Meet Kristin Kirkpatrick
Kristin Kirkpatrick, RD, MS, author of Skinny Liver and upcoming book, Regenerative Health Kristin Kirkpatrick is a best-selling author, an experienced presenter, and an award-winning Dietitian. She is the President of KAK, Consulting, LLC, a dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic Dept of Department of Wellness & Preventive Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, and a Senior Fellow at the Meadows Behavioral Healthcare in Wickenburg, Arizona.
Kristin is also a contributing writer for TODAY.com, Eating Well Magazine, Costco Connection, and Cleveland Clinic Essentials and has appeared on both local and national shows such as the TODAY show, NBC Nightly News, Fox Business, Bloomberg TV, and the Dr. Oz show. Kristin is also a Nutrition Expert with the NBC affiliate for Denver, Colorado. In January 2017, Kristin published her first book, Skinny Liver: A Proven Program to Prevent and Reverse the New Silent Epidemic—Fatty Liver Disease. In February 2024 Kristin will release her second book, Regenerative Health: Discover Your Metabolic Type and Renew Your Liver for Life.
Kristin has over 25 years of experience in health management. She holds an M.S. in Health Promotion Management from American University in Washington, D.C., and a B.A. in Political Science from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She is licensed as a Registered Dietitian in the state of Ohio. In May 2012, Kristin received the Ohio Outstanding Dietetic Educator of the year award and, in 2013, received alumni of the year from her high school, Gilmour Academy.
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Podcast transcript:
Welcome to the Urban monk podcast, with Kristin Kirkpatrick. She is one of my favorite types of interviews because she is in the trenches. She’s working with people every single day, all around the subject. Matter of food. It’s one thing to say, Well, you should eat like this, or you shouldn’t do that.
It’s another thing to have the rubber hit the road and try to apply this advice in real lives. And this is what she does. So, uh, really, uh, honest, heartfelt and sobering conversation with somebody who knows their stuff when it comes to food.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Kristen, it is great to see you. Welcome to the podcast.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here. I’m so excited.
Dr Pedram Shojai: This is fun. Listen, you and I have a lot of interesting synergies. Uh, and I love working and talking to people who actually work with people. Because it’s not some mental laboratory where you come up with theories and see if you could spin them online. You have a person that comes back and says, Wow, that didn’t work.
Dr Pedram Shojai: I’m still overweight. I’m still inflamed. That was disgusting. And that feedback loop is appropriate for someone who’s in clinical practice. Just a quick, like, who, who is this chick, um, for the audience? Uh, where, where are you coming from? What have you done?
Yeah. So, um, I’m a registered dietitian, been dietitian for over 20 years. Uh, my entire career has been spent at Cleveland clinic and integrative medicine. Uh, which was a great opportunity for me because it’s like the clinic is like, I, we used references the other day that were like star Wars references, but I would say clinics like the millennium Falcon, where it’s like, There’s so many pieces and parts, but it gives me the opportunity to like, really tap into like really different types of brains and different theories. So that’s been great for my career. But, um, yeah, I’m just, I’m just in the business of trying to work with people to change behavior surrounding food, which when you say it sounds so simple, but it’s so difficult. So difficult to change that behavior.
Dr Pedram Shojai: If you look at just the chem chem lab, a part of that business, you have flavors and odors and colors and textures, uh, and then addictive elements being built into food every single day. We know that this happens. They’ve admitted that it happens yet. We continue to buy products that are designed to make us addicted to it.
Dr Pedram Shojai: So just that part of the, that part of the conversation alone could be a three hour talk, like, Oh my God, like this is, they’re stacking this food against our best interest so that we keep buying this thing that may or may not be good for me.
Right. Right. And I, and I oftentimes say that to my patients, um, even my patients that are saying like, Oh, this is a healthy meal that, that I’ve been able to get at the grocery store. What do you think about it? And a lot of times I like to remind them that the FDA that manages all of these front of package claims still has not yet defined healthy. I mean, they will because now we’ve had this six months to one year kind of call for comments where the FDA is saying, okay, we’re going to define healthy. What do all of you guys think about it? What do all the clinicians, what are the average consumer think about it? And so I think that will be defined, but healthy needs to be defined within the aspect of your own life, your own preferences, et cetera. Not everything that you get at the store, even though it says all these great things to try and lure you in is healthy. So to your point, I think a lot of times consumers really want to make the right choice, but they’re kind of lured into the wrong choice, um, through smoke and mirrors. That’s, that’s really what I see.
And I always tell people like, you know, have you ever seen an apple at the grocery store with like five claims on it? High in vitamin C, a lot of fiber. Like you, you don’t need those claims. Cause you know, the Apple’s good for you. You know, it’s good for you where you need. All the claims is the products that may not be good for you.
And they’re trying to tell you why it will be good for you.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Honestly, it’s hilarious. Once you put on that lens. Go to the grocery store. I get kicked out of grocery stores cause I’m always filming and making fun of stuff. Right. Um, sorry, can’t do that here, but you start looking at it and you’re like, Oh my God, every single product is an advertising billboard and every single product has marketing messaging when you’re walking down the central aisles, right?
Dr Pedram Shojai: Not, not the, not the stuff around the periphery. And all of a sudden you’re like, this is, this is sales copy.
Yeah.
Dr Pedram Shojai: food that needs sales copy, to your point, um, I gotta question that. Like, why are you trying to convince me to eat your stuff? No one has to
Right. You’re convincing me Yeah, Right. Exactly. Right. And even like, it’s just so interesting looking at kind of the, you know, the grocery store people, when you talk to grocery store people, they’ll tell you what a difficult business it is, but they’ll also really admit to the fact that there’s rhyme and reason to every single solitary aspect. So even looking at like, what’s eye level to, let’s say our eight year olds. That’s what’s attractive. What are they walking by? What’s not going to be eye level to them is going to be a whole grain cracker. It’s going to be something that’s like a little bit more colorful, a little bit more kid friendly. So then you get the aspect of the kid trying to tell you, Oh, please get me this, please. You know, so there’s that whole thing, but like, yes, that the modern day grocery store is a real challenge because there’s so much choice and we do have some data showing that the more choice you get. Um, the more likely you’re going to make a bad choice, right? Because there’s just so much it’s overwhelming. I often, um, I often say that like my ideal grocery store is one where you walk in, you see the name of what the food is and you see the ingredient label and nothing else. All right. That’s it. But you just see the ingredients and not to say that the numbers are not important. They could be very important. Someone with, with hypertension might really have to look at sodium, for example. But the ingredients tell the story. Those ingredients tell the story. So if your ingredients stink, and then you’ve got, like, all these claims about what’s good about it, that’s when you really should start saying, okay, well, the ingredients don’t look good. Why am I being sold? To your point. So I think it’s a great point.
