Ultimate Prescription

Hibiscus

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

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

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Series Code: UP

Program Code: UP000099A


00:17 With the rising cost of health care, and disease being more
00:19 prevalent than ever, more and more people are starting to
00:22 pay attention to what they eat and drink.
00:25 Stay tuned to today's program where we're going to be talking
00:27 about food as medicine.
00:29 The Ultimate Prescription starts now.
00:32 I'm Dr. James Marcum.
00:34 Are you interested in discovering the reason why?
00:37 Do you want solutions to your health care problem?
00:40 Are you tired of taking medications?
00:43 Well, you're about to be given the Ultimate Prescription.
00:49 Hello, and thank you for joining us here today at the
00:52 Ultimate Prescription, a program dedicated to helping us better
00:55 understand God's design for our lives.
00:57 I'm your host, Nick Evanson, and we're talking here with
00:59 Dr. James Marcum today about medicine as food.
01:02 And, Dr. Marcum, welcome to the program.
01:03 Well, it's nice being here, Nick.
01:05 And I'll tell you, I had a great night's sleep last night.
01:09 That's wonderful!
01:11 I went to bed early listening to some music, and the next thing
01:14 I knew it was midnight, and I said, Man...
01:17 And you're still listening to the music?
01:18 Yeah, I was listening to the music.
01:20 I turned it off and went to sleep.
01:21 You know, sleep is so important. Yeah.
01:23 When the body's rested and renewed itself, sleep is one of
01:26 the most valuable treatments.
01:27 I know we're talking about food as medicine, but I'm going to
01:31 divert for a little bit, and talk a little bit about rest,
01:35 and how important that rest is.
01:36 You know, there's so many stressors in the world,
01:39 from all over, whether it be our food, or the climate,
01:43 or worries that we see.
01:44 A lot of people now are stressed even by politics.
01:47 Are you? Do you watch politics?
01:48 I try not to watch too much of it, but if you watch the news
01:51 at all you can't help but see some of it.
01:52 You know, why is the news always, it seems like it always
01:55 has negative stories.
01:56 I wish they required you to have just as many positive,
01:58 and feel good stories as they do negative.
02:01 That would be good for us.
02:02 Anyway, so a lot of people are stressed out these days.
02:05 Well, I'm diverting, but the opposite of stress is rest.
02:08 And I frequently, in addition to nutritional things,
02:11 there's other aspects of health, I frequently
02:14 prescribe rest to people.
02:16 And the three different types of rest: there's the physical
02:19 rest, and I did really good with that last night.
02:22 There's also the mental rest.
02:24 You know, some people are busy 24/7. Right.
02:28 And they're just doing stuff all the time.
02:30 And their brain actually needs some down times,
02:33 like turning your computer off lets it reboot, so you can rest.
02:36 And everything comes back on better if you rest.
02:39 A lot of people feel guilty for doing fun things.
02:42 You know, going out and doing something that
02:44 you'll really enjoy.
02:45 But, you know, I was in Europe not too long ago,
02:48 and some of those people in Europe don't have
02:50 the best of habits.
02:51 And yet I noticed that their health, especially their chronic
02:55 disease, was much less than what we have in the United States.
02:58 And they take time off every day just to rest and have fun.
03:01 Yeah, just enjoy life a little bit.
03:03 That's important. So that's the second type of rest
03:05 to counteract the stress of the world.
03:07 And the third type is found in Matthew.
03:10 The text in Matthew 11:28 that says, Come unto Me all you who
03:14 are weary and heavy laden, the ones that are stressed out,
03:17 and God gives us rest.
03:19 So our worship is a treatment for stress.
03:22 And now we have studies that show when we're in worship our
03:26 stress chemistry goes down, our brain improves.
03:29 It helps even our DNA do better.
03:32 So that's why I had a good sleep last night.
03:34 My stress level has come down a lot, and I'm wearing
03:37 comfortable shoes today.
03:38 That's important, too.
03:40 So when your feet are happy the whole body's happy.
03:41 So we're talking about food and beverages today.
03:45 Yeah, so rest is something that will benefit everybody. Yep.
03:47 Nutrition is as well. Uh huh.
03:49 But I imagine there might be one specific type of patient who
03:53 benefits the most from nutritional
03:56 attention to what they eat?
