Top Five Supplements To Promote Overall Health – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 542
We all want to optimize our overall health, let’s do that by learning about the five most recommended supplements to take on a daily basis.
Tag: energy
Feeling Energized Again with the Anti-Fatigue Program
More than 20% of Americans deal with fatigue. The good news is that there are nutrients that can help!
Keto Diet vs Mediterranean Diet – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 525
keto diet
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Keto Diet vs Mediterranean Diet – InViteⓇ Health Podcast, Episode 525
Hosted by Amanda Williams, MPH
*Intro music*
InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed healthcare professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that InViteⓇ Health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code PODCAST at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started!
*Intro music*
Amanda Williams, MPH:
[00:00:40] When it comes to a healthy diet, oftentimes people get confused between dieting and diet. Today, I want to talk about the importance of diet, and I’m going to zero in on the difference between the two most popular diets that people adhere to. One is the Mediterranean diet, the other is the keto diet. The keto diet has definitely gained a lot of attention and momentum over the past few years, so I want to really be able to differentiate between the two, which is the most ideal and why one would be following a said diet. So not dieting, but actual diet. I’m Amanda Williams, MD, MPH, Scientific Director at InViteⓇ Health, and it’s important to understand the difference, when you think about the word dieting and people will often say this, “Oh, I’m on a diet,” or “I’m dieting.” Dieting is when you’re actually limiting yourself to, you know, certain choices of foods as opposed to following a healthy diet, which is going to allow you to have a lot more options, but they’re in that healthy category.† [00:01:52]
[00:01:53] So we have to understand that when it comes to adhering to a particular dietary pattern, the two diets that most people trend to are going to be the Mediterranean diet and the keto diet, and there’s a lot of interest in this. They are very different in their own right. We understand that many people say, “Oh, you have to be on a keto diet and this creates ketosis.” There’s a lot of science that will show that actually the adherence to the Mediterranean diet is the preferred dietary choice. And I encourage people all the time when they come to me and say, “Hey, should I be doing a keto diet? I had a friend that did it and they lost all this weight and they feel really good and energetic.” It doesn’t work the same for every single person. So when you’re doing the keto diet, we’re actually kind of following in that vein of dieting because we’re limiting our exposure to certain nutrients, whereas the Mediterranean diet is not doing that. We have the full spectrum of all of the different food groups, but we’re just making healthier choices.† [00:03:05]
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[00:03:06] So let’s get into some of the science behind this. So what’s really involved when someone’s doing a Mediterranean diet or a keto diet and comparing the two? So historically, when you think about the Mediterranean diet, this is when you think about countries that border the Mediterranean Sea, who always followed a very unique dietary routine that included many healthy fats, things like seeds and nuts, lots of fruits and vegetables, a good intake when it came to fatty fish and a low intake of things like red meat and sugar and dairy. Now, following a Mediterranean diet is certainly advantageous and the most widely studied of all diets out there. So we understand that when we look at every single system in the body, the Mediterranean diet has been shown to be clinically effective at targeting issues with cognitive health because it helps to maintain your brain volume as you age. When it comes to heart health for supporting the entire vascular system. When it comes to regulating blood cholesterol levels as well as blood sugar levels. So all in all, we know that the most healthy way to eat is through that adherence of the Mediterranean diet. Having optimal cardiovascular health is what most people should be striving for. Maintaining the health of our brain is what most people should be striving for. And of course, not falling into that trap of having elevated glucose that can do so much damage to every single system in the body.† [00:04:44]
[00:04:45] Now, when you think about the keto diet, this is a little bit different. The keto diet was initially introduced back in the 1920s as a diet to turn to for neurological support. So when people had seizures, for example, what they were doing was allowing the body to use ketosis. It’s using fat for fuel instead of carbohydrates. So when you think about this and you correlate this into a dietary intake, this is why a keto diet is going to be incredibly restrictive or basically eliminating down carbohydrates. So the carb intake would solely be coming from minimal exposure to, say, a little tiny bit of fruit or a little tiny bit of vegetables. So its initial, you know, target for brain health and for the neurological component to that made a lot of sense because you didn’t want to have excess sugar, which would then create these misfirings. However, for the average person to eat this way is usually not going to be sustainable. And we know that when people are doing a keto diet, oftentimes they will find this initial drop in weight, and that’s because you’re taking the bad carbohydrates out, so initially you can have this weight loss. But the problem is is that managing that weight loss and maintaining that over time becomes difficult because now you’re lacking in key nutrients that come from healthy carbohydrates. So now you can start to see the difference. And this can start to create this response in the body where originally you do the keto diet, you have a lot of energy and then over time you start to dwindle and you start to feel tired and fatigued, and it can even affect your mood. You maybe start feeling anxious or depressed. It can affect your sleep.† [00:06:49]
[00:06:51] So when we think about a keto diet, does it mean no one should ever do a keto diet? No, not necessarily. There are times where a keto diet could be quite advantageous, but for the average person, 95% of people the Mediterranean diet is 100% the choice that you want to make. And looking at that comparison, the risk versus benefits one could say between a keto diet and a Mediterranean diet, it is definitely very scientific, and we can look at how many of the foods that are contained in both the keto diet as well as the Mediterranean diet. There’s a cross linking of those when you look at some of the healthy fats, for example. But we also have to realize that it is through that, you know, strict adherence to a keto diet that things can start to diminish in the body.† [00:07:46]
