Cholesterol Myths and Genetic Truths

Full transcript

Hello and welcome to Health and Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony Amen, and we have another great episode for all of you. I always say I love nurses because, as all of you know, my wife is a nurse. So, without further ado, let's welcome to the show another awesome nurse, trish Snyder. Trish, it's a pleasure to have you today thank you.

It's a pleasure to be here, anthony.

Thank you so much for having me yeah, absolutely, first I just want to get a little bit to know who you are and what got you into the health and fitness world yeah, well, great I've.

I've always really been into health and fitness and, um, becoming a nurse. I've been a nurse for about 25 years. I worked with adults and also with children, adolescents, now in particular in psych, mental health, and most recently I really got into more of a functional, holistic approach with my clients because I found that a lot of people came to me really they had these big symptoms. They they knew something wasn't quite right, but yet every time that they went to their physicians to have a physical or blood work they were, you know, told that everything was fine, but yet they still continue to have sort of like these symptoms. So over time I was like I've got to really look into like what is? There's something going on, of course, but like what is it? And in the Western medicine world the way that we approach like blood work and things like that is we, you know, we have normal lab ranges, right. So if the, whatever the lab is, falls within that normal you know range, it doesn't get flagged and it doesn't really get addressed, it doesn't really get looked at, unless, of course, it's high or it's low. And really when that happens, physicians use it to diagnose and to come up with a treatment plan, as nurses, we just, you know, we just let the physician know hey, you know, this is what's up and we don't really do anything with it. But as I moved into functional medicine, I looked at those lab ranges and really found that what we're trying to do in functional medicine is we're trying to have optimal lab ranges. So just because your labs are within normal limits doesn't mean that you're optimizing at an optimal level, you know. So we really try to look at those deficiencies, whether it's vitamin deficiency or underlying infections, and we really try to intervene much, much sooner than if we were to wait until it became an obvious issue and finally, did you know, come up on a lab result. So I think just taking a closer look at that is great. I've always been like a big fan of nutrition and always wondered why we really weren't trained to use nutrition as medicine. We really only had maybe, I think, one course in school. It's not something that we really do, and I just find that there was like a big, there's a big disconnect, you know, because it seems like in Western medicine we're trying to fix a problem after we already have it and we really should be starting at the beginning, doing all of the things that you know keep us healthy and really trying to improve our nutritional health and really all aspects of health ahead of time, because that's ultimately what's going to reduce the risk of us developing chronic diseases and things like that. So I really like this approach because we take action much sooner than we normally would be taking action otherwise.

Yeah, you're definitely right. It was something we've talked about a lot. Why don't modern medicine really focus on the nutrition component? For example, my brother went through the whole med school process and I actually saw his nutrition book that he was given and it was like six pages. I know what's a protein, what's a carb, what's a fat, and then that's it. There was nothing beyond that. Don't let your patients eat too much. So if doctors were able to learn how to use proper nutrition in order to help people, along with modern medicine, then wouldn't we be optimizing the medicine and optimizing our patient self?

We absolutely would, so why aren't we doing it?

Yeah, and this kind of leads me to like a spurt, like yesterday alone we were talking to all of our trainers and they're now showing like it's a good example. You mentioned blood work right, blood work. We mentioned total cholesterol levels. Total cholesterol levels normal is up to 200, correct? Yes? So recent studies and which kind of makes sense have been showing that total cholesterol levels of the 200 actually don't make sense anymore. They're noticing that those that have a genetic predisposition to have higher levels of cholesterol our bodies are actually used to having that high amounts of cholesterol becauseols because genetic production for it. So it's okay for somebody who has high cholesterol from their uh parents to have it as themselves and it won't cause any effects. The flip side of that is that it's not the amount of cholesterol in the blood that will lead to clotting and everything like that, but it's the type of cholesterol you have, along with how that cholesterol flows through your blood vessels. So they're doing a lot of cool things measuring how blood really flows through a tube to see what type of cholesterol you have in your body. That's sticking to the outside and creating that plaque where it doesn't make a difference anymore as opposed to how much cholesterol you produce, because we all know and we've talked about a million times on the show dietary cholesterol does not raise your overall cholesterol levels and that's why doctors don't even know, but yet alone it's. The biggest factor is how much cholesterol we naturally produce that's going to raise our cholesterol levels.