03:58 Well, we're talking in this series about
04:00 nutrition as medicine. Uh huh.
04:02 Remember foods have chemicals in them that
04:05 changes our physiology.
04:07 Well, you know, we know certain foods that we need just to stay
04:10 alive and give us energy, and our proteins, our carbohydrates,
04:14 some fats in our diet. Right.
04:15 But now we're learning that there's specific chemicals
04:18 in certain foods that can treat disease conditions.
04:23 Now are these chemicals similar to chemicals found in say
04:27 prescription medications?
04:28 Well, yes they are.
04:29 You know, they're all chemical compounds made up of carbon,
04:33 and nitrogen's, and hydrogen bonds hooked
04:35 together in fancy ways.
04:36 Then when they get into the body, some enter and
04:39 do different things.
04:40 Some are broken down by the body to do certain things.
04:43 God has just made us so complicated biochemically.
04:47 It's just amazing how all these chemicals interact.
04:50 Now we've, of course, developed chemicals and
04:54 the physiology of medications.
04:55 Okay, I went to medical school.
04:57 We spent a lot of time learning about those.
05:00 But remember, a lot of times those just treat
05:02 one chemical pathway.
05:03 But now we're looking at nutrition as a way to treat
05:07 specific disease conditions.
05:09 You know, to actually change our physiology.
05:13 Now is every plant good?
05:15 You know, and that everything that we eat good?
05:17 Not necessilarly, you know.
05:18 Have you ever had poison ivy lately?
05:21 Not lately, but as a child I had it quite bad.
05:24 Well, that wouldn't be something you would use as a
05:26 medication, you know.
05:27 Not that I'm aware of.
05:28 But now we have studies on certain foods, the chemicals of
05:31 certain foods, and we actually studied the amount that can
05:34 actually change our physiology.
05:36 So some people that come to the office that have certain
05:39 conditions we now can say, Listen, we now have certain
05:43 foods you can eat that will change your chemistry,
05:45 and treat this condition. Right.
05:47 And some people choose to have a medication for their ills,
05:52 to treat a symptom.
05:53 Some people choose a nutritional aid, and sometimes there's other
05:57 things that we can do.
05:58 Sometimes I can just prescribe rest and it helps a person out.
06:01 Right. You know, rest is a treatment for something
06:04 like high blood pressure.
06:05 Rest would be something for treatment; it's a treatment for
06:08 inflammation, so it helps different things as well.
06:11 So all these different things that come into
06:13 our body have changes.
06:14 And we've actually studied these.
06:16 And what I've done in this series is I've specifically
06:19 looked at the literature.
06:20 Now there's lots of things that have not been proven
06:23 and might be helpful.
06:24 But they also might be harmful, just like eating poison ivy.
06:27 You wouldn't necessarily want to do that
06:29 as a nutritional treatment.
06:30 There's lots of plants that are good.
06:33 There's some plants that aren't so good.
06:34 And I've actually looked through the studies that have been done
06:38 on certain plants, and these are studies that have been done,
06:42 and proven, and repeated, and replicated.
06:45 And these are things that I think would definitely be used
06:49 to treat certain disease conditions.
06:50 And I wanted to bring those to our audience,
06:52 just so they could start thinking about these.
06:54 And this might be something that they might want to apply
06:57 to their life to treat certain conditions.
07:00 That makes sense, but I think there's a perception out there,
07:02 and I could be wrong, but I think people look at
07:05 medications, let's say, this is just water, but let's say
07:07 it was a medication.
07:08 People will think, This is going to heal me.
07:09 The doctor gave me this prescription.
07:11 I have faith that this is going to work. Right.
07:13 And I think sometimes when we're talking about nutrition,
07:15 people don't expect that nutrition can have a dramatic
07:19 effect on their health.
07:20 Is that right? Are people?...
07:21 Yeah, I agree with you that we have some slick
07:24 marketing out there.
07:26 Lots of people want something that will fix them, you know,
07:30 or they think, when it's been marketed as it's going to fix
07:33 you right now, where it really just treats a symptom,
07:36 at least in chronic diseases.
07:38 The chronic diseases, medicines really don't fix the problem,
07:43 they just treat the symptoms.
07:44 And in chronic diseases, I mean things like type 2 diabetes,
