Ever felt like you're on a merry-go-round of treating health symptoms without ever getting to the heart of the problem? Well, buckle up for an eye-opening journey with us, Dr. Jake Berman and physician assistant Jenni Berman, as we unravel the often overlooked roots of common health issues. From Jenni's personal victory over irritable bowel syndrome through a gut health overhaul, to the surprising impact of stress-related cortisol imbalances, this episode is a trove of insights on natural and holistic healthcare approaches. Discover how to navigate the medical maze with self-advocacy and learn why the 80/20 rule could be the game-changer in managing your wellness.
This isn't just another health and fitness talk; it's a robust discussion on the transformative power of exercise and nutrition. As we share our personal narratives on making thoughtful food choices and the mental tug-of-war that accompanies it, you'll see why strength training is more than a path to weight loss—it's a cornerstone of longevity and a vibrant life. Learn about the symbiotic relationship between muscle mass, metabolic rate, and calorie deficit, and why the nutritional value of your food can be more important than its calorie content. Plus, we take the guilt out of pleasure eating by embracing a balanced 80/20 approach to diet. Join us for a conversation that might just redefine the way you think about health and happiness.
Check Us Out On Social Media - Facebook: @bermanwellness , @physicaltherapynaples, @Berman Golf Instagram: @berman_wellness, @bermanphysicaltherapy , @Berman Golf Youtube: Berman Golf, Berman Physical Therapy TikTok: Bermangolf, Bermanwellness
Email us - drberman@bermanpt.com jenni@bermanwellness.com
Check out our website - https://www.bermanpt.com/ https://www.bermanpt.com/wellness/ https://bermangolf.com/
Ever felt like you're on a merry-go-round of treating health symptoms without ever getting to the heart of the problem? Well, buckle up for an eye-opening journey with us, Dr. Jake Berman and physician assistant Jenni Berman, as we unravel the often overlooked roots of common health issues. From Jenni's personal victory over irritable bowel syndrome through a gut health overhaul, to the surprising impact of stress-related cortisol imbalances, this episode is a trove of insights on natural and holistic healthcare approaches. Discover how to navigate the medical maze with self-advocacy and learn why the 80/20 rule could be the game-changer in managing your wellness.
This isn't just another health and fitness talk; it's a robust discussion on the transformative power of exercise and nutrition. As we share our personal narratives on making thoughtful food choices and the mental tug-of-war that accompanies it, you'll see why strength training is more than a path to weight loss—it's a cornerstone of longevity and a vibrant life. Learn about the symbiotic relationship between muscle mass, metabolic rate, and calorie deficit, and why the nutritional value of your food can be more important than its calorie content. Plus, we take the guilt out of pleasure eating by embracing a balanced 80/20 approach to diet. Join us for a conversation that might just redefine the way you think about health and happiness.
Check Us Out On Social Media - Facebook: @bermanwellness , @physicaltherapynaples, @Berman Golf Instagram: @berman_wellness, @bermanphysicaltherapy , @Berman Golf Youtube: Berman Golf, Berman Physical Therapy TikTok: Bermangolf, Bermanwellness
Email us - drberman@bermanpt.com jenni@bermanwellness.com
Check out our website - https://www.bermanpt.com/ https://www.bermanpt.com/wellness/ https://bermangolf.com/
Speaker 1:
This is the Berman Method Podcast, featuring Dr Jake Berman and physician assistant Jenny Berman. We are here to treat problems and not symptoms. Disclaimer this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and not to treat anyone or to give medical advice. If you are interested in any information that we are giving and would like to use this for yourself, we recommend that you contact your primary care physician or reach out to us and ask us questions about yourself specifically. Enjoy.
Speaker 2:
And we're back with the Berman Method Podcast, treating problems and not symptoms. David against Goliath. How's my tone or tune? Am I in tune with my tone? My tone is good, it's good. Pitch perfect 17. I think I'll make it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, we keep talking about you trying out and you just have to commit.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. If anybody knows when the next auditions are for pitch perfect 17, let me know.
Speaker 1:
Well, you should just commit and do your own research. That's what we preach. All the time you got to be your own self-advocate.
Speaker 2:
Did I ever tell the story on this podcast about how one of my patients at the first office told me that he wished I was on the radio? No, I never said that. Okay. So there we were. I was in Destin, in the panhandle, at my first job ever at a PT school, and I would randomly just serenade my patients as I was working on them, singing along with the radio. And I was working on this guy's hip one day and I belted out some lyrics to something and he goes man, I wish you were on the radio. And I said, finally, finally, somebody that appreciates my talent. And he goes no, no, no, I wish you were on the radio, that way I could turn you off.
