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Roots to Health with Dr. Craig Keever
Welcome to Roots to Health—where we dig deep into the foundation of lifelong wellness! Hosted by Dr. Craig Keever, Northwest Arkansas’ first and only plant-based pediatrician, this podcast unearths the power of nutrition, lifestyle, and holistic health to help kids, families, and adults thrive.
What can you expect?
Dr. Keever breaks down the science of nutrition and disease prevention in a way that’s simple, practical, and life-changing. From raising healthy kids to optimizing adult wellness, each episode delivers key insights that challenge conventional wisdom and empower you to take control of your health.
Whether he’s debunking nutrition myths, explaining how food shapes long-term well-being, or sharing actionable tips for disease prevention, Roots to Health is your go-to guide for vibrant living—one bite, one step, and one conversation at a time.
Get ready to rethink everything you thought you knew about health—and discover just how powerful roots can be!
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Roots to Health with Dr. Craig Keever
Healing Through Green Leaves: How Plant-Based Eating Fights Chronic Inflammation
Feeling trapped in a cycle of chronic pain and inflammation? You're not alone. Millions struggle with inflammatory conditions that conventional medicine often manages with medications rather than addressing root causes. But what if your kitchen could be your pharmacy?
In this revealing episode, Dr. Craig Keever and his wife, Amy Keever, explore the powerful connection between what's on your plate and the inflammatory response in your body. They break down the crucial difference between helpful acute inflammation and the destructive chronic inflammation that contributes to heart disease, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, and even neurodegenerative disorders.
The standard American diet creates the perfect storm for chronic inflammation – processed foods, refined sugars, and foods high in omega-6 fatty acids fuel the fire. Meanwhile, the delicate balance of our gut microbiome gets disrupted, potentially leading to a "leaky gut" that allows substances into our bloodstream that have no business being there.
Dr. Craig shares his remarkable personal journey from taking multiple medications for diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol to transforming his health through plant-based nutrition. Through continued dietary refinements focused on omega-3/omega-6 balance and reducing fat intake, he's achieved near-normal blood sugar levels without medication.
You'll discover specific foods with powerful anti-inflammatory properties: dark leafy greens, omega-3-rich seeds like flax and chia, berries packed with antioxidants, cruciferous vegetables, legumes, and healing spices. Learn how these foods work together to calm inflammation at the cellular level and potentially reverse conditions once thought to be irreversible.
Ready to fight inflammation at its source? This episode offers practical ways to incorporate these healing foods into your daily routine. Whether you're dealing with chronic pain or simply want to optimize your health, this conversation might just change your relationship with food forever.
Thanks for listening to Roots To Health!
The information provided in this video is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have seen or heard in this video. Dr. Craig Keever is a licensed pediatrician, but the content shared here is general in nature and may not be applicable to your individual health needs.
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Welcome to the next episode of Roots to Health. I'm your host, dr Craig Kever, and my lovely compatriot however, you say that compatriot lovely wife and vegan chef. Amy Kever, and we're here to talk today about a topic that actually I think we may have done one similar to this recently, but this is, I think, think, a slightly different slant.
Speaker 2:You can't talk about it in one sitting.
Speaker 1:Not one sitting, and really I think we can't talk about it enough because it's such an important deal.
Speaker 1:It's the basis really of all of it. It's kind of the basis of all of this and the topic is plants versus pain, how plant nutrition fights chronic inflammation, pain, how plant nutrition fights chronic inflammation. So, um, basically, um, the differences I think to first describe are between chronic pain and acute or or inflammation. Chronic inflammation versus acute inflammation, of course, acute inflammation deals with an acute injury, something, something that happens, and now we got some inflammation immediately. Yeah, versus the chronic, which can be very subtle, low grade, typically at first pain issues, but that just don't seem to go away.
Speaker 2:They're hard to nail down.
Speaker 1:They're hard to nail down. They can be very subtle and then become not so subtle.
Speaker 2:Yes, I can speak from experience. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:So you know I don't have any immediate statistics available, but certainly, you know, chronic inflammation is affecting more and more people and we'll get into some of the reasons for that here in a little bit. And that feeds into other issues, like you know seeking pain relief and opioid addiction. On one end of the extreme, you know, and on the other end of the uh pain relief situation is taking too much tylenol or ibuprofen, as you know, a relatively minor way that we have of taking care of someone.
