Season 7, Episode 1: Harnessing Circadian Nutrients for Rhythmic Balance with Dr. Deanna Minich

Evelyne: I am so excited to be able to sit down with you for the next hour. I’ve admired you for such a long time, probably from the first time I saw you lecture and in conference. I love all the research that you share your perspectives on life. And you were my professor of Detoxification and Bio Transformation in my Master’s in Human Nutrition and Functional medicine. So lucky me. And I’m just very excited to have you here today. So, before we dive in, what’s leading you up this week?

Dr. Deanna Minich: Light! I think it’s light. I would say, you know, it’s kind of interesting as a nutrition scientist to be getting into what might seem like peripheral topics, but actually circadian rhythm, looking at the balance of light and darkness, looking at seasons and their effect on our food supply, which would be prime phytochemicals. You know, I kind of feel like, wow, this I really missed the mark in nutrition science. You know, if I look at my degrees back when I got my master’s in the 90s and my PhD, it was all about macros and macros and a little bit on the Phytonutrient side. But now we see that there’s so much with chrononutrition. So, I would say that’s what’s lighting me up, is literally light and looking into the effect that light has on our eating and has on our food supply. So, I know we’re going to get into that in this podcast.

Evelyne: Yeah. And I think it’s great timing too, as we’re just heading into spring now. So great timing. So, a little bit more about Deanna. She is a nutrition scientist, lecturer, educator and author. She has over 20 years of experience in academia and the food and dietary supplement industries. She has been active as a functional medicine clinician in clinical trials and in her own practice. She’s the author of seven books on wellness topics for book chapters, over 50 scientific publications, and she’s just an amazing person. I’m just so excited to talk to you today. So, we’re talking about rainbows and rhythms, harnessing circadian nutrients for rhythmic balance.

So, I was telling you before we started, I wish we had four hours because we have so many things we could talk about. So, I’m curious, how did you get so fascinated by like, phytochemicals on the nutrition side?

Dr. Deanna Minich: It started during my graduate school training, so I went to grad school at the University of Illinois at Chicago back in the mid-90s, and I was studying carotenoids. So, carotenoids are the plant compounds that make plants look pretty. Typically, they’re what give plants the red, the orange and the yellow colors. And so, there are these 700 different compounds called carotenoids. And I was studying a few of them like beta-carotene and lycopene. And this was back in the day when I would say phytochemicals were just looked at as antioxidants. And there was this whole movement around functional foods.

Evelyne, this is well before your time, but essentially it was kind of like a pre, it was kind of like taking us along that path into supplements, but it was taking food and adding in therapeutic amounts of different actives in order to have certain claims and a lot of different foods were coming out during that time with added lutein for eye health, like prune juice with added lutein.

So, my graduate training was all around these carotenoids, and I got really interested in them because of that. And from that point on, during my PhD, I studied essential fatty acids. So, a little bit left of that. But yeah, very much related because carotenoids are fat soluble. And then when I got into functional medicine and started working with Jeffrey Bland, as we all know the father of functional medicine, I started doing some actual, I would say, clinical research and even working with people at the functional Medicine Research Center on different formulations that would relate to phytochemicals, to look at their effects in the body.

So, I would say that my journey was kind of nerdy, science like benchtop work all the way to working with people clinically. And since you took the metabolic detoxification course, one of the areas that I was focused on with Jeff and the whole team was looking at phytochemicals for detoxification, and we know that there is a use for them.

So, we’ve come a long way. We’ve come a long way from the 20th to the 21st century with phytochemicals, because now we look at phytochemicals and like you and I talked about before, I don’t know if there are 10,000 different functions of them, but they have clearly gone beyond just being antioxidants.

And what we are now seeing, this kind of a newer effect of phytochemicals is that they can act as chronobiotic agents, chronobiotic agents, which means essentially, if you break down that word chrono- time, biotic- life, that these phytochemicals, depending on when they’re produced by nature, can actually help to prime our internal circadian rhythm.

They can help our bodies to stay in rhythm and to tell time better in a way of different biological functions. And this is kind of a newer, newer application of phytochemicals. I would say. So, we’re going to talk about things like polyphenols, which are one of those probiotic agents. We’re going to talk about things like circadian nutrients, like the yin yang relationship between vitamin D and melatonin.

So that is kind of where I started with phytochemicals and have been in this industry of natural products now for some time through food supplements, clinical work, clinical trials and rooting for the underdogs, the phytochemicals.

Evelyne: Yeah, I love that. I want to go through some definitions, but I also want to say it’s interesting. Right now, we’re very much in a protein phase right. And of course, protein is very important. We know that I learned from you how important it actually is for detoxification. But then we sort of forget about all of the other components of food when we focus so much on the macros. So, it’s very interesting how that always changes. And we can talk about that more.

But I want to ask you about some definitions. So circadian biology chronobiology, chrononutrition. Can you define those?

Dr. Deanna Minich: So circadian refers to the 24-hour light dark cycle that we’re all connected to here on planet Earth. So, 24 hours, it’s a little bit more than that. That 24 hour that’s circa about a day is what we’re looking at with circadian anything.

So, if we apply the circadian term to biology we’re talking about the biological or physiological effects within that 24-hour time cycle. Chrononutrition, also a relatively newer term in the literature, refers to the influence of timing on eating and how those two things interface. So, if you eat breakfast at 8 a.m., is there a difference between having it at that time?

Then at 9 a.m. or 10 a.m.? So, what I would say is the when of eating, it’s looking at the timing effects. And we could even go into looking at chrono applications to dietary supplements. I feel that this is more cutting edge, in the way of looking at when should we be taking probiotics? When should we take our vitamin D? Does it matter?

