*DISCLAIMER: This is a transcript of episode 15 – Nutrition and CBD – Part 1 from our Full Spectrum Living with CBD podcast. Click here to listen to the episode or click here to watch the video.
Ep15_NUTRITION AND CBD – PART 1
Meredith [00:00:06] All right. Welcome back to this episode of Full Spectrum Living with CBD. I am Meredith your co-host here with our hosts, Adriane and Jessica. And today we actually have a special guest.
Meredith [00:00:15] We’re really excited to welcome her. This is Amanda Nighbert and she is a certified dietitian and she’s joining us today because we wanted to have a conversation about nutrition and how it impacts the endocannabinoid system. So I know, Adriane, you had a few thoughts on this to kick us off.
Adriane [00:00:34] We wanted to bring Amanda here because we’re definitely not experts when it comes to nutrition. And we do know that studies show that the Endocannabinoid System can be nurtured and enhanced by things that you’re consuming. Which is then going to help CBD help you. So I’m actually start with the something that we get asked all the time. People come in looking for help with inflammation all the time. We know CBD is largely beneficial. So what kind of foods can people eat or what can they do in their nutritional routine to help with inflammation?
Amanda [00:01:08] Hey, thanks for having me. I’m super excited to be here to talk about this really popular topic. Inflammation is a really hot topic right now for everybody looking to kind of improve their health. And it’s a broad topic to kind of think about because there’s a lot of things that impact on inflammation in the body, food being one of those very specifically. So whenever I’m asked about inflammation in general, the foods that kind of come to mind at the top of the list are going to be gluten, dairy, sugar seed oils, vegetable seed oils are kind of the big ones. Sometimes soy will kind of fall in there. But anything that’s highly processed with a lot of additives is going to really ramp up inflammation in the body.
Adriane [00:01:58] OK. So you seem to be an advocate for the whole foods, then?
Amanda [00:02:01] Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I think what people don’t realize is that anything that you’re dealing with in in regards to like your health, whether it be diabetes or hypertension, joint pain, autoimmune disease, it’s all made from inflammation. So any time that you can simmer inflammation in the body, you’re going to improve on those health conditions. So really the foundation of improving your health is to really look at “how can I reduce inflammation in my body?”
Meredith [00:02:36] Amanda, I think it would be awesome if you could just give us really maybe even a definition of inflammation because it is such a hot topic and we are hearing so much about it. But I wonder if everybody really even even knows what that means.
Amanda [00:02:50] Yeah, absolutely. Anytime that you have something going on on your body, we have this natural inflammatory response. And in most cases, that source to be something really beneficial. If we get sick, like suffering from a little cold right now.
Adriane [00:03:04] You really don’t sound like a frog!
Adriane [00:03:06] But when you’re sick and you have a healthy immune system, then that is going to support you getting better. But when you have levels of unhealthy inflammation in the body, then that’s actually going to make you sicker. So it’s kind of like a negative response that you’ll see. It starts really slow. It’s like a really, you know, small fire. And then the more inflammation you add to it, the bigger and bigger it gets. And I think a lot of you will see that with their health. You know, 10 years ago, something happens and it creates this kind of small change in the way they feel. And then over time, it kind of builds and builds and builds and kind of gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And so anytime that you can do things to, you know, again, reduce that overall inflammatory response in the body, it’s a good thing.
Adriane [00:04:05] I thought it was really interesting how she talked about like it starts small and then over time it layers and layers and layers. That kind of goes with what we say with CBD and why it doesn’t work overnight. Right? So this isn’t a condition that was started yesterday and you can take something and it’s going to completely go away. So adding CBD into your daily routine and including that in your nutritional wellbeing as well, adding fruits and vegetables that are gonna help do that is going to help that process of peeling back that inflammation go a little bit faster.
Amanda [00:04:36] I would think, absolutely. It’s not an overnight response when you’re dealing with reducing inflammation.
Jessica [00:04:43] I wanted to ask actually if we can backtrack just one moment. When you were saying about seed oils being pro inflammatory. Would you consider hemp seed oil to be pro inflammatory? Because that is the question I imagine we would probably get.
Amanda [00:04:59] No. Well, we’re talking more about highly processed oils – canola, vegetable, etc.
Jessica [00:05:28] And then my secondary question there was. So those are some really good foods to remove. I always function best when I take out the bad stuff by adding in good stuff. So what are some really like inflammation busting foods you could add to your diet as opposed to take out?