[00:07:47] So I want to talk about a study that was done in 2021, and it was published in the Nutrients Journal, where they were looking at the adherence of a ketogenic and Mediterranean style diets. So this was a crossover trial, and it was called the Keto-Med randomized trial. So it’s kind of interesting, right? Keto-Med randomized trial. And the reason why they wanted to focus in on this is because of the prevalence, the rate of type two diabetes that is increasing at this alarming rate throughout the United States as well as throughout the world. And we know that the foods are that driving factor. So people who follow a Standard American Diet, which is high in bad carbohydrates and unhealthy fats, does not have any exposure to the powerful antioxidants that fruits and vegetables provide, or the fiber that those fruits and vegetables provide. We know that when we’re looking at the average carbohydrate intake in the United States, it makes up well over for many folks 50% of your daily energy, and that is certainly going to be problematic. Now, when you look at a Mediterranean diet because you’re getting this expansive exposure to different nutrients, the healthy fats coming from the olive oils and the nuts and the seeds, fatty fish, avocados, for example, we know that the energy coming from the carbohydrates is going to be somewhere around 35%. Now we can look at a ketogenic diet. We know that this is incredibly restrictive to that carb intake. And so the range of carb energy when someone’s on a keto diet is roughly about 10%. So you can see Standard American Diet, you’re well over 50% just eating donuts, horrible foods that are just not nutrient dense whatsoever. We can look at healthier carb options in the Mediterranean diet, which is going to yield you really wonderful energy. About 35% of your energy will be coming from those foods, from those carbohydrate-based foods, but they’re healthy carbs, whereas the restrictive keto diet only going to be 10% and in some cases even lower than that.† [00:10:05]
[00:10:05] So they wanted to set up this randomized crossover trial to compare the two different diets. So looking at the ketogenic diet versus the Mediterranean diet, and the objective was to really determine which diet is more effective in improving blood glucose for that regulation of diabetes and looking at those outcomes over time. It was quite interesting the way that they set this study up, so they took adults over the age of 18 years old and they were assessing their blood glucose levels, their hemoglobin A1C and these were all people who had been diagnosed with type two diabetes. They had them complete these different screening assessments to see what their current dietary intake was like. And then they had them join into this, and they had them adhere to a Mediterranean diet, and then after they did that, they switched them over to a keto diet and they were able to follow and track how these people responded to the different foods through the analysis of blood testing. So it’s a really interesting way to, to assess how foods impact the human body. And they’ve done a really interesting study where they had people go and eat like a burger and fries and a milkshake. And then like an hour later, they tested their blood levels and you could see how the immune system was incredibly raging and the inflammation was driving up. And then they tested them like six hours after they had that meal and it was still really high. So it tells you the damaging effects of those bad foods. So looking at this particular study, they, you know, tracked what they were eating. They had them do the Mediterranean diet. Then they switched them over to doing a keto diet and then assessed all of those different functional levels so they can compare which one is going to actually yield and garnish the better support for someone who is dealing with type two diabetes. And what they were able to notate through this study was that the nutritional interventions that both of the different diets yielded, the Mediterranean diet by far gave the greatest bit of support because remember, they were getting that comprehensive blend of fruits and vegetables that were helping to fend off oxidative stress and inflammation in the body. And so this is a example of a very scientifically driven study showing the advantages of adherence to a Mediterranean diet over a ketogenic diet.† [00:12:54]
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[00:12:55] There have been other studies that have looked at both the positives and negatives of a ketogenic diet, and it is, like I said, gained a lot of momentum and popularity over the last decade. And the main reason is because people can lose a lot of weight. So I always say ketogenic is technically dieting. It’s not a diet. It’s not something that you would stick with for life. It’s dieting. And to understand the difference between the two and seeing the science behind the Mediterranean diet and its prevention of chronic diseases, it is hands down the most widely studied and the most supported when it comes to the scientific data when you’re looking across all different spectrums, whether we’re talking about chronic kidney disease, heart disease, any of the metabolic disorders, we know that it comes down to the full spectrum of getting vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fibers, healthy fats, good healthy carbohydrates. This is what the human body actually needs. So when we’re restricting the body to less amounts of one thing, it doesn’t always pay off for us in the end. So hopefully this yields a little clarity for those who maybe are kind of on the fence, like, “Which one should I do? Should I do the keto diet or the Mediterranean diet?” Well, Mediterranean diet is actually the one about healthy eating, keto diet is technically dieting. So if you understand the difference between the two, maybe you use the keto diet for a short term, maybe a couple of weeks. You know you’re getting ready to go on a beach vacation. You want to trim down a little bit. Perhaps that keto diet in the short term would be ideal, but for long term overall health for all aspects of your wellness, the Mediterranean diet is the choice to definitely make.† [00:14:50]
[00:14:51] So I want to thank you so much for tuning in to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast. Remember, you can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting invitehealth.com/podcast. Now, do make sure that you subscribe and you leave us a review. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @invitehealth and we will see you next time for another episode of the InViteⓇ Health Podcast.† [00:14:51]
What Is Brain Fog? – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 517
If you’re feeling like you can’t focus or that your mind is fuzzy, you may be suffering from brain fog. Here’s what you need to know.