Correct? Yes, so it's. You know, if you, if you end up with a high number of cholesterol, it doesn't really paint the exact picture. You know there's much more to those numbers and you're right, it doesn't come from what we eat. So, yeah, and a lot of people don't really know that either, and that's just something that's not really talked about as well. So, very interesting, yeah what?

what side of this do you see is the most not noted and what do you think is the most forgotten? You mentioned these minor symptoms and stuff like that that people overlook and say, oh, you're fine. Are there any in particular ones that you're seeing trends towards, like either vitamin deficiencies or things like that that you really wanted to address?

Yeah, I do see sometimes when patients have these like vague symptoms, like, for example, a lot of fatigue, I see people are just exhausted, they have brain fog, they are feeling sort of depressed and a lot of times when I look at their blood work I find low levels of vitamin D. Usually I can find low levels of vitamin B12 also, and then sometimes they find some underlying infections. So with vitamin D, for example, normal lab ranges for vitamin D is anywhere between 30 and 100. And that's a huge range and if you fall anywhere in between that you're fine, even if you're like just 30. Where with functional, we're trying to get it closer to 50 to 80, because that's the optimal range. And not only will you feel better, but vitamin D also improves, you know, boosts your immune system. It has so many great benefits. So that's definitely one thing that I see very often. Another thing that I see is tied to gut. So many times, patients that I see that have mental health disorders, they're depressed or they have something going on. Very often they also have GI symptoms bloating, diarrhea, constipation, they have sensitivities to certain foods and things like that and the gut is really vulnerable, the second brain and they're so interconnected. And many times I find that patients have these symptoms and it's really related to the fact that the microbiome is, you know, disproportionate to what they have. Um, for example, serotonin. Serotonin is one of the neurotransmitters that's responsible for our mood, you know, serotonin and dopamine dopamine mainly in the brain, but serotonin in the gut. So if we have issues in our gut, it's affecting our ability to produce the serotonin which is going to have a direct impact on our mood. So many times. Sometimes, if we just kind of look at fixing whatever gut issues there are whether it's a leaky gut or what have you it can improve somebody's health overall, because our gut is responsible for not only those neurotransmitters that help us feel great, but also the cells in the gut to absorb the nutrients and for them to function properly have to be working as well. And when we don't have that, then we might be taking all the supplements in the world and eating the greatest diet, but if those things can't get into the individual cells, then they're not able to function properly. So I kind of see that connection a lot between the gut and mood. And then vitamin D, of course, which the majority of us are deficient in, but I definitely always find those in blood work. Sometimes I do find underlying viral and bacterial infections. Now, these infections are not going to be flagged and these infections are not going to be what you need an antibiotic for, but they're underlying, and these underlying, especially viral infections, they're the biggest trigger of autoimmune, you know, which explains why somebody can get Hashimoto's, at like you know, 20, and then somebody else at, like you know, in their fifties. So very much underlying viral infections, underlying bacterial infections, again just below the surface, kind of making some changes in the way that the body is working and how they all interact that can lead to these you know, these symptoms of, I know that something's not quite right, but again, not high enough where it's really going to be. You know that obvious.

