Ultimate Prescription

Almonds and Walnuts

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Nick Evenson (Host), Dr. James Marcum

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Series Code: UP

Program Code: UP000094A


00:17 If you live in North America you probably eat the standard
00:20 American diet, which statistics show can lead to serious
00:23 health problems down the road.
00:25 But if you want to prevent disease, and if you want to
00:27 reduce your need for prescription medications,
00:30 you're going to want to stay tuned to this program today
00:32 as we'll be discussing food as medicine.
00:34 The Ultimate Prescription starts right now.
00:36 I'm Dr. James Marcum.
00:39 Are you interested in discovering the reason why?
00:42 Do you want solutions to your health care problems?
00:45 Are you tired of taking medications?
00:47 Well, you're about to be given the Ultimate Prescription.
00:55 Hello, and thank you for joining us today on the
00:57 Ultimate Prescription.
00:58 Our program is dedicated to helping us better understand
01:01 God's design for our lives.
01:03 And on today's program, Dr. Marcum is here to join me.
01:05 I'm your host, Nick Evenson, and we're going to be talking
01:07 about food as medicine.
01:08 Dr. Marcum, welcome to the program.
01:11 Well, I'm glad that we're talking about food as medicine,
01:14 because this has been around for a long time.
01:16 You know, we've talked before on previous programs about how
01:21 this was God's plan at the very beginning to use fruits,
01:25 vegetables, nuts, and grains for our bodies, not only to make us
01:27 feel better, but now we're finding that it can actually
01:30 change the chemistry when we have disease;
01:33 especially for chronic disease.
01:35 Modern medicine is great for disasters.
01:38 You know, from having a heart attack I want a stent.
01:41 If I'm bleeding to death sew me up.
01:43 You know, if I'm having a gallbladder attack and it needs
01:46 to come out, I want it out.
01:47 That's great for acute problems, but for chronic disease like
01:51 diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, cancer, some of those
01:58 obesity related illnesses.
01:59 We want to see if we can get at the cause.
02:02 And all too often modern medicine treats symptoms,
02:05 and not the cause of disease. Right.
02:08 So that's why I'm glad that we're talking about it.
02:10 But you know what the challenge is when we talk about food as
02:12 medicine is how do we make it interesting for those
02:15 that watch it, Nick? How do we make it entertaining?
02:17 Yeah! How do we make it entertaining?
02:18 Tell me, how do we do this?
02:20 Well, we've got to make it applicable to their lives.
02:23 Applicable? Make it relevant.
02:24 Make it relevant to their lives. Right.
02:26 So, that's a big challenge.
02:28 You know, when people... We eat food every day.
02:31 A lot of times we eat out of convenience. Right.
02:34 But I've been finding out that as people learn about things,
02:37 and make changes one step at a time, they feel better.
02:40 And, actually, we know in our brain our taste buds change,
02:45 but our brain changes, and how we think about food,
02:48 and all these receptors that happen.
02:50 You know, food can be an addiction.
02:52 Do you believe that? Yes, certainly.
02:54 Yeah. I have people come to the office that are addicted to all
02:57 sorts of things, including food; especially sugar.
03:00 You know, people addicted to sugar.
03:01 It's in everything it seems.
03:03 Especially processed sugar.
03:04 And the people that make processed sugar know that it
03:08 causes an addiction.
03:09 That's why they have processed sugar. Right.
03:11 And the brain, you know, these little amounts go a long way.
03:14 And they put more and more in it so you need more and more to
03:16 feel those dopamine receptors; make them happy.
03:19 So we just eat more and more.
03:20 Yeah. You know earlier you mentioned convenience. Yeah.
03:23 And in North America we have all kinds of convenient ways to eat,
03:26 right? But those aren't necessarily the healthiest way.
03:29 It's hard to get good healthy nutrition if you're
03:31 eating at fast food places, where you don't have to prepare
03:34 your own food, right? Right.
03:35 And it's very convenient, and a lot of people like to just put
03:38 it in the microwave.
03:39 And, unfortunately, those products come with lots
03:41 of chemicals to preserve it.
03:44 And believe me, the people that make food know how to get
03:48 us addicted to food.
03:49 They know how to make products that make us eat more and more.
