Dr. Marvin Singh | Nutrition, Microbiome and Gut Health
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Recent studies have shown that factors like diet, exercise, sleep, stress, and toxins have a significant impact on your microbiome balance and therefore your overall health. Join us today to learn how to optimize your gut health and some insights into intermittent fasting.
Key Takeaways From This Episode
Personalized diet based on genes and microbiome
Food sensitivity test effectiveness
Types of intermittent fasting
Disadvantages of snacking before bed
Use of natural vs artificial sweeteners
How to keep a healthy microbiome
Disclaimer: All of the information and views shared on the Live Greatly podcast are purely the opinions of the authors, and they are not medical advice or treatment recommendations. The contents of this podcast are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Always seek the guidance of your physician or qualified health professional for any recommendations specific to you or for any questions regarding your specific health, your sleep patterns, changes to diet and exercise, or any medical conditions.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About Dr. Marvin Singh
Marvin Singh, M.D is an Integrative Gastroenterologist in San Diego, California, and a Member of the Board and Diplomate of the American Board of Integrative Medicine. He is also trained and board-certified in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology/Hepatology.
He founded the Precisione Clinic, whose primary aim is to help people understand their body, how it works and what it needs.
Connect with Dr. Marvin
Website: www.precisioneclinic.com
Facebook: Precisione Clinic
Instagram: @precisioneclinic
YouTube: DrMarvinSingh
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Kristel Bauer, the Founder of Live Greatly, is on a mission to help people awaken to their ultimate potential. She is a wellness expert, Integrative Medicine Fellow, Keynote Speaker, Physician Assistant, & Reiki Master with the goal of empowering others to live their best lives!
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Episode Transcript
Kristel (Disclaimer)
Now for a quick disclaimer, the views and opinions expressed on this podcast are purely the opinions of the authors. They are not intended to provide medical advice or treatment recommendations. Contents of the Live Greatly podcast are intended for informational and educational purposes only and make sure to always seek the guidance of your physician or qualified health professional when you have any questions regarding your specific health, any changes to diet and exercise and any medical conditions.
Dr. Marvin (Teaser)
Sugar is bad. Fiber is good. If you want to eat something think about, Is there much fiber content in this, or is this a lot of sugar in content in it and use that as a method of a gut check with regards to whether you should eat it, or how much of it you should eat.
Kristel (Guest Intro)
If you’re looking to improve your gut health, improve your wellbeing, and learn more about nutrition.
You're going to gain a ton of insight from today's episode with Dr. Marvin Singh. Dr. Singh is an integrative gastroenterologist. He actually did the same integrative medicine fellowship with Dr. Andrew Weil that I did. And he even taught in RGI unit, which is how I learned about Dr. Singh. We are going to be talking about different tips to optimize your gut microbiome.
Dr. Singh is going to be sharing his insights into intermittent fasting. We're also going to be talking about food sensitivity panels, whether or not they're worth it, whether you gain value from them, if they're accurate and we're going to be chatting about artificial sweeteners. Stevia and more.
Dr.Singh is the founder of Precision clinic and he also has a great podcast Precisione the Healthcast. So let's jump into it and welcome Dr. Marvin Singh to the show.
Dr. Marvin:
Thanks for having me.
Kristel:
My pleasure. So I would love for you to just to give a little bit of background about yourself so that the listener can get a little bit of a feel for what you're all about, what you're excited about and anything that you're currently working on.
Dr. Marvin:
Yeah. Awesome. Well, I'm an integrative gastroenterologist, so that's a little bit of a different thing, I guess then, uh, many people may be used to hearing about. An Integrative Gastroenterologist is somebody who's done regular training, um, in medicine and gastroenterology, which is the study of the digestive tract, but then I've also done a two year fellowship in integrative medicine, through the Andrew Weil center for integrative medicine in Tucson and at the university of Arizona.