Yeah. So this kind of goes into what I like to really push onto everything, which is feedback loops. And this is the problem, I think, with medicine as a whole, where somebody comes in sick, somebody comes in sick, it's I take problem A, I give them a fix B, and that will equal result C right, and that's all we look at. Is that one cycle, that part of that cycle? Right, there is A to C, but we're missing the complete cycle, which is A, b, c, d, all the way down to Z, of a complete of what people are doing. And let me break down exactly what I mean by that. So there's a good understanding. Let's take depression right. Depression is probably one of the most common mental health disorders that you see. So with someone who's depressed, usually there's a trigger, some a death in the family or something in their life happened, or they broke up with a girlfriend. There's some kind of emotional trigger that happens. With that trigger, they start doing negative feedback things. For example, they maybe some people don't eat because they say they're sick to their stomach. They can't get it. They have a spike in cortisol levels, they avoid the sun because they want to curl up in bed all day. They're not moving their bodies, so they're not burning and the caloric output that they're used to and all these things start to build. So you start seeing these other issues that keep people in depression because now what's going to happen? They're going to feel like shit because they didn't sleep last night, they didn't get out, they didn't reset the circadian rhythm by getting the sun. Therefore, the vitamin D3 levels are low. They're eating horrible foods no one's depressed snacking on healthy foods ever. So they're the guts getting all screwed up. They have bloating, their gi inflammation and all of that is keeping them awake at night. On top of that, they're set. They're having running thoughts a lot of people, so that's even making their sleep worse. So they're waking up extremely tired. When they're getting extremely tired, the cortisol levels under the roof. Now the cortisol was under the roof. They're not going. Yet again, they're reaching for stimulants. So they're going for caffeine, mostly to keep themselves going throughout the day, and they're keeping themselves as a go-go-go mode. Now they're reaching for high carb foods, which are usually ultra processed at this point because they just want a quick sugar rush to keep them awake, because they're falling asleep. And then all of that starts to compound on itself and this is why I really believe that, like, take things like anxiety, take things that depression for the mass majority because I don't want to label everybody, the mass majority of people the reason is the things they do after the triggered event that leads them down a spiral and downward line is what keeps them depressed and keeps it building major depressive disorder. Because you've become so incompetent of taking care of your health and you've neglected it for so long that now you're really even in a deeper hole because now you're 20 30 pounds more overweight. You haven't moved in six months, so now you really feel like you haven't slept in six months. You just all these things compound on top of each other. The vitamin d levels talk about that down in the dumps because they haven't seen the sun in six months. You just all these things compound on top of each other. The vitamin d levels talk about that down in the dumps, because they haven't seen the sun in six months. Things like that which really make it way harder, especially for someone like you in a mental health profession, because you're trying to pick apart this loop and a lot of people and medicine, and I really think they just see one thing they see depression, ssri. Let's give them that. Let's fix that. There's the a to b to c. What about everything else? They're not. They're not created a habit of being down in the dumps, like their lives are in shambles, everything around them and it's not. It's so much harder you have to take a full person approach in order to bring them out and start fixing that negative feedback loop and reversing it to create a positive feedback loop which then will ultimately lead them into healthier habits. So then, when a trigger happens again it's oh, recognize trigger, okay, stick to positive feedback loop, which is eating healthy, getting to bed at the right time. Let me focus on that, let me change my direction and I know I'll get over this depression in a week, two weeks, whatever it may be. I won't be down in the dumps and be way easier for myself to manage as a person.

So true, yes, I think people are looking for that quick fix. You know, I'm feeling this way, so I want this to happen. Never mind, I need to kind of put in the work in order to do all the things that I need to do, like making sure I'm getting enough sleep, like you know, picking healthy food choices, because, again, I'm already depressed but if I use food to comfort me, that's going to make me more depressed because I'm going to put on the weight, you know, and just all of that. And I do see that a lot and sometimes I try to tell people well, it's like you know, if you're trying to lose a bunch of weight and you're trying to go on a diet, yeah, the quick fix is, let me take something like ozempic and I'm going to lose all this weight and it's going to be great. But what are you going to do when you're not taking that? Because you haven't learned the proper steps, you haven't made the best food choices. So if you haven't really retrained your brain and established these habits, you'll just end up going right back and, you know, gaining weight again because you've got to put in the time, you've got to put in the work, you've got to look at everything you know and everything feeds off of each other. So the less sleep you get, the more depressed you're going to be, you know. And then the less that you get, the less energy you're going to have. Then you'll be too tired to have something healthy, so you'll grab something quick and it's just. It's just a cycle that you see, yeah you can even take it a step further.

Just to kind of mention what's been breaking recently with supplements, but one of being creatine, they're showing that low levels of creatinine in your blood are directly linked to depression. Now is it a correlation or causation? I don't know, but it's there and as a whole, because what I mentioned before is, if I'm depressed, what am I not doing? I'm not sleeping. When does our bodies produce creatine? When we're sleeping. So does one cause the other or who knows? But I can say as an individual, if I can keep my creatinine levels high by getting enough sleep or just to get a kickstart to start supplementing with it, then I can really make sure I'm not digging myself in an even deeper hole like all these negative levels, and doctors might even look at that. I get the opposite. I mean, it's such a pet peeve of mine when you have someone who doesn't work out, let's say, haven't looked at a weight in 35 years. Take someone who's 50, 60 years old. We do a light workout. Their creatinine levels spike because their body's not used to it. So you get extremely light level of creatinine for your body to start regulating it because it's putting it out to all your muscles trying to drench them because it has such low levels and it had for so many years. They go to the doctor. They get blood work, doctor goes you have really high creatinine levels. You need to stop working out and it's like this person hasn't worked out in 60 years yeah, but we need to make sure it's not this. No, why don't you just look into their history and say you know what they did start the gym last week? So it's probably not their kidneys, you know. We probably don't have to worry about it because it would have been high before they started working out if it was their kidneys correct yeah I had a client tell me the other day that her physician told her to stop weight training because it was causing inflammation.