Dr Pedram Shojai: do you do that for folks? I mean, we live in a market economy, right? Your food Smurf, um, you know, meditation Smurf and lawyer Smurf or teacher Smurf is listening right now saying, I don’t know how to read these stupid labels.
Right.
Dr Pedram Shojai: so, I mean, there’s apps, there’s a lot, there’s a lot out there now. How do you counsel your clients on that?
A lot of times I will put it down to the basics and I’ll look at ingredients like when I say look at ingredients, I mean the actual number of ingredients. So I will say, Hey, like, let’s start with that. If you see something that is five or more ingredients, it doesn’t mean it’s not a good choice. But it might warrant you to kind of say, okay, why are there five or more ingredients?
Why are there not two ingredients or one ingredients? Okay. So that, that’s kind of number one for looking at that. So putting it really high level. Um, the other thing I suggest is that the more marketing there is, the more likely they’re trying to convince you. So that’s kind of another red flag that might come up. And then the last one is, you know, sometimes I like to look at what Michael Pollan said about food. I just think he’s so interesting and he defined food is something that comes from nature is fed from nature and will eventually rot. So when you’re making those choices at the grocery store, 90 percent of your choices should meet that definition of food. It’s coming from nature. It’s fed from nature. And we can really get in the weeds about what fed from nature means, right? So that if you go into like meat and you look at bison versus a factory cow, um, one is fed from nature. The And will it rot? Right? Will it rot? If you put this in your house, how long before this thing goes bad? So I think that’s another way to kind of look at that. Um, we used to do these grocery store tours in all parts of Cleveland through Cleveland clinic for, for anyone that wanted to attend. And we would take that definition of food. We would go through every aisle and we would have people start saying, Oh, this is food, but this may not be food. So that was a real eye opener we saw for individuals, like trying to determine. Okay. What’s the best? I want to have cereal. That’s a really tough one. Like what’s the best cereal? So number of ingredients, does it meet that criteria for food or just some high level ways of looking at it? You go deeper than that.
And it’s too confusing, but you know, remember you’re competing against really smart people in marketing who know exactly how to get you to put that in your cart. All right.
Dr Pedram Shojai: One of the kind of origin stories of cereal, as you said, that as an example was, I thought it was general mills that ended up having to find a way to dump off all their excess wheat because of the, um, the subsidies. And they’re like, well, what do we do with all this? And so they came up with this concept of cereal and start pushing it on people and marketing to people.
Dr Pedram Shojai: And after one generation, people that were having, you know, eggs and bacon and, you know, maybe You know, whole wheat toast or whatever they were having switched over to having cereals that then had to be fortified with all the stuff that they forgot to keep eating. Right. But it wasn’t a thing. I mean, there was muesli in Germany, but it wasn’t like a food item that was actually what people ate until someone decided to productize it, which is crazy to me.
It’s crazy. And it’s, you know, it’s, it’s interesting because I feel at least from the pediatric stand, um, it’s still being in some ways pushed today. Like I just think of my appointments that I attend with my kids. And a lot of times the doctors will say, Oh, we need to get more nutrients. So fortified cereal is a great option here. So we still have kind of this like mouthpiece of, well, it’s fortified. So let’s, let’s consider this. So, you know. It could also have a million different colors and all these additives and, you know, let’s not even get into the sugar, but, so it’s still kind of still being promoted as a good way to get your vitamins and your minerals, right? Um, an easy way to do that. So that’s challenging. And especially, I mean, whether it’s an adult or a kid, the, the more muesli from Germany is a great example. the more likely someone, especially if they’re used to having their taste buds, touching other processed foods throughout the day, the more likely they’re going to taste it and use that word cardboard.
Oh, this tastes like cardboard. I got to add something in it. So I think part of it is also, we’re, we’re so accustomed to really craving and desiring these, these ultra processed foods. Then when we have something that’s not ultra processed, it’s just not hitting the bill. It’s just like, that’s boring, this has no taste, uh, as a dietitian I hear the cardboard one all the time, like, you know, someone wants to have, have steel cut oats, steel cut oats, well that’s a little cardboard ish, can I, can I put a bunch of, a bunch of sugar in it?
That will make it better. Right? So, we’re just so like, it’s part of the addiction process, but it’s also what our taste buds are used to and what they’re accustomed to. Right.
Dr Pedram Shojai: against a multi billion dollar industry that is trying to push cardboard on people, um, with sugar on top to make it palatable, but then they get addicted to sugar and their candida goes up and their microbiome gets screwed up and they get into toxemia and they end up with chronic disease, which then feeds another multi billion dollar industry called healthcare.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Oops. Right. And so like we’re sitting here literally like we’re like UN peacekeepers. Trying to just save lives when, you know, the arms manufacturers are just keeping the war going, right? And so it’s very difficult trying to get someone to eat a carrot when it doesn’t taste like a ding dong, right? And
Right. Right.
Dr Pedram Shojai: the fortified diet could mean, and, and, you know, I just, I was just in the middle of this like food wars thing, which was, um, quite, quite an interesting experience, um, between the vegans and the, the meat people.
Dr Pedram Shojai: I don’t really have a dog in the race, I was just trying to Help people understand perspectives, but I’ve found that both sides have dug in their heels and have become fundamentalist in ideology, which I don’t think is science. Right? And so, you know, anyone wants to talk about it? Pedram’s in the middle.
Dr Pedram Shojai: We can have a conversation. Um, but you know, someone can say fortified means eat the rainbow. Someone else can say fortified me means eat organ meats. Right? Um,
Right.
Dr Pedram Shojai: but that is
High source of nutrients.
Dr Pedram Shojai: that is, that is fortified. Right? Um, Right. That is absolutely fortified through nature. And just cause I put fully in something doesn’t mean it has the spectrum of phytonutrients that my, my body, my microbiome need.