And so triple board certified in all these areas. I actually sit on the board. I'm a member of the board for the American board of medicine. Do a lot of things. Um, but, uh, one of the things that I really became, uh, is integrated was precision med recommended, truly recommendations I's personal. And you should exercise. I mean, getting into the details of genomics and the microbiome, and a lot of other things, integrative and functional medicine testing that we often do and really giving, um, personalized recommendations to people. And that's been real fun for me to do. It's really fascinating cause everybody's like their own puzzle and we get to put it together.
You don't know what the book is going to say, because there is no book. You're just kind of exploring, learning about somebody's genes and their microbiome and listening to them and their story and putting it all together for them. And it's been really cool. And so I started my own practice called precision clinic. That is the place where we do that kind of stuff. So it's been real fun.
Kristel:
Awesome. You know, that reminds me a lot of functional medicine. I used to practice in functional medicine and integrative psychiatry, and we would do a lot of that, like personalized testing and looking at the gut microbiome. And is that similar?
Or, you know, I'm sure you have a little bit unique things that you're doing, but.
Dr. Marvin:
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we, I'm pretty flexible because everybody is different, you know, as far as how deep you want to go, or what kinds of testing you want to do? There's all kinds of things I can do. I mean, if you want to sequence your whole genome, do whole body imaging, look at the microbiome, food sensitivities, mitochondrial health, chemical toxicities, all that stuff.
We can do all that stuff. Or if you just want to know simply, and as cost-effectively, how should I eat for my genes? We could do a nutritional genetics panel and we can talk about that, you know, so, you know, everybody has different needs and wants. And so I try to meet those as best as I can.
Kristel:
I love that. And I think, you know, we're all individuals and these like blanket diets, it's not a one size fits all. And that's the tricky thing. Like people, you know, when I was practicing, I'm not practicing clinically anymore, but they've come in like, should I do plant-based diet? Should I do a keto diet? Should I be a vegan?Should I do? You know?
And it's like, wow. Let's, you know, let's start with the basics here. Let’s lower inflammatory foods. Let's crank up, you know, higher antioxidant foods. But I'm wondering if you have any general suggestions for people and how they can eat to optimize their gut health and their overall wellbeing.
Dr. Marvin:
Yeah. So since I'm a big personalized medicine guy, I try to look at the information, a lot of people, which is a problem these days kind of eat not based on their health or based under genes or their microbiome. They eat based on whose blog posts sounded the best today. And that's the problem. And I'm actually writing a talk for a lecture I'm going to give next month, just finishing it up, finished it up last night.
And the topic is actually diet and the gut microbiome. And I don't know how much I can give away here because I haven't given the talk yet. But, um, basically, you know, I dug deep into some of the major plans like paleo autoimmune, paleo vegan, even carnivore and Mediterranean diet. Some of the Aikido, you know, some of the big ones that most of us talk about often and, you know, for the most part, except for a few, few instances there are good data on all these diets, actually, with regards to the microbiome outside of perhaps the carnivore diet, where the diet data probably lacks and the data that is there is questionable regarding health benefits.
But, so what does that mean? You know, if the Mediterranean diet has great data and vegan diet has great data and there's even data on keto diet and paleo diet and stuff like that.
So which, what do you eat? So the second part of my talk is really kind of talking about personalized medicine because there's no one size fits all. You know, we can't really say you should eat this way. Sometimes I may say, um, eat in this style because the name of the diet is what really resonates with people.
You know, like, you know, if you give them, if you say paleo, then they already kind of made in their mindframe, have that set, but then personalize that paleo diet for them based on whatever their situation might be, looking at how diverse their microbiome is, looking at what their food sensitivities are, looking at what their nutritional genetics are, because some people have propensities for deficiencies, certain vitamins and nutrients that's genetically based.
And so if you don't, if you ignore those or you don't pay attention to those, then you potentially could be eating in a way that could be detrimental to your health in the long run. So it's really, really the best diet is a personal one and, uh, that's what I really advocate for.