Melatonin for More than Sleep – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 513
Melatonin is commonly known as the sleep hormone, but did you know that it’s also important for immune functions, fat burning and more? Learn more about why it’s important to have sufficient levels of melatonin from Amanda Williams, MD, MPH.
Stress Versus Burnout, Part 1 – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 502
burnout
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Stress Versus Burnout, Part 1 – InViteⓇ Health Podcast, Episode 502
Hosted by Amanda Williams, MPH
*Intro music*
InVite Health Podcast Intro: Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed healthcare professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that InViteⓇ Health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code PODCAST at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started!
*Intro music*
Amanda Williams, MPH: [00:00:40] We’ve all said it from time to time, and that is, “I am so stressed out,” or “Oh, I feel burned out.” Today, I want to talk about the difference between stress and burnout because there is a distinct difference and understanding that is key in terms of being able to manage it. And in Part 2, I’m going to talk about nutrients that can be incredibly supportive when it comes to enhancing your energy and giving you that sense of just wanting to get out there and get back to life and do the things that you enjoy doing. So I’m Amanda Williams, MD, MPH, and let’s get right to it.† [00:01:15]
[00:01:16] Let’s talk about the actual difference between stress and burnout, because the two often go hand-in-hand. And one thing that we do know is that when it comes to stress, uncontrolled stress or chronic stress… It’s one thing to have acute stress. This is when you get startled or you can have eustress, which is actually good stress. Maybe you’re nervous a little bit to get on a rollercoaster. And so that would be a sense of you stress. So it’s not bad stress. And so some stress is actually good. Chronic stress, on the other hand, completely different. It’s kind of like when we look at the difference between acute inflammation and chronic inflammation. We know that acute inflammation is good. It helps our body heal and recover. But chronic inflammation is detrimental to our health. It’s the same thing when we look at stress and everyone has probably heard of this.† [00:02:13]
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[00:02:14] They’ve actually done multiple studies to assess the level of burnout in people who work. And when you look at the statistics, it’s really incredibly alarming. I’ve done many presentations on stress and burnout through the years and presented to medical students, so they have a better awareness of why they need to be cognizant of the difference. And when you traverse over from stress into burnout, why that’s so detrimental. Because in healthcare in particular, you see a much greater likelihood of developing burnout than from other occupations. Clearly, it’s across all occupations, but we do see that in medicine in particular, it is a really alarmingly high rate and there’s a reason for this. And part of that is because the burnout phase starts in the education process. So starting in medical schools where most people start to go from that stress into the burnout category, and this is where the problem starts to present itself in terms of the long term implications.† [00:03:26]
[00:03:28] So I’ve talked about stress before in different podcasts and how we can go about trying to manage our stress. And as I mentioned in Part 2, I’ll go into different nutrients, but trying to differentiate between the two… When we think about being stressed out, this is when, you know, where emotions are very strong towards something like you really have a lot of care, I guess is one way to put it, put it into perspective. Where you feel very anxious and you feel kind of hyperactive, like, “Oh, I’m so stressed out, I have to race over here and I have to do this.” That is much different than burnout. Burnout is when you feel drained. You don’t, you no longer have that hyperactive component that’s driving you. You feel helpless. So you go from that anxious feeling to just feeling completely run down. And just, “What do I do?” And so you can see, even just from that example, that there is a clear distinction between the two.† [00:04:35]
[00:04:35] We know with stress, oftentimes we feel this in a more physical sense, where maybe your stomach, it’s, you know, people say, “Oh, my stomach’s in a knot.” Maybe you feel a little bit jittery. Maybe you feel like you’re sweating a little bit. When we look at burnout, we transition more over into that emotional component. So there’s also the physical that’s there because remember, we have the low-energy state, so you just feel completely drained. But it’s that emotional toll that really builds up when you have burnout, in a way, you almost have like this blunted emotional response. So when you’re stressed and someone says, “Oh, I need you to do this and I need you to do it right now,” you get yourself worked up and go, “Oh my gosh, how am I going to? I can’t do all of this.” So you’re still having this emotional attachment to it.† [00:05:24]