I think in the dietary supplement industry, we’ve always focused on how to take it in terms of like take it with a meal or take it with this kind of, you know, you need fat because it’s vitamin D, so you need a meal with fat. But we haven’t actually talked about what time of day to take things.

And a lot of that work is still emerging. It’s very nascent. And we don’t really have like a set framework of how to do that. And there can also be personalized clock genes that would determine that. So, I would say we’re still on the forefront of that, but we need to be thinking about it because as pharmacists would tell you, the timing of when you take a medication determines its effects.

And there’s even some work that you would have heard me talk about at the IFM meeting, which suggests that even taking resveratrol during the light, or more in the dark times of day could change this activity from being an antioxidant and then a prooxidant. So that was some preclinical work that was done and published. So, there’s a lot we don’t know. The more that we start to get into these rhythms of nature, we start to uncover that there’s a lot more complexity than we initially realized.

Evelyne: Yeah, this is so fascinating. And it was actually your presentation at the IFM annual conference last year that made me think, okay, we had to talk about this on the podcast. I want to dive a little deeper into some of this. I know you said some of the research is still early, but from a food perspective and also from a supplement perspective, you mentioned like vitamin D, you mentioned resveratrol. Are there other examples like the microbiome has its own circadian rhythm, right. Like how can we use that knowledge to support gut health? Like is there a time that we should be taking probiotics that’s better or polyphenols for gut health?

Dr. Deanna Minich: I wish we knew that. Just to back up from that, because there’re going to be a lot of questions that I feel like I don’t have the answers for. Like they just aren’t codified in the literature yet. But we could kind of get an inkling because I do believe that we need to follow nature. And what I mean by that is we need to look at what nature presents in our environment at that respective time of the year.

So as an example, there was a study, there’ve been multiple studies on cherries. And what these studies on cherries would show is that if you have cherries at a different time of year, so in their off season versus in their season, you can start to change things like lipid and other liver gene expression. So that’s kind of interesting.

I mean, that’s mostly what we see with animal work. There haven’t been a lot of human studies in that respect. But we may be changing things like body composition if we’re eating foods consistently out of season. Now, I don’t want to scare people away from thinking like, oh my goodness, I live in the Midwest and I’m eating oranges in the winter. Is this a problem?

I used to work with Dr. Jack Kornberg. I don’t know if you remember him, but I remember that we would see patients together and he would tell us. I remember he told this patient. He said, when you eat oranges in the winter, it’s like telling your body it’s summer in the store fat.

So, you know, is that happening? I mean, in some ways, if you look at the literature, we are changing some of the genetic aspects and programming and the lipid and glucose homeostasis. At least we see that in animal models, because we can manipulate their photo periods and then feed them to mimic times of winter and summer. Now I think with humans it’s pretty difficult to control a lot of these different variables. And who’s eating oranges every single day of winter in large amounts?

And this is where the whole premise of diversity comes in. And I talk about that in my new version of the Rainbow Diet, that there are four principles – color, creativity, diversity, and rhythm. And if we can focus on those four principles when it comes to eating, we’re going to be in pretty good shape.

And that’s a very different way of thinking than thinking about like you need 80g of protein, you need, you need, you know, 50g of fiber. Like I, you know, it’s so interesting because I have gone from being more nerdy and numeric into being more like higher level concepts that are just known to be tried and true. And then based on the individual trying to personalize those.

Evelyne: Yeah. Do you think that the reason that as a population are so unhealthy, I always think like it must be the toxins, but do you think it’s just because we are so out of sync with our natural rhythms?

Dr. Deanna Minich: I think it’s both of those things and probably many others, right. Because the toxins are pervasive in the environment. I mean, we can’t ignore that the toxin load just continues to increase.

And what we need as part of reducing that toxin load is phytochemicals. I got to say. I mean, yes to protein, like you mentioned before, yes to healthy fats to offset the inflammation that comes from those toxins. But then we also need the phytochemicals to be protective. So, things like sulforaphane, things like those polyphenols a lot of the organosulfur compounds. And some of these things will fluctuate depending on the season and depending on where we live.

So, we were just talking about how I live in the Pacific Northwest here in California. So, we have different microclimates depending on where we’re at. You’re around a lot of sun, perhaps more oxidative stress. I’m around less light. And it’s interesting that you get different things that grow here, and they grow throughout the year.

And I often think that, you know, we’re in these certain areas. And if we’re attentive to those foods, then that will prime us better to live healthier lives. But look at people today. I mean, they’re much more mobile. They’re traveling and, one of my basic premises for travel is when in Rome, eat like the Romans or, wherever you are, try to adapt, because that microbiome signature to which you just asked about a little while ago, I think that will also be next-level food as medicine concept.

So we’re talking about the circadian rhythm. But then there’s also not just the nutrient value of foods, but also the microbial populations that certain foods impart. And there are certain groups around the world that are starting to look a little bit more into this.

There was even a study, and I don’t have it at my fingertips right now. But there was a study looking at organic versus conventionally grown apples, showing that the microbial populations of both of them were unique, very different. And even on the apple itself, the calyx was different than the stem was different than the peel. So even within that food itself. And just think about all the hands that would touch that apple. Right? So food is so much more than what we see. Some of the things that we can’t see are really changing our, our own physiology.

So I think we’ll become much more sophisticated in that way. But I also don’t think we need to make foods so complex. I think keeping it simple and keeping it to like, again, the color, creativity, diversity and rhythm, the diversity aspects I think can be very enriching. And I think that that is an undervalued, under discussed concept of eating.