Kristel:
Right. And I, um, I resonate with a lot of that. And, and for you listening, just for a little tidbit, you know, I did the same program as Dr. Singh and he actually was one of the instructors for my GI unit. So that was awesome.
What I want to talk a little bit about is this food sensitivity testing. Because I know when I was in practice, I was told that it wasn't very accurate and now I know there's some newer things coming out, but I would love to hear your insights into that and kind of the gold standard that I would do would be more an elimination diet versus following like a food sensitivity test, which I had heard, wasn't always very accurate.
I would love to know what do you do in practice? What are your thoughts on that?
Dr. Marvin:
So you’re right you know, I don't know whether there will ever be a perfect science with food sensitivity stuff, and there are a lot of different tests out there. Um, and I've seen a lot of different tests come to me from other places from other people.
And what I tell it in practice, I have seen where somebody looks at their food sensitivity tests, they follow it to a T and they get a lot better. And then in other cases, they might not see much impact or in other cases you think somebody has multiple food sensitivities and they actually have none on the test, you know, so there can be some discordance there.
Um, so it's really a combination of approaches. You know, I always preface the conversation with the patient and say, we can do this. Um, and it might help guide an elimination diet, but don't take this as like, the message that came down from heaven that you shall not eat broccoli because the sensitivity test told you that there may be other reasons why people might have an antibody to a particular food, for example.
And sometimes these things can change over time as well. So we use this as a guide because if you're completely lost and how we should eat and what we should try to eliminate. At least this might help guide us and there's risk and benefit to every, in this case. It's not like we're choosing which chemo drug to give you for your cancer.
We're talking about food. So best case scenario is we find something and it actually, you eliminate it and it actually helps you a lot. Worst case scenario is you donated some blood to the lab and you paid them some money and you got to test it wasn't helpful. So you look at your budget, you look at your needs, you look at your desires and you make the choice with regards to whether you think it'll be important enough. At the end of the day, your body is the best doctor.
And that I say that all day long every day, because some people come to me and say, well, you know, avocado was negative on my tests. But If I eat avocado, I break out in a rash, but since the test was negative, I should eat avocado, right?
No, no. That doesn't mean that you, you, you eat avocado, right? Your body is the best doctor.
So at the end of the day, it's a combination of things. It's a combination of looking at that, trying that, using that as a guide. Seeing what your body does in response to that. And then after a period of removing that food from the diet, if you feel like it's time to see if we can bring that back, then you can bring the foods back one by one in a guided manner to see what happens to your body then.
And we can also follow other parameters. We can see what happens in your microbiome. We can look at, you know, other inflammatory markers, things like that. Concerned that there's a particular impact being made. So it's kind of, I guess, I don't know how you qualify that answer I gave you, it's kind of a middle of the road answer.Um, but I do use them. I have found them to be very helpful in certain cases. Uh, but it's not the end all be all I would say.
Kristel:
Okay. Yeah, that definitely helps. And I want to jump over to. Uh, intermittent fasting. I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. You know, we had a section on that in the fellowship, so I learned about it, but there's just, there's different approaches to it.
There's different levels of fasting. Some are way too intense for anything I would ever want to engage in or recommend to others and other intermittent fasting practices, I think are more practical, but wondering what you've learned about that. And as far as how it can impact the gut microbiome and GI health and overall well-being.
Dr. Marvin:
Yeah. You know, so intermittent fasting, there are a lot of different fasting types and some are aggressive and some are not like you're mentioning, I think time restricted fasting is probably the easiest one to kind of dabble in. If you don't really know much about fasting and want to try something and time restricted fasting is basically where you say you're going to eat within this window of time and I'm not going to eat within this window of time.