Dr Pedram Shojai: So you have been working to personalize nutrition for people for decades, right? People come in with their ideologies. Hey, I’m a vegan person. Hey, I’m a meat person. I’m a, what I’m a cardboard person. Right? So how do you meet them where they’re at to actually help them? No,
number one, um, you know, not identifying who you are based on your diet. So when you say, I’m a vegan, that’s identify, that’s, that’s, that’s you. That’s as part of my persona. This is who I am and everything that goes along with it. Um, so really kind of looking at your dietary pattern is something separate than you as a person, because when you make it part of your identity, you get a little bit more, um, tunnel vision and it’s like hard for you to see other Aspects. of what could be out there. And really what we know is that when you think about, I get this question all the time and no one, no one likes the answer cause it’s, it’s boring. And it’s people consider it to be a non answer, but people say, what’s the best diet out there? Like what is the number one diet? Number one diet is the one you can stick with. And that has a good level of nutrient density, right? And that’s the basics of it. So I think instead of just saying, well, I’m a vegan, um, you know, we have to go towards, well, I like some of these foods that fit into the vegan diet. I also like to have wild fish.
I also like having a cheeseburger every once in a while. So give me some guidance on the best cheeseburger to get. And then your environment. Um, you know, I had this patient who came to see me. He had a massive heart attack, almost died, came to the Cleveland Clinic. He’s a cattle rancher from Texas. This guy loved his meat, right?
So he comes to Cleveland Clinic, they save his life, and two weeks later he ends up in my office. And he’s charming like you wouldn’t believe, sitting with his wife, Alice. And he says, Kristen, I’m going vegan. Whoa. That’s That’s a big change from what you’ve been used to, right? He goes, no, I’m going to do it.
I, I, this is a wake up call. This cattle rancher, right? And so I first looked at Alice and I said, Alice, what do you think about this? And I know you’re the cook in the family and how do you feel about this? And she’s like, how do I feel about it? I’m not going vegan. Are you out of your mind? And you know, she said, are you out of your effing mind? So she was very passionate about the fact that this was his decision, not her decision, and it was that moment where I knew this guy was not going to be able to keep a vegan diet, right? Even despite high motivating factors from a heart attack. cook’s not, yeah,
that’s not happening.
Dr Pedram Shojai: PB and J for lunch,
Yes. yeah.
no, it’s not happening.
It’s not happening. So, you know, I think, um, oftentimes we just look at diet and it’s just diet. I’m going to eat this. And we don’t look at what is my sleep look like? What does my support system look like? So we don’t take in that whole aspect of how dietary change can be enhanced, or we could find barriers, um, to be able to reach it, right?
He had the best intentions. High motivation. There was no way this guy was going to succeed at being vegan. Not with his wife not on board, that’s for sure.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah. Did you tell him that in not so many
Yes. Yes. So I said, um, I said, I don’t know if vegan is the right step to take right now because it’s such a diversion from what you were used to. But I think that we’ve got a lot of data on what could be good post heart attack. Um, what could be considered heart healthy where we can have some plant based options, but you can also probably still enjoy some of the foods that you really loved before the heart attack occurred. And that also could speak to a better quality of life. Like do you want to be miserable and never have a heart attack again?
Which that’s not a guarantee either. There’s plenty of, let’s not to get back to the grocery store conversation, but there’s plenty of vegan foods at the grocery store that, you know, are not good for you. A lot of cookies are vegan, right? So, um, so that word loses meaning to me unless we kind of address it in the context of what does the rest of our diet and lifestyle look like.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Honestly, I think the middle needs a better publicist. Um,
Right? Right. It’s a good way to put it.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Right. Because the extremes have, I mean, look, everyone loves extremes. The, you know, red team, blue team, you know, us versus them. And something I’ve noticed in this kind of, this comes up as you’re saying this is there’s a mentality that’s almost like.
Dr Pedram Shojai: I’ve been a sinner and now I’m born again. Right. Where it’s like your, your ideology shifts to your identity. Like your, your entire identity has to be this thing. And you know, this guy’s like, he didn’t stand a chance, right? Like good luck going out with the good old boys in Texas as a cattle
Right.
Dr Pedram Shojai: you know,
Getting your tofu.
Dr Pedram Shojai: getting your tofu.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah. They’d laugh them out of the room. It’s, it’s very hard to be fair. It’s very hard being vegan in a world that’s not supportive. Right. It is. Um, But the identification as I’m a vegan person instead of I eat this way is an interesting phenomenon to me. Where, you know, I’m, I’m a car, I’m a carnivore diet, and people, people really become the, the identity that they need so that they can fill the gap instead of maybe doing some meditation and finding out who they are.
Dr Pedram Shojai: So to me, I think there’s this. There’s a, there’s a fundamental, um, you know, it’s, it’s infantile, right? What’s happening out there. And so you got to navigate all this crap, right? Like I, that’s not, that’s not my fight. I just like stepped into it and was like, ew, right. But you are in that every day. So you’ll have someone come in and say, look, I swear by this, this is who I am.
Dr Pedram Shojai: So then you got to work around those parameters, I would assume.
All right, got to work around the parameters You know if someone comes in and says oh, I absolutely want to be vegan This is this is my goal in life. Then what I’ll do is I’ll try and break it down not by telling them not to be vegan, but by giving them more of a limited timeframe. So I’ll say, okay, let’s just do this.
Why don’t we try and be vegan for two weeks and let’s really work hard at doing that. And I’m going to guide you towards the best way to do that. And then on week three, we’re going to reconvene. And we’re going to talk about what worked and what didn’t work, right? So that gives a little bit more context, a little bit more specifics to that type of goal. Um, and not to say I would ever talk someone in or out of a dietary pattern that they want to take, but I will challenge them and say, what are some of the foods you think you might really miss? Um, what are some things that like maybe something from your childhood that you had that you really want to embrace, or have you done the education to look at how to prevent? some nutrient deficiencies that could pop up in a vegan diet like calcium, like iron. And we have studies on that as well, right? So I think, um, making sure they’re not identifying with it. Yes, but even giving them that short term goal. And that’s the same thing I do when someone comes in and they say, Hey, I’m here today because I want to lose a hundred pounds. Oh, okay. Well that’s, I can’t even wrap my head around a hundred pounds. So why don’t we do this for three weeks? We’re going to try and lose three pounds. Then we’re going to reconvene and we’re going to tack on some more, but we’re going to go in three pound increments. You can wrap your head around that. So really kind of like challenging people to understand how to look at the goals they have, um, within the context of what’s realistic, what’s in their environment and what worked in the past. You know, what worked in the past is a great indicator. Yeah. Oh, I tried to go vegan 10 years ago, but that didn’t work.
