Holistic Nutrition on Keto and Chronic Pain Relief | KCL29

Episode Description: 

Join Carole as she teams up with Ciara and Kristen, hosts of the show The Fiercely Holistic Podcast, as they talk all things holistic nutrition!

Functional & Holistic Nutritionists, Ciara Shea and Kristen Mihaly, share expert insight on how to make healthy living achievable by providing small, tangible changes to live a fiercely holistic life.

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Transcript:

Keto Chat Live EP 29

Carole Freeman: [00:00:00] Hey Ciara we did it. We’re live. Hey everybody. Hey. Hey, are you confused about what foods are the healthiest? Do you worry about food… about your food budget? When you’re making healthy food choices, you should stick around because this episode is for you today. My special guest cohost, there’s two of them. You can only see one right now.

Carole Freeman: One of them is invisible. She’ll be joining me later, but we’ve got Ciara, and Kristen, later will be joining me. We’ll do their intro here in just a moment, but I’m gonna make sure I get the medical disclaimer out of the way so we don’t get in trouble. Anyone out there in the world. Welcome to chat live.

Carole Freeman: I’m your host Carole Freeman. I have a master’s degree in nutrition and clinical health psychology. Also a board certified keto genic nutrition specialist. And this show is meant for educational and entertainment purposes. Only. It is not medical advice nor intended to diagnose, prevent, treat, or cure any condition.

Carole Freeman: If you have questions or concerns related to your specific medical condition please go contact your personal qualified [00:01:00] healthcare professionals. Welcome to the show. Ciara thank

Ciara Shea: you so much, Carole. I am so excited to be here and I apologized already, but I will do this again.

Ciara Shea: Live then. I’m a little scratchy. I was under the weather a couple of days ago. But I’m super excited to be here. I love talking about food. It is my ultimate passion. So thank you for having us on. And yeah, Kristen is on her way. She has a little itty-bitty baby at home that she’s putting down to bed.

Ciara Shea: So it is a new way of life for

Carole Freeman: sure. Oh, wonderful. Those of you watching, please participate in the show. I can see we’ve got people live here. So go ahead and just give us a comment. Let us know where you’re joining from the show’s interactive. Feel free to ask questions, chime in. We need comments through the whole thing.

Carole Freeman: We’re glad you’re here and we want you to be here with us the whole time. Also to kick things off, I have a quiz that I’ll be I’m gonna just have a quiz question to start things out and we’ll let you all keep guessing. Where is Carol going for Thanksgiving weekend? So pop your guesses in the chat.

Carole Freeman: We’ll just keep that going here for a little while. [00:02:00] I’ll share the answer. We’ll see if anybody can get it. If you’ve been watching recently, if you’re a regular, the answer so you can cheat if you’ve been watching for awhile, but if not, this’ll just be a fun game to keep going. Let’s see Ciara. I can just keep saying your name both ways. Sierra it’s like Russell Wilson’s wife, right? Yes. Or like the singer. Okay. Same person. Yeah. Ciara and Kristen. They are co-hosts of fiercely holistic podcasts. They’re both nutrition therapy association graduates, nutritionist, holistic and functional nutritionist.

Carole Freeman: So really great. So glad that you’re here. Just I’ll let you, tell your story, tell us a little bit more about who you are. How did you get interested in what you’re doing?

Ciara Shea: Yeah I am a functional nutritional therapy practitioner. I live on long island, New York. I am also a jurist doctor almost about to get sworn in as a lawyer.

Ciara Shea: So that’s a whole nother story for a whole nother podcast episode. But I. Ultimately graduated law school. I was 24. I was on the [00:03:00] fast track to like working the 90 hour weeks and all that. And my mom got diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and through her care, I was really blown away at how narrow-minded our medical community is.

Ciara Shea: And how there was really no, there was no appreciation or understanding of the role that food plays, the role that stress plays. And the importance of lifestyle in managing illness. Now, as a practitioner, I don’t manage or treat illness what you were saying in your disclaimer. But I knew that there was a role for me in the wellness field, because more people had to be empowered and understanding that the food choices that they make are really important and it plays a huge role in how you feel.

Ciara Shea: You obviously know that Carol, like you do this, this is what you spearhead. And so I love that. So for me, I put my law books aside [00:04:00] for about 10 years. And I went back to school and I went to the nutritional therapy association. And as I graduated, I began my practice. I’m the owner of a nutrition and wellness.

Ciara Shea: And in my practice I mostly help women. So moms, future moms, current moms shift their habits and fuel their bodies. So it’s so much about lifestyle, but it’s also about. What are you putting in your body? It matters. It totally matters. So I operate based on a nutrient dense whole foods, diet and we work through habit and shifting and really ensuring that we each feel empowered and good in the choices that we’re making.

Carole Freeman: Awesome. Valerie, see? Or she’s a regular hello. She says Robin wants to be part of the show as well, and she wants to know what are you drinking in the can I think that says oh, maybe

Ciara Shea: I have, oh my God. Oh gosh, no, I haven’t. And I got the coaster. I have a big.

Carole Freeman: Peppermint tea, which is good. So mine is it’s water and then also [00:05:00] element salt.

Carole Freeman: So Valerie is gonna know what this is, but it’s electrolyte supplement. That’s primarily sodium from the company, drinkelement.com. They don’t sponsor the show they could if they wanted to, but I know I’m good friends with the owners of the company too, but and then I’m drinking it out of my improv mania pint glass.

Carole Freeman: It’s my local comedy club that I hosted open mic at their every Wednesday evening. And so I’m a big fan, but also they’re awesome. And it’s a good, that’s awesome. It’s a good drink. I like drinking out of glasses. So thanks for rubbing for asking the hard questions. And then do you want to tell about Kristen your partner and hopefully

Ciara Shea: I hope so.

Ciara Shea: She hasn’t texted yet, which is a bit concerning, however that’s okay. We can roll without her. If something came up that is totally fine. So Kristen and I met in school, she was one of the assistant teachers. She is also a functional nutritional therapy practitioner. She has her own crazy medical story, which.

Ciara Shea: Drove her to wanting to learn more about [00:06:00] holistic nutrition. She ha she was wheelchair bound out of nowhere in high school and through a series of tasks and, shifts in lifestyle. She is totally fine and functional now.

Carole Freeman: Wow. But when we

Ciara Shea: met, we hit. And we have this idea of creating a podcast.

Ciara Shea: And so yes, our podcast is called the fiercely holistic podcast and the goal of our podcasts and all of our episodes and interviews is to really bring small, tangible changes into your life. So what can you do today that may not feel big, right? Like maybe adding those electrolytes to your water. That’s a small change.

Ciara Shea: That’s going to have a really big impact in the long run. If you’re staying hydrated and properly fueling your body with electrolytes and all those beautiful trace minerals. So that is what we do on our podcast. And yeah, I’m hoping Kristen can make it, so she shares her story because it’s really powerful.