07:47 high blood pressure, obesity, joint pains, not sleeping well
07:54 at night, maybe even anxiety depression.
07:56 Some of these chemical changes that happen chronically,
07:59 if we can get at the cause, that is really much better
08:03 than just treating symptoms.
08:05 But everyone wants a quick fix.
08:06 It's been marketed that way, and we've done it
08:07 for years and years.
08:09 The pharmaceutical industry is making a lot of money;
08:14 billions of dollars.
08:15 They have lobbyists.
08:17 They hit us in medical school.
08:19 You know, they don't call it physiology school,
08:23 they don't call it nutritional school,
08:24 they don't call it lifestyle school,
08:26 they call it medical school.
08:28 We're taught about these chemical pathways.
08:30 So you're right in that perception.
08:32 And that's what we're trying to do here is give people some
08:35 alternative things to think about, show them the evidence
08:38 behind it, and let them know that this is something they can
08:40 incorporate into their lives.
08:42 There's evidence based behind it.
08:43 This is things we can do to ways to get at chronic disease
08:46 if people want to do that.
08:48 Now some people say, No, I just want to treat the symptom.
08:51 And that's their right to do so.
08:52 But we want to give them some truth and let them
08:55 know what's out there.
08:57 That's right. And some of these chronic conditions,
08:58 if they're taking a medication for it, they're going to be on
09:00 these medications for the rest of their life potentially.
09:02 Right, and every medication has some side effects.
09:06 And you have to deal with that as well.
09:07 And those medications are treating one path,
09:09 whereas the nutritional alternative might benefit a lot
09:13 of areas of your life.
09:14 Yeah. So we've looked at some specific foods and beverages
09:17 that change our chemistry that we can use just as effective
09:21 as a prescription pill.
09:23 Right. And on today's program we're going to talk about
09:25 hibiscus and other beverages that might have
09:29 some healing powers.
09:30 And this is a hibiscus tea here that we've steeped a little bit,
09:34 and it's got a nice rich red color.
09:36 It looks delicious. Yeah.
09:38 What can you tell us about hibiscus, Dr. Marcum?
09:40 Well, you know, before I talk to you about the study...
09:43 Is hibiscus a flower?
09:45 What is hibiscus?... What is the background on hibiscus?
09:48 Here's a fun fact...
09:50 I think it is a flower.
09:51 Everybody knows commonly about the flower,
09:52 because it's very beautiful.
09:54 But hibiscus is actually the name given to more than 250
09:57 species of herbs, shrubs, and trees of the mallow,
10:00 or Malvaceae family. Yeah.
10:03 How about that? There's over 250 different items that
10:05 are labeled hibiscus.
10:06 You know, and so taking different herbs and things
10:09 in us, you know, we have to talk to our doctor,
10:11 because certain herbs are not good. Right.
10:14 Certain herbs have been studied, certain herbs
10:16 have not been studied. Right.
10:17 Okay, well this is one of the teas that's been studied
10:21 very well, hibiscus.
10:22 And actually Tufts University, they actually studied this.
10:27 And they had people drink three cups of hibiscus tea a day,
10:32 and they showed that it lowered your blood pressure,
10:36 the sostolic blood pressure about six points, okay?
10:40 Then another thing that they wanted to study;
10:43 they took people having two cups in the morning.
10:46 They found that was as effective in lowering blood pressure
10:50 as a medication we prescribed called taking
10:53 captopril twice a day.
10:55 Wow, that's significant. Yes.
10:56 As effective as using the medication.
10:58 Yes, they studied that.
10:59 And the point is is this has been studied.
11:01 You know, of course, hibiscus has a few side effects, too,
11:05 you know, if you use it as medicine.
11:06 The main one is the chemicals in it are a little bit acidic.
11:10 Now you've done some background.
11:12 It has quite a few different acids in it, doesn't it? Yeah.
11:15 Yeah. And you do have to brush your teeth, because it can hurt
11:19 your enamel afterwards. Sure.
11:21 And, of course, you don't want to take too much
11:23 of any good thing in.
11:24 So you don't want to do that.
11:25 But you do have to rinse your mouth afterwards.
11:28 But hibiscus is something that people can add to their...
11:31 If they have high blood pressure they might want to use
11:33 hibiscus tea instead of a medication to lower
11:36 their blood pressure.
11:38 Also hibiscus has lots of antioxidants, and other things