Evelyne: For the practitioners listening, what are some practical ways that you think that we can better encourage our patients, our clients, to eat more seasonally? I mean, yes, it’s like, okay, go to the grocery store and shop or go to farmer’s markets. But what do you recommend to people that’s simple?

Dr. Deanna Minich: Yeah, well, there are different lists that are available because, you know, obviously in every place Northern, Southern Hemisphere, you’re going to have different foods, different locations. So, there are websites that are primed with like these are the foods in season in your particular location. So those do exist. But I do think that like you said, farmer’s markets, but also community supported agriculture is really good for this.

So, where I live, I actually have a CSA where when you go on the site, you don’t see the same foods all the time to choose from. You are limited by what the farmers are actually growing. And if you go into a grocery store, even some of the larger mainstream grocery stores, you can kind of see some of them are now showcasing what’s local, and if it’s local, then you know that that’s most likely a seasonal food. So, I think you can go from that perspective.

But in general, if you think of food energetics, just to make it really simple, as we move into autumn and winter, you’re going to be thinking about more foods that are tubers, that they are more root vegetables, a little bit more complex in fiber. So more insoluble, soluble fibers, so thinking about the foods that are more associated with the earth element, I’m doing a little bit of traditional Chinese medicine here.

I happen to be married to an acupuncturist. So, I feel like they have the powers of observation. If you look at a lot of whether it’s ayurveda or you’re looking at TCM, sometimes they have to revert back to what they observed because it seems to make sense. And then in springtime, what are the seeds, the shoots, the things that are coming above ground, things that are green and rich in chlorophyll.

So, it’s a really interesting study that I just happened to see based on chlorophyll. And it was how and this was looking in animals and different mammals. So, we would tend to think that there might be some similarity with humans, but essentially when these animals were fed a chlorophyll rich diet, the research was found chlorophyll metabolites in their bodies that they then showed led to an increase in ATP. Like somehow these chlorophyll metabolites were generating ATP through the mitochondria.

And typically, we think that, oh, we need plants because they’re providing the energy, because they’re the ones that can photosynthesize and we can get energy from their byproducts. However, if we just are eating plants that are rich in chlorophyll, it would seem based on this study, which just had me completely mesmerized because they were talking about photonic energy, the ATP kind of looking at the quanta of the metabolic reactions that just even the chlorophyll metabolites could help that.

So, I think at certain times of the year, we’re going to be more susceptible to oxidative damage, and we need to be more attentive to our mitochondria. There are certain times of the year we might have more susceptibility to inflammation, like the summertime when it’s just high heat. We might be out in the sun more, more ultraviolet light exposure. Well, we have more fruit at that time. And fruits are really rich in polyphenol oils, which are incredibly protective. So, I think yes, we follow nature in that way. And again, the diversity aspect of bringing in 50, five zero unique plant foods or even bringing in things like animal foods per week is, I think, a very healthy practice.

The American Gut Project actually showed that when they had people consuming greater than 30 unique foods per week versus people consuming less than ten, that the people consuming 10 or more were better producers of short chain fatty acids. And these short chain fatty acids, the acetate, butyrate, propionate, they’re really important for modulating the gut immune brain access.

So, the diversity that we’re taking in is fostering a better gut milieu and functionally, biochemically, physiologically better biomarkers of health. So, no matter what, especially when you’re having that change of season, which we just have experience moving from winter into spring, having that diversity creates better resilience.

So, in terms of, clinicians helping their patients or clients to track dietary diversity, really easy to do this. And actually, you can create fun, engaging, gamified ways to really get them, as part of this, this whole process. Right, because it kind of takes them away from the analysis paralysis of eating and into something that’s fun. And everybody, everybody is in a food rut. And especially when you’re transitioning from one season to another, you really need to let go of that previous food rut and to bring in the change that comes in.

And typically, that’s why we even talk about detoxification at certain times of the year. Someone’s like, you need to push that reset button biochemically, physiologically and even psychologically to prepare you for the next season.

Evelyne: Yeah. And in terms of those 50 foods, I love this like tracking it. That also counts spices and herbs, things like that, right?

Dr. Deanna Minich: It does, it does. And just as an example of that, I so I have a group and sometimes we do these challenges and this was a challenge. And so, I tried just for myself to see how many of these different plants that I could pack into one meal, just to see using exactly what you just spoke to, like a lot of the herbs and spices to really amp it up.

And I had 31 unique plants in one meal now. It was like a stir-fry, and I counted things like unfiltered olive oil. So, I have a list of things, and I have if anybody wants this, I have it in the Rainbow Diet book. I also have it on my website that people can just download and just get it.

But I have it done in categories because you might want to think about herbal teas, right? This doesn’t have to be very inflated in cost. I think this is one of the ways to make food accessible and healthy is to focus on diversity. One of the women in the group, over this time frame of just seven days, she had 232 unique plant foods.

Evelyne: Wow!

Dr. Deanna Minich: And let me just give you a quick hack, because it’s not only herbal teas that have complex blends of herbs or, I have a curry powder with 11 different spices that I found. So, right there that’s 11 because I’m not looking at quantity. We’re looking at quality. And just different condiments too, bringing them in is, counting things like tahini, which would count, sesame seeds, nuts, seeds. It’s more than just your fruits and vegetables.

But yes. So, I think, again, just bringing things in. Smoothies would be good for that. And just piling in a lot of different phytonutrients into your smoothies. And, again, counting you can count other things too, like animal foods. But the studies were focused more on plants.

Evelyne: Yeah, I love that. And I think we all as functional and integrative practitioners, we know that we’re supposed to eat, a wide diversity of plants and different foods, but sometimes it’s good to have a little reminder. So, I love this.