Speaker 2:You really have to fight and be an advocate of your own health. Because when I was going through all this pain I I don't know why I kept them, but I kept asking a doctor who kept giving all kinds of various pain pills and I would go home and read about them. I'm like I'm not doing that and I just collected a whole bag full of them and if I had not really tried to be an advocate for that, I could have been on pain medicine for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1:Sure, and I'm guessing they were all flavors of different types of pain medicine, from fairly benign to very addictive.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I mean it's and it's it spills into everything else.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, and, and you know, to that end I again I'll say I say it fairly regularly you know I'm I'm definitely an advocate of Western medicine. I was trained in Western medicine. But there are a lot of shortfalls of Western medicine and one of those shortfalls is the whole idea of a pill for every ill and doctors not taking enough time to sort through the history to figure out what is the root cause of the issue and how do we fix that. We may be able to put a band-aid over it and mask it, but unless you treat the root cause, it's going to still be there and you can't afford to go on autopilot with your food.
Speaker 2:You can't like. We're learning so much that I mean I've been in this for a long time you obviously, as a physician, have been into it much longer but learning about nutrition it's like wow. There's always a revelation of like I didn't think about that being a problem.
Speaker 1:I tell you, and again as a student of Western medicine for a long time, doctors don't get trained in nutrition and what that can do for us. Right.
Speaker 2:Nor I mean would you say that they're really even encouraged like to have that mother. You've always said the mother is the historian of the family, so you really have naturally leaned that way. But I don't know that they're really trained to kind of assess that as far as I mean. You know they kind of get into that problem solving in a different way.
Speaker 1:It's very much a problem solving attitude of here's the problem, I can fix that, you know, instead of digging deeper. For what's the cause of that problem? Right, you know, it's the acute desire to satisfy the patient's needs. To satisfy the patient's needs and then to get on to. Another aspect of current medical faults is having to see so many patients so quickly.
Speaker 2:It's understandable, that's right. It's a difficult chore.
Speaker 1:So we digress that's a completely different issue.
Speaker 2:That's what we do here. We do here yes, we don't want to make any apologies for that, yeah.
Speaker 1:So but yeah, this issue of chronic inflammation really affects so many people and can create anywhere from just minor annoyances to severe debilitation.
Speaker 2:And it's really highly with women. Women seem to be more prone to it than men, but it's happening for men as well. Women seem to be more prone to it than men, but it's happening for men as well.
Speaker 1:Well, and not only that, but to kind of get to the underlying theme of why we're doing this, the standard American diet really feeds the flame of chronic inflammation, for sure, yeah, and we'll talk more about that in a minute. So what are the kinds of issues that I'm directly addressing here? You know, heart disease, interestingly, is a problem of chronic inflammation. Yeah, okay, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, things that you might not necessarily think of initially as inflammatory per se.
Speaker 2:I never knew like thyroid issues and type 2, that that was all a type of an autoimmune issue, right?
Speaker 1:I mean it's crazy. Absolutely, it certainly can have those components to it. Thyroid for sure, yeah, particularly the type 1 diabetes, particularly the type 1 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes may not be as directly related to autoimmune issues, because that's more related to insulin resistance and the content of the diet. Type 1 diabetes certainly is where your body has overreacted to the insulin producing cells in the pancreas and basically eliminates them. So, yeah, and not to mention neurodegenerative diseases, various like Alzheimer's and various forms of dementia.
Speaker 1:So, and of course, as we're alluding to, when we get to the place of having a position of chronic inflammation in our bodies, that situation then kind of creates a self-building, perpetuating problem, because the nerves then become irritated, yeah, and then that just builds on itself, yeah, so these are all the reasons that this, this is a very important topic for these times. Oh my gosh. Yes, yeah. So why does diet matter in this case? I think, um, first of all, um, to kind of shamelessly self-promote, um, I'm giving a talk, um, at the uh end of august yeah, nothing to be shameful on that.
Speaker 1:I know what you're saying through the Bentonville Public Library Foundation and the Bentonville Public Library on the topic of food is medicine, and this is why diet matters so much. And what I was alluding to about getting to the root causes. When you can get to the root causes and fix that, it changes things dramatically. So, for instance, you know, if you followed us for a while, you know that I've had type 2 diabetes and you know one of the ways to historically fix that was, oh, decrease your carbs, increase your fat and protein people we've met have not had fruit in like a decade, right because they're told not to eat, and anybody with diabetes knows of the old adage of you know carbs are your enemy.