03:53 And I think about the soft drink epidemic, you know.
03:56 Look at all the sugar that's in that.
03:58 And if you look at all the packaged foods.
04:01 High fructose corn syrup; it's in almost everything now days.
04:04 Right. Again, a little bit of that goes a long way.
04:06 And if you think about it this way: you know, if you eat an
04:09 apple, you know you get natural fruit. Okay?
04:12 Sugar... Yeah, about 14 calories for a bite of an apple,
04:16 depending on how sweet it is.
04:17 Well, the brain has trained us as we've gotten older,
04:21 that we want to get calories the easiest way. Right.
04:24 The brain just sort of wants to do that.
04:26 Well, you know, an apple's a great way for a calorie.
04:29 But which tastes better to us? a sweet apple, or a sour apple?
04:32 Well, often the sweet apple; more calories.
04:34 Well, now we've concentrated calories.
04:37 We don't want to have apples anymore.
04:38 We have apple pies.
04:40 And we have concentrated, just a little bit, and our brain says,
04:43 This is great! I don't have to work as hard.
04:45 I get all these calories.
04:46 I can feel so good.
04:47 But at the same time there's downhill damages.
04:50 So that's why we want to talk about food as a way to treat
04:53 disease, but food can also cause disease.
04:55 You mentioned the sad American diet. Right.
04:58 You know, and that that's the standard
05:01 American diet now is sad.
05:03 In fact it's been estimated that, you know, fiber is so
05:06 important to our body.
05:08 It's been estimated that 97% of people now do
05:11 not get enough fiber.
05:13 Um. You know, let's talk for a second about what eating well
05:16 looks like just in a one day scenario.
05:19 You know, for somebody who is going to get up and have
05:21 their breakfast at home.
05:22 And they're going to eat something healthy for lunch
05:24 and then for dinner.
05:25 What is the balance of where you take most of your food in?
05:28 Where does that lie?
05:29 And then what kind of foods are we talking about for
05:31 just a regular day?
05:33 Well, that's a good practical question for people out there.
05:35 But one of the things you want to do is you want to eat most
05:37 of your food in the morning.
05:39 You want to break the fast.
05:41 Why do you want to break the fast?
05:43 Well, because that's when our chemistry, the epinephrine,
05:47 the cortisol, our body starts to rev up.
05:50 Remember at night we were designed to rest, and heal,
05:54 and take it easy; the body parts get better.
05:56 Then in the morning when the light comes up,
05:57 the circadian rhythms rev us up.
06:00 So we start increasing our metabolisms.
06:02 But that's when we should take our biggest meal. Right.
06:05 So a breakfast, a healthy breakfast might look like
06:09 something like oatmeal with some walnuts and almonds on top,
06:13 maybe some flax, maybe some kia seeds, maybe some berries.
06:17 You know, different types of berries on top.
06:19 That might be a good start to breakfast. Okay.
06:22 Um, and the things that we don't want to necessarily do is
06:26 Fruit Loops with lots of milk on it, and sugar on the side,
06:30 and then a donut. That might not be the best way,
06:32 because that's a lot of processed sugars,
06:34 and processed things.
06:36 Then lunch. You know the basic lunch might be greens.
06:39 And you might put different types of vegetables,
06:41 and different types of nuts, and beans with your greens. Right.
06:44 And maybe a healthy topping to make it taste good,
06:47 like a balsamic vinaigrette.
06:48 Not all the sort of creamy, fatty toppings.
06:51 And then a dinner might look like a base like potato base,
06:56 you know, a baked potato base, or a bean base.
06:58 Where we could... And then we might dress it up with other
07:01 things with it like some peppers.
07:03 And make that base sound good.
07:04 We might add some pasta and grains to that.
07:07 We might put some other fresh things with it.
07:10 So that's sort of an idea of what a regular
07:13 diet will look like.
07:14 And then you can dress it up with herbs, and spices,
07:16 and things that tickle your taste buds.
07:18 I particularly like to go out occasionally and tickle my taste
07:22 buds with hot sauces.
07:24 Hot spicy food? Yes, I do.
07:25 In fact when I go out to eat I like to eat Thai food.
07:28 Because, you know, you can get, if you go to a Thai restaurant
07:31 you get a Thai spice, and you can make it as
07:33 hot as you want it to. Sure, sure.