Ciara Shea: But yeah. Food is life like it’s

Carole Freeman: so important. Wow. I actually have a couple of different [00:07:00] stories of transformation from food. So I can really relate to that where. One of them that isn’t even related to my keto journey, but actually how I got really on board with food being so powerful and healing was in my late twenties.

Carole Freeman: Actually, I was diagnosed with advanced Duodenitis. This is a story I haven’t really got out there. I definitely haven’t shared this on the podcast yet, but advanced duodenitis at night, which the part of the intestines that it connects to the bottom of your stomach is your duodenum or do-a-dee-num depending on who you ask, how to pronounce it, but it was so inflamed and irritated.

Carole Freeman: They wanted to just remove it. They wanted to cut it out. So that’s what, conventional medical doctors are really skilled at what medication or what surgery will fix this thing. Inflamed intestine equals would cut it out. And I also had ulcers really horrible pain and it was way too young to be having that kind of stuff going on.

Carole Freeman: But I was eating the standard American diet. My favorite breakfast was I had young son and was married and a couple of stepsons. And my favorite breakfast was a double tall mocha with couple of glaze donuts [00:08:00] and just eating whatever, and so I asked the doctors at that time, contemplating surgery they, I said, should I be eating something different?

Carole Freeman: And they said, oh no. We find this has nothing to do with food. That kinda doesn’t make sense, like the whole purpose of our digestive system is to digest food and it doesn’t relate to food. And so I, it was a weird thing because I had always wanted to go see a naturopathic doctor.

Carole Freeman: But I felt like it didn’t have a good enough reason to go. And then after this diagnosis and them telling me my only option was surgery, I was like, I think I finally have a good reason to go see a naturopathic doctor at that time. We did some food allergy testing. I don’t do that as much now, but we did food allergy testing.

Carole Freeman: I eliminated several things. I basically just completely switched from a standard American diet to whole foods, a hundred percent, whole foods, diet, and everything cleared up and No longer needed surgery, no longer was in pain. That kind of began my journey of dietary experimentation and trying everything to [00:09:00] find what was best and optimal for me.

Carole Freeman: And, the work that I do now with keto, a lot of the people that are in the scene you find that they’ve tried all the diets as well, right? Like they’ve tried things. And then I went from whole foods and then I was doing food combining, are you familiar with. I’m not sure that with me, no food combining is there’s a, I’m trying to remember the book Harvey and Marilyn diamond back in the, maybe the late seventies or eighties wrote a book on it.

Carole Freeman: And so it it’s a theoretical approach. But basically it’s that, protein foods need to high acid environment in your stomach to digest. Whereas carbohydrates need a more alkaline environment. Like they don’t need us and they actually dilute the acid as well in your stomach.

Carole Freeman: And so food combining is basically you eat certain foods in certain combinations and then you avoid eating other foods. And in those combinations though, Protein and vegetables together you can eat and fruits should be eaten alone because they digest very quickly. And starches should not be eaten with with protein foods and fats go with anything.

Carole Freeman: [00:10:00] Interesting. Again, radical diet change. I don’t know how much of it was, the food combining help this, or just basically really cleaning up. My diet was probably the biggest factor of changing things. Then from this is the continuum swinging really far is going from food combining to vegetarianism and then for vegetarianism to veganism and then for veganism to raw foodist vegan.

Carole Freeman: Oh my gosh. And after going vegan, it only took me about it. It just made, took me a couple of weeks before I started being really tired, really sick. My doctors that I immediately developed a pretty serious anemia. My liver didn’t, you’re supposed, your liver, supposed to have a six month supply of B12 mine.

Carole Freeman: Didn’t like it ran out immediately. So I learned for sure that like my body doesn’t do well with a vegan diet, but anyways sharing that was stage one of my journey and figuring out that food is very important at for healing the body. What we eat matters. So that’s, I want

Ciara Shea: to point something out.

Ciara Shea: I’m sorry. I’m coughing. Hold on one [00:11:00] moment,

Carole Freeman: sorry.

Ciara Shea: One of the things that you said about going to naturopath, they work with preventative. Our doctors in the conventional medical system do not, they work with sick care. You go to them when you’re sick.

Carole Freeman: So that’s what they learn.

Ciara Shea: So going to someone like a naturopath, going to someone like myself as a functional nutritionist,

Carole Freeman: or you, we talk

Ciara Shea: about shifting your lifestyle

Carole Freeman: so you don’t get sick.

Carole Freeman: Yeah.

Ciara Shea: That’s that’s so important because so many people don’t our culture. We don’t have that mindset. We don’t have the prevention

Carole Freeman: mindset. Yeah. And we use the term health care to provide, or insurance and medical system. And we equate that with wellness care, but it’s actually.

Carole Freeman: I often nickname at like just below death care. Like how do we keep people from dying? And that’s really the way a lot of it’s geared towards which it’s important. It has its place, but if we’re trying to live [00:12:00] optimal wellness, optimal health we need other people on our care team that can really, that are trained that way to know.

Carole Freeman: How do we treat the whole body is one, how do we optimize health rather than just preventing death? A hundred percent then a lot of people, a lot of my clients they don’t understand that as well. Like I’ll refer them. I have a functional medicine physician, a naturopath that I partner with that I share and send a lot of my clients too.

Carole Freeman: And they’re, some of them are resistant at the beginning cause they’re like, they don’t really understand the difference between they’re like, oh, I have my doctor. It’s covered by insurance. He runs all my tests for me every year. And I’m like and it’s been pretty remarkable too. So those are the clients that have been willing to go and get these extra tests.

Carole Freeman: We’ve found some things. There are doctors like, there, this approach, right? It’s that’s a little out of the range. We’ll watch it. And I joked as well. Watch it get worse until we do something about . And the functional, oh my gosh. Sorry. And the functional ranges are so different. So let’s talk about that.

Carole Freeman: Sierra, what does functional nutrition mean? [00:13:00] What does that even mean?

Ciara Shea: And by the way, I’m going to cough with you guys through this whole

Carole Freeman: thing. She’s got the mute buttons. You see me,

Ciara Shea: It’s a holistic individualized approach. It’s a root cause approach, right? So by the time you’re sick let’s talk about you’re inflating.

Carole Freeman: That’s a symptom. That’s not the root cause.

Ciara Shea: So that is a perfect example of what functional nutrition or functional medicine would do is look at well. Interesting. What are the things you’re eating? What is your stress like? Are you hydrated? Do you have proper stomach acid? Do you take Pepto-Bismol every single day or eat Tums?

Ciara Shea: Do you drink tons of coffee? Although coffee for many people is fine, but it can be various medic if you don’t have a good quality brand not all coffee is created equal. So that’s what functional nutrition or functional medicine would do. We dive to the

Carole Freeman: Deep root cause of what is going on with your

Ciara Shea: system.

Ciara Shea: And then we address that root cause we don’t bandaid the [00:14:00] symptoms. So what would have happened for you if you got that little part of your your duodenum removed. The rest

Carole Freeman: wouldn’t have gone away. Has happened. It would have had temporary symptom relief until the next section of my intestines got just as inflamed and they had to cut that out.