Speaker 1:Basically, you know and that sugar is to blame and that sugar is to blame, and sadly that is absolutely nowhere near the truth we're not saying that sugar's good, but it's really not right. The primal right, we've been through that in terms of the, refined sugars are the problem, but the enemy is not carbs, the, the, the complex carbs are the savior.
Speaker 2:Really, it increases our insulin sensitivity, yeah, um so who are you the poster child for that?
Speaker 1:well, and that's where I was going with this is, you know, getting at the root cause. Um, you know, I was on two diabetes medicines, two blood pressure medicines, a cholesterol medicine and lost then 100 pounds going to this way of eating and then by continued tweaks, because it all doesn't just go away by then, and this is what I want to say to people.
Speaker 2:I don't mean to interrupt you. I'm just saying don't let those tweaks that you have to kind of keep talking, don't let your food addiction start talking at that point, because you really could have gone. You know, this isn't working for me. I'm going to have to, and it would have been a way to kind of soften things and you just kept at it, and so that was really important.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Yeah, that was real, it has been really important, and you know my belief in the phrase food is medicine.
Speaker 2:You've held that promise to yourself.
Speaker 1:I've held that promise to myself and the process of test and measure. You know I've gone for the last two years, having achieved some of my goals, not achieved the end goal, and so to that end, my blood sugars were a little higher than I wanted, just barely kind of in the pre-diabetic range, I suppose you could say, and I want to have all my numbers down in the normal range, you know, and I've been unable to lose the last 20 pounds to get to my quote-unquote normal ideal weight.
Speaker 2:Which isn't a vanity thing. That being my is really important.
Speaker 1:It is really important. It is really important and my whole issue with that for me has been you know, if I could have normal numbers, ie normal blood sugars, normal blood pressures, normal cholesterol, and be at whatever weight, I'm happy with that. But I've proved to myself that concept that the BMI is important. It's not the be-all, end-all number to pay attention to, but it is a good piece of information.
Speaker 2:It's definitely showing that, as you got it down, your body started just being able to handle things better.
Speaker 1:I'm still not quite to the quote-unquote normal bmi, but I'm getting closer. I've, in the last month or so I made a few tweaks and eliminated a little more fat from my diet and some things that I I kind of knew, but, uh, you know, didn't pay as much attention to, as I should have. Yeah. So I've rebooted and increased my exercise program a little bit and decreased the fat content and lo and behold, I'm waking up with sugars in the low 100s.
Speaker 2:And, just as a side note, like it used to, if you had a high-fat or more decadent meal, even if it was plant-based, you shot up for two weeks sometimes. We went on a bike ride yesterday and we had a decadent kind of plant-based meal and your sugars did not react that way.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's exactly right. So that is really cool to see. So, in terms of the chronic inflammation, then, that we're talking about trying to apply all of what we've just talked about to that issue. You know, and something that we've watched with your chronic pain, as we've increased our omega-3 fatty acids.
Speaker 2:It's been a game changer.
Speaker 1:And decreased our omega-6 fatty acids. It's really helping.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so that part of the processed foods it's not just like that, it's got oil in it. So much we have eliminated a lot of like unknowns. Part of the processed foods it's not just like that, it's got oil in it. So much as we are, we have eliminated a lot of like unknowns, because there are a lot of things slipping into your food that you do not know or you know exactly talk about that on the next podcast well and right, and and to that end, then what?
Speaker 1:what are the things that we really look at on not just a plant-based diet, but more specifically for chronic inflammation? We are looking in a big way at that omega-3 to omega-6 ratio. That's a big player. Now, why is that a big player? We've talked a little bit about that in previous podcasts, about the omega-6. Fatty acids are directly involved in our inflammatory response. It kind of turns it on. Yeah, all right. So it heats things up, which is something that our bodies need. You know, if you can't heat up your immune response, you're not going to have an effective one, right? So omega-6s are a very important aspect of it.
Speaker 2:A you know it's hard to pin down a precise number per se, but you know you're not gonna worry about getting an F Omega 6 right, you will find them even in the plant world, and not that nuts are a bad thing, but if you are inflammatory you kind of need to pull off those because their ratios are way off so the ratio that we're kind of looking for overall in a normal healthy diet in a person with no inflammatory issues, would be about four parts omega-6s to one part omega-3.