Speaker 2:
Just shut you up, oh my goodness, I was like Okay to Shay, good burn. Anyways, the Berman Method podcast focused on treating problems, not symptoms on the physical front, the internal front, the gut, the systemic front right. Focusing on not taking pharmaceutical medication something that was synthetically compounded in a lab somewhere versus something that was organically grown out in the wild. Right. We shouldn't be focusing or relying on some drugs, some chemical that was synthesized in the lab Right.
Speaker 1:
Right. What can we do internally? What can we put into our body that is whole natural.
Speaker 2:
Yes.
Speaker 1:
To treat problems and not symptoms.
Speaker 2:
Good. Give me an example of treating a problem, not a symptom, in your world.
Speaker 1:
In the functional medicine world, treating our gut and not just taking medications for irritable bowel syndrome, not just taking that medicine to make you stop having diarrhea, that pharmaceutical medicine so that you're not having diarrhea, and we're actually treating it from the gut, from the inside. What is causing the inflammation in the first place? Yes, you're having diarrhea. That's a symptom, that's not a problem. The problem is with your gut lining. There's probably a food that you're eating that your body is not tolerating and is causing your immune system to react. It might be your cortisol, which is a stress hormone, which is causing your body to react. So where is the problem causing your diarrhea or constipation with irritable bowel syndrome?
Speaker 2:
Versus taking the pink stuff.
Speaker 1:
The pink stuff, a prescription medicine to stop you up or to help you go. There's probably I don't know for sure but 12 different medications out there prescriptions to help you with your bowel movements, as opposed to figuring out what the problem is. This all goes back to. If you have read my book. I wrote a book. If you don't know, it's on Amazon. Listening to your Gut is the name of it, jenny Berman. But my majority of the first chapter of my book is talking about my journey, and we've talked about this a couple times on the podcast. But the fact that I was 25 years old, graduated from PA school and taking 21 pills a day just so I could stay out of the bathroom and function.
Speaker 2:
Was it 21?
Speaker 1:
21 pills and we thought I was going to have to live on that forever.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Because I was taking, like I think, seven, three times a day.
Speaker 2:
Oh, it was seven pills before every meal.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I was taking a handful of they called them supplements pills Before every meal. There were seven of them.
Speaker 2:
They weren't supplements, though.
Speaker 1:
They were pills, yeah prescriptions.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, there was nothing supplement about it. It was something that was synthesized in a lab, somebody wearing a white lab coat.
Speaker 1:
Mm-hmm, but that was the seven was in combination with like enzymes and all these things. Now I'm taking zero digestive enzymes because I figured out what the problem was and treated the problem of these food sensitivities and the fact that my cortisol level was extremely abnormal after going through PA school. There are things that we can do to control the cortisol or stress response. So this brings us to you know, yes, we treat problems and not symptoms. Don't just take the prescription.
Speaker 1:
Figure out what the problem is and, as we've talked about multiple times on this podcast, you oftentimes have to be a self-advocate for yourself and say that taking that pill is not enough. I want more answers, I need more investigation, I need more time, I need somebody else to look at this a little bit differently, which is where functional medicine or a manual physical therapy out of network clinic can come in for whatever your issues are, to say that you're just not going to take that pill, you're not going to have that surgery without having more answers, more investigation, and something we wanted to talk about today, kind of leading into that, is the 80-20 rule for your body. We hear it all the time that we have to that 80% comes from the kitchen 20% exercise. That's something that we've been told forever. 80-20 for our health right.
Speaker 2:
We've been told. I don't know that. We've been told Like you, and I have personally been told it. I don't think that the vast majority of America has been told that 80% of your results come from the kitchen, not from the gym. You don't think so. You don't think that's a well-known thing?
Speaker 1:
I do not think that's a well-known thing I really don't think so Well when you are working towards health. The majority of the time you'll at some point see the quote 80% Diet, 80% kitchen, 20% exercise. So the point of that is you can't outwork a bad diet.
Speaker 2:
That's the big thing right there. That's the point of the 80 20 you can never outwork a bad diet.
Speaker 1:
Initially, when I got into the functional medicine world, I was like you know, I would really even say that 90% of it's the kitchen and 10% of it is Exercise, and I do think that the 10% exercise is still true. I still believe that. But that's not it. So we have. I'm gonna come back.
Speaker 2:
Can I interrupt you for one second? Yeah, let me do it an exploit. Let me get clear. We're saying 80 20. So let's start off with a simple goal. If your goal is to lose 20 pounds and to tone up and get a Physique that you're looking for, what we're saying is to reach that goal, it's gonna require a hundred percent effort of some sort. 80% of the effort is coming from the kitchen, 20% is coming from the gym. That's what we're saying. We're not just to put it as simple as possible right, that is correct.