Ciara Shea: And then they’re like, shocked that oh, like you’re now removing all of these really poor quality foods and bad oils and fats and highly processed snacks. And there’s,there’s, you’ve less injury inflammation, so kinda mind blowing to be quite honest, why this is not more mainstream.

Ciara Shea: We shouldn’t have to be like fighting these we’re not like crusaders and renegades. We’re just people that are like, we want to feel good and we want you to feel good. And we want you to know and feel empowered with the food

Carole Freeman: choices you make. Yeah. So that’s a big difference then. So conventional medical system in the United States, Canada, probably most of the world is like you said, they’re, symptom-based what symptom do you have?

Carole Freeman: What medication or surgery? Give you to remove that symptom, right? [00:15:00] They’re not trained to think of the body as a whole part. Just the fact that we have these individual doctors, we have a heart doctor, a liver doctor, a bone doctor, a brain doctor, neck doctor, they just look at every little part is completely separate and not related.

Carole Freeman: And I’ll give you a little fun, tiny little story here, Sierra. But my training I went to Bastar university, which is one of the top, most world-renowned natural health institutes in the world. However, there’s still a disconnect even there, my degree was a very specialized one. It was a double master’s in nutrition and psychology.

Carole Freeman: And yeah, the reason they have this program was because the students wanted this, they know. What you would feed what you eat, affects your brain and your brain, how it functions, what you think and feel affects what you eat. Like they’re not separate and they’re really important in providing health. And so all the students got that.

Carole Freeman: But the way that the program is run and I don’t, I’m not trying to like diss on them [00:16:00] or their, the Institute or anything like that, or just the way that it works. Like we’re just trying to illustrate the difference of how people are trained in the way that they think of these things.

Carole Freeman: So there was one person that headed the nutrition side of our program, and one person that headed the psychology side. And we always wanted, every class we wanted an integrated, we want. Please tell us how all these affect, but there were very separate classes. And so we had to do a lot of that integrating on our own.

Carole Freeman: Just because again, those, you know the experts that were the head of those departments, that’s where the way they were trained. So I even had a friend of mine that I told him I was getting this really unique degree, so proud of it. And he’s how did, how does food and psychology relate to each other?

Carole Freeman: Oh, that’s normal though. Just think of that, like psychology is what you talk to a counselor about and nutrition is how you eat healthy yeah. Yeah.

Ciara Shea: The other thing I want to say is. The, our modern medicine is beautiful in a lot of ways. And I like that you said, like we’re not dissing on them.

Ciara Shea: There is a time and a [00:17:00] place for that. And there are medical procedures and medical advancements that we collectively are incredibly grateful for with that said it’s different than what we’re talking about. We’re talking about this like hole in the system is broken because it’s not serving people before they’re sick.

Ciara Shea: And so that’s, what we’re talking about like that precursor, right? You shouldn’t only have to rely on your doctor when you’re sick. You should have support from any sort of doctor, whether it’s a naturopath to really get that, that, that preventative care.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. So big difference between functional.

Carole Freeman: Nutrition functional medicine and conventional approaches to, and, we can talk a little bit about them why those lab values are different. I just wanted to welcome the people that are joining us live. Please join us and join us. Tell us where you’re joining us from.

Carole Freeman: Give a comment. Also the running quiz of the day is where is Carol going for Thanksgiving weekend, please [00:18:00] post your guests, guesses, get guests, please post your guesses in the comments. Do you mind sharing a little bit then because people will get labs from their doctors. And this is one of the things recently, for example, that one of my clients She is very good care for standard medical care.

Carole Freeman: She gets annual checkups and is followed by physicians. And I was referred her to my functional medicine doctor and I was just checking through her labs to myself. First time I’d seen them. And I said, oh, this one is like really high. Like doctor said anything and is this. And we went and looked back or like for three years it’s been high and the doctor never said anything to her about it.

Carole Freeman: And and so she’s really excited to see this functional medicine doctor. Now, another one of my clients ended up had a nodule on her thyroid that getting a biopsy that, this is something you can probably appreciate is like standard. Thyroid tests are not gonna find any dysfunction until things are really bad.

Carole Freeman: And so the way that this functional medicine doctor looked at the labs was like, things are a little off, let’s go get some more further testing for you. And they actually. They [00:19:00] found like really early stuff that was really important to catch. So you can talk a little bit then about like, how do you look at labs compared to the rec the reference ranges, there yeah. So

Ciara Shea: I was just, if you heard me ferociously typing, I just wanted to make sure that I’m saying the right ranges. So let me give you an example. Okay. So

Carole Freeman: joining us from Texas, welcome Robyn,

Ciara Shea: Or was that her guests that you’re going to Texas

Carole Freeman: I I live in Phoenix, Arizona, if that gives you a little bit of a hint, but I think she’s in Alvin, Texas.

Carole Freeman: So oddly specific issues guessing that I was going to say

Ciara Shea: Maybe she

Carole Freeman: knew maybe there’s something really cool in Alvin, Texas. I should go check out. That one’s asking if I’m going to Vegas for Thanksgiving. That’s a good guess. I’m going to Vegas in December. But that’s not correct. I’m uh… Good guess though. Thanks for participating.

Carole Freeman: Keep guessing.

Ciara Shea: So let’s just use vitamin D as an example. Cause I think that’s a really easy one for everyone

Carole Freeman: to understand. I word that usually goes with, cause that will, since we’re live on certain things, but just [00:20:00] vitamin D is good for vitamin D is very

Ciara Shea: good for your body. Vitamin D is essential.

Ciara Shea: So when you were looking at conventional ranges of vitamin D, so let’s just say you get your blood drawn and you’re looking at your vitamin D ranges. Conventional ranges are 30 to a hundred functional ranges. So sorry. When a doctor sees that and you were anywhere from 30 to a hundred. You’re good.

Ciara Shea: Yeah. You’re your vitamin D is totally in range. A functional value wants you between 50 and 80 so that the ranges are much tighter and this is not going to be the same, for each thing. But every single lab you pull, like your thyroid labs, the functional ranges are going to be way, way tighter.

Ciara Shea: They really want you in a very smaller range. They talk about that because that’s where you’re going to be at your optimal health. You’re not going to be as healthy, with your vitamin D level at a 30, that you would be at a 90, so it’s almost like ridiculous to think about those conventional ranges and why they’re so wide [00:21:00] and what the explanation is for that.

Ciara Shea: I know Kristen and her practice runs all types of blood work. She is a restorative wellness practitioner. She also does. She just texted me. She also does functional lab tests. And for me, I mostly work with the habit and the food. So at some point I may incorporate blood work because I think it’s a really good way of knowing what’s happening in your body on on the next level.

Ciara Shea: So there are so much we could do just like you were saying, Carol, like just by switching the way that you’re eating, you feel better already. So there’s a lot that you could be doing foundationally to shift that before blood work really comes into the picture, but it is really good to get your blood work drawn yearly and test it on functional with the functional lab ranges to really

Carole Freeman: be able to know what’s up.