Amanda [00:05:45] Well, first and foremost is vegetables. You know, anytime that you can incorporate high nutrient dense foods, foods with lots of antioxidants, lots of vitamins and minerals, lots of fiber, that’s going to be the best case scenario. So vegetables are always the first on my list. And I always say, you know, what’s the one food group? We don’t eat enough of vegetables. What’s the one food group that we should be eating more of? Vegetables. It should definitely encompass at least half of your plate when you are making your meals each day.
Adriane [00:06:20] And just to be clear, vegetables, not potatoes. The green leafy is what we’re looking for.
Amanda [00:06:28] I don’t mean white vegetable. I mean, potato is our number one vegetable of the United States. And that’s a problem. Followed by peas and corn. And they actually consider ketchup to be a vegetable in the school system. You know, when we’re looking at like healthy lunches, they can count ketchup as one serving a vegetable. So we definitely have a very backwards in the United States. But I mean, it’s all about balance. The more color you can getting your diet, the better. So anytime you’re only eating like all white foods or all green foods, that’s not a good thing. Purple and orange and red and green and white. The more variety you can find in the color, the larger the nutrient intake it’s gonna be.
Adriane [00:07:13] OK, so eat a rainbow. So you mentioned something – you said antioxidant. So explain what that means because again, CBD also known for being an antioxidant. We say it all the time, but our consumers may not know what the difference between being antioxidant or anti-inflammatory or what are the benefits.
Amanda [00:07:33] So antioxidants are really powerful because they like attack free radicals in the body and free radicals create a lot of inflammation. The more free radicals you have, the higher your inflammatory response. So anytime that you can consume more antioxidants to help reduce free radicals to help improve that inflammatory response, you’re going to feel so much better. And so free radicals create diseases and unfavorable health conditions. So that’s a benefit of antioxidants.
Adriane [00:08:08] And the free radicals come from where?
Amanda [00:08:10] Just from food, the environment. Fruit, vegetables are where you’re going to get antioxidants the most. Actually our number one source of accidents – can you guess what it is?
Jessica [00:08:27] I’m going to say kale.
Amanda [00:08:30] It’s actually coffee. Coffee is our number one source of antioxidants. Just load it up. And it’s a good thing because we love coffee and coffee is really high in antioxidants and polyphenols. But it’s gets a bad name because it’s a really big sign that we’re not eating kale or we’re not eating enough vegetables in order to get more antioxidants from that food group. And so, unfortunately, maybe Starbucks is giving us the most antioxidants. But whole Foods should be. But it’s all about balance and moderation.
Meredith [00:09:08] For sure though, someone starts making these choices right. And I love I love Jessica’s idea of, you know, let’s talk about what we can add in vs., you know, always being in this concept of deprivation. I don’t think we function really well and we always think about what we can’t have. So let’s say we start making these changes and we’re starting to eat more green veggies and we’re reducing fast foods and processed foods. We’re drinking more water. We’re doing these things. How do we start to notice those shifts in our body? Like, what are the things that we might begin to feel or see as we make those changes?
Amanda [00:09:46] Oh, they’re pretty immediate. I mean, I know the long term benefits take a while, but typically my clients will report physical changes in the way they feel and the way they look within the first 14 days. So we all carry about five to 10 pounds of inflammation on our body at all times. And actually the biggest area in which we see the most noticeable inflammation is in our midsection. We carry that five to 10 pounds of extra fluff, fluid bloating kind of in our midsection. So when you start to remove, I know you’re talking about adding things back versus removing, but when you do really start to replace some of those inflammatory foods, gluten and dairy are the ones that I really focus on the most. Because it’s like when you put all of these things together, gluten, dairy and sugar are the big ones. But once you start to really cut back on those and consume more fruits and vegetables, you immediately start to see that reduction of bloating, and that poppy feeling your energy gets much higher. You sleep better. So it’s it’s pretty pronounced right off the bat if you can really kind of dive into it.
Jessica [00:11:12] Pounds of inflammation… Like inflamed fat tissues or?
Amanda [00:11:16] Usually it’s in the form of like fluid – maybe some secondary fat. This is a really good example. So say that you are really dialed in, you’re a healthy eater, you’re conscious of all these things and you go on vacation and you live your best life. You know, you consume more alcohol than maybe you would. You eat foods that you wouldn’t eat on a regular basis and you come home and you’ve gained five pounds. We all see that. Well, a lot of times my clients would be like, oh, my God, I just gained five pounds of fat. And so I tell them I’m like, no, you didn’t. You just gained five pounds of inflammation. So as long as you set to get back to your healthy lifestyle, that five pounds will be gone within five to seven days because it’s not fat. It’s inflammation. It’s fluid retention. It’s that bloat. So it’s a really great way for me to help them to see. Listen, you didn’t just undo all the success that you made in, you know, four days, five days, whatever. Your body’s just giving you that kind of inflammatory response. It’s telling you that it doesn’t like, you know, the way you lived in the foods that you consumed over that time. But if you get right back to it, you’ll be right back to where you started.