Speaker 1:Somewhere in that range Two to five parts. Say that again Two to five parts of omega-6s to one part omega-3s. It is slanted a little heavier for a person without metabolic disease, okay, okay. Now when you get into the aspect of healing somebody with chronic inflammatory disease, then you really probably want to flip that ratio.
Speaker 2:Oh, big time that's yeah, yeah, and I will link Dr Brooke Goldner's. We have that short video where she really explains the pathways to where, because this is a lot to take in at once.
Speaker 1:It is a lot.
Speaker 2:But I'll link that below so you can have that as a reference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah, and so what are the foods that are highest in omega-6s? Well, the standard American diet Right everywhere Meat, dairy and eggs, very, and then we've got to throw nuts in there because that's not on the standard American diet so much. But it is part of the plant-based world and so it is something that you have to pay attention to, and I don't think Brooke would necessarily say to someone who's in a healed state of their chronic inflammatory disease.
Speaker 2:Oh no, she has them. Yeah, but everybody, keep in mind Dr Goldner's process is she's working with everybody who's ill, that's right, everybody who's got some kind of inflammatory process going on. So a part of her. She has her. Goodbye autoimmune protocol. She has her goodbye lupus protocol. So one is more raw foods, the other one, and then there's hypernourishing, which is kind of a step down to both of those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so typically, as we've kind of mentioned but I'll put it in a little briefer summary the pro-inflammatory type of diet is high in processed foods, high in refined sugars, high in saturated fats and, as we mentioned, as a result of of all that, high in the omega-6s. Yes, so, contrasting that with the anti-inflammatory diet, which are going to be foods that are high in antioxidants, high in polyphenols, high in fiber and high in phytonutrients, these kinds of foods will lower a protein in the blood called a c-reactive protein, which is a protein that is one marker to use for how revved up our body is in terms of our inflammatory response, and it will lower other markers that are used to test in the bloodstream for that. And, as mentioned, fiber is in there as one of the anti-inflammatories.
Speaker 1:well, uh, one of the reasons that you can't do it without your fiber can't do it without fiber, because one of the huge players in all of this is our gut lining, which we've had a talk on that, a podcast on that that I'll remind people is one cell layer thick, okay, so it's micro, very delicate, yes, and it's surrounded by our gut microbiome, the trillions of germs that coexist with a beautiful family that coexist with us and and it's a symbiotic relationship, you know, we provide them a safe place Theoretically, we provide them the fiber they need and they provide us a lot of things that help us heal, which makes a prebiotic more important than a probiotic.
Speaker 1:That's right, and the problem is, when we get a diet that's too high in saturated fats and all the Western diet things, then you get a much higher tendency towards a leaky gut. Yeah, and that will allow things access to the bloodstream that don't have any business having access to the bloodstream, so much and that revs up the autoimmune chronic inflammatory and the thing is for lifestyle medicine.
Speaker 2:Medicine I've always said you cannot get to the other things like good sleep and not being stressed. You can't do it when your diet is so messed up.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right.
Speaker 2:But the empowering thing to me is to watch someone who had 15% left of their kidney or liver function and then Brooke flips the whole thing by her program, which you can do by using Grocery Star Foods, and completely heals the body. So when it's firing up against and saying the autoimmune is going against your own organs, that completely changes when you heal.
Speaker 1:It does completely change, and Brooke Goldner's story is just one of the most remarkable I've heard. You know as a teenager having stage four lupus, being told that she had her kidneys were dying for kidney disease stage four, kidney disease, and finding this way of eating and tweaking it to her satisfaction, with her understanding of what was going on. And now her body at the age of what? Mid-40s, mid-40s no markers of chronic inflammation, lupus or anything. She was told she would never bear children.
Speaker 2:She had two children, so I mean she was not expected to live through her 20s.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And you know she's helped thousands of people. And to those people who maybe they don't get full capacity of their kidneys or their liver, they're still able to live a very they get off the transplant list Y'all come on Exactly.
Speaker 1:I mean, that is like that is amazing. It's totally amazing. Thousands of people she's helped yeah it's just an incredible way of living and we could talk all day long and do about anecdotal cases. Okay, brooke Goldner being an anecdotal case, this is not a long-term research scientific project, okay.
Speaker 2:Explain that to people that might not understand what that's really saying. So, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:so there's various levels of reasons to believe certain things. Anecdotal evidence is probably one of the weakest in terms of Very true, but it's not research based Right.