You’re making me think of something else. There was a review article I believe you wrote a couple of years ago on plant antinutrients? Like the lectins and some of these other things that get demonized. I think that we definitely need plants in our diet. I know that you believe the same. So, I’d love for you to touch a little bit on that. Why are they called antinutrients and why are they demonized?

Dr. Deanna Minich: You know, it’s so interesting because in certain populations they are seen as polyphenols and prebiotic agents. But in another group of people they would be seen as antinutrients. And we do need to be cognizant of how some of these phytochemicals work.

So let me give you an example. You have different categories of what has been referred to as antinutrients. And the reason they have been called antinutrients is because many times some of these phytochemicals are bigger and bulkier and they tend to bind things.

So, they could bind things like minerals and prevent them from being absorbed. But you would even think about something like fiber, soluble fiber can bind things in soluble fiber can also sweep things through the gut. So, there are certain of these things like lectins, oxalates, nitrogens, tannins. Some people consider phytoestrogens to be endocrine disrupting. So, I think it’s just a matter of how we define things and we need to look at the individual.

So, let’s just take oxalates right? So, oxalates tend to be high in foods like chard a lot of green leafy vegetables. And if we have those vegetables raw, and we have a certain gut microbiome signature that doesn’t affect break down oxalic acid. And we tend to be hyper absorbers of these soluble oxalates, and we tend to be more predisposed to forming kidney stones. We might be hitting on multiple cylinders if all of a sudden, we just start a high green juice diet, right? And this is eating foods out of its traditional preparation. So, whether it’s this celery juice craze or the kale juice craze, where again, people get into food ruts, having something like a 12 to 16 ounce raw kale smoothie, do I think that’s a good idea just because it’s a plant? Not necessarily. Right? This could be kind of extreme.

And again, it’s just not every plant and every preparation for every body. So, I do think that we need to be personalized in the approach. And it’s not to say yes to all plants in all formats. But I do think that what is happening out there with all of this talk about antinutrients is that people are just dismissing fruits and vegetables and plant foods entirely and just saying no, just eat meat and animal products.

And this is the bane of the nutrition existence as I’ve known it over the past decades. It’s like a pendulum. And people get really wedded to their opinions, to their beliefs, and it becomes very polarizing and very categorical. So instead of saying that there’s a spectrum of how you would interpret the data and how you would look at that food in its preparation and the individual, it just becomes a yes or a no.

And I’ve seen that time and time again. I have given so many lectures and I’m teaching this. And then during the break when people come up to me to ask questions or say, Deanna soy yes or no. And I said, wait a minute, we just talked about this. It’s not a yes or a no, but this has happened to me so many times where people just want their lives to be easier. They want their thinking about food to be simple, and sometimes it’s not so simple unless we again adhere to nature.

So even with something like soy, I would say there’s so much there about the context of the soy food, how much you’re having, what format is it in? Is it fermented? Is it organic? Is it non-GMO? What is your gut microbiome like? Because we know that some of the people that experience benefit from the isoflavones actually can convert some of those isoflavones into even more active metabolites.

So, yes, I think again, nutrition is, it’s acted as a pendulum, but it’s really a spectrum because nothing is really ever, I mean, there are certain things that are just going to be outright not good for the human body, right? A lot of ultra processed, high sugar, highly refined foods, full of toxins. I mean, that’s a clear no, but fruits and vegetables, I mean, it’s really hard to arm wrestle that one because there’s so much in the way of published science that would seem to be irrefutable.

And the reason why we wrote that review article. So, I wrote it with a graduate student from the University of Western States. His name is Weston Petroski. The reason why we took that on is because I finally said to Weston, I said, you know what? I get this question all the time about these antinutrients. And I really want to know, are we doing a disservice to people by talking about fruits and vegetables and is there science to support this whole talk about lectins and autoimmunity at the level that we see, it’s being discussed in functional medicine and even integrative medicine. Like I just want to know what does the science say.

But I walked away from that paper at the end of this six-month writing exercise, seeing that there really isn’t a lot to hang our hat on in terms of saying like, okay, antinutrients, totally problematic, let go of all fruits and vegetables, let go of all whole grains.

Now is there nuance for the individual? Depending on the state of their gut, the state of their immune system? Of course. But is there copious science to suggest that we should just wash our hands of any plant foods? No. At least at that time in 2019, when we published the article, we did not find good published evidence base, placebo controlled human clinical trial data to suggest that eating plant foods in their traditional preparation and format would be problematic for most people, and there are ways to reduce the concentration of things like oxalates and, just these different compounds, right? Usually by cooking them, usually by using some kind of water that they leach out into heating the food often changes the composition of the food and alchemizes it in such a way that you now have less of certain actives, like the goitrogens that aren’t going to be as problematic for the thyroid?

So yeah, it’s a complex relationship that we have with food. And sometimes we try to stack the deck to support our own agreement and bias. And I didn’t want to have inherent bias. And so that was part of the reason for writing that article.

Evelyne: Yeah, we’ll link to it in the show notes. And I just appreciate being able to have a nuanced conversation about this. I feel like that’s what we always try to do on this podcast, because I don’t think it’s black or white, and it makes it kind of hard in our field because it’s like just seems to be so much fighting nutrition.

I want to talk a little bit more about food, but not as in like diversity or fruits and vegetables, but more timing of food and how we can align that with our ideal rhythms. So, what are your thoughts on things like fasting for meal timing, sleep/wake cycles, things like that?

Dr. Deanna Minich: So, I’m going to lean on some of the work of other people to talk about this. This is not my research, but I have had the pleasure of having certain conversations with people like Dr. Satchin Panda, who is an expert in circadian rhythm, and talking with him in depth about his research, reading his books.

