, tomatoes. And I would also look at citrus fruits because I've had a lot of people who have emailed in with questions and they say that citrus fruits actually flare up their eczema.
Yeah, I wouldn't do all of those at once because we've got to remember, she's 19 months old. That's true. I would definitely want to add time. And that's what helps.
Yeah, for sure. And then I have heard that people with eczema, especially if it's on their hands and feet, that they benefit from eating foods that don't contain nickel and nickel, is found in trace amounts in the soil and can be like in some of the foods.
And some of that is like in nuts, seeds and meats, chocolate. Yeah, I would look at some of that.
So but I definitely would say, you know, trying that elimination diet is really the best thing and taking out certain things and seeing if that improves for sure.
Yeah. Taking them out one at a time and really focusing on things that, you know, she can have as well. It is difficult because it really is, because quite often they're picky eaters anyway, but they've got a limited diet and then not they're not the same mindset as an adult. Think. OK, I don't really want to eat quinoa, but this is going to do me good while I'm avoiding something else. You know, if a child does want to eat quinoa, you're not going to get to eat them. So you got a little bit of compromise with that.
Yes. And then she said, I've been also trying to help her out by suggesting things like safer detergent, nonalcoholic lotions. What are some of your favorite products as far as detergents go, organic detergents or any kind of lotions or products that you love?
So here in the UK, we've got Ecover. I don't know if you guys have it in America, eco of an eco leaf. There are two lovely detergents that are very ethical, but also just minimum chemicals in there as well, using things like these laundry bowls that you can get that they don't have any detergent and some have natural soaps and some plants as well. So they're basically just helping with the friction of your washing in the water. So I'm just 100 percent chemical free. So, you know, there's nothing in there whatsoever that could be helpful in terms of the lotions. Usually with eczema, it's good to have two or three and rotate between them so the skin doesn't get used to them. And out of there it can be very helpful because that's just so wonderfully soothing. And the polysaccharides in there really support the skin health anyway. Jason, do you have Gessen's in America? Yes, that's yeah, they do really nice Oliviera cream and nice Calendula cream. If you've got a herbalist that can put together a calendula cream, that's Marigold's. That's incredibly soothing and healing for any kind of skin condition. And it's very, very simple on the skin. Lovely for babies and children. So I'd recommend you to one as well.
Yeah, my husband likes my husband. I was using this brand called Seventh Generation and it was free and clear and had no sense.
And he was like, I need to get something with some kind of scent. He's like, I don't like like smelling my towel and it doesn't smell good. So they do have one that's like a fresh lab in. And it is made with all essential oils, which is good, but yeah, I wouldn't touch, like, regular laundry detergent, like a tiger or any of those to save myself.
And I certainly would try to steer clear of the steroid creams as well, because I just. Yeah. Cause problems further down the line or anything that's got a paraffin base to it as well. Just not great. And destroy the Skins natural oil barrier with that.
All right, this is from Kayla in Grand Rapids, I'm getting married in seven months and going on my honeymoon in Bora Bora. I can't wait, but I really want to look good in my bathing suit and I need to get six pack abs. How should I eat to get six pack abs? Kayla in Grand Rapids.
Wow. Well, congratulations, Kayla. That sounds exciting.
Yeah. The first thing that makes me think about is do you actually really need six pack abs for your wedding?
Because that is a lot of pressure on yourself. And you don't to lose the focus of all the excitement that's going to be building up their wedding and what the wedding is actually about. So I always try and get fit and healthy, but please don't lose perspective on what this day is and what we say means for you, because you can still have an amazing honeymoon without six packs if your abs. I had a wonderful honeymoon and my stomach is nowhere near a six pack. So great idea. But please keep it in perspective.
I don't want you to lose out and enjoyment of what they spend the day and the honeymoon is all about. I think really this is partly nutrition, but also exercise. I mean, if you want perhaps you're going to be a lot of vigorous exercise routine to stick to that. So if you're already in a gym, then joining a gym or getting a personal trainer or something like that is going to be really important for you to stay focused and to have a plan to develop your exercises to get to that point in terms of what you're eating, Ben. Well, it's a good balance of everything, but certainly looking at the facts. So a good balance of healthy facts, because the facts will help your metabolism to help stimulate your metabolism so that you burn more fat effectively. So if we're talking about converting into muscle, then certainly looking at your face, that's going to be really helpful and eating things such as grass fed beef and the full fat dairy because they contain you conjugated linoleic acid, which is something that can help. And if you're training to do that conversion of fat to muscles. So it helps with the muscle building. And looking at your protein intake, obviously, because we need that fat, I'm healthy muscles when you're training and also the antioxidants, which are often overlooked when people are trying to lose weight and not turn up, your fat cells have a lot of toxins. So it is really important to make sure you've got a really good intake of antioxidants, because once you start breaking down those fat cells, you're releasing toxins into your system. So again, this comes back to a brightly colored fruits and vegetables, maybe the vegetables, because they've got a higher content making sure you are eating a Remco, a good seven servings of veg every day, maybe a couple of fruit as well. And just to make sure you've got a really good supply of the antioxidants. And again, that helps with recovery after training as well. So things like delayed onset muscle soreness, if you've got plenty of antioxidants, vitamin C and vitamin E system, too. So those are the main areas I'd be looking at and obviously cutting out old, refined, processed foods, refined sugars, everything like that, and not necessarily going completely carb free because you do need carbs, your energy levels. So but just looking at your portion size that and keeping that in balance and everything else that you're having. Good luck.