And I'm like what? What does that even mean? Like, as far as like, if your muscles are inflamed? I mean, if your muscles are inflamed it's not really an inflammation but that's a good thing because they expand when you're lifting weights. But yeah, she was told to stop lifting weights altogether and she stopped doing it for over a year and she ends up she feels worse than she did before when she was on this consistent routine of working out and weight training. So, yeah, there's a lot of like it's misinformation. People don't understand exactly you know what it is. And to tell somebody not to work out or not to lift weights, I mean, not only is it good for your bones and your body but it's good for your mental health and it develops and establishes these healthy routines that hopefully will be lifelong, that you'll stick with. That's. I mean, exercise hasn't shown to damage anybody's health. So it's just it's crazy to hear, you know, somebody say don't work out or don't do this or don't do that I'm a personal trainer.

right? Let's take me as an example. If I was telling you Trish and I said, trish, you need to work out more, but I was 100 pounds overweight, I smoked and I ate Oreos, let's just say for breakfast every morning Would you take me seriously? No, if I am your cardiologist and I come in reeking of cigarette smoke because I was just smoking prior to coming in and I'm 40 pounds overweight, would you take them seriously? No, here's the sad truth. People wouldn't take me not seriously, but they would still take their doctor seriously, because we have been taught to have white coat syndrome, which basically means the doctor walks in the white coat. I'm going to believe everything you say, but if you can't take care of your own health, then how can you take care of others' health? And that's the relationships. That's true with having kids, that's true with every aspect of your life. So why isn't it true with medical professionals taking care of patients? And not to say medical professionals need to be ripped out of their minds and shredded, which would be awesome, but no, at least to the point having a baseline, because if you are somebody and this is the reason behind it if you are somebody who takes care of their own health. You will start doing research into all the current like nutrition studies or the current supplementation studies, and you'll be able to figure out because you're going to say, hey, what I know isn't working, so I need to go learn more, and you're going to take those extra steps. And then, taking those extra steps, you're going to have a deeper dive and understanding of how your body works when it comes to the foods we eat and the supplements we take and the exercise we do, and then we do, and then you'll be able to fix yourself and then, when you have yourself being optimized now you can also be there ultimately for your, your patients, be able to take care of them better, be able to teach them more and really help them as individuals with a better understanding, because now you know about nutrition, exercise and supplementation beyond what you've learned in med school and you'd be a absolutely phenomenal doctor, and I will give my brother props on that. He's been working out since he was like 15. Your competition is too strong for all the time, but at least like he does that and that's why everyone was shocked when he started in the medical field and pain management. All the patients wanted to see him because, even though we don't like to think that we have these biases, we have these biases Like we see it and we go. He works out. I take him more seriously than that doctor who's 50 pounds overweight and smoking cigarettes. Like I'm going to go to the one that's not doing that.

True, and patients and clients will look at you and you have that trust factor that this person understands, because they live it, They've been through it, they know exactly what they're doing instead of like you. Just that, you know that trust factor and I think they'll take you definitely more seriously if you live it yourself and you have been doing all of these things and you know, you know, you know exactly what they need to do because you've done it yourself and you know that this works or that works, so it's great. Yeah, That'd be amazing to have a doctor who's you know also weight trains and competes and and all of that Cause that's that would be the person that I would want to see.

And ask for help. Like I asked for help, right, I don't know everything there is to know about pharmaceuticals and how the body works. In a certain internal level. I go see doctors I do that, right. But I know like that's not my field. I'm going to trust them and be like, hey, I need help with ABC. They need to look like you're starting to see it more because we do train a lot of doctors. But it was a stigma, like even 10 years ago, like they wouldn't come to us. You don't know what you're talking about. You years ago, like they wouldn't come to us. You don't know what you're talking about, you don't know what you're talking about. But thank God that's starting to turn and people are starting to understand. We need this whole practice of, hey, I need, I need to learn, like physiology, I really had no study in physiology. Physiology Teach me. Yeah, I'd love that. And I'm going to come to you and I'll be like, hey, what kind of drug classes would somebody need to take that had nerve issues? Like, teach me that. And then we can have this mutual beneficial relationship. We can start writing scripts for each other and the doctor can come in and say, hey, I'm going to prescribe you, three times a week, 45-minute exercises with the trainer, because I know they're going to optimize for your health. I'm gonna. I know that you have depression. The best cure and most underutilized drug for depression is exercise and you know, the best part is absolutely zero side effects. So, like little things like that, just why not. And it's free, just why not. And it's free, yeah, free medicine, free medicine, you can do it on your own. All that fun stuff. Yeah, it's just an important thing to think outside the box. Stay in your lane, know the people who to talk to Know the experts. Look for people that embody that, because they're going to practice those things on themselves and they're not going to tell you something that they personally wouldn't do, because then it comes against their ethics. But if they're like, yeah, I don't care, then you're a little more trustworthy. Like go to a car dealership and you want to buy a honda and the salesperson is driving like a Lamborghini and you're like you clearly don't give a shit about Honda. Why are you telling me how good of a car it is? Like things like that just are great for us as consumers to really start looking for and recognizing so we can make educated choices with everything that we're doing. Which is why my trainers train with each other. It's great Because they are trainers, but they can learn from everybody else and they believe in personal trainers because they know the way they can get them. Like my manager who competes professionally for the IFBB like she has a coach. She has nutrition, she does our nutrition, but she has someone that monitors her nutrition, does our nutrition, but she has someone that monitors her nutrition because she knows, but she needs someone to keep her in check.