And basically, if we look at the 24-hour clock, just to make it really easy, here’s the like the general takeaway, the general takeaway is to track our eating with our hormonal rhythm. And we do have a hormonal rhythm. And I would say that our day is bookended by cortisol in the morning and melatonin in the evening.

And those two are like a seesaw. So, if we are changing up cortisol, we’re going to change up melatonin and vice versa. So how do we set the stage for like that very robust morning in terms of high cortisol high testosterone getting us out of bed in the morning. Having the most about most amount of metabolic fire.

So according to Dr. Panda, what he recommends is within an hour of waking. So, the first hour that we wake up to focus on hydration kind of get the body more mobile, see light, go outside, get that full spectrum light, prepare the body, set off that signal of melatonin and encourage cortisol and really wake up into your day. And within that one hour after waking, to have a breakfast. So, within that breakfast time, then we kind of move along and then setting the stage for some kind of lunch.

If we look at cardiovascular efficiency and metabolism and I would say a lot of muscle related hormones, we see that peaking between 2 and 5 p.m. So that might be the time to schedule a workout, because by that time we’re pretty limber. We’re well oxygenated. Our blood has been circulating. I know many people like a morning workout, so maybe that works well for them. All of this has the additional nuance of the personalized overlay of that person’s clock genes and rhythm. Right? So, what I’m speaking to is just generalities and kind of a template, but really making sure that we finish off our eating before it starts to get dim or even dark outside. This would confer the best in the way of, I would say, the circadian effects on eating, because as melatonin starts to go up, this starts to interact a bit with insulin.

And so, for some people they have, different gene variants that can interact with that melatonin, insulin dynamic. And they can have even more issues if they’re eating late at night. So, in as much as we can to pretty much mirror our day with, with eating and our nighttime with the parasympathetic activities of preparing for sleep.

And we see that, right? So many people talk about, wow, if I eat a little bit too close into bedtime, I just don’t sleep as well. We especially see this with things like alcohol, where people just have a glass of wine at night and their sleep is disturbed. So, I think being attentive to hormonal rhythms is really important.

We know that, in certain articles we see that insulin kind of has its peak towards the, the latter half of the afternoon. We see thyroid hormone in the early hours of the day. So, if we just think about the metabolic hormones and how things are working from that perspective, we can kind of gauge that. Yes, we need some kind of breakfast, we need some kind of lighter meal towards the end of the day. And for some people, you know, they flip flop that like some people like to do very light breakfast and then a heavier meal later in the day because their chronotype might be a little bit different.

You have a more morning chronotype or more of the morning lark, and then you have more of an evening chronotype, which is more of the night owl. And some people just kind of have that they’re built a little bit differently. And the chronotype is something that we can adjust through different ways to kind of shift our rhythm.

But essentially, I would say for the most part, it’s important to look at eating during the light hours and refraining from too much food during the dark hours. I find it kind of interesting because when I was with Doctor Panda, I said, well, what about people on the Mediterranean? Because they tend to eat a lot at night, and they have maybe a cappuccino in the early morning.

And his answer to that, and I’m just kind of paraphrasing here, this is kind of like the general sentiment of it. But basically, he was saying that, you know, they still have shifted their fast where they tend to have, maybe at 10 a.m. they have a little bite to eat. So, they’re not really have they’ve just shifted their rhythm and they’re working rhythms and everything else has kind of shifted with that. And again, just different levels of stress. And it’s just how the society is built in that way.

Evelyne: Right. I have a couple follow-up questions. So, you said with the darkness and food, well, I’m a night owl. Well, I think you know that about me. I just have a really hard time with mornings. I don’t love them, and I don’t get enough morning sunlight. Actually, ten minutes before we started recording, I thought, okay, I should go outside and just get sun on my face for 30 seconds. So, I did, and I opened the blinds so I get sunlight, but I’m not like directly in it usually, sometimes until I go out, go about my day and start driving. And I have a hard time with that. And I know that it’s something I need to work on because I love sunshine.

But you also said about the darkness and food, but what about like in winter when at 4 p.m. it gets dark? I mean, a lot of times I don’t have dinner until eight or so in the winter. And also, you said the workout between 2 to 5 is optimal. I mean, most people are still working. So how do this?

Dr. Deanna Minich: All right. Well, I think we do it to the best of our ability, quite honestly. Like you can only do what you can do. And so, and again I’m just giving you kind of like this cut out template of based on research where most people are tracking. But you being more of an evening chronotype, you may naturally just have a clock system that works a little bit later. And so that might actually be more optimal for you. I mean, obviously you’re healthy. You have to look at whether or not the person is symptomatic, do they have any health issues, and if they do, then you might want to start to look at the circadian rhythm imbalance, like if somebody is a shift worker.

Evelyne: Yes, I was going to ask about that.

Dr. Deanna Minich: And so well and I think what that is trying to flip-flop your day and night and keep it relatively consistent, where you’re doing things at a certain time all the time. So, making sure that you’ve got the remaining hours of light in the morning for a few hours and then kind of tapering things off. There’s a whole protocol of how to do that. And different people talk about that as a way to mitigate or offset some of those shift work syndrome effects.

Evelyne: So, I’d love to talk about that more because I feel like with shift workers, like nurses or even I think of pilots who are traveling between time zones. But a lot of the time it’s like; it’s not like that all the time. It might be, you know, a couple days a month, or it might be like 3 or 4 days, and then the other days of the week they’re on the regular schedule. So, what are some of your tips for practitioners working with shift workers? Because I find that this is very difficult, and we know that shift workers are more prone to certain diseases, right?