Speaker 2:that's right.
Speaker 1:You're right. I mean, it's like my anecdotal story, right? Okay, I view that as a very powerful thing for me.
Speaker 2:I think it demonstrates the power of plant-based eating um it was valid for you, but on paper it wasn't proven. That's right yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:and so I would never in a million years tell somebody look at my story and do what I do, because this is what's right for everybody, because I am one anecdotal case.
Speaker 2:But once you get thousands of those coming, you do start to follow.
Speaker 1:But having said that, anecdotal cases for me are things that kind of raise my radar and then it gives me something that I can hone in on and look at. Well, what is the real science behind this?
Speaker 2:And she is being involved with the Journal of Medicine to do things like that.
Speaker 1:And so, in terms of other things, the next levels up. You're talking about meta-analyses of lots of Double-blind placebo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Direct experiments involving double-blind placebo control. Randomized studies are the ultimate way to filter out all of the variables and figure out, not studies paid for by someone who has an agenda. There you go, and that's one of the things that's really a problem in this country, because there's so much misinformation out there.
Speaker 2:It's no wonder people are confused.
Speaker 1:It's confusing, and the meat industry and the dairy industry and the egg industry and the refined sugar industry are all trying to put out information that says well, this science study says this. Oh, but the science study was funded by us, so and you know we kind of paid the researchers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're kind of scared of it. So they kind of react to things like that.
Speaker 1:They want to, they want to come at it well, and just like years ago, when we finally figured out smoking's bad for you it causes cancer and the tobacco industry did exactly that same thing. They tried to sweep it all under the rug and they tried to provide science that said no, that's not true, smoking's good for you.
Speaker 2:Which sounds crazy, but to us, as much as we've been in this, it's crazy what the standard diet is being said To us. We're like it's the same thing, Yep, but it's just fed in people's everyday lives and it's like they don't think anything about it. Exactly so sad.
Speaker 1:So the next segment and this we're probably going to sound a little bit like a broken record on. That's okay, because what are the key foods that are anti-inflammatory? Is the next little segment we need to talk about, and I would say probably the biggest one that contributes to this, of course, is green leafy vegetables Dark green leafy vegetables, to include kale, spinach, arugula, and you could go down the list.
Speaker 2:And the more I've seen. Like you know, brooke uses the greens, of course, but it's beside the omega-3s that you're supporting, on the side those greens have. Not only are they nutritionally dense, they have all those supportive elements that when you start saying, okay, what does it need? Folate all this. You know all these different things iron you know it's all there phytonutrients, everything's there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exactly right. And then, to couple with the green leafy vegetables, is going to be your omega-3 containing foods, which are primarily going to be chia seeds and flax seed and, to a lesser extent, I think, walnuts and hemp and hemp yeah, and hemp seeds yeah, very good, yeah. So what are some of the other tweaks that we use in our diet to improve our nutritional status that are anti-inflammatory? Well, berries, particularly darker berries. These have a lot of polyphenols and anthocyanins that is helping those free radicals that's right.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right and really helps calm things down in that way. Turmeric or curcumin is a natural kind of pain reliever.
Speaker 2:And anti-cancer, and anti-cancer, yeah, although do listen to the next podcast.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:We've got a little news there. We have a little news about that.
Speaker 1:yeah, news there. We have a little teaser about that. Yeah, um, cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, brussel sprouts uh, primarily have sulforaphane in them. Uh, and that are. That has anti-cancer properties and broccoli sprouts.
Speaker 2:Are they very, very, very high?
Speaker 1:sprouts are fabulous, yeah, unbelievable and legumes, beans and lentils and and things of that nature. Lots of fiber, lots of fiber and resistant starches to help with lower gut inflammation. And then, of course, various herbs and spices, to include ginger and cinnamon and garlic and those kind of things. Those are all very good anti-inflammatory properties.
Speaker 2:Dr Brigger talks about cloves as one of the highest. As far as being able because I got to where I was just kind of taking that in a supplement form myself I would just grind it up myself, right yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1:Uh, a brief little uh foray into what are some of the clinical evidence and and whatnot towards all of this. There was a 2015 study done that demonstrated whole food plant-based diet reducing pain and improving function in rheumatoid arthritis patients. Physicians Committee on Responsible Medicine is doing ongoing research with plant-based diets and lowering the, as I mentioned before, the C-reactive protein, CRP and tumor necrosis factor alpha, which is a cancer involved in cancer treatment.