Yes, I love personal trainers, the only thing I ever did was invest in one.

If you're ever out on Long Island. You let me know I will sure will yes. But is there anything else you wanted to mention as far as it comes to the mental health world? Trish.

Oh gosh, yeah, there's so many things, but it really just comes down to just the basics. You know, the best thing that you can do for yourself your mental health is to engage in self-care. You know, make sure you're getting enough sleep, make sure you're getting outside every day. You know, try to use nutrition. You know properly, yes, you can indulge and have a treat every once in a while, but if you're making healthy food choices, then that'll improve your energy, which will improve your mental health. But I would say, just take time every day, even if it's just 10 minutes, just to focus on one thing that you can do for yourself to improve your self-care, because then you'll be able to improve other people. We're only as good as you know ourselves. Right, if we're too fatigued and we're not doing the things that we need to do, we really can't be there for somebody else as well. So I think self-care is the number one thing that a lot of us sometimes neglect, unfortunately, in today's busy world and everybody running everywhere. But I would say self-care for mental health is the number one thing.

I love it and Trish. I'm going to wrap this up by asking the final two questions I asked everybody. The first question is if you were to summarize this episode in one or two sentences, what would be your take-home message?

This episode, oh gosh? One or two sentences. What would be your take home message? This episode? Oh gosh? To not listen to your doctor. You know, as far as like, if there's something that you don't agree with and you know that, you know you question it. Go with your gut, because just because your, your physician, is saying one thing, they might not be the expert in it. You know, they might not know and they might not, you know, be willing to refer you to somebody who has a little bit more you know, experience and knowledge. Like I just have to, like tell people that my primary care physician a long time ago was great and he was, of course, a Western medicine doctor and I had these chronic headaches and migraines for years and I had two sinus surgeries. I went to see an allergist for five years and I still continue to have these debilitating headaches like every week. And I just went to him like, what else can I do? And he said have you thought about a chiropractor? And I nearly fell off the chair. I'm like, really, and I was so impressed that my doctor said, sure, what you know, why not? It's not something that you know I do, but if it's available and you want to learn more about it. I encourage you to do that and I'm all for it. And I thought that was just wonderful that you know, even if you're you know, a doctor and you don't have an understanding, if you just shut someone down right away and say, well, that's ridiculous, you know, then people lose that confidence to okay, you know, to find you know a different answer. So because he was so motivating and encouraging encouraging, I found, you know, it really helped my headaches. I started seeing a chiropractor and for so many years my headaches just decreased tremendously. So what I say to people is, if you bring something up with your physician and they don't seem like they're on board or they balk at the idea, just know that there are other providers out there who you know will support you in whatever you do, because not everyone has all the answers right. If there's something that I don't really know a whole lot about, I'm not just going to say it doesn't exist. I'm going to say, oh, you know, why don't you go find out here? So never give up. I think. Just you know, you know your body better than anybody else and just trust your instincts.

I love it. Thank you, trish. And the second question how can people find to get a hold of you and learn more?

They can find me on wholehealthalternativescom and I usually will host a monthly workshop where I try to teach people to read a couple of markers on their labs and we kind of talk about some of these vitamin deficiencies and things like that. So if they want any information about upcoming webinars, they can find me at Whole Health Alternatives.

Whole Health Alternatives. Awesome Trish. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, guys, for listening to this episode of Health and Fitness Redefined, don't forget hit that subscribe button and join us next week as we dive deeper into this ever-changing field. And remember fitness is medicine. Until next time, so Outro Music.