And, you know, then there are more aggressive. Some people do and every other day fast, some people will. Fast two days out of seven days, people will do a fasting mimicking diet, which is a different kind of thing. Where body kind of thinks you're fasting. You're eating little bit, but it's not a whole lot, but you are basically putting your body into a particular kind of fast and state as well.
There is good data regarding helping balancing blood sugar and metabolism, and there are changes in the microbiome that they suspect are contributory to some of these positive changes. Is there tons and tons of data on this in the microbiome? I wouldn't say tons and tons of data, but there is data. And interestingly enough, um, uh, fasting has been suggested as a practice since way before me and you were around. Hippocrates actually suggested that fasting could be beneficial in certain medical conditions as well. So this goes back to like fifth century. Beast is like long time ago, and I think there were even stories. You know, Pharos and, and, and, and leaders from long time ago, there was a big meeting, or they were about to go to battle or something that they would go into a fasted state because they thought it would give them more mental clarity and that they would be able to make decisions better.
So I've heard that there were stories of these as well. So fasting is not a new practice and it can certainly help one of the best ways that I think it could help is in a behavioral way and not even looking at science or what's happening inside. If somebody has a problem with snacking or somebody has a problem trying to lose weight, this is one way where we can say, okay, well, let's try intermittent fasting.
Let's do some time restricted fasting because at the most superficial level, what it does is kind of help prevent you from eating too much and eating at night and snacking at night. You know, that's one of the, that's one of the downfalls of a lot of us, you know, the day is over. You had, uh, had a long day at work and sit down and relax.
And what do you do? You start getting out and stuff to munch on. And so if you kind of mentally put that in your mind that, Hey, I'm fasting, then maybe you won't be, you won't be doing that as much or at all really shouldn't be.
Kristel:
Is it so typically on a little bit, on the easier side of things, what would be the minimum amount of time where it would be considered intermittent fasting? Is that 12 or 13 hours?
Dr. Marvin:
I usually when, uh, when somebody is just starting, especially if I think it might, might be challenging because it's a paradigm shift in thinking about food. I'll tell them 12, because 12 and 12 is, I mean, that's pretty good, easiest to say 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. I mean, we're going to be eating at 4:00 AM. Are you going to be eating at 10:00 PM?
We shouldn't be doing that anyways. It's not good for your health to eat and then go to sleep anyway. So that's one way to start. And then, um, once that gets going, I, you know, start narrowing the window a little bit. I kinda think that, uh, you know, um, having a window from like 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM is probably not bad.
That's kinda your eight hours of eating and the other 16 hours of fasting, that's probably a decent way. And you know, some people do stricter than that even, but I think that's probably a decent place.
Kristel:
So those people. Person who's listening. Who's like, I love my bedtime snack or like, I love having something right before bed.
And you mentioned, you know, that's not good for you. I'm [curious what you've seen as far as any research or data or insights as far as eating right before bed. And could that negatively impact quality or other maybe metabolic processes that the body goes through during sleep?
Dr. Marvin:
Well, yeah, you bring, I mean, I think it's mainly an issue, you know, uh, and the analogy that I give people.
Say you are a contractor and you're trying to renovate a house and you bring in, and your workforce is sitting there on the site and you bring all the supplies over, you drop it all off at the house and you say, okay guys, you ready to work? And they say, yes. Yeah, you say, okay, great. And you shut off all the power and the water and everything else in the house.
You say, go ahead. How are they going to be able to do that? They're not going to be able to work in the dark. They're not going to be able to work without plugging in their, you, your utensils or tools or whatever. Um, and the same thing you should think about as, uh, your digestive tract, shut off, stay, breathe.
Uh, just jumped in your are really one of the main parts of the job when, when you're in, when you're in that sleeping state, you know, some people do like to have a little bit of a light snack. I mean, if you're fasting, then you're fasting. If you've decided to do that. You're not fasting if you eat. So, I mean, it's kind of, that's kind of a black and white thing, but if you're not fasting and feel like this is just something that you like to do, I usually try to say, it's not the end of the world, but don't have something that's very heavy.