Okay, let’s, let’s spend some time there. Why didn’t it work? And what are the things that didn’t work that we could probably change this time to try and make it work? If it’s even possible.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah, but if this is yet another Hail Mary that you’re gonna fail on, then
Dr Pedram Shojai: two months from now, three months from now, you’ve proven to yourself that you suck at something and then you start to have negative self worth and you realize that you’re not gonna be good at any of these things and then it’s just gonna be a downward spiral.
Dr Pedram Shojai: You’re not going to succeed if you keep making unrealistic goals for yourself. I appreciate that perspective a lot.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Um, food. As medicine food for vitality. This is something that I’ve just finishing recording a summit on this. So it’s, you know, top of mind obviously is there is a way to consider. Your diet as something that nourishes and enhances your experience as a living Breathing human and empowers yourselves and makes you feel great and vital versus poisoning yourself, right?
Dr Pedram Shojai: And so there’s all these perspectives that we also have to be careful not to step on the the bipolar land good bad you know land mines
Right. Right.
Dr Pedram Shojai: That to me seems like a healthier operating system. Like, how does this make me feel? Am I more vital? Do my joints not hurt? So how do you shift the dialogue to say, let’s just feed your health and vitality and the rest of this crap will follow.
Yeah. Um, so I think that the conversation I try and have with my patients is very similar to some of the wording that you used, which was, okay, if I’m going to have this, I’m going to have this food today. How is that going to drive my day? I mean, even looking at it from a day to day perspective. So today I am going to go skiing or today I have 50 podcasts.
I’m just going to be sitting all day. You’re dying on both of those days should probably differ. a little bit because when we start looking at how will this food fuel me? So looking at the concept of fuel and nourishment, it is different based on what your goal is for that day, what you’re really needing to accomplish that day. So I think that’s kind of one way to look at that is okay, let’s let’s look at the goal of the day or let’s look at the goal of the month. Um, and let’s make our goals more health related and not vanity related and there’s nothing wrong with I want to get into a lower pair of jeans. There’s nothing wrong with that. But those types of goals tend to not be sustainable because even if you reach that goal through massive restriction and misery, your other genes are eventually going to become normal again because you won’t be able to maintain that, right? So I think that’s, that’s what people lose in the perspective is I just want to lose weight or I’m just not going to have this food anymore.
And they think that that is kind of the golden egg of health and longevity and vitality, but it’s not the golden egg if it can’t be sustained for longer than a month. So I think that’s why it’s so important to give some flexibility perspective and literally looking at what does my day look like? And here’s what my food should look like because of it.
Dr Pedram Shojai: As you say that, I think of my truck in the garage. It’s not going anywhere today, so I don’t need to go gas it up. Right. But if I’m driving around all day, I find myself at the gas station and the idea of sitting here podcasting or, you know, whatever desk example we can use, you don’t need to go gas up the truck as much either, right?
Dr Pedram Shojai: You might need, you know, fuel for your brain, but you’re not running a marathon today. Right. And
Right.
Dr Pedram Shojai: I think, shit, cause you know, my meal size doesn’t change. My caloric intake doesn’t change when I’m at home all day. How do you get people to be mindful of that, to catch themselves, uh, you know, in, in their dosing of food?
Yeah. Um, it’s interesting. So I did this experiment. I always say that if I’m going to recommend something to a patient, I have to do it myself. For at least a few weeks. I have to have perspective. Um, so I’ve, you know, tried everything under the sun, but I did this experiment. Uh, my whole family was going down to Dominican Republic.
I’m half Dominican. So we spend a good amount of time there and I, and it was me and my brother. So this is like, I don’t know, it was probably before I was married. We always eat like pigs when we’re in Dominican Republic. I mean, it’s just the tostones and lots of white rice. And it’s just, we, we don’t focus on that.
So I said, okay, listen, here’s what we’re going to do on this vacation. We are going to put ourselves on a hunger scale. And one is I want to eat my own arm and 10 is I got to take my pants off. Okay. We’re always going to be a four, a five or six. And so. Okay. We don’t listen to the cues of hunger, and we miss the cue of fullness because once we’ve gotten to fullness, we’ve overeaten. So when we put ourselves in that scale, we came out of a two week trip and everyone had lost weight. And we didn’t alter what we actually ate while we were in Dominican Republic. And we still had the fried foods and the white rice, but we put ourselves on that hunger scale. So My point here is that when you start listening to your hunger, when you listen to gremlin coming in and saying, Hey, we need some fuel. That’s when you eat and when you no longer feel that hunger, that’s when you stop. And what happens is we stop when we feel fullness. So I always tell my patients there’s no physiological reason for fullness. Other than, Hey, the food tastes great. The food’s addictive. I’m going to keep eating it. That’s why you become full or you’re distracted.
There’s a whole bunch of reasons, but leptin sends the message to the body. It’s time to stop eating. We got enough fuel for the next four hours. It’s like that gas tank clicking off. We keep eating beyond leptin and leptin isn’t come at fullness. It comes when we have that lack of hunger. So eating till you’re no longer hungry and not till you’re full. Is like, wow. Once you master it, you’ve mastered this concept of portion control. You really have, because you’re listening to your hunger.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Okay. There’s a lot there. I want to stay on this for a minute. On one side, we’re in kind of a juicy conversation I like to have around awareness and attention and, and checking in with oneself. Hey, am I hungry right now? Am I, am I needing another bite of this? Which requires us to. Turn inward and be aware instead of, you know, the conversation or, you know, the, hopefully not the nightly news that’s in front of us while we’re eating.
Dr Pedram Shojai: And then the other side of the conversation, um, Um, tends to also skew into dark alleys, which is, well, the, the, the leptin and the ghrelin are compromised because of the environmental toxins and you know, all of our, you know, our dysbiosis and all these things. And so you don’t stand a chance because your satiety hormones have already been disrupted.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Right. And so. There’s a couple. So the victim side of that is I don’t stand a chance. So I’m going to lose the, the, the other side of that is, well, don’t eat toxins and don’t expose yourself to toxins. And that system is resolved. So there’s probably a third or fourth in there, but that’s just, what comes to mind is let’s take away the excuses.
Dr Pedram Shojai: And then how do we instill the awareness knowing that at that moment, those are the bad food decisions. That’s the, that’s, that’s really the crux of it there. In my, in my view is you’re sitting in front of the food. You’re putting the food in your own mouth. You could have stopped. Why didn’t you?
Right. And, and, and think about it this way. Like when you’re out to dinner with someone, or, or even just sitting with your family at a meal, how often we pick up a fork and it never leaves our hand. Right. Just think about that. Like pick up the fork at dinner and rarely do we put the fork down, take a bunch of chews, right?