Speaker 1:
And so where I was going from there is that when I first got into functional medicine, I was like man. I could really argue that 90% of your goals, if it's to lose weight, to gain muscle, to heal your gut, to Whatever fix your sleep, I would say 90% of it's your food and the other 10% is your exercise. And now I've come back to say, okay, I agreed, the 10% of exercise is still true. I'm still standing my ground on that point, but I would pull back to say that 80% is coming from food. So where's that other 10% coming from? That other 10% is coming from our lifestyle, from getting to bed on time to Getting adequate, restful sleep, to meditating, to getting yoga, to having stress relieving Options for your body techniques. You know, for me personally, I don't meditate or go to yoga. That's not what.
Speaker 2:
My body.
Speaker 1:
That's not me. I'm Jenny Berman, not gonna relax from meditation and yoga. But getting outside and walking 10 minutes after lunch and 10 minutes after dinner, that's something that's gonna bring my cortisol down. Getting on the boat with my family, that's gonna bring my cortisol down. So, to come back, what I'm saying is 80% is coming from the foods that we're putting into our body and we'll go on that topic in a minute. 10% coming from your exercise, because that is important at the end of the day. Again, I'll touch on that. But we have to have 10% of a lifestyle that is going to Bring our stress response down, recharge our batteries, allow us to Smile and laugh and to have that relaxation technique for dopamine, serotonin levels to regenerate. That is another key factor in our entire lifestyle of reaching our goals. And you're gonna tell me well, meditating is not gonna make me lose five pounds. But if meditating brings your cortisol, your stress level down, that is a key component to being able to lose five pounds.
Speaker 1:
Love it, absolutely love it so going from there, because I said I would come back to the exercise and the dietary part and Exercise is absolutely important. We have to. At the end of the day, if we're looking to lose weight, we have to burn more calories than we're consuming, right? That's the, the definition of getting a calorie deficit which allows our body to burn fat, even though that's not the the only equation that goes into weight loss. So exercise is important for that department. However, the more important reason for the exercise and specifically strength training is we have to have muscle mass. The more muscle mass we have, the more calories our body burns at rest. So we can get into more of a calorie deficit if we have more muscle mass. But also muscle mass the amount of muscle mass we have ultimately defines our longevity and our quality of life for more years comes from the amount of muscle mass that we have.
Speaker 2:
I think that's the most important thing is everything that we're doing right here, right now, at this season of life that we're in. This is setting up our quality of life as we get into our 60s, 70s, 80s and hopefully 90s and maybe even above. The thing that I can say has a direct correlation with quality of life into your 80s and 90s is how strong you are. It has minimal to do with what's showing up on your blood work and has maximal to do with your ability to get your ass out of a chair, to get up and down from the ground. The people that I've met in their late 80s and 90s that can get down on the ground and get back up again, they have exponentially greater quality of life than those that are scared of falling, those that are spending the majority of their time in a recliner. It's completely different. So we're setting ourselves up now.
Speaker 1:
Exactly so that 10% of getting in the gym is not about just getting on the treadmill or getting on the elliptical or the stair master and burning calories.
Speaker 1:
It's about getting in a place, a comfortable place, where you can do body weight exercises, you can lift weights, you can use resistance bands to gain that lean muscle mass. That is a key component to your longevity, to your mood stability, to your sleep, your energy and your overall immune system. And then, absolutely the other 80% has to come from what you're putting into your body and not just, again, calories. Calories is not, it's not even relevant. It's not even okay. It's a little bit relevant, but not that important. More importantly is what types of things are you putting into your body? Are you putting foods into your body that your immune system is reacting to, or are you putting foods into your body that your body is actually absorbing, similar to what we talked about on the last podcast that was the last podcast, right, that we talked about bioavailability. The other 80% comes to the amount of proteins that you're putting in your body so you can actually regenerate that muscle mass and gain muscle mass as we're aging instead of losing it.
Speaker 2:
I love it, love it, love it, love it. Thinking about food as fuel, because once I started seeing food as fuel, it made tough decisions less tough. And here's the way that I look at it. Do you want your body to perform like a sports car or like a 1985 Corolla that you know it's dependable, it gets you from point A to point B, doesn't have power windows, seats are torn, ac doesn't work, sometimes it fires up, sometimes it doesn't. Or do you want it to be like a sports car?
Speaker 2:
If you look at those two vehicles a sports car or a 1985 Corolla that has been used and abused, road hard, put up wet, the sports car is not going to perform the way that it should. If you put in 87 octane at the gas station, you need to put a minimum of 93 octane, because 93 octane is better quality fuel than 87. Everybody can agree on that. Versus the 1985 Corolla, it's going to do just you could not tell a difference. If you put 87, 93, 104 racing fuel on it, it might blow up actually if you put too good a fuel in it, but the 85 Corolla, it's not going to matter.