You know, if you want to have some berries or something like that, that's light and give yourself a little bit of some space to let your stomach at least get the digestive process going. So I don't like eat some cheesy nachos and lunch meats and stuff like that. And then brush your teeth and go to sleep five minutes later.
That's not, that's not a good thing. Oftentimes people might wake up feeling like they have heartburn and indigestion and stuff anyways. And that's your body, it's his way of telling you, “No, that wasn't right. You shouldn't have done that”.
Number one, the food choices weren't good. And number two, you did it right before you went to sleep.
Kristel:
Right? I would love to talk a little bit about sweeteners and sugar. I think most people know that sugar is not something that you want to have. What about these other sweeteners? Like Stevia? Monk fruit and, you know, I personally like, I just, I avoid all the other artificial sweeteners and I recommend avoiding that.
But you know, Stevia and Monk fruit, I know, are used a little bit more commonly. And then also I'd love to know what do you think about like natural sweeteners here and there? Like honey, maple syrup or even like coconut sugar if you're baking. I love to just get your insight into that.
Dr. Marvin:
I'm more personally a fan of more natural sweeteners. And for example, oatmeal is a good example. So if you have your steel cut oatmeal, I don't mind if somebody wants to put a little honey or a little maple syrup in it. I personally don't. I use blueberries and raspberries as my sweetener because then you’ll get multiple benefits from that.
But if somebody doesn't like oatmeal and the only way they're going to eat is if they put a little bit of organic honey in there, that's fine because those also have health benefit that also has its own set of health benefits as well. So I don't mind it, you know, sugar we know is, uh, pretty much widely accepted as, and known fact that it's not really the best for your health. I have a mantra where I say sugar is bad and fibers is good.
And it's such a stupid little simple mantra, but, uh, I say it over and over again to make people remember it. Sugar is bad. Fiber is good.
If you want to eat something, think about, is there much fiber content in this, or is this a lot of sugar content in it and use it as a, as a method of kind of like a gut check, no pun intended.
Uh, with regards to whether you should eat it or how much of it you should eat.
The artificial sweeteners are different topics. I think for the most part, uh, we know that adding sugar to stuff can alter the microbiome and could cause metabolic derangements, uh, things like your sucralose or Splenda and equal and those kinds of things. Um, so those people may use as weight loss aids, and yes, it's not the same thing as straight up sugar, but I don't know. Sometimes I feel like maybe regular sugar is better than that junk because that stuff is, that stuff is awesome. I read that you put a little bit of organic cane. Sure. You then take Splenda because it's just not good for you. Stevia and Monk fruit are more natural sweeteners. I don't mind those if somebody really needs to sweeten, I generally encourage trying to go as natural as possible. We don't know, you know, what the science will show in the times to come. But I think for now, those kinds of things are probably more accepted as being okay as opposed to others, because it's hard to kind of say no to everything too.
So you kind of have to pick your battles sometimes as well, you know?
Kristel:
Sure. Perfect. You know, I want to know, or I would love to know some top tips for people to really optimize their gut health. Do you have like a top five things or it could be like four, six, whatever, but you really have a healthy gut microbiome.
Dr. Marvin:
Yeah. So the top things that I usually try to emphasize with people are some of the simplest things. That for the most part don't cost any money. And that's why they're the best. I think there are obviously things we can do. Therapy wise, maybe supplement wise, that's a different kind of conversation, but I've actually written book chapters on this topic as well.
And this is lifestyle medicine and the microbiome, believe it or not, there are actually, there is literature published on the microbiome impacts of all of these things. And this is what we're talking about. Not just diet, diet is the obvious one. So when I give a talk on this topic, I would save diet for less cause everybody always thinks, oh, you're talking about diet. Yeah. Diets in the conversation. Diet is obviously going to be an important part of this, but sleep is very important for your quality and the timing of your sleep can impact the microbiome is balanced, the toxins that are in your life. And we're talking about toxins that you're eating toxins that you're breathing, toxins that are around you, toxins that are in your cosmetics.Toxins that are in your water. These things can certainly impact the microbiome.