Speaker 2:Which is one of their instructors. I have to say that's a great place to find any kind of resources or any kind of it's physician's committee yes, physician's committee yes. Of his physician's committee yes physician's committee.
Speaker 1:yes, patients with fibromyalgia reporting symptom relief with vegan diets. I mean the anecdotal studies. Yeah, anecdotal studies are abounding in the plant-based world. For anybody interested in taking a deeper dive into the clinical evidence, I would really point you to Dr Michael Greger's website, nutritionfactsorg.
Speaker 2:he's got a wonderful YouTube page, I believe under the same name and he's really great because he kind of goes all over just like physicians committee, but it's real. He has real short videos that if you're like you want to look up something specific, that's not you know where other people would be more about healing heart disease.
Speaker 1:He's really kind of overall he's got so much information yeah, I, I will tell you he's not backed by anybody, right?
Speaker 2:he's, he does everything. He. All of his funds that he gets from his book is donated to charity organizations.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and research I mean, for me, hands down, he's the first source I go to when I'm thinking I need to understand a scientific research article that's that shows me what is right in this situation. Definitely, yeah, that's a really. He's really high on my list. He really sticks to the science, you know, and he's he's the one that most commonly says the whole phrase placebo-controlled, double-ranged. Yeah, he's got that down to a nut and you won't know until you put it to the test.
Speaker 1:Exactly All right. So you know practical tips on a brief basis for how to start incorporating, you know, some of these anti-inflammatory foods. I mean, one of my favorites is a smoothie. I mean, that's so easy to get a bunch of greens and a bunch of these anti-inflammatory foods, For sure. And so tasty. Yes, you can sweeten it with dates and holy moly. It's like you never even know you're drinking vegetables.
Speaker 2:Put those flax and chia in there.
Speaker 1:Other foods, to include chickpeas and turmeric and, as we mentioned, greens, you know salads. We do eat salads as vegans.
Speaker 2:They're big.
Speaker 1:bulky salads they're big bulky salads very dense with all kinds of wonderful eat the rainbow kind of things. But yeah, I mean the salads really do participate. I would say, how many salads a week do you think we eat like that? Two or three?
Speaker 2:We get on a kick and we do them a couple times a week and then we don't do them for weeks yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, in closing, uh, this has been a really good topic for me. We've covered this very nicely. I think I just want to uh re-emphasize the whole concept of of, uh, you know, the standard american diet is is just so full of holes and problems and it's killing this country. It literally is, and it's very serious I mean like we are in a.
Speaker 2:We are, we have the most resources and we are the most deprived as far as our health, but we there's so much money being put into the medical.
Speaker 1:You know part of this, but it's like we're we're dying well and and in point of fact, with heart disease being the number one killer of adults in this country, you know um and dr caldwell esselston saying that. Dr caldwell esselston saying that yeah, that heart disease need be nothing more than a toothless paper tiger.
Speaker 2:It's ingrained in my brain. It's a foodborne illness.
Speaker 1:It is a foodborne illness, and that's where we're at, and I think not all, but a lot of this chronic inflammation is a foodborne illness.
Speaker 2:This did not happen 30 years ago. That's right.
Speaker 1:And certainly at least not in the kind of populations that we're seeing it now. But certainly you may have a genetic predisposition to something, for instance a genetic predisposition to heart disease or to diabetes or whatever. But if you eat the right foods your risk of any of those things drops dramatically, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And I say eat the right foods, that also includes not eating the wrong foods.
Speaker 2:That's for sure. Yeah, dr Metz always told me he's like if people don't take the bad out, I'm not going to take my time to help them put the good in.
Speaker 1:That's right. So, yeah, I thank everybody for listening and watching and I really appreciate it, and we would love to hear feedback. We have multiple ways to contact us.
Speaker 2:And they can post on YouTube. This is going to be on any kind of podcast venue, but you can also see it on YouTube if you're listening to this and you think, hey, I'd like to see this too, yeah, let us know, kind of what you're needing to learn more about as well.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. We'd love to hear different topics. We've covered a number of topics over the last few months and we're starting to, I think, want to kind of branch out a little bit, and hearing from our viewers and listeners will help us figure out where you want us to go. So with that, we'll sign off and have a good day. Take care, thank you.