Carole Freeman: And I actually have my clients run a bit of blood work more regularly, depending on what we see metabolic markers specifically, that I’m looking at. So I’ll do a little [00:22:00] plug here. If you don’t know about those ones, Ciara but own your labs.com is a company that empowers consumers to be able to order their own labs directly to go to lab Corp.

Carole Freeman: So I’m not available in New York, New Jersey or Rhode Island. For some reason, those states don’t let people that’s illegal to or something. There’s something there that doesn’t allow

Ciara Shea: do it. You can do anything in New York, you can’t get stool samples run you can get a urine test run. You can’t do any of these things.

Ciara Shea: It’s really

crazy,

Carole Freeman: but you guys, the states are so much closer together. Couldn’t be too hard just to. Unless you live on long island.

Ciara Shea: Yeah. So if you’re anywhere like in the Manhattan area, you could easily pop to New Jersey, but I’m on long island. So I’m like getting over the bridges and, or through the tunnels is just, it’s you might

Carole Freeman: as well go to Canada.

Carole Freeman: It’s a trip.

Ciara Shea: But that’s actually, that’s a great, that’s a great resource to share. And for anyone

Carole Freeman: [00:23:00] not in New York, that’s all there’s a couple more too. So there’s Ulta labs.com as well. And another one you can order your own labs. They don’t go through lab Corp. You ended up having to find a different practitioner to draw the blood.

Carole Freeman: And a lot of them actually partner with a naturopathic doctors and other places that draw blood. And another one that I’ve used is life extensions as well. Okay. You could order labs through there too. So there’s a lot of different options now, which I love because. In the past it was trying to get people to get their doctor, how do I help my lay person Tell their doctor, why they need, they need to coach their doctor and explain why they need these labs.

Carole Freeman: And it was really frustrating and it was only recently that I realized, like I wanted them to run insulin. That’s the, one of the ones that I’m looking at because that’s actually a very early predictor of your progression insulin resistance, all the way to diabetes and high insulin is the first thing that we can see that’s elevated long before A1C or even your fasting blood glucose is going to be the last thing that shows up.

Carole Freeman: Oh my gosh. Welcome Kristen. [00:24:00] Hi Ciara hi. So Robin sharing that every time she has her blood test and she has no vitamin D and she has to take a prescription what am I doing wrong? Is that a fun question to tackle now? We’re not giving any specific medical advice. We’re just education in general.

Carole Freeman: Robin, we’re not your practitioner. So we can’t specifically tell you, but in general, if somebody were to say like, why is my vitamin D always so low? Why do I have to take a prescript? What

Ciara Shea: let me bring Kristen up to date because she’s this is, would probably be her question, but we were actually just talking about the tighter lab ranges when it comes to functional testing versus conventional.

Ciara Shea: So we use vitamin D is, as the example I know is your favorite. I said that right before I said it, that you do a lot of this in your practice. And so we were talking about.

Carole Freeman: I’m really sorry. Really quickly, Kristen don’t mention the I word that’s associated with vitamin D. I’ve found that if we talk about that on here, my then YouTube and Facebook will no longer show this to anybody.

Carole Freeman: So just in general, health and wellness is what we’re talking about. [00:25:00] Okay.

Kristen Mihaly: Fabulous. So yes, the lab ranges are much tighter when we’re looking in the body and the scope of functional medicine. We want to see what does the body need to function or perform optimally. So when we go. To our PCP and we get blood drawn.

Kristen Mihaly: They’re looking at a range that was determined based on basically pooling all these people, taking an average number. Newsflash our society as a whole is so sick. So the ranges have come down and become so much more broad. The example which we’re using here with vitamin D that I always say is, now the lab range of your traditional Western med doctor is 30 to a hundred.

Kristen Mihaly: If I got a 30 on a test, that’s not the same as a hundred, that’s a really broad range. So we like to see those much tighter between 65 and 85. If Robin is constantly experiencing low vitamin D [00:26:00] levels. One thing we would want to actually look at is where vitamin D is absorbed. So we’d look at the large intestine, believe it or not, because that’s where we absorb water, vitamins and minerals.

Kristen Mihaly: So one thing I would have her check first is digestion. Is she absorbing everything optimally the best way to tell that is, are you having one to two good bowel movements a day? Are you experienced, experiencing any gas, bloating, or belching? And if not, and you’re digesting and absorbing, then you’re good to go.

Kristen Mihaly: And I’ve personally seen that a lyposomal vitamin D is much better absorbed in the body when taken with the larger meal of the day. So like a dinner time and it would be a liquid form tends to be absorbed much easier. And you would want to work with a practitioner like Carol was just saying, because.

Kristen Mihaly: They could then specifically determine your dose. Some people thrive on 2000. I use, I personally take closer to 12,000, so that’s just something [00:27:00] to

Carole Freeman: mind. Yeah, love it. I, and I I’m a really big fan as well. Let’s test first to see where your level is. Let’s supplement if needed and then let’s test again because so many times people are just like I just take 5,000.

Carole Freeman: I just take 10,000. Cause I heard every

Kristen Mihaly: day and if you test you, we can usually bring the levels up and see a good reaction to the dose in about six months. So test dose

Carole Freeman: test I’ve. I was really surprised. So I moved from Seattle Washington. I lived there 27 years and I moved to Phoenix, Arizona about a year and a half ago.

Carole Freeman: And I, one of the reasons I moved here is because I know that sun is good for my health, like my mental health, my physiological health, and oh and so I get sun exposure every day, mid day, full body an hour or more. And so I assumed I’m so good now that I moved to the desert and get this [00:28:00] regular sun exposure, real sun exposure.

Carole Freeman: And, but I just was running some other labs earlier this year and I’m like what the heck? I’ll check my vitamin D. And it was down to 30 and I’m like, okay, back on the supplement train. And I’ve been taking. I did some mega dosing at first and I been doing 10,000 a day retested again, cause I want to see is that too much or and I’m like a 79, 10,000 a day and still getting sun exposure.

Carole Freeman: Now I know this late in the year that the sun is lower, whatever angle on the planet. And so you don’t convert as much of it as well, but that just shows and I take a liquid as well. I take in one that’s that’s an MCT oil. Like I L I like one that’s in a fish oil or some kind of real good quality oil.

Carole Freeman: And then I take it with a spoonful of Barlean’s fish oil as well. So then I’m getting the double like perfect cause like absorbs like like you need fat to digest and absorb and transport fats, fat-soluble vitamins. So Robin Robins on high doses of [00:29:00] morphine, this is probably a clue into why she’s having trouble.

Carole Freeman: Do you have suspicion, do you know what you want to speak to that about why that may affect her absorption and bowel movements? Probably. And C do you want me to

Ciara Shea: go for it? Because honestly, I don’t want to misspeak. This is an important

Carole Freeman: one.

Kristen Mihaly: Okay. So typically morphine and it depends on how long she’s been on that mega dose, but because it has, it is an incredible drug and it can really help with pain management, but it can also affect the stomach lining.