Speaker 2:
Your body is the same way. So when I started looking at food as fuel, it's like, really, at the end of the day, it shouldn't matter if it tastes good or not, because it's just fuel for your body. And that helps me out tremendously. And this is a mental battle that I deal with every single day. It's not easy for me to look at a plate full of protein and vegetables and say, okay, it's going down. It's easier for the protein, but the veggies it's like, ah, come on, just power through it. And I'm going, okay, this is fuel, pound these veggies, pound the protein, save the carbs for last, if we have carbs on the plate. Same thing is true for cookies.
Speaker 2:
Now, if you rewind to the first episodes on this podcast, when we first started two years ago, three years ago, I had a really, really difficult time saying no to chocolate chip cookies. If there was a plate of chocolate chip cookies there, 10 of them are gone within 90 seconds and I don't even know what just happened Versus. Now, when I see the cookies, I'm going that's fuel. Do I want to put the sludge into the car? Do I want to put sludge into a sports car. Yes, I'm considering my body a sports car, a 40-year-old dad bod sports car. I'm not 40 yet. Or do I just want to put one or two pieces of sludge into the sports car? So it's not that bad.
Speaker 1:
Right. Right, and that's another side of this 80-20 role is being on 80% of the time and having 20% of a little bit of freedom, and certainly that's important. We need to have those times where we have the 20% of freedom. So, one, we know what it feels like and know when we actually feel better being the 80% on. But two, we don't want any sort of deprivation, right, and so having that 20% of freedom is important.
Speaker 1:
But what are you doing in that 20% of freedom? Are you sticking to your food sensitivities, because you know that certain foods are toxic to your body, so you can have a little bit of fun and a little bit of freedom without putting toxins destroying your insides, putting toxins into your body? So again, the 80%, with 80% meal plan. What are you putting into your body? What kind of fuel are you putting in that car? 10% of movement and exercise, because you need to continue to gain lean muscle mass. 10% of your lifestyle bringing your stress levels down, making sure you're getting to bed on time, waking up on the first time your alarm goes off and not the fourth time, because that's not good for your stress response within your body either. And then, following the 80%, 20% where 80% you are on, you are perfect, you are grinding it out and 20%. Once you're in that maintenance state can have a little bit more of the freedom and be able to put yourself right back on track the next day.
Speaker 2:
Exactly and, by the way, blue Light Special. If you've got to this stage and listening to us preach up here our sermons, whatever you want to call it, and you're hitting the snooze button, you need to unsubscribe today. Nobody listening to us regularly. Better be hitting the snooze button. Set your freaking alarm for the time that you need to get up. Don't set your alarm 20 minutes or 30 minutes before you need to get up, because it takes me seven times to hit in the snooze button to actually do it. No, screw that. Set the alarm for when it's time to get up. When the alarm goes off, get up.
Speaker 1:
Put your feet on the floor. My dad will always tell me when I was growing up put your feet on the floor. You would scream from downstairs upstairs when the alarm goes off, Just get out of bed. But it's true. As soon as you get up and put your feet on the floor and walk to the bathroom or walk to the kitchen, it takes away the hard part.
Speaker 2:
I do mindless thing every single morning because it just gets me moving. I get up and I immediately go into the kitchen and I start putting away the dishes from the night before. Most of the time I think I'm sleepwalking and anybody could easily come in and just rob the whole entire house or whatever, because I'm just not there. But by then to five minutes I'm there. By then 10 minutes like OK time to go to the gym. Let's do this.
Speaker 1:
Right, Put your phone in the bathroom so when your alarm goes off you have to put your feet on the floor and walk to the bathroom to turn the alarm off. Don't put your alarm right next to your bed.
Speaker 2:
I think we're preaching to the choir right now. I think the vast majority of everybody listening to this better not be hitting this news button If you are unsubscribed.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I don't know, I don't know. All right, have a wonderful week.
Speaker 2:
That was fun. 80-20. Are you a sports car or are you a 1985 Toyota Corolla?
Speaker 1:
Ciao for now. Thank you for subscribing on your social media and podcast platforms to the Berman Method Dr Jake Berman with Berman Physical Therapy and Jenny Berman, Physician Assistant, with Berman Health and Wellness. You can find more information on our website wwwbermanptcom for physical therapy, bermanptcom forward slash wellness for the health and wellness. You can also find us on social media, Facebook, Instagram and on your podcast platform, so be sure to follow us, like us, subscribe to us and, if you would like any further information, definitely visit our website and reach out to us. You may also find our free reports on the websites as well, where you can download this free information for yourself. Have a great day.