Dr. Deanna Minich: They are, they are. So, what I would say here is, it was interesting because I asked Dr.Panda fora his guidance on that as well. And he talked about not eating when you’re flying, because that’s just adds to a lot of oxidative stress. I’m not an expert here in terms of like all the different protocols, but I’m just going to give some general best practices because some people have shift work that where they’re consistently flip-flopping the day night rhythm. So, there’s a way to work with even supplemental melatonin and taking it six hours before your desired bedtime. So, you’re kind of setting a different phase of your circadian rhythm. So, using something like a supplemental melatonin would be very good for that.

And scheduling your meals for times that work on most days and kind of keeping that consistent, whatever that might be. The consistency is key. But for somebody who doesn’t have that rhythm of where they’re flip-flopping and it’s just jet lag, right? Typically, when I think of travel and intermittent kind of disruption to the circadian rhythm, I think about the days before that happens. So having a pre-travel regimen, then you have your travel days when you’ve landed and then you have your post travel days. And I do think that the pre-travel days are really important for setting the stage for a successful trip.

And what you can do there is in terms of thinking about the number of time zones that you’re traveling. So if you’re traveling, let’s just say and you’re going across the United States and you’re going from West Coast to East Coast, and you have three time zones making sure that you start to go to bed a little bit earlier, like 15 minutes earlier for three nights before you start to travel and also starting to take a low dose melatonin like 0.3 milligrams three days before you start that travel as well, and doing that about three hours before bedtime.

So typically when people take melatonin, they think about taking it 40 to 60 minutes before bedtime. But if you have to start to shift your circadian rhythm before you travel over time zones, then taking that for some time, like 2 to 3 hours, a little bit more time so that you’re getting the signal earlier and then you’re actually going to bed earlier so that when you’re arriving on the East Coast, that you’re more acclimated to deal with, kind of the change there.

And then usually when we come back from the East, back to the West Coast, that’s a little bit less problematic. It’s usually worse going. And that’s why focusing on the pretravel regimen, I think, is important.

As far as other things about nutrition, I think, always preparing in terms of meals. So, maintaining as much as you can, proper hydration, which will help with mitigating some of the jetlag.

Also just preparing in terms of making sure that you have enough protein, making sure that you’re doing a supplemental protocol before you travel. Like some people, they don’t just do melatonin. I mean, melatonin is great because it’s an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory agent. It’s doing a lot of different things. But then also thinking about whether you need additional antioxidant support to reduce a lot of the oxidative stress.

When I think of airplane travel, I will also just mention practical things like try to not sit close to the window. You know, I never want a window seat. I usually choose the middle because I don’t like the aisle, but closer to the window you have more radiation exposure, and that’s going to change your, your jetlag and the overall toxicity of travel.

And so, some people like L-theanine it can help them with just that state of restful alertness. Magnesium can be helpful to enable better relaxation of the muscles and also prepare the body for better sleep. Plus, people are just low in magnesium overall, right? Yeah. So, I think that’s part of it.

Evelyne: Right. Very helpful tips. Thank you. And I’m curious. Funny, I like the middle seat sometimes because I feel like there’s more leg space, but I love the window seat because I love the view. I’m always taking pictures out the window. Sometimes the entire flight, you know? And you have all these thoughts when you’re flying in the window seat about, well, I do about like how small we are and how big the world is. I go into this whole philosophical thing.

Dr. Deanna Minich: I’ve had those moments as well, but the only thing I would mention there is that, you know, the peak UVA would be between and : a.m. and p.m. and so if you can do your flying like later in the evening so you can catch the sunset or earlier in the morning, what wouldn’t be for you, it would be more evening.

Evelyne: Yes. Evening flights for me.

Dr. Deanna Minich: And you could just strategize depending on where you’re going. Perhaps you take an evening travel but still have the window seat. But yeah, I mean all of those things add up. Oxidative stress, inflammation. They’re always going to be peaking greater when we are traveling and adding to jet lag if we’re not attentive to them.

Evelyne: Yeah, definitely. I also loved what you said earlier in the show about when in Rome, eat like the Romans. I’m actually going to Rome in a couple months. So, I will be eating like the Romans.

Dr. Deanna Minich: I think about bread and I just think that the food is different and in certain parts that you wouldn’t have it here in the States, but you might eat it where it is. It’s just prepared differently. Again, it gets to like the preparation effect.

Evelyne: Yeah. I think you know, Deanna, that I grew up in Belgium. I was born and raised there. Yeah. So, I didn’t live in the US too, like the summer I turned 12. But I did grow up eating so much local food. As a kid, I would go to the goat cheese farmer to get goat cheese and the apple farm and the strawberry farm. And I would go to the butcher and, and we did eat some junk food, too. I think there’s a misconception that eating junk foods in Belgium.

Dr. Deanna Minich: Cheese fries with mayo.

Evelyne: Yes. You know, and the waffles and all of that. So, we definitely ate that. But we did grow a lot of our own food. And also, we got so much from like neighbors who were farmers and from the farmers market. And my mom still to this day, makes homemade bread all the time. So, yeah, I think it’s just so interesting eating seasonally and now being here, this is something else I wanted to touch on. I find it so difficult too, and I’m sure that practitioners have this challenge with their patients. Right. For us to live in this society that we live in, where everything is so rushed all the time.

And even like for me, being a night owl, the world doesn’t cater to us night owls. But I wonder, I think of that quote, “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

Dr. Deanna Minich: Yes, I love that quote.

Evelyne: Me too, but I have such a hard time applying that to life. Like I love the idea of it, but I find it so hard to live that way in our society, and I think that’s probably one of the reasons that we are so sick. Right? Like we’re just disconnected from the rhythms, whether it’s like lightness, darkness, food, seasonality. So, I’m curious if you have anything to add to that.