Kristen Mihaly: So if there is any. Breakdown in that epithelial layer in the stomach, then we can sometimes see something called leaky gut. And that is when your, basically the tight junctions in the gut are more separated or spread out, which allows undigested food to go into the bloodstream, which lessens the absorption in the digestive tract.

Kristen Mihaly: So [00:30:00] this could definitely be the connection here could be that GI absorption connection due to the morphine. If you’ve been on morphine for, five to 10 days, I don’t think that would be the cause. But if you’ve been doing this for weeks or months, and you’ve been cycling that in and out of your life, then that could definitely have a

Carole Freeman: big

Kristen Mihaly: kind of red flag as to why you’re not fully absorbing the vitamin D five years.

Kristen Mihaly: Robin said, yeah. So your. Probably a great place to start here would be to start tightening up and sealing up that leaky gut. And we can do that with wonderful food options like bone broth. It is so nourishing. The collagen in there is going to literally act like plaster to holes in the wall and seal up the gut lining.

Kristen Mihaly: We can do that with some collagen if you are open to it, college and peptides are great. Marshmallow root Jerusalem artichoke. There are a lot of very calming, soothing [00:31:00] herbs that work beautifully and really tightening up that gut lining. And then Carol, just to get back to what you were saying with the vitamin D, taking it with is huge and we see that absorption is a bit better when taken with K.

Kristen Mihaly: So a vitamin D K two would most likely be better absorbed than just a straight run of the mill vitamin.

Carole Freeman: The other thing that we find a fun fact about vitamin D specifically too, with relation to the keto diet is when people are doing low carb it actually will activate more of the vitamin D in the bloodstream than otherwise.

Carole Freeman: And so it was interesting. Cause when I first started my levels just changing my diet, my vitamin D levels came up just from that as well, too. So that’s another piece where I was so surprised about my low levels, but also why it’s so important to keep checking. Exactly. And Sierra,

Kristen Mihaly: why isn’t

Ciara Shea: there an app or a website literally.

Ciara Shea: We’re and so I was actually going to ask you Carol, how can I don’t see where I could [00:32:00] put in the comments, but maybe I’ll do it in the private chat to you. Because it doesn’t let me comment right now, but it’s called my Tabin. And Carol, I just put it in the private chat if you want to share that.

Ciara Shea: So this is a website available to anyone and it basically helps identify medication cause nutrient deficiencies. Robin, you could put in there. Morphine or if your if it actually has a name, a technical name on it, put it in there, and it will tell you any sort of nutrient deficiencies that you may have based on that medication.

Ciara Shea: They have to share that information. Medic again, we were talking about this before, like modern medicines. Beautiful, but we can forget that these medications are really powerful and they don’t just come into the body again, like we were saying everything’s interconnected. And in fact, one thing, right?

Ciara Shea: So some of these medications are powerhouses and they really do have a great effect in our entire body. So again, about empowering yourself like Robin, we hope that this isn’t scaring you in any way, knowing [00:33:00] that the medication that you may need to be on is affecting your health in another way. It’s about feeling empowered and understanding like, okay, now that I know this, what can I do to help support my body and find that balance?

Carole Freeman: Exactly.

Kristen Mihaly: And I just threw something in the chat too. Carole, if you don’t mind sharing this, it’s an app that you can download onto your smartphone. And it’s called D-minder, D as in dog minder. And you it’s a comprehensive vitamin D tracking app. So it uses GPS in your phone to figure out where you are in the planet.

Carole Freeman: This is crazy. I graduated. So I graduated with my nutrition degree 2012. Okay. Back then it was just like there was a website that we could go to that kind of have an app. I know. I’m so excited. You guys are here. Cause I, I haven’t, I’m just realizing I haven’t got to hang out with nutrition, nerds like this in a long [00:34:00] time oh my gosh.

Carole Freeman: Okay, cool. I’m writing this down. We’ll put it in the show notes as well. So D minder app, it’s on the screen for those of you watching, and then

Kristen Mihaly: it’ll tell you, this is what I love about it. It computes when you can get the best vitamin D and how much you can get, but it also gives you a timer. So you can, it’ll alert you like this is the best time.

Kristen Mihaly: Now, granted, some of us may be working or be out grocery shopping or something, but it’ll alert you when the best time to go out and get that vitamin D is, and then you can track your history and it’ll estimate your levels on this ongoing

Carole Freeman: basis. Interesting. Yeah, it’s

Ciara Shea: very cool. Like over the summer in New York, I would get sound everyday outside.

Ciara Shea: And it was like amazing. I was like, great. I just got from sitting outside doing nothing it’s thousand I use, it’s not going to, obviously New York is not Arizona. And especially New Hampshire, especially now in New Hampshire, but it’s something

Carole Freeman: and it’s another tool to add to your tool [00:35:00] box.

Carole Freeman: So Valerie sharing that her vitamin D went from 22, which is very low, even by conventional standards to 51 pretty quickly when she added more salmon and sardines, her diet took outdoor walks or lunch break. Easy to get back to that. Yeah. It’s healthy for you. Robin’s getting a, you guys are great.

Carole Freeman: Thanks, Robyn. I would love to share a little bit in a moment. Cause it sounds like I’m going to assume that with being on high doses of morphine, that Robin’s probably in a lot of pain. I want to share my story of pain recovery, just because it’s related to what she’s talking about. But first Kristen, I would love to.

Carole Freeman: So Ciara gave us a little bit of a a teaser about your story of what got you into the work that you do. But I would love to hear it from you and Please share.

Kristen Mihaly: Absolutely. Thank you. So I, the seed was first planted when I was a young girl. I was born and raised on Cape Cod in Massachusetts and my middle brother, Matthew was diagnosed with autism right before his second [00:36:00] birthday.

Kristen Mihaly: And 28 years ago, autism was pretty rare. And basically my parents, there was no internet to Google, what is going on. And once they got the diagnoses, they were very open to alternative therapies to help support him. So we did things like acupuncture and culation and Reiki. And one of the things along the way was going gluten free.

Kristen Mihaly: And I can attest to that gluten-free 28 years ago was pretty nasty. It was like eating. But my parents said, if we’re going to do this with Matt, we’re all going to be on board here. So that’s when the seed was first planted and then flash forward to, I was about 15 years old and I always had very irregular periods.

Kristen Mihaly: So I was put on birth control really young at about 14 years old, I was put on birth control to try to regulate those and being a 14, 15 year old, I forgot to take it. [00:37:00] So two days went by three days, went by four days, went by and I said, know what? I forgot to take this little pill. I’m just going to take them all at once.

Kristen Mihaly: And then I ended up getting really sick and ended up with Charlie horses in my legs. I was getting about 80 to a hundred a day. And we went to Boston hospitals because, we’re told those are some of the best in the country. We went up there and at that point I was then unable to walk. And half of the team of doctors that I saw believed that it was a virus that settled in my spine and the other half believed it was Lyme disease.