11:41 that are beneficial that they haven't studied in studies yet.
11:45 So a lot of these plants have studies on them,
11:48 but there's lots of beneficial things that have not been
11:50 studied that they can incorporate into their lives.
11:53 So recap just there.
11:54 You mentioned a couple conditions that
11:56 hibiscus is good for.
11:57 Recap those for us.
11:59 Yeah. Hibiscus is especially good for
12:00 lowering blood pressure.
12:02 And it's been shown in the Tufts University study to be
12:04 just as effective as the medication
12:07 captopril twice a day.
12:08 It also has antioxidants, which might help
12:12 some with inflammation.
12:13 Antioxidants are sort of anti-aging,
12:16 keeps us from rusting; might help our DNA do better.
12:19 So there's less mutations, there's less changes.
12:22 So there's lots of things that we're learning about this tea
12:26 that's beneficial to us.
12:28 And now how to put it in our diet, that's another challenge.
12:32 Yeah. And for that challenge we've turned to our friend,
12:34 Kristina McFeeters, who runs a health food store.
12:37 She helps education people on some of these natural remedies
12:40 that you can use, and she's going to show us how to make
12:42 this hibiscus tea from scratch.
12:44 And so we're going to turn it over to Kristina.
12:48 Welcome to Kristina's Kitchen.
12:50 I'm Kristina McFeeters.
12:52 Today let's explore one of my favorite ways to incorporate
12:56 hibiscus into my diet.
12:58 I'm going to show you how to make ice tea out of loose
13:02 leaf hibiscus flowers.
13:04 You can find dried hibiscus flowers at any bulk herb store.
13:09 Also, if you don't want to make your own tea you can find
13:13 tea bags with hibiscus at any health food store,
13:18 and some grocery stores.
13:20 If you want to make your own tea with loose leaf herb
13:24 one of the things that I like to use is a tea ball.
13:27 It makes it very easy.
13:29 There's very little cleanup.
13:31 If you don't have a tea ball, you can put the herbs straight
13:34 into your cup, and then just pour it through a strainer,
13:37 to strain the pieces out before you drink it.
13:39 We're going to use the tea ball.
13:41 And the most common rule of thumb for most of your herbs
13:46 is about a teaspoon to a tablespoon per cup of water.
13:51 Because the hibiscus flowers are large, and take up a lot of
13:55 space, we do a tablespoon per cup.
14:08 We're going to put the tea ball in the cup, and see if I can
14:14 keep the chain out, so it will be easier to get out later.
14:19 And we're going to add boiling water.
14:22 When I'm making ice tea I like to fill up my cup half full
14:27 with boiling water.
14:28 And once it's steeped I can fill the rest of it with ice cubes.
14:36 We're going to let this steep for five to ten minutes,
14:38 and then we'll add our ice.
14:41 If you like to sweeten it at this point, you can add some
14:45 sweetener while it's still hot.
14:47 But hibiscus tea has a sweet, but tart, tangy flavor.
14:52 And I like it without any sweetener at all.
14:55 So our tea is done steeping.
14:57 We're going to remove the tea ball out of our tea.
15:08 And we're going to add ice cubes to fill up the rest of the cup.
15:37 See how fun and simple that is?
15:39 It's guilt free, full of nutrition, amazing
15:44 antioxidants, and so delicious.
15:46 Be sure and try this at home.
15:49 Thanks, Kristina. That was a great demo.
15:51 And using loose leaf like that, it's probably the most
15:54 economical way to do it.
15:55 But you also, like we have here, you can just use these tea bags,
15:58 and it makes it pretty convenient and easy, but maybe
16:02 a little bit more expensive.
16:03 But if you haven't tasted this, this is, it's rather a tart,
16:07 kind of like a, maybe a cranberry almost.
16:09 But it's very delicious, very good.
16:11 But, you know, if you think about it, you know, the tea bag,
16:13 of course, you know, you get the chemicals out into the
16:16 beverage from the tea bag.
16:18 And we get those good chemicals that lower your blood pressure.
16:21 So, you know, you think about, after you've had a tough day,
16:24 you're really stressed out from work.
16:26 Your blood pressure might be going up a little bit.
16:29 Well, this would be a good beverage to help bring down
16:31 the blood pressure, help sort of calm you, and relax you.
16:34 So that was really great that Kristina
16:36 showed us how to do that.
16:37 Yep. Well, we've got to take a break, but we're going to be
16:40 back in just a moment as there's lots more to talk about
16:42 regarding food as medicine. Stay with us.


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Revised 2017-04-20