Stress is a big one. And we talk about stress and stress, not being healthy for you, but one of the ways that stress is, uh, primarily not healthy for you is because it can cause alterations in the microbiome. So this is a very important topic as well.
Exercise is a very commonly known thing. Good for your health. Good for your cholesterol. Good for your heart. Good for weight loss, but how is that being done? How is that being accomplished? A lot of the, that of the emerging research is showing that people who are more athletic for example, have more diverse microbiome.
And perhaps this is the mechanism by which these positive health benefits that we talk about is actually happening. And so, you know, these are some of the main ideas behind that social interconnectedness and enjoying life and being out in nature and doing those kinds of things is also important. And there's actually a microbiome data or literature with regards to, uh, people who are in a better social environments.
And, uh, talking about improvements in their microbiome is diverse. So, you know, and just to clarify for people who don't know, um, diversity. Means how many different kinds of the trillions of kinds of microorganisms that live in our gut are there in your, in your gut. And that is widely accepted as a strong seat, right?
That is where the strength of the microbiome comes from is in diversity diversity.We'll always be talking about diversity, diversity, diversity. That's because we know that if you have a diverse group of microorganisms in your gut, that can do a variety of different functions and that's the best way to keep balanced.
It's kind of like that in the job for us too. Right? Starting a company and you want to hire a hundred employees. If you say, well, they're all going to have the name, Kristel they're all going to come from the same town. They're all gonna have the same education. They're all going to have the same numbers of siblings.
And we're going to have a hundred of these people and it's going to be great. Okay. Well, they all might be very qualified. You know, they all may be very smart, but there's not a lot of diversity there. So if you're trying to innovate, you're trying to create things. You want to have a good, well balanced company.
You want people from all over the place. So that from all the different kinds of backgrounds, because everybody brings their own ideas to the test.
Kristel:
Right. Yeah, that was incredible. That was extremely helpful. And we are going to be kind of coming towards the end. I'm going to do a quick wellness lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a few questions, but before we get into that, I want to briefly just touch on the book that you're working on, rescue your health, and you know, that should be coming out. By the end of the year, right. Fingers crossed. And then also your podcast precision to help cast. So if you're really loving what Dr Singh is talking about, and you want to learn more, check out his podcast and also, you know, keep your eyes peeled for his book.
And if you want to share any information about where people could find that if you have a newsletter or something, people can sign up for, please feel free to share that now.
Dr. Marvin
Yeah, thanks. Well, my podcast is available everywhere, so, uh, iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. And it's also on my website, precision clinic.com. And I love that because as you know, podcasts are a little bit of some work, but it's actually one of the funnest things that I do because you get to talk to a lot of people, a lot of experts, and really try to bring information. And that's really one of the goals that I had, uh, when I became an integrative practitioner is cause I started applying a lot of this stuff to my own health and I saw how much benefit it was.
And I also realize how very little people actually understood about health, even though even doctors that's their job in life is focused on health. Doctors can sometimes be the most unhealthy people actually. So I said, you know, I want to bring this information to as many people as I can. Um, and so then I started the podcast and then, you know, the idea for writing a book came from that as well.
And when people hear personalized medicine or precision medicine, I kind of feel that one of the first ideas that might pop in your mind is, oh, that's not for me. It's too complicated. Or I don't want to know. Or I'm scared about knowing about this or it's too expensive. And a lot of these are actually myths.
It's not necessarily true. Anybody can do personalized medicine, anybody can do precision medicine. And so that's what the book, Rescue your health is really about talk about some of the main kinds of tests that can be done. I go over some of the most cost effective tasks. And then I talk about how I've used this in practice and what some of the outcomes are, and kind of bringing it together for people on how to get started in this.