Adriane [00:12:34] I love that. And that makes perfect sense because how many times have you gone on vacation and you’re just like Oh, my gosh There’s no way I eat that much. But that makes perfect sense.
Amanda [00:12:47] Yeah, absolutely. Well it’s not possible. It would be really hard to gain five pounds of true fat in that short of a time.
Jessica [00:12:56] I think you kind of touched on something that I think I always associate as the single biggest issue for inflammation in the American diet, which is sugar and the amount of sugar just hidden in everything we eat. Could you talk a little bit about ways to really curb sugar cravings or just your general intake throughout the day?
Amanda [00:13:17] Yeah, absolutely. You know, in the 1970s, when the government came out with that food guide pyramid, it was all about fat. Fat is bad for you. Fat makes you fat. We’ve got to cut that. We’ve got to cut calories. And what happened is, is when they came out with those guidelines, the manufacturers of food ran with it. And so what they did is they started to pull all the fat out their food and what they add carbs and sugars. So we actually eat four to five times the amount of carbs and sugars today that we did in 1977 when the government came out with those food guide pyramid. And ironically, we eat 25 percent less fat than we did in 1977 and were more obese than we ever have been. More sick. Obviously, our health is at a huge decline. And it is really all of that added sugar and carbohydrates that has created this epidemic of obesity, of heart disease, of diabetes, of joint pain, autoimmune conditions across the board. And it hasn’t been really until about the last 10 years that we’ve honed in on the fact that we need to stop worrying so much about fat and we need to worry more about carbohydrates and sugar. And the problem is, is that carbohydrates and sugar are hidden everywhere. OK. So, for example, can you guess how many grams of sugar are in a cup of low fat milk?
Amanda [00:14:46] Twenty seven. OK. There you go. Would you think milk would have a lot of sugar in it? It does. It’s not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of it.
Amanda [00:15:00] So, we look at something like milk to be super healthy. We encourage our children to drink it at every meal. They serve it at school lunch. So they drink a cup in the morning. They drink chocolate milk at lunch. They drink a cup in the evening. And by the end, the day, just from the consumption of milk, they’ve had almost 40 grams of sugar.
Jessica [00:15:22] Did you say from skim or low fat?
Amanda [00:15:26] Well, it doesn’t matter. I always say skim milk because people think skim milk has less sugar in it than whole milk, but it actually has the same amount of sugar as whole milk. So they both have total grams of sugar. They have different amounts of fat because that’s what we’ve been so focused on. But we don’t really think about the sugar.
Jessica [00:15:44] I have milk drinking child who I’m trying to cut sugar with. So what would be ideal to scale back the amount of milk that your kids drinking? Is it arguably better than to have something like a full or fat like a whole fat milk?
Amanda [00:16:00] Absolutely. I don’t really believe in fat free, low fat. Full fat milk, if you’re going to use dairy products, I would encourage you to use full fat, organic grass fed whenever you can. But I think at the end of the day, it’s definitely about kind of using less. It’s definitely not something we should be pushing kind of at every meal. More water. This is a good example just to show people where sugar creeps up, a lot of times it’s very misleading. So, for example, if you get like a large sweet tea out at a restaurant, I mean, obviously, we know it’s loaded with sugar. But when we look at the menu, it says one hundred and fifty calories. So we’re like, oh, well, that’s not too bad. But in reality, that translates to seventy five grams of sugar. So large sweet tea from a fast food restaurant has anywhere from 60 to 80 grams of sugar in it. And it’s only a hundred and fifty calories. Wow. So when we’re really down into looking at like this calorie and fat, we miss the big picture, especially when it comes to inflammation, because sugar is everywhere.
Adriane [00:17:17] And so it’s not just sugar, the white crystals right. So there’s other things that we can consume that our body still thinks there’s sugar. Like it doesn’t make a difference. Right. So what are some of those?
