Food , Fluid and Supplements for Optimal Heath

Welcome to today’s podcast on “Food, Fluid and Supplements for Optimal Health”. Our guest is Dr. Jamie Noll, a former clinical dietitian and hospital pharmacist, who has spent many years in drug research, development, and marketing with major companies such as Eli Lilly, Boehringer-Ingelheim and Bayer.  Dr. Noll has also authored 3 books on plant-based nutrition in The 95% Vegan Diet series and has lectured widely on preventing chronic diseases through a healthy diet.

In this episode, we will be discussing the specific foods that can help build your immune system and reduce inflammation, as well as the importance of safe drinking and bathing water in our overall health. We will also be addressing the topic of supplements and whether they should be added to your diet.

Dr. Noll will share her insights on the best foods to include in your diet to promote optimal health, reduce inflammation, and prevent chronic diseases. She will also provide tips on how to ensure that your drinking and bathing water is safe and how to incorporate supplements into your diet, if necessary.

By the end of this podcast, you will have a better understanding of what foods and fluids to consume to promote optimal health, the importance of safe water in our overall health, and whether supplements are necessary for your diet. 

Currently, Dr. Noll works as an MLS Realtor with Realty Executives, where she helps clients find their dream homes. Her broad range of experience in health, nutrition, and wellness makes her a valuable resource for anyone seeking to improve their quality of life.

 So, sit back, relax, and let’s dive into the world of nutrition with Dr. Jamie Noll. 

Transcript

Zoey: 0:10

Welcome to the Open Forum in the Villages, Florida podcast. In this show we are going to talk to leaders in the community, leaders of clubs and interesting folks who live here in the villages to give perspectives of what is happening here in the villages. We hope to add a new episode most Fridays at 9am. We have converted all of our shows to Buzzsprout. Of course, you can still listen to Apple Podcast, Amazon Music and about 20 other podcast platforms. Your favorite podcast player will still work. We are now a listener-supported podcast. You can become a supporter for only $3 or you can choose to pay more per month. Go to openforminthevillagescom and click on Support in the black box. There will be a shout out for supporters in episodes. This is a shout out to supporters. Tweet Coleman, Dan Capellan, Ed Williams, Alvin Stenzel and major supporter Dr Craig Curtis at K2 in the Villages. We will be hearing more from Dr Curtis with short Alzheimer's tips each week.

Mike Roth: 1:13

This is Mike Roth on Open Forum in the Villages. I'm here today with Dr Jamie Noel again her career as a clinical biotician and hospital pharmacist. She has spent many years in drug research, development and marketing with major companies such as Eli Lilly, ballringer, inglelheim and Bear. She's authored three books on plant-based nutrition in the 95% vegan diet series. Jamie has lectured widely on the to-dos and the not to-dos to prevent chronic disease. She's now a villager and she's selling real estate as an independent MLS realtor with realty executive. Thanks again for joining us, jamie.

Jamie Noll: 1:52

Thank you for having me.

Mike Roth: 1:53

Jamie, i always like to ask what brought you to the village. Don't say a card.

Jamie Noll: 1:58

No, What brought me to the villages? I think the ability to gain a new tribe have a lot of fun. It's sort of like Disneyland for adults and to be involved and serve my community.

Mike Roth: 2:12

And how long have you lived here in the villages?

Jamie Noll: 2:13

For years.

Mike Roth: 2:14

Okay, good, and what village do you live in?

Jamie Noll: 2:17

I live in London.

Mike Roth: 2:18

London That's south of 44.

Jamie Noll: 2:20

Yes, it is.

Mike Roth: 2:21

Okay, and you wrote a series of books on a 95% vegan diet. You know that kind of took me a strange why only 95%?

Jamie Noll: 2:30

In my work as a clinical dietitian, the number one reason I saw that people failed was because they were always trying to be perfect, and so they spent a lot of time beating themselves up and then regressing and going into a downward spiral because they felt so deprived with what they were trying to do.