And I remember you saying that you said butter is something that you don't do. You do OK with.
And I saw on your your site you had a great recipe for how to make homemade ghee talk about how someone does that, how to make homemade ghee and why is that a little bit better than butter for some people?
So the game is pretty much pure butterfat. So it's taken out the proteins and it's taken out a 100 percent guarantee and it's taken out nearly all the lactose, the milk, sugar. And so it's often suitable for people that are lactose intolerant like me. And it's very easy to make your own ghee. So just by a good product of good quality grass fed and dairy butter, organic if you can, and you chop it up into little cubes and then you start melting gently and you keep an eye on it, just stirring it every now and again. And it will go through various stages of building up and then the bubbles will come down and then it will bubble up again and you'll start to see these red colored sediment at the bottom of the pan. And once that has formed and you've had that second round of bubbles come up, then it's ready to strain and you strain it through cheesecloth.
And I'm very, very fine. Mesh into a joke and then cover it in a sterilized jar and you leave it to set. And it's just wonderful. Your kitchen with my popcorn when you make a is absolutely gorgeous and it will just fit and then that's it. Then again, you get to go to cooking possum.
And how often do you make that?
Oh, when I get time, I really haven't got any in the kitchen at the minute, but I just, I keep buying the butter thinking this weekend I will make some will get eaten.
Yeah. And because you don't feel terrible when you eat it so you're like OK, I can and you can buy.
Yeah. And I don't, I don't use a lot of butter in cooking anyway. I tend to cook more with coconut oil so.
Yeah. And a little bit of both tried to use. I can tolerate that. Absolutely. Fine. That just adds a different element if you're doing an Indian dish for example, because that's what they were traditionally used. The frying is think it's just an amazing smell and taste. Yeah.
OK, this one's from Laura in Chesapeake. Recently I've been getting really bad heartburn.
I notice it more whenever I eat anything that contains chicken, grilled chicken, fried chicken, even just a little portion of shredded chicken mixed in with other foods. I never used to get it. Then suddenly, almost I get it almost all the time. I've tried taking over the counter medicine to help, but it doesn't really do much for my symptoms. Is there anything on the more natural side that I can take to help prevent this? Also, is there any reason I specifically only get it whenever I eat chicken? Laura in Chesapeake.
Oh, Laura, this is a bit of a puzzler. I mean, there's no reason why I can think of that. It would just be specifically chicken. But then also why not? You know, we all have different ways in which we can tolerate things. So it may be that chicken is the trigger for the heart, but. One thing I was thinking about was, is it right, fatty, checking that you're having because I fatty foods, they do stimulate a production of something called Kinnane, which is part of our digestive process, and you're producing it anyway. But as you get higher amounts of it produced in response to very fatty foods, and that can relax the ring of muscle at the top of your stomach.
So that may be accommodating a little bit more of the reflux and the heartburn. And so that's just a thought in case it is very fatty, because when I mention that it happens, whether it is fried as well as I would expect that to do that, then coming back to what we talked about earlier, are you taking time to eat how you relax when you're eating? Are you chewing your food properly? Because if not, if you're eating in a hurry, then the signals aren't being sent to your stomach to get ready for the food. So food will arrive and it will certainly have to produce a flush of stomach acid. And sometimes this can mean that too much is produced. And also the lowering of muscle, the sphincter muscle at the top of your stomach doesn't close properly and then you can get a little bit more kind of heartburn or reflux coming back up. So I definitely look at your eating habits to make sure you are relaxing, sitting down to eat, sitting down and sitting still for a few minutes after you've eaten as well to allow the food to pass down comfortably to your stomach and to make sure that's happening in terms of remedies that you could use to support it. One of my favorite ones, the heart, that is something called silicone gel. Do you guys have it over there?
I haven't heard of it.