Kristen Mihaly: I ended up in a wheelchair for eight months and was just told here’s a bunch of valium so the traditional therapy was let’s just hit your system with mega doses of antibiotics. We don’t really know what it is. Is it viral? Is it Lyme? Is it bacterial, but let’s just do this. So I was doing antibiotics and IV antibiotics [00:38:00] for about a year.

Kristen Mihaly: And that then later on really affected my gut health and my hormones. And I ended up with an auto immune disease. I ended up with endometriosis and was just told good luck. And I didn’t believe in my heart that my body wanted to fail itself at 17 years old. Sound like 117, but not 17. So someone along the way said, why don’t you try a holistic.

Kristen Mihaly: Practitioner holistic nutritionist. And I think we’ve all been at the point where when you are feeling so terrible and you’re so sick, someone could tell you like go outside and eat tree bark and you’ll feel better. And you’re like, okay,

Carole Freeman: I’m going. I gave it a shot.

Kristen Mihaly: I started getting better and totally changed career paths.

Kristen Mihaly: I was a singer songwriter changed that and said, this is what I want to do for a living. And it’s really neat. Just full circle. I got to do my [00:39:00] preceptorship with the nutritionist that I saw when I was sick. And then I opened nourish in 2013.

Carole Freeman: So that’s my little

Kristen Mihaly: story.

Carole Freeman: Wonderful. You miss the one I shared, I won’t go over it again.

Carole Freeman: Cause people watching would be bored, but I, my first experience of nutrition healing was in my late twenties with basically they wanted to chop my intestines out because they were inflamed. And I said, this, should I change my diet? And they’re like, nah, that doesn’t do anything to do with it.

Carole Freeman: Yeah. And

Kristen Mihaly: it’s crazy. Cause once they take those things out, there’s no putting them back

Carole Freeman: in. It just wears out the next part of it. So Robin, I’m so sorry. So she’s saying she cries every day. I don’t know what your situation is, but I can imagine you’re in a lot of pain and if the Ciara and Kristen won’t mind and let me indulge Robin for Robin and share my part of my story of how I came to be a keto board-certified keto nutritionist, I’ve got degrees in nutrition and psychology that I had prior to.

Carole Freeman: Coming on board with Keto. So in March of 2014, I was in a really [00:40:00] bad car accident. I was rear ended by somebody going about 35 miles an hour. She didn’t even tap on her brakes. And I was the last, in a long line of parked, stopped traffic. She slammed into me a very old car with no airbags in it.

Carole Freeman: It broke my seat on impact. Then my car was shoved into the car in front of me and my legs smashed up against the dash, no air bags again in this old car. And so I had crush injuries for my legs from basically for my knees to my ankles. And I’ll spare you the photos, but horrific bruising from knees to ankles there.

Carole Freeman: And then. So do things simultaneous simultaneously developed or the next year and a half that just had me pretty much disabled. So I spent the first three months after the accident being bedridden because of the pain in my legs was so bad. And I developed something called chronic regional pain syndrome, which from what I understand, the pain chart for chronic regional pain syndrome is like the worst pain a human can experience.

Carole Freeman: And it’s progressive it’s crippling and disabling. So basically the [00:41:00] there’s it’s nerve dysfunction. It’s also brain dysfunction. So when pain is this and I, again, I don’t know what your unique situation is, but I know that this is the way that pain works is that the longer we’re in pain, the way that the brain works is if that part.

Carole Freeman: So the whatever part of my brain that’s connected to my leg my lower legs where the pain was, it’s just pain, the cells around that area. Then also start to copy that. And so if you’re in pain long enough, the pain will spread to other parts of your body, even though there’s no actual injury there anymore.

Carole Freeman: So that was what was starting to happen to me because I started to feel the tingling in my thighs. So the pain was moving up my legs and it wasn’t actually spreading physically in my legs. It was spreading in my brain. And I was referred to, I, they, they wouldn’t put me on any painkillers is in Washington state back in 2014.

Carole Freeman: And they basically referred me to a pain specialist. Did nothing, but refer me to a pain group basically learn to live with it was what the [00:42:00] treatment was. And I was like, really that’s all we’ve got, and so the thing is, so I tried, I went to, so the other thing that was happening to me simultaneous was what I had.

Carole Freeman: I had an undiagnosed brain injury from the impact. So this is actually pretty common when you’ve got some other injury that supersedes that the pain is so great there, they don’t notice the other symptoms. So I was laid up in bed for three months, not moving walking that could have been a symptom by itself of a concussion, but because it was my legs, they just overlooked that.

Carole Freeman: The brain injury ended up resulting in post-traumatic hypopituitarism, which basically meant the inflammation in my brain started to cause my pituitary gland to not work correctly. And that caused everything else in my body, all my other glands of my body to start going haywire as well. And so the longer I was sick, the more symptoms I had.

Carole Freeman: Perhaps you two know Ciara and Kristen know that the more symptoms you have when you go to a conventional doctor, the more likely they are to refer you to a psychiatrist, they think [00:43:00] you’re just, you’re crazy. You’re depressed. You’re making it up. You can’t possibly, there’s nothing that causes all these symptoms.

Carole Freeman: And I had to figure this out on my own. I was so desperate. I really believe that food could heal me, but I didn’t. It took me a long time to figure out really, even what was going on. So I actually have had two different ants on different sides of my family have this same CRPS pain syndrome that I had.

Carole Freeman: That was something that I was like, I guess I’m just going to have to live with this. And, a year and a half after the accident, I couldn’t stand because it was the swelling in the legs was so bad. It was so painful. A light touch was excruciatingly painful. I couldn’t do acupuncture.

Carole Freeman: So standard things that you would think would help with pain management acupuncture was it would cause gushing blood to squirt out of my legs and just like all the pain signals and sensation signals just get completely screwing and this in the syndrome that happened. So I was just like, all right, I’ll deal with that later.

Carole Freeman: I’m in denial. I don’t want that to be what’s going on. But so I [00:44:00] finally figured out that the post-traumatic hypopituitarism the brain injury thing. My first course of action was actually to do 30 days of every kind of brain antiinflammatory that I knew of for my school. It made no difference.

Carole Freeman: So then I wracked my brain to heal my brain. And thank you all for letting me share this. Cause I, I want to share with Robin like how transformative this is for pain. And I’ve had several clients that have had chronic pain that is just literally magically just gone. And so I remembered in school that it, a ketogenic diet was used to treat epilepsy.

Carole Freeman: So this was like my thought process of how I got to following a keto diet myself. That well if epilepsy, something stopped working right in the brain. If a keto diet will help that perhaps it’ll help my brain injury I started researching it and I, started to understand that ketones were an alternate fuel source.

Carole Freeman: And I decided that maybe that would just help me have enough energy to get back out of bed. I didn’t have any idea that it would help heal my brain. I just thought [00:45:00] maybe it’ll give me an alternate fuel source that I could get some healing and get a little better. The transformation was just dramatic within days, the symptoms of the brain injury and the pain in my legs was almost gone.