Jamie Noll: 2:48

The China study was the largest epidemiologic study ever done in human nutrition And the areas in China where they do not get the chronic diseases that we die of in the US, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, etc. They eat a mostly plant-based diet, but they are not 100% vegan. They are not 100% plant-based. They do use meat, but it's more as a condiment on their food rather than a main part of a meal. And so what I wanted to do because the China study and also Caldwell-Essistan's book on preventing and reversing atherosclerosis really lend credibility to the fact that we should all be moving more to a plant-based diet Unfortunately, neither of those works really taught people how how to have and maintain a healthy plant-based diet. So I wanted to do the work to help people in America, under our own cultural norms, have a close to 100% plant-based diet and to point out to people that you can be highly successful without being perfect.

Mike Roth: 3:52

Is there one tip that you could give our listeners who are at first borns and whose first ones we all know have to be perfect? Jamie, what would you say are the one or two most important things to focus on when it comes to preventing chronic diseases?

Jamie Noll: 4:06

The first thing I would say is it's really important for us to strive to reduce inflammation in our bodies. Inflammation comes from oxidative stress, which comes from exposure to things like UV radiation, air pollution, pesticides, other chemicals and even some foods are considered pro-oxidants, such as red meat and dairy. So we need to focus on eating foods that can fight this oxidative stress. So that would be the number one thing I would say we could do to focus on to prevent chronic disease.

Jamie Noll: 4:35

The second thing I would say and it's one of the most exciting areas of medicine right now is to build our microbiome. So the microbial cells that live in our gut, as well as throughout the rest of our body and on the skin, actually outnumber our body cells by 10 times, And the human microbiome encodes more than 3 million genes, outnumbering human genes by more than 100 times. For this reason, the microbiome is often referred to as the secondary genome, contributing to health and disease every bit as much as our own DNA. It's well known now that the microbiome of people who have various health conditions, such as obesity, diabetes, depression and many other diseases, are different than the microbiome in healthy people. Thus, we need to strive to maintain a healthy microbiome. So those are the two things I would say we should all focus on.

Mike Roth: 5:24

Let me throw a couple of questions about that. Number one you mentioned that dairy isn't good for us, And many of us were brought up with the nutritional food groups and dairy was included.

Jamie Noll: 5:34

The most inflammatory part of dairy is casing, which is the main protein that's found in animal milk products.

Mike Roth: 5:43

You talk about chronic disease. What specifically are the chronic diseases besides diabetes, which you mentioned earlier?

Jamie Noll: 5:51

The number one killer of Americans is heart disease. Type two diabetes leads greatly to heart disease And that is a big factor in people dying of chronic heart conditions. And then, of course, there are the cancers that we see that are diet related in this country, many Breast cancer, for one.

Mike Roth: 6:11

You think that's dietary related?

Jamie Noll: 6:13

I don't think it's been proven in the literature, really Yeah.

Mike Roth: 6:17

And what foods Yeah.

Jamie Noll: 6:19

It's obesity mostly. I mean, there are many cancers that are linked to obesity, and so that's obviously something we need to focus on as well. But in terms of the components of what we need to do to avoid the chronic diseases, it's reducing inflammation. Certainly, if we reduce our weight, we reduce inflammation, but then building the microbiome so that we're building our secondary genome to be able to fight off these chronic diseases.

Mike Roth: 6:44

Well, that's another $50. word microbiome Could you explain what microbiome is to our listeners?

Jamie Noll: 6:50

Sure, so the microbiome are the microbial cells so bacteria, et cetera that live in our gut, throughout the rest of our body and on our skin, and they actually outnumber our body cells by 10 to 1. So it's kind of like we're walking around like little pig pens. We have these microbial cells just hanging onto us as we walk around, but they influence our ability to fight inflammation and therefore fight disease.

Mike Roth: 7:17

So is there any way to analyze what someone's microbiome is, whether it's good or bad? Oh, sure. Not that simple.

Jamie Noll: 7:25

No, no, no, It's very simple And it's generally done with stool samples.