There’s data looking at chewing more, slowing down the whole system of what occurs when we chew more, but we tend to not put the fork down. So, um, and that’s, you know, that’s kind of, we can look at it in the past than the aspect of, Oh, put your fork down, but really literally putting your fork down in between bites. is something we tend not to do. So that’s part of, I think, kind of this, this mindfulness part is it will not occur. I would say the third part. So what, so what you said is the inclusion of ultra processed foods, which we have no ability to be able to stop eating. It’s really hard to do that. Um, but I think like just slowing down the process, which might be even more challenging because we are a society that’s all about rushing. Right? We’re eating in our car and we’re distracted and but slowing down the process of food. Just the concept of eating it sometimes can help with being able to recognize that I don’t need any more food anymore. Um, and the reason I always say that portion control doesn’t work really well is that people that struggle with portions are typically the same people and at least in my practice that are struggling with ultra process foods. Right. And I remember sitting as a kid in the eighties and seeing like the potato chip devil, like literally this was an ad and he was a devil and he said, you can’t eat just one and he’s holding the potato chip. You’d never see that ad today because that devil was absolutely accurate. They don’t want to, you know, don’t advertise that. Right. But,
Dr Pedram Shojai: onto us.
Oh shoot. Right. Oh my gosh, that was a bad ad. But, but that’s the whole point is that you can’t eat just one. You can have one, one, um, you know, you can have a head of broccoli or a half a head of broccoli and be like, that was really enjoyable and I’m done. You can’t do that with potato chips most of the time.
So, so, so there’s different, um, there’s different compounds within the foods we chose. So to your point, I think it goes back to making the right decision. And that’s where I think the baby steps approach is a little bit more realistic. Right. Instead of me saying, okay, well, we’re going to cut all the ultra processed foods in your pantry and your fridge.
And this is what I’m going to do when I’m going to visit you in your kitchen. Um, you know, we have to look at it from a different perspective, instead of saying, okay, I’m going to take away these potato chips. What do you think you could have in place of it that you won’t feel deprived? So that’s the conversation we have to have.
And that might take a half hour. So it’s a much longer process than people give it credit for. Unfortunately with insurance. You know, if I have someone in my office for a half hour, I’m, I’m lucky. All right. So the insurance is the other, um, you know, we should have unlimited timeframe, uh, for dietetic visits, but
Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah, good luck. Good luck with that. Um, yeah, I don’t, I don’t think the insurance model works. I think the middleman has ruined the game and I think that it disintermediates the relationship. I’d rather pay you the money and listen in because I expect the value because I understand that I’m paying the money.
Dr Pedram Shojai: But you know, the insurance just dings my card and I don’t even, I don’t even know what I get from it. A couple things came up. One, Really interesting. We were having a conversation two nights ago around our dinner table where, you know, three or four times I’m, I had to lean into my daughter and be like, stop talking with your mouth full.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Right. And then I’m like, God, why is this kid? And I’m like, Oh my God, my wife and I do it. Both of our moms are notorious. Like they, they lived in these big families where it’s like, you gotta get, you know, you just, you gotta get a word in and there’s too many kids. And you know, and so I was like, Oh shit, this is, I can’t yell at her over this.
Dr Pedram Shojai: This is learned behavior. And so as you were saying that I’m thinking, okay, we’re going to play a new family dinner game where. The person who talks has to put down their fork, which means they’ve chewed their meal, then they speak, and then the next person can speak and you rotate and learn to be mindful around whether you’re chewing or eating and take the time.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Um, because for me coming from a big family, like background. Yeah, it wasn’t a thing.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s true. It’s, it’s,
Dr Pedram Shojai: going to do that tonight.
Put the fork down. Put Literally. Physically. Put it down in between the chews and, um, chew more. I think, I think some of the studies show around 40 chews. Now, most, most adults and kids are not going to, to do that. Um, they’re not going to go through that process, but I think, I think we lose a lot of, Mindfulness, right?
I mean, this is definitely a cliche type of project, but it is something that we did in kind of our mind body classes that we ran. You know, the first class we would always ask, we would have everyone put a raisin in their mouth. They had to keep that raisin in for 30 minutes. couldn’t, couldn’t chew it.
That just had to kind of stay towards the back. And then every few minutes we would say, how is the raisin changed? What does the texture taste like? Is it sweeter? Um, so it changed over the process and people were like, Oh my gosh, I’d never had any clue that if you kept a raisin in your mouth this long, it would change throughout time and it would, there would be all these things we could discuss.
Usually I have a handful of it and I’m down in it. It’s right. So it’s kind of like this. That’s an extreme example of mindfulness, but it kind of goes to the point of when we slow it down, when we chew, um, when we give ourselves the opportunity to have a family meal without a timeframe, it speaks more to the mindfulness of the meal and the pleasure of the meal versus you got to get, you got to get this down because you’ve got homework now
and we got to sit down and watch TV.
All right.
Hope you’re enjoying the podcast back to it in a second. If you have not seen my interconnected series, I highly recommend you do so. Just go to the urban monk.com go under films. That’s in series and you can see it there. I think it’s our first two episodes. Uh, we’re doing a free screening of, and if you like it, you can get it from there. Really informative, really important to understand why the microbiome, why the vegetables, why all of it. Um, and would, it.
has to do with your health back to the show.
Dr Pedram Shojai: right.
Dr Pedram Shojai: I mean, the first one is a legitimate excuse, uh, to a certain degree. I think, I think the kids are over homeworked. Um,
Dr Pedram Shojai: yeah, but if you’re in a hurry to finish dinner to watch TV, you’re lost, right? That
Right, you’re
Dr Pedram Shojai: that, yeah, that is a bad deal. Right. But yeah, I mean, we had this last night. I mean, they, they come home from ski racing.
Dr Pedram Shojai: It’s 7 p. m. We got to feed them, get them in the showers. And then they still have, my son has like an hour and a half of homework,
Right.
Right.
Dr Pedram Shojai: you not hurry dinner? And so the, the lifestyles are so compressed that it is something that is very, I just want to acknowledge the people listening. It ain’t easy.
Dr Pedram Shojai: It ain’t easy, right? Time is
not easy. It’s not easy. And I share that all the time. I’m I’m people often say like, Oh, I bet your kids are the perfect eaters. They are the exact opposite of perfect eating. I struggle every single solitary day. I’m trying all the tactics. I’m doing everything I can to get a little bit more nutrient density and it’s always a fight. So it doesn’t, you know, life happens so we can take theory and really good data and interpret it into how something should be. But then life happens. and you’ve got homework or you’ve, you have to prepare for something the next day at work. So, you know, we have to kind of get into this concept of gentle nutrition where we’re also not just completely killing ourselves because we might have a bad night.