Carole Freeman: We know now we have a lot of research actually, that shows how being a ketotic state actually basically counteracts all the pain mechanisms and inflammation in the body too. So that was one of the myths that my naturopath I was seeing was like be careful with all that saturated fat on a keto diet, because that’s really inflammatory.

Carole Freeman: My CRP, when I started before I started keto was like 7.2 crazy high. Within two weeks it dropped to 70%. Wow. Bacon and Butter. And so we know now. That it turns off like the, I forgot all the names of the enzymes. Now, the Cox two, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. It basically turns off and turns down like from 11, it turns it down to a 0.5 on the, the pain and inflammation in the body.

Carole Freeman: So it’s so powerful. So got through the inflammation [00:46:00] and the pain that I had, my CRPS is completely in remission going on. So 2015 and may was my keto anniversary. What almost, what’s the math on that? 20th? Oh six and a half, almost seven years. And also Robin, I’m gonna, I’m gonna assume too, that you being on pain medication for this long, I’m just gonna assume that you probably don’t have the financial resources.

Carole Freeman: I know that when I was in that situation, I was getting, I young son. I was getting my food from the food bank. I didn’t, I couldn’t work. And I know that, Ciara and Kristen are going to talk about if we have time about quality food and organic and things like that. But I want to tell you that the effects that I’m talking about for pain reduction from keto specifically, that you don’t have to get organic.

Carole Freeman: Like I was getting my food again at the food bank and I was doing my best to put together a keto diet from that food. And I got all of the effects from that by just getting the best that I could protein keeping the carbs low basically was, what really mattered. So I just wanted to inspire you a little bit, Robin, I feel for you, and I know chronic pain what a heavy [00:47:00] left blank of that is and how it’s invisible because other people can’t see it.

Carole Freeman: And so they just, they don’t have a lot of compassion for what you’re going through. So whatever it is that you’re that’s resulted in you having to be on the pain management like this my heart goes out to you send me a message and let me know if you want to, if you want more private information, I you can find me on Facebook also.

Carole Freeman: I’m going to put Robin, I have a text number that you can join as well. If you want to text me privately about this as well. I’d love to it’s on the screen there. So 6 0 2 7 0 4 5 3 0 9. So Robin, if you’d like to chat a little bit more privately, if you don’t want to tell the whole world what’s going on, or we’d love to just, give you a little bit more inspiration and tips there.

Carole Freeman: All thank you all for I, I told Sierra, we were just, we were going to chat about stuff and see what happened. Patients were going to happen. And do we want to cover, I know that you’ve got to leave here in a little bit. Sierra, do you have a couple of minutes then to we have about 10

Ciara Shea: more minutes?

Ciara Shea: No

Carole Freeman: problem. Nutrient density, and then like how to prioritize, like which foods, if you’ve got a limited budget, like how do you know what to prioritize [00:48:00] what’s important and what doesn’t matter as much. Yeah,

Ciara Shea: I think we should split this into two things here. Protein and fat they’re both wildly important.

Ciara Shea: So veggies are easier. Clean 15 dirty dozen is a quick and easy one. You can go right to the environmental working group. They tell you the dirty dozen and the 12 dirty is vegetables and fruits. You want to stay away from those. Those should be organic. Otherwise the clean 15. Yeah. You could choose conventional for that because they’re less sprayed.

Ciara Shea: I’ll start with fat because I think you like fat and anyone on this or listening to this podcast is going to like fat. We talk on our podcasts a lot about this and each in our individual practices, quality fat is vitally important. So fat is the building blocks of your hormones. It is how you absorb vitamin a D E and K, it provides cushioning for your bones and joints.

Ciara Shea: It helps the adequate absorption of, and utilization of protein. It is vitally important. The [00:49:00] things that we want to stay away from are the highly processed vegetable oils, right? So the canola oil, the rapeseed oil, the peanut oil, although that’s not as common, even the vegetable oil blends. So if you see a of olive oil and canola oil blend, those are the oils we want to stay away from.

Ciara Shea: They are so highly processed. So highly heat treated, chemically treated by the time that they get to your system, your body doesn’t know what to do with them. So what we want to opt for. I say less is more, get yourself a good high quality, extra Virgin olive oil, or a good high quality butter. So I often recommend using Kerry gold Kerry gold is really affordable, like for an entire block, maybe it’s two 50, $3 like that super affordable, and that will stretch really far.

Ciara Shea: And then for any of your oils, these are the buzzwords you want to look for. Again, this is about choosing all of these words together [00:50:00] as the best, but do the best you can. So organic. So organic is just going to mean that there’s no pesticides or herbicides that were used on the origin of whatever that oil is.

Ciara Shea: So if it’s coconut oil, that coconut, if it was an olive oil to olives you want to choose unrefined. So unrefined means that there was no additional. No chemical treatment, no. Heat treatment. When you have a refined oil, it has gone through another process typically to change the flavor you want to look for Virgin or extra-virgin and you want to look for what is the last one that I am not thinking of?

Ciara Shea: Cold pressed. Yes. Thank you. I’m like, I will find it, which is very different than cold processed. So if you see cold pressed or expeller pressed, it really just means that the oil was, is extracted from that original fruit nut or seed through two steel plates versus cold processed or expeller [00:51:00] processed.

Ciara Shea: There were chemicals in possibly heat, very high heat used in that process. So looking for any of

Carole Freeman: those trick you, cause back when I was in school, they didn’t call it cold processing, but basically they’re like, this is cold. This is close enough. So we’ll trick people into thinking. Yup.

Ciara Shea: No, it’s so different.

Ciara Shea: So you need to read it carefully. And then if any of you guys have questions about the fat, come and put them in and then Kristen, do you want to talk about protein?

Kristen Mihaly: Sure, absolutely. So your protein. One of your building blocks, it converts into amino acids. It helps repair muscles. It helps fuel us.

Kristen Mihaly: It gives us energy. Now, Carol, you might be able to touch more upon too much. Protein can actually cause more of an increase in blood sugar. So you want to be mindful of your proteins when you’re doing more of a ketogenic diet, but when we’re looking to choose our proteins, You want to [00:52:00] eat them as closely to how a mother nature provided them for you?

Kristen Mihaly: So I always say when the day comes that a chicken lays an egg and it’s just the white in the egg, that’s when you can just see egg whites, but for now let’s eat it the way mother nature intended pairing the beautiful protein of the egg white with the beautiful fat of the yolk. So you eat the two together.

Carole Freeman: There’s rare instances where there’s two yolks, but I’ve yet to see an egg that has no yolk exactly. 40 chickens in my backyard. Oh.

Kristen Mihaly: Really focusing on this protein in a whole food source. So using really, if you have the availability nose to tail we’re used to eating these big cuts of meat in our society, and we’ll eat these just

Ciara Shea: really

Kristen Mihaly: flavorful pieces of meat. If you ever have seen like a conventional chicken breasts, it [00:53:00] is pumped with water and saline and it’s huge. And then you’ll see like a pasteurizer or an organic chicken, and it’s more of a smaller size and you think I’m going to buy that one. That’s more, but really then when you cook it down it shrivels up.