Mike Roth: 7:29

I like to throw a joke into every one of my shows And I really came up with a food joke. Ok, so, jamie and these jokes are from my grandson, evan Why did the teddy bear say no to dessert?

Jamie Noll: 7:42

Oh my goodness, i don't know why a teddy bear would say no to a dessert.

Mike Roth: 7:46

Because she was stuffed.

Jamie Noll: 7:49

Ah, good one, mike. Ok, we got the food joke in.

Mike Roth: 7:53

Jamie, what can we do to improve our gut health? microbiome.

Jamie Noll: 7:57

Yeah, so there are three main things to think about when it comes to building and maintaining a healthy microbiome. The first one that most people think of is adding probiotics, or healthy bacteria, to our diet. You can certainly do that with supplements, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute, but I want to focus also on the fact that raw fruits and vegetables contain healthy bacteria. A lot of people don't think of it like that, as does cultured foods such as yogurt, kefir and kombucha.

Mike Roth: 8:24

Everyone knows what yogurt is. What was that second one?

Jamie Noll: 8:28

Kefir is sort of like a drinkable yogurt, if you will, and kombucha is more like a fermented tea. Ok, but if you choose to add a probiotic supplement to your diet, look carefully at the types of species, because what we want to do is we want to have a broad range of microbial species. We don't want to have just one or two. A lot of people say, well, i eat yogurt, that's good. Right, yeah, it is good, but you're really only getting one species, lactobacillus acidophilus, out of yogurt. If you buy probiotic, look at the label and see how many different species are on there. You want a variety of species.

Mike Roth: 9:02

What's the minimum number of species that one should look for?

Jamie Noll: 9:06

I don't know that there's a minimum. I would just say do some comparison shopping with what's on the shelf. The other thing to look at is the number of CFUs, or colony forming units, that is on the label on the box of the probiotic, and so that tells you how many microbial bodies are in there. Making in mind that that's the number of CFUs that were there when the product was made, not after it was shipped and sitting on a dock or what have you. So the other thing you want to do is check the expiration date on any product and make sure that you're going to be able to use the product within before that expiry date.

Mike Roth: 9:41

What else is there besides the do-for-got-health, besides probiotics?

Jamie Noll: 9:45

Well, the other thing you can think about and should think about is to increase the prebiotics in our diet. Now, prebiotics are valuable fiber that build the home for the microbiota in the gut, so it gives the probiotics the internal architecture to set up shop. Beans, peas, lentils are all great sources of soluble fiber, as are many fruits and vegetables. But again, one can supplement the diet with products that contain soluble fiber. So a good example of this might be something like organic psyllium husk, which you can get off Amazon. Just a teaspoon full, mixed well into eight ounces of water. drink that and then follow with another eight ounces of water, at least once a week.

Mike Roth: 10:24

What do you think of the psyllium pill?

Jamie Noll: 10:26

That's perfectly fine. You just want to make sure you chase it with enough water to make sure it goes down and through the gut without a problem. A fun thing you can do. one of my, i guess, guilty pleasures, you might say, is chia seeds. So chia seeds are. if you put chia seeds in water, you quickly see how they become very gelatinous And that's soluble fiber right there. And so my guilty pleasure is to make chocolate chia seed pudding and have that. So it's delicious, it satisfies my chocolate craving, but it also gives me the soluble fiber upon which to grow my microbiome.

Mike Roth: 11:03

We've heard a lot about healthy dark chocolate. Is that really healthy or is that just a hoax?

Jamie Noll: 11:09

Well, chocolate does contain good antioxidants, which we'll talk about in a minute. I want to finish up this discussion about the healthy microbiome and then we can move on into the inflammation, if that's okay with you. So the last thing I would say when you're building a microbiome so we talked about probiotics, we talked about prebiotics The third thing would be to just avoid foods that don't support a healthy microbiome, such as red meat and processed foods and dairy. It's certainly okay to enjoy these things once in a while, and I call it feeding the soul. I think there's nothing wrong with feeding the soul We have to do that but when we eat these things frequently, what happens is we fill up and we're not hungry, and so when you're not hungry, then you're not in the mood for the healthy things. So the healthy things can become too small a part in our daily diet, which we want to avoid.