We might have a night where the meal’s not perfect. Meal’s not always going to be perfect. All right. But if the meal’s pretty good most of the time and everyone likes it and people are getting some sort of nutrient density, that’s a whip. It’s not going to happen seven nights.
Dr Pedram Shojai: There’s a lot to be said around in the old days, everyone would just stop and hold hands and someone would do the Lord’s prayer and just stop time for some gratitude, take a breath and shift the mindset of the table prior to prayer. Bringing on the food and it, that, that did, that did stuff, right? That did that slowed you down.
Dr Pedram Shojai: It instilled gratitude. It pumped the brakes a little bit and shifted mealtime into something that was a little more sacred. How much of that helps when you’re counseling folks, when they start instilling those types of rituals back in, and it could just be gratitude. It doesn’t have to be the Lord’s prayer, right?
Dr Pedram Shojai: But putting in, uh, interjecting a parasympathetic. Pulse to say, hold on, we’re doing something different now. Slow down.
Right, right. Yeah, and in our family a lot of times before dinner we’ll, um, we’ll go over our peak and our pit of the day. What was the best part of the day and what was the part of the day that like wasn’t, wasn’t as great as it could have been. And that’s sometimes, and we’ll do that before we eat, right?
So we’ll kind of share, here’s what happened in the day. Um, so I think everyone will have some sort of different tactic of how to do this. The interesting thing is with most of my patients, it’s a struggle to even get the family to sit down, let alone let’s stop before we eat. So everyone’s eating in different rooms. Um, a lot of times I have families where the kids get one meal and the parents get another. So that’s a real challenge. And again, I under, as a parent, I understand that challenge. It’s not judging it whatsoever. Um, so even the fact like we’ve gotten away as a culture. of sitting down and just taking 45 minutes. Um, we’re just kind of like, it’s like a means to an end. It’s dinnertime and it’s like, let’s just gobble it down and then let’s get the heck back to our rooms and do our own thing. So it, you know, I don’t really even approach the, what do we do when we’re at the table yet? Because I can’t even get most of my people at the table. So that’s really the challenge, right? So, um, I mean, I’ll settle for, can you all sit at the island? Can you sit at the kitchen island? Okay. We don’t have to, to set the table. I do, I do like try and convey to my kids the importance of dinnertime, family dinnertime. And what I do with that is like the importance of setting the table, which might sound ridiculous, but like, where does the fork go?
And based on what we’re eating tonight, what utensils do you think we need? So we’ll have that whole conversation. And I made fun of half the time for it. But it starts to like, you know, get their mind frame into this is what I did when I was a kid and hopefully it, it follows through to what they’ll do with their families.
Dr Pedram Shojai: I’m so broke. I can’t even pay attention. That’s where we’re at, right? That’s where we’re at is,
Right. Here’s the food. Eat it.
Dr Pedram Shojai: I mean, where I would probably, where I go mentally with that is take away the flippant devices. Stop
gosh. Yeah.
Dr Pedram Shojai: time back from the attention economy, at the very least, if the homework is overwhelming.
Dr Pedram Shojai: So if you’re, you know, letting them browse or play the stupid apps, I mean, it’s a dumpster fire. We got rid of YouTube a long time ago, but then we’d get them, you know, some game on their iPad. And then, through that game, they’d request 27 other games through the ads that they would see. And, and I just be like, what is this?
Dr Pedram Shojai: And I just sat with him for a couple hours and be like, Hey, let me, let me hang out with you while you’re doing this thing. And the degree to which the advertising just crawls over into your kid’s brain. And some of it was like sexually explicit ads for like kids that snuck through. And I was just like, gone, gone, all of it gone.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Like, this is insane. Right? Like we, we don’t stand a chance.
Yeah. And isn’t it crazy? I’ve done the same thing. Isn’t it crazy when you tell your kid, like, I’m just going to sit in the room while you’re watching this,
Dr Pedram Shojai: Totally.
you know, they’re kind of like, okay.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Mom,
Right. Like, Oh,
okay. All right. No, I’m just going to be working in the background. Right.
But it’s crazy what you hear and what they’re being exposed to. That sometimes we don’t even,
we’re not even aware. And I will say there’s a food perspective to it as well. Yeah. I mean, I’ve been at the store where my kids will say, well, I, I heard, you know, I heard from like all my friends at school are talking about this YouTuber and he’s got this chocolate bar and I got to get it. And I’m like, well, what if it tastes like crap? Like you got to get it because it’s like 5 and this YouTuber is saying that this is his chocolate bar. Like, are we, are we thinking about like what this, you know? So yeah, that’s tough.
Dr Pedram Shojai: yeah, as a parent, it’s, you know, the, the orcs are crawling over the walls and you have like, you know, three archers left, right? Like,
right, right, right,
Dr Pedram Shojai: Okay, so yes, it’s difficult, but you don’t stand a chance if you don’t draw the line. Um, you know, we can spend another hour on that, but I want to talk about the thesis that’s come out of your recent book.
Dr Pedram Shojai: You all have proven something that I find to be very encouraging, right? The regeneration of tissue, the, the promise of healing, um, the turnaround, right? So tell me what you have done. Tell me Why that’s so important. And let’s get into this other part of the work that you’ve just brought to the world.
Yeah. So, um, we really focused on metabolic and liver health. And, you know, again, if we, if we look at the liver just to give that one Oh one, it’s got like, Hundreds and hundreds of different processes in the body, right? Digestion, filtration, metabolism, detoxification, hormonal blood clotting. It’s all these great things that the liver does. So, when the liver becomes compromised for any reason. It trickles down to other organs because it touches so many organs, right? There’s so much blood flow that goes in and out of the liver. And so there’s so much impact with other organs. So what we really looked at was the dietary principles as well as some lifestyle principles as well, um, and inflammatory principles. that help with creating a liver that has too much fat, too much scar tissue occurring, too much inflammation occurring, and literally reversing that process through the regeneration of more healthy liver cells. So that’s kind of the high level concept of what we’re looking at, but of course it could really be boiled down to a lot of intricate things that any one of us could be experiencing.