07:35 And it can bring life to food that might seem boring to you.
07:38 But the more you eat healthy, you realize that not only
07:41 you use large variety, but the food in itself tastes different.
07:45 Yeah. So let's talk about that a little bit.
07:47 Um, for some people eating, as you just described,
07:50 there's going to be a large departure from
07:51 what they're used to.
07:52 And their taste buds might not be adjusted to it.
07:54 They might not like it.
07:56 It just doesn't taste good. Yeah.
07:57 So is that something that we're just going to have to deal with,
07:59 or do our taste buds change?
08:00 Well, our taste buds do change, but, you know, some people like
08:03 to do everything at once.
08:05 The people that have health problems, you know, they've just
08:07 been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, for instance.
08:09 We know that nutrition can reverse that. Right.
08:12 A person that has high blood pressure and wants to change it
08:14 with nutrition rather than medications.
08:17 Someone that has diagnoses of breast cancer
08:20 wants to lower their risk.
08:21 Or someone that's diagnosed with heart disease and wants to
08:24 reverse the disease or halt it.
08:26 Those people can change very quickly.
08:27 But what about the people that are, they feel like they're
08:31 healthy on the outside, but on the inside things are going on.
08:35 You know, these hidden diseases like high blood pressure,
08:38 fat in our diet, diabetes that we don't discover
08:41 till we get a symptom.
08:43 Then it's pretty much evolved.
08:44 Those are the people that sometimes it's harder,
08:46 and we have to find one thing.
08:48 But I found out, Nick, that when a person tries one thing,
08:51 they do it for a while, then the next time it's a lot easier.
08:55 In fact I work with a group of people, Nelson Campbell,
09:00 you know his dad wrote The China Study. Okay.
09:02 And he's developed some ten day jump starts.
09:06 And we've noticed that people that eat healthy just for ten
09:08 days, they feel so much better at the end of ten days that they
09:13 can't go back. Right.
09:14 And then when they eat bad they feel bad.
09:17 But most people it doesn't happen all at once.
09:20 It's a journey. Right.
09:22 And that's why the spiritual life is so important.
09:24 You know, having God in your life giving you the power
09:26 to make changes and see what truth is.
09:29 I have some people that honestly believe that these packaged
09:32 foods, and some of this stuff that we're actually eating
09:34 today, that they have to have it. Right.
09:37 But we've learned from watching people, that when people eat
09:41 healthy foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, herbs,
09:44 the things that come from the earth that God gave us,
09:47 they actually do better.
09:48 And not only do they do better, but they feel better. Right.
09:52 So we're going to talk about...
09:53 Yeah, I was going to say, Let's talk about nuts and seeds.
09:55 We've got some walnuts here and some almonds.
09:57 What are these good for?
09:59 Well, why don't you tell me?
10:01 Why don't you eat one of those?
10:02 You know, you want to try one of those almonds there?
10:04 Yes, it's pretty crunchy.
10:06 Yeah, it's a little crunchy there.
10:07 You could eat a little almond there.
10:09 Well, I'm just going to give you some data, okay?
10:12 And then you can decide if this is data that's very helpful.
10:15 Well, almonds and walnuts, and different nuts,
10:18 it's like these are loaded; a lot of nutrients
10:22 in a very tiny package, so they're nutrient dense, okay?
10:26 And they have lots of a substance called Omega 3 fatty
10:30 acids that are healthy fats. Uh huh.
10:32 In fact a lot of your brain is made of fat.
10:34 Did you know that? I didn't know.
10:36 So if I call you a fat head that's actually...
10:39 I'll take that as a compliment. Exactly.
10:40 But, no, it's not being mean, because we want fats in the
10:43 brain, the healthy fats that is, not the processed fats, okay?
10:47 And remember, the processed fats are the fats that get
10:51 hydrogenated, you know, that we start processing them.
10:54 We heat them up and they do some bad things in the body.
10:57 But let me... I just wrote down some of the studies that have
10:59 been done on nuts and the good things it can do. Okay.
11:03 Back in 2001 Frazier, in the Archives of Internal Medicine
11:07 showed that by eating 1/4 cup of nuts each day you could extend
11:11 your life by two years. That's incredible!