Mike Roth: 11:58

Okay, and this is today's Brain Health tip from Dr Craig Curtis. What is one thing that people can do to help their brain.

Dr. Craig Curtis: 12:10

One of the best things they can do comes down to the choices every day Getting lots of sleep, for example, getting the proper amount of sleep, for example, and what does that mean Approximately hours? Seven to nine hours of sleep per day is what's currently recommended.

Mike Roth: 12:24

Good Thank you Can foods actually help you reduce inflammation in your body.

Jamie Noll: 12:30

Yes, absolutely. In fact, other than taking medications that reduce inflammation, the most important means would be to improve upon one's diet. Inflammation in our bodies comes from oxidative stress, and that comes from being exposed to UV rays, air pollution, pesticides, other VOCs or volatile organic chemicals, and even emotional stress can play a part in inflammation. So all of these things are what we call pro-oxidants. They cause oxidation. We fight pro-oxidants with antioxidants, which are present in fruits and vegetables and herbs. So, if you think about color, antioxidants are what give fruits and vegetables and herbs their color. Now, there are literally thousands of chemicals that have been identified as antioxidants in fruits, vegetables and herbs, and they all work in different ways. This is why we need to eat a variety of color to create a symphony with which to fight oxidation and inflammation.

Jamie Noll: 13:29

You can't create a symphony with just one or two instruments. You need many different instruments. The same goes for the types of antioxidants in foods. You need them all to create an optimal internal environment. Before we leave this question, i'd like to give a shout out to Tumeric, which is well known for its antioxidant properties. A prudent thing to do is just half a teaspoon of organic turmeric powder a day. You can make it a tea, you can make it a latte or you can put it in a smoothie. Smoothie can help inflammation tremendously.

Mike Roth: 14:02

What about the turmeric pills that they sell at the health foods stores?

Jamie Noll: 14:05

Yeah, you're not getting as much turmeric in those pills as you would if you were just using the powdered turmeric, because you have to consider there are fillers in there as well to keep it from getting clumpy on the inside of the capsule. So save yourself some money. Buy the organic turmeric powder. You can get it off Amazon, because Amazon now owns whole foods and just a half a teaspoon a day somewhere in your diet.

Mike Roth: 14:31

Okay, my next question, jamie, is about water here in the villages. Everyone wants to sell you a water filtration system when you buy a new house. What are your recommendations about water in the homes here in the villages?

Jamie Noll: 14:43

The first thing I'd want to point out is that the water in which we bathe is every bit as important as the water we drink. So if you think about certain drugs like fentanyl big topic right now you only need to touch it with your skin to absorb a deadly amount.

Dr. Craig Curtis: 14:59

The skin.

Jamie Noll: 15:00

That's right. The skin is the largest organ in the body and when you bathe, anything in that water gets absorbed into the skin. And the reason I say the water in which we bathe is every bit as important as the water we drink was unfortunately illustrated in the case against PNG portrayed in the movie Aaron Brokovich. Do you remember that, mike?

Mike Roth: 15:19

I remember the name.

Jamie Noll: 15:21

So chromium-6 was the poison that was creating all of the cancers. And chromium-6 when you drink it, it's somewhat disarmed by the acid in the stomach, but when you're in the shower breathing the steam of that water goes into the lungs, which doesn't have the same defenses as the stomach, not to mention it was also being absorbed through the skin as well. So so there's that. And then it's also important to realize that there are no EPA standards for pharmaceuticals in our water supply. It would be impossible to regulate all the drugs that are flushed and find their way into our water supply, so for these reasons, i highly recommend people invest in a whole house water filtration system, not just a water softening system, but a filtration system that can block out pharmaceuticals and volatile organic chemicals. I should also mention that, other than our reverse osmosis system, i am not aware of any system capable of blocking out chromium-6. However, there are EPA standards for things like chromium-6 in our water supply, so I really don't worry about that too much.