Kristen Mihaly: So the big thing we keep in mind here with proteins is nutrient density. How much kind of bang can we get for our buck here? So if you have the availability to try any different types of protein, that would be excellent for diversifying the diet. So for dinner tonight, I had venison. Now, granted, my husband is a hunter, but I’m trying bison or Buffalo or quail.

Ciara Shea: or

Kristen Mihaly: bear. Ciara came to visit us over the weekend and we had bears Shepherd’s pie.

Carole Freeman: It was

Ciara Shea: so good, but it’s like, who tries that? And it was so rich, right.

Kristen Mihaly: So that’s when [00:54:00] looking at switching to more of a holistic lifestyle and getting more whole foods food, and money always come up, right? Like your expenses here, it can be so expensive to go to whole foods. And it’s, there’s no joke when it’s called whole paycheck. So the thing you want to keep in mind is when you switched to more of a nutrient dense protein, a little is going to go along way

Kristen Mihaly: you will find that instead of needing a 16 ounce conventional steak, if you purchase a grass fed steak, you may feel full or you will notice that you feel more full after four to six ounces because there’s more nutrients packed into that because there’s no hormones. And the animal is not pumped with medication to really gain weight so quickly.

Kristen Mihaly: So the buzzwords we like to see here when purchasing our proteins are as close to, like I said, mother nature intended these animals to be so pasture, that [00:55:00] means that the cow or the chicken is grazing on pasture. It’s eating grass, grass fed is another room that we love to see looking for grass fed and grass finished.

Kristen Mihaly: So typically your beef cow is pumped with grain and yes, that makes it really tasty, but it takes away a lot of the nutrients because what the animal. We eat. So when the animals eating grass and that grass converts to vitamin K2, then we get those wonderful vitamins minerals and amino acids. When the animals eating conventional grain or soy we’re eating more grain and soy.

Kristen Mihaly: And if you think about it if the grains pumping the cow, is it going to pump me up too? There is that connection. Now, if you eat fish, you want to look for wild, caught your cold water. Fish is going to be great. And let’s see, am I missing any more

Ciara Shea: buzzwords? I would say the distinction with poultry.

Ciara Shea: [00:56:00] So you might see cage-free versus free range. So top of the hierarchy here is pasture-raised is like Kristin said, next down on the list is going to be free range. So that typically means that the chicken or Turkey or duck have access to the outdoors. And they did spend a lot of time outdoors.

Ciara Shea: Cage-free really just means that those chickens weren’t in a cage, but have no access to outdoors necessarily. So when we’re talking about what nature intended chickens are not vegetarian, they eat bugs they eat grubs, they eat all of these beautiful insects outside. That’s what we want our chickens to be eating.

Ciara Shea: We don’t want them in a hen house without having any access to outdoors. So when you’re looking for chicken pasture-raised and if you can find that free ranges as the next best option, I feel like

Carole Freeman: that

Kristen Mihaly: vegetarian. Vegetarian fed is now marketed as a really healthy thing. Sierra was just saying they’re meant to eat bugs and grubs and the more yellow, the yolk.

Kristen Mihaly: That’s [00:57:00] typically a sign that they’re not getting as much of that, those bugs and grubs, the more orange, the yolk is really what we want to see. Just like I grew up on not to name names, but Landolakes butter and it was like white. And then I started eating grass, fed butter, and it’s yellow. And I’m like, oh God, something’s wrong with this butter, but

Carole Freeman: that’s how butter should.

Carole Freeman: So David, I just want to clarify David’s question. So he’s asking about the Shepherd’s pie that you guys ate. If it had mashed potato now Ciara and Kriste n are here. They’re not Keto people. So I would say they I’m going to guess they probably had potatoes, but I would say a really easy swap to make it a keto version just as a mash cauliflower on top, or you don’t even have to go so far as mash it.

Carole Freeman: Like you could just make a basic Shepherd’s pie and put chunks of cauliflower on top of that and roast that in the oven. Just, that’s a good question, David. David’s the the carb police here today. So asking that question when we use sweet potato, sweet potato. Okay. I know we’re going to have to wrap up here.

Carole Freeman: I know I had a quiz question from earlier. I just want to make sure that a, I reveal the [00:58:00] answer. The question was where’s Carol going for Thanksgiving weekend, I’m actually taking a road trip to grand canyon and Zion national park, a very unconventional Thanksgiving. I’m I don’t even know what I’m going to have on Thanksgiving, but I.

Carole Freeman: Probably be sitting in my tent, eating some I dunno, Turkey, luncheon meat or something like that. Yeah. And it wraps around my birthday weekend. And so this’ll be the second year where like birthdays are a little unconventional, so I’ve decided last couple of years, like I’m just going to go someplace cool.

Carole Freeman: And moving to Arizona. There’s a lot of scenic places to see around here. And I, it’s funny, we were talking about seafood actually. So next week’s episode, actually our next episode. So no, no episode on Thanksgiving, but on December 2nd, next episode, I actually have seen a Wheeler of Sena Seafood

Carole Freeman: they’re out of the Pacific Northwest and they have a company that specializes in local cot Alaskan sea bass and salmon and halibut. And so that’s what I have coming on December 2nd. She sent me a sample pack of all their fish a couple of [00:59:00] weeks ago, and I’ve already devoured all of it. So that’s fun that you’re talking about that.

Carole Freeman: Cause we’ll have a very high quality seafood producer coming on in a couple of weeks. So where can, I know we’ve gotta wrap up here. So where can people find you Ciara and Kristen, if they want to know more about what you do and want to know more support for functional lab values or just habit changed with their transitioning to more healthful eating habits?

Ciara Shea: Definitely. So you could find me I’m on Instagram at Ora O R a nutrition or nutrition.com. And then you can find both of us and Chris, I’ll let you share your info too, but you can find both of us on the fiercely holistic podcast, anywhere that you listen to podcasts, whether it’s on apple podcast or Stitcher or anything.

Ciara Shea: And we’re also on Instagram, that’s just more our catalog. We’re not super, super active on that account, but at the fiercely holistic podcast,

Kristen Mihaly: Yeah. And then my business, my company is nourished holistic health and nutrition. We’re located here in Bradford, New Hampshire. You can find us [01:00:00] online@nhhnutrition.com for nourish holistic health and nutrition.com.

Kristen Mihaly: And then on Instagram at NHH nutrition and Facebook

Carole Freeman: NHH nutrition. Excellent. Thank you both for being here and taking the time to be here. Thank you everyone for watching gotta mention our show sponsor. Our transcripts are provided by keto space.com. That’s keto-space.com. So go check and check them out.

Carole Freeman: They generously provide transcripts for the show that if you’re reading this later right down there on my blog that’s who provided it for us. If you’ve enjoyed the show, please share it with somebody that you love and care about. Sharing is caring. And remember, if you help this show grow, we’ll help you shrink so thank you everyone for watching.

Carole Freeman: We’ll see you next time. Bye Carole.

 

 

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