11:15 1/4 cup of nuts, okay?
11:16 In the New England Journal there's a study that they
11:19 studied lots of people called the Prediment Study;
11:22 a big study, and it shows that people that ate a lot of nuts
11:27 as much as 1/2 a cup a day, they lowered their risk
11:31 of stroke tremendously: as much as one half. Wow!
11:35 So it's by eating nuts.
11:36 Okay, you know. It helps...
11:38 50% reduction? Yes, of the chance of having a stroke
11:40 just by eating regular nuts every day. That's incredible.
11:44 I had a patient that came to me not too long ago
11:47 that had high cholesterol.
11:49 And they were interested in lowering their cholesterol.
11:52 Now they didn't have a lot of other problems.
11:54 They just wanted to lower their cholesterol.
11:55 They wanted to try it off of stat. Sure.
11:58 So I said, Well, there's a study out there that showed
12:00 Brazil nuts, if you ate 8 to 10 Brazil nuts a day,
12:04 that lowered your cholesterol as much as a statin medication.
12:07 You know, you've heard all of the statins: Zocor,
12:10 Crestor, Lipitor, Pravachol.
12:13 And I use those in appropriate situations.
12:15 But I said, Well, you know, you're in a low risk group.
12:17 Let's give it a try.
12:19 And sure enough, they ate 8 to 10 Brazil nuts a day
12:21 and their cholesterol came down to within the limits we wanted
12:25 based on their risk.
12:26 I bet they were pretty thrilled about that, too.
12:27 They were, they were.
12:29 But nuts do things better than that as well.
12:32 So it also... walnuts have been shown to lower
12:36 the risk of cancer by as much as 50%.
12:40 A Harvard study that was done that showed that when we eat
12:43 nuts we have less obesity.
12:46 It seems... Nuts seem to boot your metabolism, speed up the
12:50 rate which we burn off calories.
12:52 So you want to lose weight, eat some nuts every day.
12:55 It seems a little bit counter intuitive because nuts generally
12:59 are high fat food, but yet they speed up the metabolism so they
13:03 can benefit weight loss?
13:04 They balance themselves out.
13:06 I imagine there's some balance there though,
13:08 because if you eat too many nuts...
13:10 You don't want to eat tons of nuts. Okay.
13:12 But you want, you know, about a handful.
13:14 You know, a cup to a quarter cup a day. Yeah.
13:17 The Harvard Nurse's study, they looked at a bunch of nurses,
13:20 and they showed that a person that ate just two handfuls
13:23 of nuts a week, two hands full of nuts a week, they can extend
13:28 their lives, live longer as those people that run
13:31 four hours a week. Wow!
13:33 So a hand full of nuts two times a week,
13:36 or run four hours a week.
13:37 Now we want you to do both.
13:38 Both would be even better, right?
13:40 But this study was quite, quite interesting.
13:43 Another thing that it seems is it seems to improve absorption
13:47 of other nutrients when you eat nuts. Really?
13:50 So it does something within the bowel itself,
13:52 probably with the good in bowel flora.
13:55 It probably changes the chemistry of those
13:57 trillion bacteria in the gut, so we can absorb nutrients better
14:01 when we have nuts in our diet.
14:02 So these are just a few things that are out there,
14:06 Nick, that help us know.
14:08 The studies, science again proves that what God has given
14:11 us not only helps prevent disease, but treats things like
14:15 obesity, helps us lose weight, it helps our brain work
14:20 better by the Omega 3's fatty acids.
14:23 It lowers the risk of cancer, lowers the risk of all sorts
14:26 of things, and helps us live longer by mechanisms we might
14:30 not even be able to explain at this point.
14:33 Sounds like there's a lot of significant attributes of eating
14:35 nuts; including those into your diet.
14:37 I'm going to have to do more of that.
14:38 Yeah, I think so. So I hope that I convince you that we should
14:42 have nuts as a way to treat and prevent disease.
14:45 You know, Brazil nuts.
14:47 It does many good things to help our bodies.
14:49 Alright. Well, there's lots more to come here on the
14:51 Ultimate Prescription where we talk about food as medicine.
14:54 But we're going to take a short break, so stay with us.


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Revised 2017-03-30