Mike Roth: 16:23

You're just getting closer and closer to the microphone.

Jamie Noll: 16:27

I'm getting excited about the topic.

Mike Roth: 16:30

Yes, so, without knowing it, the potable water that's delivered to the homes of the villages may or may not be carrying toxic chemicals? What about the exposure to the irrigation water?

Jamie Noll: 16:44

Well, the irrigation water is definitely not potable and it's definitely not something we should be bathing in.

Mike Roth: 16:50

Have we talked about water enough?

Jamie Noll: 16:52

I think I'm done with water, if you are.

Mike Roth: 16:54

Okay, let's give our listeners a couple of recommendations for supplementation in their diet What's really good for them and what's pure quackery?

Jamie Noll: 17:03

Okay, thank you. Well, the first thing I'd like to point out is the fact that our laws do not protect you from the blatant quackery that you see every single day on TV trying to sell you supplements that are not proven through valid science. So my number one recommendation, before I get into specifics, is that it's really important to sort of become your own scientist, and I actually have an entire chapter on the subject in my first book, the 95% Vegan Diet, and my daughter, who's an attorney, wrote the chapter on food labeling laws. So we tried to cover that extensively in our book to keep people from succumbing to the very provocative commercials that you see every day on TV about supplementation.

Mike Roth: 17:44

Now what I can tell you, when you talk about supplementation, are you talking about vitamin and minerals, or are you talking about something else that's advertised?

Jamie Noll: 17:53

Well, right there, i'm talking about all the other supplements that are unproven scientifically. Vitamins and minerals have been proven for a very long time in terms of what we need for life, but there are lots of other nutritional supplements out there that you know, quite frankly, are not proven scientifically and can actually be dangerous. And the problem is the laws that were written actually hamstring the government from taking products off the market. So with drugs, for example, in the pharmaceutical industry, drugs have to be proven to be safe and efficacious, not so much in the nutritional supplement industry. Basically, it's in arrears, so they really don't have to prove safety and efficacy in humans, and they're only taken off the market after, usually, a number of deaths have occurred.

Mike Roth: 18:44

And your recollection what's the last supplement that was taken off the market?

Jamie Noll: 18:48

Mahuang comes to mind first.

Mike Roth: 18:50

What It sounds like a game my daughter plays with the Chinese tiles.

Jamie Noll: 18:54

Yeah, yeah. So it's a little scary, but Mahuang was a Chinese herb that contained a pheadron And you know a pheadron, given to people with hypertension or other you know vascular conditions, can be deadly. I mean, it can create heart attacks and strokes. And it took years literal years to get Mahuang off the market. Now the problem is there are very smart chemists all over the world who can take a pheadron and change something just slightly on the chemical entity, and it still has the same dangerous properties. But because it's not a pheadron, it gets marketed in a different product. So you constantly have to be on your toes and really know what you're taking before you take it.

Mike Roth: 19:36

So what about products that have, you know, high concentrations of vitamin C or vitamin D, or even the B vitamins? Are those generally good products, or should one not take them, unless they were direct to bite your doctor?

Jamie Noll: 19:50

I think if it's, you know, extremely, if it's an extremely high level, in other words, hundreds or thousands of times above the what we used to call the US recommended daily allowance, i think that should be recommended by a physician before one considers it a prudent recommendation for us in the villages, just considering the fact that you know the RDA's When they were set okay, they were probably now set too low for the toxic environment in which we now live. So the RDAs were based on how much we need to avoid a vitamin or mineral deficiency, not to necessarily provide optimal health. They tend to be deficient in and a lot of people don't believe it in the villages is vitamin D. I know many people are listening and saying but we live in Florida, we get plenty of sunshine, which makes vitamin D in the skin. But two things about that. One, we should all be wearing sunscreen to prevent premature aging and skin cancer. So our dermatologist would not be happy with us if we're just exposing our skin to get vitamin D.