We might have an equivalent. It's just silica gel, is it? It really is very, very polite. And at the silica helps to coat and soothe all the digestive tract right the way through from the mouth, right the through direct. So it's good for any kind of inflammation or irritation at any point in your digestive system, but it's really cool, soothing for heartburn and reflux. So that would be an option and also very good quality. Other beverages can help as well. So using that regularly can again help with the symptoms using digestive bitters before you eat. That's a favorite of mine because that helps to stimulate the vagus nerve, which tells the stomach to get ready for food. And it also helps the help to toe that ring of muscle at the top of your stomach as well. So maybe looking at things like Santori, Yaro Dandelion and quite a few different digestive bits and you can get them combinations as well. And they do taste really better. And that is the point. You have to just hold it in your mouth for a minute or so, left that bitter taste work and then swallow it if it's really persistent. And if this gets worse, then I would definitely say a practitioner because it could be worth being checked out for Helicobacter pylori, just in case you've gone over overgrowth of that, because that is one of the symptoms of that as well.
And then another idea would be for her to take HGL between HCO with Pepsin and because, you know, if you have protein in your stomach and you have low stomach acid and you're not able to break down because proteins require stomach acid and pepsin to break down the food, where if you're not having if you're not eating protein, it's not it doesn't require as much stomach acid to break it down. And so if you're eating a meal that's lacking in protein, you probably don't need as much HDL. But if you are having let's say, you know. Who knows, 15 ounces, that's a lot, but eight ounces of chicken breast for lunch, that B10 HOUSECALL with pepsin could help you digest that protein. So that's what I would suggest, is to try taking some of that and seeing if maybe you just are low on stomach acid and need that stomach acid to help you digest your food, is it?
Yeah, it is true. I have to say, it's not something I would normally do first.
I tend to go more for the digestive bitters first digested, but it's about retraining the body to produce its own and just getting that response back and the reaction of the vagus nerve and things. And sometimes if somebody is already having the heartburn and they've got the irritation, that then the actual beating and pepsin can make that irritation a bit worse. But if the digestive bit isn't enough, then you're trying to move on to something that might be tame and just start really low dose on that because was taking assets the starting low and building it off gradually.
So talk about the digestive bitters just for a little bit of how do you take them? When do you take them of, you know, like right before you're about to eat or and what is your favorite kind of bran that you like?
OK, I'm there's a few different combinations. And the idea is that you take them about 10 to 20 minutes before a meal. They come as a liquid. Now, you can get capsular versions of some of these herbs. But in this case, if you're trying to support the stomach and stomach acid production, you need to have a liquid. So it comes as a tincture and you put the drops into a little bit of water, hold it in your mouth and it tastes better. It really does. But that stimulates the bitter taste on your tongue, which then tells the vagus nerve, and that goes down to the stomach. So you sending these nerve messages down to your stomach and so it starts to produce the gastric juices in response to that bitter taste so that when you eat the food, the stomach is already ready and the gastric juices in there so they can get to work digesting your food properly. And some of the bitters makes them tolerate that. Also has a tonic effect on the ballot, esophageal sphincter, that ring of muscle at the top of the stomach. So helping them to close properly and keep the food and the acid in the stomach rather than reflecting back up again.
I've got I got nature's answer. Do you have nature's answer?
And I've heard that one. I've heard of urban moonshine. Have you heard of that one now?
I've never heard of that one, but I'm sure there's lots of them. I tend to go for nature's onset of Meridien or a vocal.
They do some different ones as well, so they tend to have very similar herbs and so Yare Santori, tons of iron and they tend to be kind of on a theme of those. Sometimes I might have Ginger as well. I would avoid anything with peppermint because peppermint can relax that muscle at the top of the stomach. And so that can actually make heartburn worse for some people. But going for those bitters is really helpful. If you forget to take them before your meal, you can take them afterwards just as soon as possible afterwards, so that it is going to still work on that food that is in your stomach with the power of the food.
So how long are you putting it just in your mouth before you swallow it?
If you can do about thirty seconds, that's pretty good, but it does taste better. So some people can't and they just kind of knock it back. That's fine. You know, you still going to get an effect from it. But if you can allow that taste to circulate in your mouth, then it's helping to stimulate the nerves.
Well, it's been an absolute pleasure. Just listening to you talk is just soothing.
I love your accent so much.
So where can our listeners go to follow you and your work so I can be found at debatably nutrition in York? Dakotah UK, that's my website. And then I have a free Facebook group, which is also called Nutrition in New York. And if you want to join, to apply, to join. Like I say, there's a couple of questions, just quick questions to answer and then that's it. There's also a Facebook page of the same name as well. I'm on Twitter, which is about nutrition in York. So it's all the same time. Just remember, nutrition in York, pass them.
And if you have a question that you want answered, go to questions at Chantel Ray dot com. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.