So dysbiosis in the microbiome, it’s a great example of that, right? The liver, um, well, 75 percent of, of blood from, you know, the intestines going into the portal vein, going into the liver. When we have things like leaky gut or gut, or we have like SIBO, um, that hugely impacts it because the blood that’s going in and out. is going to be blood that needs major toxification, right? Major detoxification. So, um, I think the, the message is we’ve got something that is taking care of a lot of parts of the body. There’s a lot of hope because it is the only organ that does regenerate, literally can regenerate. Um, but that you got to do something about it.
You can’t just sit around and say, well, this is going to take a long time. I’ll be dead by the time I get cirrhosis. You have to look at this and say, what are, what are my modifiable, non modifiable risk factors? What can I do today? What are the steps I can do today to kind of regenerate this whole concept within my body?
Right,
Dr Pedram Shojai: ago, I’ve been public about this. We were in Portugal and Spain and you know, it was, it was a win in Rome summer and just have the gelato with the kids and the wine with the wife and the pasta and the gluten and all that. And I came back and I couldn’t sleep.
Dr Pedram Shojai: I’m like, why is this guy not able to sleep? Right. And it wasn’t like, Oh, you meditated off. And I started looking into the literature and I was like, Oh my God, I, not only did I get leaky gut, the endotoxemia, um, is leading to my liver, the liver’s in charge of the clock genes, all sorts of stuff. And the second pass of the liver is for endotoxins.
Dr Pedram Shojai: And so I got deep into the literature on endotoxemia being like, Oh my goodness, it’s an alarm signal from inside the body trying to say something ain’t right. And the liver doesn’t know how to talk. So you get maybe if you’re lucky, some tinnitus or some, uh, you know, some insomnia to tell you something ain’t right way before you end up with a diagnosis of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
Dr Pedram Shojai: So you’re not talking about stem cells here. You’re not talking about peptides here. You’re talking about food.
right, right.
Dr Pedram Shojai: How do, how do we eat our way out of this?
So I think, um, you know, you can look really high level and look at. The antioxidant capacity of certain foods. Um, and just say, okay, these foods have high antioxidants. They have high bioactive compounds that we know can fight against cellular damage. We have cellular damage within liver tissue that’s been compromised because of too much fat, literally fat in the liver. Um, so high antioxidant diet is 1 concept. I often say that like when we look at like all the governments. Recommendations for fruit and vegetables. It’s like, I’ll have seven servings of fruits and vegetables every day. People can’t really wrap their head around it. And most people will say, well, who’s got that kind of time? But I think it’s because a lot of people don’t break it down into, like, really color. And so that’s 1 of the things that I always communicate, you know, if you just get. 5 to 7 colors, and it doesn’t have to even be a serving, just get more colors, just get things that have a lot. High polyphenols, high photonutrients that tends to be really beneficial to liver health based on the data based on some of that, some of that, um, there’s certain things, you know, it’s interesting that we, we can’t control, right?
So we, we looked at a lot of research looking at what happens to your liver in utero. So if you’re, if your mother has fatty liver, if your mother has gestational diabetes, you are much more likely. To also develop that yourself, and it becomes harder for you to reverse it because you were compromised to begin with. So we found that data as well as non modifiable great example, but it doesn’t mean there’s not hope. So I think we have to kind of break down the genetics. Versus what can I control? The good news is you can control a lot of things moving more, having more color. Um, you know, even again, not portion controlling, but even thinking on this mindfulness that we’ve already discussed, not overfueling. All right, so you use the example of your, your truck. So when you’re pumping gas, and the thing clicks off. If we sit there, we say, Oh, we’re still going to continue to like. continue to like pump the gas, right? Um, it’s going to get on your shoes and then could have a fire. It’s all these horrible things that can happen, but yet we do it with food all the time, right?
We keep pumping the gas, keep pumping the gas. That example was, was so spot on. So I just think, um, you know, we have to know that there’s hope, but you, you have to make changes. You have to make moves. And I want to like remind everyone. there continues to be zero pharmacological treatments for this condition. So we don’t have an opportunity like other conditions to say, I’ll just take a pill. All right. So we lose that opportunity with non alcoholic fatty liver disease. It has to be lifestyle mediated.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Uh, quick 101 on this, um, and we’re kind of running to the bottom of our hour, but I, I, I really want to, The liver will deposit fat because of the gasoline spilling on the gas station floor. That’s how we deal with it, right? And so,
Dr Pedram Shojai: the relationship of sugar, calories, and liver storing fat, just so people understand that, because I have another question to follow that.
Yeah, so the liver has a huge role in releasing sugar as fuel when it senses that the body doesn’t have enough, um, and taking on sugar when it needs to store it. Okay, so there’s this whole role that it plays. We think that the sugar is just pancreas and that’s about it. No, the liver plays a huge role in this. So when the liver becomes a little bit compromised, What happens is that and it gets too much sugar, like way too much sugar and zero fiber, zero other nutrients, um, it starts storing, storing, storing, and it has really no use to figure out what to do with this, especially if you’re insulin resistant and you’re already getting this misalignment of really signals of how much insulin is necessary to take blood sugar to the cells, to the muscle, etcetera, right?
So insulin resistance is a lack of sensitivity. You don’t, you’re not sensitive enough to figure out how much to pump out here. So it starts storing this sugar as fat. This is the connection between really the fat in the liver and the sugar. Or refined carbs, right? I put them in the same boat. Whether it’s a piece of licorice or a piece of white bread.
Same boat. Same boat. Lacking fiber, high glycemic load, etc. Um, so it stores it as fat. And what happens is, and then there’s also some fatty acid metabolism misalignment as well. Um, but the more fat we get in the liver, the more that healthy tissue is replaced by the fat. The fat serves no purpose, really.
Okay, like, I mean, only brown fat serves a purpose in our, in our body. And that ain’t what you’re seeing in the liver. So, um, that’s really how this kind of progresses. So really looking at this concept of, okay, how do I get my blood sugar under control? Could be one of the first steps towards getting that liver health back into where it should be.
Dr Pedram Shojai: How long for the turnaround, in your experience, when they shift the diet?
Yeah. Um, usually, I mean, some of the studies we’ve looked at were about 12 weeks, which I would argue is a short amount of time, right? 12 weeks is a very short amount of time. Um, so 12 weeks is probably the gold standard, but I think even within a few weeks, really changing dietary patterns can, can have a really profound effect. Um, and it’s true. You talked about like not being able to fall asleep and you could look at the same concept related to alcohol metabolism in the liver. So, you know, what I tell my patients is when you have alcohol, it’s a toxin, liver is like, oh my gosh, this toxins here and it stops every process down in order to convert that toxin and get it out of the body.