Mike Roth: 20:52

So slow down a second When you say that when you put sunscreen on, it stops the skin from making vitamin D.

Jamie Noll: 21:00

Sure, it's blocking the UV rays that.

Mike Roth: 21:02

Well, I'm not a chemist or a scientist. That's a big surprise for me. Okay, yeah, man, if you walk around without the sunscreen, you're subjecting yourself to getting skin cancer at some point in time.

Jamie Noll: 21:15

Exactly.

Mike Roth: 21:15

Well, that's a double-edged sword for you.

Jamie Noll: 21:17

Yeah, There's a little bit of a push and pull between dermatologists and endocrinologists, because endocrinologists want you to have a really healthy level of vitamin D and dermatologists do not want you to expose your skin to the sun.

Mike Roth: 21:28

Is there anything you can eat that would cause an increase in vitamin D?

Jamie Noll: 21:32

The easiest thing to do for vitamin D, quite honestly, is to just supplement it, but what I would recommend because vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin and if you take too much you can become toxic And so what I would recommend is, next time you see your physician, ask him or her to draw a vitamin D level and let's see where you are on the scale. If you're If you're a quart low, then you need some supplementation to get to the optimal levels.

Mike Roth: 22:00

And what does that test call?

Jamie Noll: 22:01

A, vitamin D level.

Mike Roth: 22:02

A vitamin D level. Very simple. All of these things have very strange medical terms, like A1C, and unless you're educated, you don't know exactly what that means.

Jamie Noll: 22:13

Right, right, and particularly for women who are trying to prevent osteoporosis and are taking calcium supplements. You need to have a certain level of vitamin D for your body to properly absorb and use that calcium, so vitamin D is extremely important.

Mike Roth: 22:28

So, Jamie, your normal line of work is as a professional realtor.

Jamie Noll: 22:33

It is now Mike, after spending about 30 years as a clinical research scientist and medical science liaison in the pharmaceutical industry. I always wanted to sell real estate and when I moved to the villages it was just the perfect time for me.

Mike Roth: 22:46

Okay so, and you're working for an agency that to me, indicates that people have to know how to sell to work for that agency.

Jamie Noll: 22:55

I work for Realty Executives. The broker's name is Glenn Stein. He's a fantastic broker And we are actually the largest MLS company in the villages.

Mike Roth: 23:05

But I will ask you to tell our listeners how they can get ahold of your books.

Jamie Noll: 23:10

Sure, So my books are available in two ways. You can look for the 95% vegan diet on Amazon. That would be the first book and that was in print. That book is also available in Kindle format and you know a digital reader format on a website called smashwordscom, And so you can get it either way, If you want to read it on your Kindle or you want to get it in paperback.

Mike Roth: 23:36

Can you get it as an audible book? You're not sure.

Jamie Noll: 23:38

I'm really not sure. I know I didn't narrate it, sorry. Well, my second book, called the 95% vegan weight loss solution, is only available in digital format, and that's on smashwordscom.

Mike Roth: 23:52

Okay, so you can't get that on paper.

Jamie Noll: 23:54

Correct, you can print it out. If you download it from smashwords, you can actually download it in a PDF format and print it out if you want. Okay.

Mike Roth: 24:03

If our listeners want to reach you as a realtor here in the villages, how do they do that?

Jamie Noll: 24:07

They can reach me through my cell phone, and that is 352-459-5892. Again, 352-459-5892. Do?

Mike Roth: 24:18

you have a website.

Jamie Noll: 24:19

I do, It's my name JamieNoelRealtorcom Okay.

Mike Roth: 24:24

Jamie, thanks for joining us here today, and I know you've educated a lot of listeners. Some of them are going to have to listen to the show twice. They got a lot out of it. Thanks a lot for joining us today, Jamie.

Jamie Noll: 24:35

Thank you so much for having me, Mike.

Zoey: 24:37

My pleasure.