And that's really the point in the title: rescue your health is really about finding out what your risk factors are, learning, what your body is doing, seeing what your inner biology is like. And personalizing your recommendations around that. And you may not feel that you need your health rescued. I there's nobody that I have found that there's nothing to say.
No, like I have never done an evaluation where it's like, Nope, everything's great. You're good to go. I think it's impossible. Even at the simplest level, there there's toxic exposures all over us in, in our environment. If nothing else, you know, that's something to talk about. All of these things can impact our health and, and if we don't do it well, we have the chance and we wait to try to figure this out after the disease or condition has occurred, it can still be done. We can still help people, but it's a little bit of a different paradigm. You know, it's better to prevent than to actually wait and tell them you have the problem. And that's really the premise of the book. I wanted to really teach people that you can take ownership of your health and it can be done in a non-scary way and it can be done by anyone.
Kristel:
Awesome. Fantastic. And then as far as links, you know, I'll share your links and social media things in the episode details as well. So people can follow you on Instagram, et cetera, if they want to stay up to date on all this interesting information.
Awesome. So let's jump into a couple of quick questions before we close out.
So are you ready? All right. Okay. First question is what is your top self-care tip that is a non-negotiable for you.
Dr. Marvin:
Non-negotiable for anybody in general?
Kristel:
For you like that, like you need to help yourself feel your best.
Dr. Marvin:
Sleep. I know that when I'm on less sleep, I don't do as well. And I don't really have that many digestive symptoms, but if I was running on three, four hours a sleep, Interestingly enough that’s when I might feel a little GI upset, not related to what I ate, not related to anything else, lack of sleep is a big stressor on your body. And so that's kind of a non-negotiable for me. And I actually started using while back one of these trackers. And you can actually see, you know, like I use the aura ring this cause it's easy for me to put on and you can really see, uh, changes in what's going on in your body, uh, based on the amount of sleep that you actually get in any given day.
And it's quite interesting. So if you're wondering whether or not that's impacting you or not, then I would just encourage you to get the data and look at it, get a tracker, see what it does to your body, and then you can see what it actually does.
Kristel:
Perfect. Okay. Last question is knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to yourself from 10 years ago?
Dr. Marvin:
10 years ago, I think at the most basic level is really understanding how important it is to read the labels on foods. It's really shocking what we eat and we don't even know what we're putting in our body. How many times have you just, you know, bought something? Oh, this is good. Somebody told me this tastes good, and you pick it up.
It's really one of the basis for saying that packaged and processed foods are not good for you, period, because that's one way to really emphasize that you want to eat in a whole foods, you know, pre plant focused. Uh, manner where you're eating a lot of vegetables and fiber sources and, and, uh, you know, foods that are sources of antioxidants and, and good stuff basically.
You know, there's a lot of sugar that they put in the foods and people don't really realize as much that there are scientists behind each packaged food. There are chemists who really sit there and try to figure out how this is going to taste good and not taste good because they want you to have something tasty in your mouth, but because they want you to keep buying it.
So one of the mantras, um, that, uh, that I also I'm big on mantras. I guess one of the things that I often repeat, uh, to people is that if it comes in a bag or a box it's made by a factory. And everybody says, yes. He said, well, if it's made by a factory, that factory is owned by a company. Yes. That company is not interested in anything other than making money.
Unfortunately. That's what companies do they want to make money. Otherwise they're not a company. So keep that in mind. When you go to the grocery store, you pick up food. The more you have that doesn't even require a label like spinach or kale or chicken, that doesn't require a label because it is what it is. You know what it is.
That's going to be better than picking up stuff in the aisles where they have all the packages.
Kristel:
The cookie aisle. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you. Well, thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation and you brought tons and tons of value. So I really appreciate you taking the time to spend with me today.
Dr. Marvin:
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.