That’s the only goal. So blood sugar is not managed well because it’s like the liver’s like, I can’t do anything else right now. I got to get this toxin out. And what happens after it gets it out is you wake right back up. So even though alcohol is a sedative, three in the morning, you’re going to wake up and not going to be able to fall back asleep. So it’s a great example of kind of what you said is that when it’s working so hard, it will do it at the compromise of working for other organs. All right. It just, it just doesn’t have that capability.
Dr Pedram Shojai: And honestly, I feel like the liver, um, the heart works a lot, but the liver is probably the hardest working silent organ in the body. Um, and it just does so much that we don’t give it credit for. Um, and we just beat it up all the time. Not just with the, the blood sugar, but you know, the, the perfume at the, the store, the, you know, all of the things that, that are exotoxins as well.
Dr Pedram Shojai: The poor liver takes it.
Right. What are we putting on our grass?
Dr Pedram Shojai: Let me let me, let someone in the front door. Um, are you, are you have a heart out? Do you have a heart out at 10?
Nope. Not at all.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Okay, we’re going to wrap it in like two minutes anyways, but let me just let her in real
Okay. Okay.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Sorry. I was supposed to leave the front door open and I, it was just partially latched so she couldn’t get in.
worries.
Dr Pedram Shojai: yeah, my bad. Um, non alcoholic fatty liver disease. The book says 25 percent of the population, that’s one in four people, have this. This isn’t trivial, this is epidemic proportions. It’s just that people aren’t falling over, dying overtly from it.
Dr Pedram Shojai: So people are like, well, whatever, right? How bad is
Or having symptoms. Yeah.
It’s really bad and that’s, that’s really probably, um That’s probably a low estimate. There’s probably a lot more people that have the condition. I mean, if you’re diet type 2 diabetic, you’re like 80 percent more likely to have fatty liver as well. So a lot of times we’ll look at inclusion, um, as a form of diagnosis.
Um, so my co author who’s a hepatologist, he would look at that when he’s trying to diagnose sometimes. Do you have type two diabetes? Do you have certain waist circumference, etc? But it’s probably a lot worse than what we think. Yes, it’s slow moving, but the problem is you don’t get the symptoms until your liver is really damaged a lot of times. So that’s the issue is that like we ignore it because we don’t have any symptoms that we can identify to the liver. We might have symptoms like fatigue or brain fog that we’re not even aware of. Put into the liver, right? Like, Oh, I’m just so stressed or I’m so tired, you know. Um, but once you start getting more symptoms that are a little bit more severe, a lot of times you’re in kind of the second stage. which is like a Nash or the area where we have more fibrosis or inflammation. So the inflammation signals are occurring really rapidly, and that’s when it’s like people are like, Oh, shoot, I really have to take care of this. So, you know, my whole point is like, let’s not wait. Let’s see if we have a diagnosis and let’s take the steps now. Not only will it help this organ, it’s going to help all the other organs as well.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Yeah, in the liver is trying to orchestrate a lot. It conjugates our hormones, it helps with the storage of energy, our metabolism, all these things that are kind of, that are off in metabolic syndromes that we all have now because we all have gasoline on our shoes. And so the idea of fixing that conductor in the orchestra, um, Really can change a lot of things in people’s stars, and that’s where I find this is a really high leveraged play is if you can fix this, then all the systems of the body start to get much more harmony because everything’s running through the liver, and if that’s the catch point where things are stuck, if you’re losing capacity in the liver, that’s just it’s a friction point where all the blood’s got to pass through.
Dr Pedram Shojai: It’s bad. It’s bad when the liver is not working right.
Bad when the liver’s not working right, right? And we, you’re right, we don’t give it the attention that it deserves. I, I remember, um, this is my second book on liver health and I remember when I was writing the first one and people have been telling me like, Oh, what, you gotta write a book, gotta write a book.
So finally I started writing a book. What’s it about? And I was almost like, Oh, it’s, uh, it’s about the liver. Right. And then I’d wait for their like disappointed reaction.
It wasn’t about the brain. It’s Not sexy.
at all. Right. Like, it’s like, Oh yeah, it was kind of like, I’d say it under my breath and then just, you know, um, but it’s true, right?
Like, so you, the heart is sexy. The brain is sexy and it should be, it plays such a huge role. But you can have, um, you know, if, if your liver doesn’t work, you don’t work. And that’s just the bottom line. That’s the high level, bottom line liver doesn’t work. You don’t work nothing about you is going to work. Um, you know, that, that is why it’s such an amazing organ and we don’t give it the credit it deserves because really it doesn’t get the news that it should get.
Dr Pedram Shojai: But if you look at the, the other news, and we’re like adding 70, 000 tons of synthetic chemicals to our environment every single day, and you know, we’re making all these new chemicals and the body does not know how to process or conjugate out. Where does that stuff go, folks? It’s gotta go through your liver, right?
Dr Pedram Shojai: And so the liver is working over time And so the liver is working over time. and not getting the support and love it needs. And we’re feeding ourselves in a way that it’s also doubling down on the same organ. So because the liver has multiple jobs, the liver is also taking multiple punches. So that’s where I find this to be incredibly important.
Dr Pedram Shojai: And again, a leveraged play, fix your liver, fix your life. What’s the title of the book? How can people find it? Um, I think that I just, I’m a, I’m a big fan of, I’m a big fan of the work that you’re doing and feel that, um, folks who get it need to read this tonight.
Yep. Well, thank you for that. It’s called regenerative health. And, uh, you can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, um, you know, if you go to my website, you can, you can get it there as well, but Amazon’s probably the best place to get it. And, um, yeah, I think we, we tend to agree. Uh, it’s a really important, important book about something that most people aren’t noticing.
And so that’s why it makes it even more important.
Dr Pedram Shojai: Great. And for those of you who love, uh, the way Kristen rolls, she was also a guest in the vitality summit, which if you’ve heard this before, um, the event starts, uh, you need to hear what we talked about there because, uh, we, we talked about a lot of different things, um, that are related, um, yet different.
Dr Pedram Shojai: So Kristen. Thank you. Great to have you on the show
Uh, such an honor.
Dr Pedram Shojai: best of luck. in all of it. You’re great.
Thank you so much.
Okay. That’s rap. Hope you enjoyed it. Uh, check out her book, check out her stuff. She’s brilliant. I really enjoyed meeting her. I really enjoyed interviewing her. She was also in my vitality summit. Both times walked away thinking I like her. I’ll see you in the next show.