Dr. Deanna Minich: No, it’s a very deep philosophical question and comment. Because we have diverted from the ways of nature in so many ways. So that’s why getting back to eating the rainbow, getting back to being in nature. It’s kind of funny that you’re even asking me that because my husband and I were over breakfast this morning, we were having a conversation about AI. We were talking about technology like pros and cons, and we can see that technology is increasing in our lives, which could potentially give us some ease and some additional time to do things that we want. And when I told my husband, I said, as long as it doesn’t touch nature, animals, it stays within its confines of being used as a tool. But allowing us to have a life that has a higher quality.

So, like you, I lived in Europe. I lived in the Netherlands for four years. That’s one of the things that I really enjoyed was I had a bike for four years. I didn’t have a car, so there are bike lanes in the Netherlands, I think probably Belgium too. Right? So, it was like a simpler way of life. You were in nature more, you interacted with people on trains and, it was kind of like New York, but like, not so many people. There are places where they’re actually doing this. It’s almost like, can I live like a European in the United States? Like you’d have to somehow live closer to an urban area so that you can be on foot, right?

I happen to live in a rural area surrounded by trees. I love it, actually, because there’s something to be said for living in nature just outright, even if you can’t walk to everything. So, what do you do? I would say find ways to be in nature, find ways to be attentive to these rhythms.

And, Evelyn, I just want to mention too, even though we talked about circadian rhythm a lot and we touched on seasonal rhythm, for women, there’s also the rhythm of different hormonal fluxes, right? The menstrual rhythm. And when I was menstruating, the way that I even had my schedule built was in the follicular phase I did I tried to do a lot of my talks and a lot of my active travel outward stuff, like when I was high estrogen and then when I was in my luteal phase, I would try to plan my schedule to be doing more of the reflective, contemplative, creating when I’m at home making PowerPoints or I’m writing things. I really tried to do that as best I could. I couldn’t always do that. But when I could, I was attentive to it.

And for many women, they don’t know. They don’t know that there, there could be a flux. And how do we be attentive to that? There’s even, I don’t know if you know about the month of birth and disease connection. So, depending on the month that you’re born now this is not deterministic. Like okay, if you’re born in March, you’re going to have these conditions. And if you’re born in November, now you’ve got these conditions. It’s just that everybody has their own rhythm.

So, I’m born in December. To me that’s like my time zero. So, every December that’s like a prompt for me to go and get my labs done. I gift myself that month with additional self-care, and it just happens to coincide with a lot of holiday stuff. So, it’s kind of nice. I take time off, but everybody has their time zero. A month where, in utero, depending on when you were born, could have determined what kind of flux of vitamin D you had from your mother, how your development progressed through those seasons. And so, I just think about the time zero concept of when you were born as, this is like when I’m setting the stage for like my year. And so, for some people, it’s not like a January to December thing. It’s like maybe it’s a March to February thing because their birthdays in March. So, like they kind of plan their year a little bit differently. But it’s really interesting to see that.

Autoimmune diseases have seasonal fluxes as well. For some people there are relapses. There are autoimmune onsets. There are remissions depending on the seasons. And I would say the most vulnerable time for things like MS would be the time when we’re moving from winter, late winter into early spring is when you see the most amount of issues with things like MS symptoms. And also, you see lower amounts of vitamin D and melatonin, which is kind of interesting, right? Because you’re coming off of winter, it makes sense for vitamin D, but vitamin D actually tracks very closely with melatonin. And if you improve vitamin D, there is one study that shows that there’s an association with improvements in melatonin. So that’s super interesting.

Evelyne: Yes. Deanna, I know we’re almost out of time. I have a couple questions that I ask every guest. But before we get to that, I have one more question from that presentation that you gave where you talked about this autoimmune and month connection, but how can we maximize just give me a few examples of like maximizing the benefits of certain veggies. What are some practical tips and the one that I’m thinking of. And as I was preparing for our interview this weekend, I shredded some carrots.

Dr. Deanna Minich: Okay, so you already know.

Evelyne: I love shredded carrots. So, share more about that and give some other example.

Dr. Deanna Minich: So, this is kind of one of those double-edged sword things. If you apply mechanical stress to vegetables, certain vegetables and you’re creating this stress to the vegetable, right? So like if you take carrots and you chop them, you can potentiate the amount of phytochemicals, specifically the phenolic acids. If you’re shredding the carrots now, you increase their phenolic acids by five times in answer to the mechanical stress. Like the plant is still alive and perceives. I’m kind of anthropomorphizing the plant here, but there’s a perception of stress. And in that stress perception or the taking in of that stress, it starts to produce more of the antistress compounds known as the phenolic acids.

So yeah, making your foods smaller through shredding and cutting and then letting them sit for a little bit too. So, as you probably know, there are these studies where if you chop broccoli and you let it sit for a bit, you chopped garlic, you chop onions, you let them sit like let the plant do its work.

Let it do its magic in terms of interacting, a lot of those cellular contents that spill out and then now start to interact, and you start to potentiate a lot of the different sulfur compounds. There’s also a slide in that presentation that I talk about synergistic foods. So there was an article that was published, I think it was back in 2019, where they looked at how certain foods just play well together, like one of the ones that most people know about is like lemon juice and green tea. Green tea and black pepper. We know about turmeric and black pepper and oil. Apple and blueberries seem to work well together. Grapes and onions work well together. Tomatoes and olive oil. These different food complements because of their phytochemicals, they seem to work well. So to be thinking about that.

But I would say if you just make this very simple and zoom out of all of this science and the micro preparation techniques and just say where are cultures doing it really well? And we look at the blue zones, a lot of these foods that they’re eating are rich in phytochemicals. Again, the broad spectrum of different foods, good quality foods, low toxin foods. Back to what you asked about before.