Amanda [00:17:27] I mean, basically, we’re talking about carbohydrates. So when you look at a food label, it actually has total carbohydrates. And then right below it indented, it says like fiber, sugar. There can be some other things, but those are all factors that are factored into that total carbohydrate. So carbohydrates are broken down in the body, very similar to the way that sugar is. There’s something called the glycemic index that scientists use to kind of measure a foods response in the body. And the glycemic index for a slice of bread is more than the glycemic index of a tablespoon of sugar. So the body has a higher glycemic response. When we eat something like white bread than it does when we actually eat just table sugar. So things like breads, pastas, crackers, things like that that were actually at the bottom of the food guide pyramid, having the most to eat, they were low calorie and low fat are way more detrimental than obviously vegetables and fruits and things like that.
Adriane [00:18:41] So they’re typically nutrient devoid as well. They don’t offer anything except for carbohydrates.
Amanda [00:18:48] Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I mean, basically, we call them empty calories. A lot of people argue, oh, well, you need grains and things like that. And I’m all about moderation. But there’s really nothing that you get in the grain group that you can’t get from a fruit or vegetable, so using those in moderation, I think is key.
Adriane [00:19:11] So then what do you think about the sugar that’s in fruit? Is it equivalent?
Jessica [00:19:18] OK. I call fruit gods candy. I know a lot of people will try to reduce their sugar intake and they’re like, I’m not going to drink sweet tea. I’m not going to eat candy, cakes, cookies, pies. And then they flip over. They eat a ton of fruit. And at the end of the day that, you know, yes, fruit is better, it’s got vitamins and minerals and fiber. There’s a lot more benefit to eating an apple than there is to eating a piece of candy. But with the way that it responds in the body with the inflammatory response, it will be similar. So you definitely want to use fruit in moderation. And that was another place that the food guide pyramid got wrong is because they really they clumped fruits and vegetables. They would say you need to eat six to seven servings of fruits and vegetables when in reality it should be more like you need to eat one to two servings of fruits and you need eat seven to 10 servings of vegetables a day.
Adriane [00:20:17] Right. Given the choice, I would think most kids would always choose fruit. If they said fruit or vegetable, I’m going with fruit.
Jessica [00:20:28] I think now might be a good time to kind of connect this to how this benefits the endocannabinoid system. I’m just hearing over and over again, like if you are taking a CBD product and expecting it to bust all these poor diet choices, you’re just, you’re really working against yourself.
Adriane [00:20:50] So you’re fighting an uphill battle, for sure.
Jessica [00:20:52] Absolutely. You can’t expect to take a coated sugary gummy and reap the benefits if you’re ingesting that. Is there anything in particular, Adriane, like you’d like to add to how it connects? Is that that’s just what I keep hearing, is if you if you’re doing you know, if you’re having a lot of sugar, then you’re certainly facing an uphill battle. And when you’re maximizing your own health, you’re allowing your endocannabinoid system, which is just one of many systems to function more optimally.
Adriane [00:21:29] Yeah, I think it’s really understanding, again, about what we have to remove not just about what we can add. If you don’t talk about what you can remove, it’s almost like saying, well, I’m just going to add CBD to my already poor diet and it’s going to do the trick. It’s not like saying I’m going to add blueberries or kale to my already poor diet and it’s going to do the trick. It will probably help to some degree. You’re getting vitamins and minerals, but reducing some of those other things is imperative. Amanda spoke about moderation and we have another episode not talking about going cold turkey, making yourself miserable, but baby stepping into it. And usually when someone starts feeling better and Amanda has clients everywhere, so she would probably go to speak to this more than we would. But you start seeing it, you want it, you want more and you want to keep going after it, making the changes.
Amanda [00:22:20] It’s definitely like a snowball effect. And I think people I know, the people that I work with have this kind of all or nothing mindset. They think they have to be perfect to get all the results and, you know, stay there. And I think even in kind of your scenario is anything any change in the right direction is a good thing. So if you can pick kind of one thing that you want to focus on, I’m going to add CBD and at the same time, I’m going to take out sweet tea and I must switch that with water just making those small shifts and building on that can create that kind of snowball effect.
Meredith [00:22:58] Awesome. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation in particular on the topic of inflammation, nutrition and how that impacts our endocannabinoid system. So, Jessica and Adriane, if someone wanted to know a little bit more about the work that you do, where can they find information?
Adriane [00:23:13] Yeah, absolutely. Go to our website, bluegrasshempoil.com. Gone through a few minor changes so come check it out. Also, our Facebook Instagram pages and we’re doing blogs so come follow us!
Meredith [00:23:25] Fantastic. Well, for this episode of Full Spectrum Living with CBD, I’m your co-host, Meredith, here with Jessica and Adriane and our guest, Amanda. We’ll see you all next time.
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