And I don’t want to overlook the obvious of eating in community, that eating is more than just about making sure that you have a healthy meal. You can have a healthy, colorful meal, nutrient dense, jam packed with all kinds of synergy. But if you have a person who’s lonely, depressed, you know it’s good that they’re taking in that meal, obviously. But we need a lifestyle component to really maximize the nutrition component, because to me, there’s science and then there’s spirit. And these two things go together. So science is the method. Spirituality is the living and how we are kind of moving through life and every experience. So it’s good to have the food because it gives us the foundation. But then we also need the spiritual fitness that accompanies that physical fitness of having a strong body.

So I want to just make sure we get that in, because I do think that many people get so fixated on nutrition and it becomes a numbers game, and then they don’t focus on like, what are you actually doing this for? It’s for greater consciousness, it’s for greater happiness, it’s for greater quality of life. And I look at my dad who doesn’t eat so well, but he’s the happiest guy. He’s not into nutrition. He likes certain things. He likes his ice cream. He likes his brown bread that he makes. And so it’s like, you know, food is everything. But food is also not everything. So, there’s kind of like that conundrum there of, food is really important, but yet there’s so many other things that nourish us.

Evelyne: Yeah. I so agree. It makes me think of the show that I just watched. It’s on National Geographic. You can watch on Hulu. It’s called No Taste Like Home with Antoni Porowski. Oh my gosh, I loved it. He goes with six celebrities to discover their ancestral roots so they bring in a genealogist to do all this research. And so they go to the UK, they go to Italy, they go to Senegal. And it was just super interesting. But I feel like it was really about how food is the thing that like ties us all together and every episode it was really about community. It was so beautifully done. I just absolutely loved it. So you might like it or anybody listening.

Dr. Deanna Minich: I wrote it down, No Taste Like Home. That’s great. I definitely want to see that. Well, and it really speaks to the blue zones, right. Because it’s not just about what they’re eating. It’s the connection to purpose, meaning and community.

Evelyne: Yeah. So Deanna, to wrap up, I’d love to ask you three questions that I ask everyone on the show. What are your three favorite supplements for yourself right now?

Dr. Deanna Minich: Oh my gosh. Let’s see, actually a vitamin C that is in combination with propolis. I love that. I take a plant melatonin. And I love that just for its antioxidant benefits. Not so much for the sleep. Because I don’t need any help with sleep. And then what is the other thing I would say? I take a multi mineral formula that I really feel like minerals are so undervalued. Another one of those things kind of like phytochemicals. So I do take a multi mineral supplement that I love.

Evelyne: Nice. I’ve been taking a multi mineral also just as of the last month or so, and I wasn’t really taking it before. And I always think of something you taught. It’s in detox that I’ve actually brought up on the show before and credited to you. Is that minerals, wait, what do you say? Minerals compete with,

Dr. Deanna Minich: Metals. That’s right. The two M’s.

Evelyne: Yes. So I find that important. So that’s great. Next question. What are your top three health practices that keep you healthy and resilient and balanced? You also travel a lot. You speak a lot. You write a lot. Like you’re just super involved.

Dr. Deanna Minich: Eat the rainbow. Yes, even diverse rainbow, number one, number two, move every day. Really important. And that’s the one I struggle with. And the third one is being attentive to light and dark rhythms. I gotta say, it’s such a basic thing, but it’s something that I’ve had to focus on. I even take my cat out in the morning with me, so she gets the bright lights, or she’s an indoor cat and I’m like, you need it too. So, I go out, I carry her out. I’m like, let’s look at the sky for a little bit, and then we go inside. But yeah, morning light, I’m much more attentive to.

Evelyne: Yeah, I hear it like almost every show. So, I need to be doing it more too. So, it’s always a good reminder. And then last question for you, what’s something that you’ve changed your mind about over the years?

Dr. Deanna Minich: I used to be really dogmatic about nutrition, about how you have to eat this, not that everything that I was talking about with nutrition being a pendulum. Yeah, it was kind of like the nutrition police. And it’s kind of funny because my dad, I grew up with a dad who was a police officer. And so, I always felt like nutrition was like it was rules. And I feel that I have really come back from that. And now I see nutrition as art. Nutrition is an art form, really, and it’s like an everyday art that we’re applying. So, I become much more soft and yielding and personalized in that approach. And then it’s also based on science. Like, that’s not just me. It’s like this just where we’re at in the 21st century.

But I did start my career in a very yes or no way and very regimented rule bound. I kind of say I come from that place. So, when I’m seeing it’s still out there in social media, it’s like, I know that because I was that, and now I feel like I’m in a different place about that, really honoring where people are at and what they need and what they feel drawn to physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually.

Evelyne: I love that. Thank you so much for sharing. You can find more about Deanna at deannaminich.com. She also shares amazing information on Facebook, on LinkedIn, and on Instagram. You have an amazing group on Facebook. I love all your posts in there. You’re always finding the coolest research. It’s actually one of the things I miss about being in school because we always had to write like multiple posts per week and just go down all these rabbit holes in PubMed and you’re still doing that all the time and you share all this cool stuff, so thank you.

Dr. Deanna Minich: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been nice to catch up and to have this conversation with you, Evelyne.

Evelyne: Thank you, Deanna, and thank you for tuning in to Conversations for Health. Check out the show notes for resources from this episode. Please share this episode with your colleagues. Follow, rate or leave a review and thank you for designing a well world with us.

Voiceover: This is Conversations for Health with Evelyne Lambrecht, dedicated to engaging discussions with industry experts, exploring evidence based, cutting edge research and practical tips.