[00:05:25] When you are burned out, you have, in a sense, kind of checked out. And it’s key, too, to understand this because we know that there is clearly a problem. And with every problem, we know that there are solutions and we don’t want to get ourselves to the point where the stress becomes so unmanageable that we do get burned out because once you’re at burnout, it’s very difficult. So we can kind of look at having a container or our coping reserve. We can have positive inputs into that coping reserve. We can have negative inputs into that coping reserve. In the outcome of trying to get that balance between the negative and the positive is what can dictate if we get burned out or if we can remain resilient, even under stress. So there are a lot of different factors that we have to consider, you know, positive input, such as having a good support system, having a good social life. Having a healthy diet, having someone who maybe mentors you, even in the setting of learning a new task at work, which can be stressful, but if you have someone who’s there and mentoring you, this can make all the difference. When we look at the negative inputs, you know, the stress building and mounting and mounting and having our own internal conflicts of, “Can I do this? Can I take all of this on?” This is when that coping reserve can get incredibly imbalanced. And then you start to see the signs of burnout, a sense of failure. You have a lot more self-doubt. You feel helpless. You feel defeated in many cases. Many times people start to withdraw. You become detached from your normal social setting. You have a loss of motivation. Maybe you become incredibly negative and you think, “I used to always be such a positive person and now I’m incredibly pessimistic. It doesn’t matter what it is, I just have a negative attitude towards it.” And this is a bad thing. And then we can look at even when you do accomplish something that you’re like, eh, and you just have no sense of satisfaction in that. Maybe you find that you are very irritable. Maybe your sleep patterns have become incredibly disrupted. Perhaps you’re sleeping more than you used to. Or maybe you can’t sleep at all. You can become very apathetic. You may start to have signs of different emotional breakdowns.† [00:08:10]
[00:08:11] And these are all things that we need to be aware of, because when they do studies and they say nearly 8 out of every 10 workers experience burnout at some point in their lives, then that’s a big problem. When they did a recent study looking at employee burnout, they surveyed over a thousand respondents, 77% of those said that they’ve experienced burnout at their current position. 91% that, said that the unmanageable stress or frustration impacts the quality of their work. And 83% of them said that burn out negatively affects personal relationships. So even those who they had in the survey that said, “Yeah, I’m still passionate about what I do, I still like what I do,” the 64 of them said “I’m still stressed out.” 64% of them still said, “I’m incredibly stressed out.” I’ve seen this in numerous studies in physicians where they have assessed, the Mayo Clinic has assessed physicians and 88% of doctors… This was years ago. Now you add the pandemic into it, but 88% of doctors, and this is probably 2015 that they assessed, said, “Yeah, I’m moderately to severely stressed.” Over 50% of them said, “Yeah, I think I could classify myself as being burned out.” So we know that this is prevalent.† [00:09:50]
[00:09:51] We know that the World Health Organization has defined burnout as a syndrome resulting from workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. So what are we talking about? Acute stress that then becomes chronic stress that then becomes unmanageable stress that then becomes burnout. So then we have these feelings of energy depletion. We feel exhausted. We have this distancing from our emotions. And I said many people withdraw from social interactions. We know that when they’ve done work and wellbeing surveys, 80% of American workers who were assessed said they experienced work-related stress. I wanted to bring this up because I have a lot of people who reach out to me and ask, “You know, I feel stressed out or I have a lot going on right now and I’m taking care of this person, plus I’m working, I’m trying to go to school.” I mean, people sometimes put a lot on themselves. And trying to find ways to cope with that. Remember, we have our coping reserve. It’s creating that balance. We’re always going to have stress. There’s always going to be a certain amount of stressors that we have absolutely no control over, but it’s how we react to those stressors, how we manage that stress to prevent us from falling into that category of being burned out.† [00:11:32]
[00:11:33] And I myself have been in that position. I remember many years ago, you know, finishing medical school, working on my master’s degree in public health. I got to the point where I was technically burned out. I felt like my brain was like Play-Doh, like you could do as you wish with it because it didn’t matter to me anymore. And that’s a really bad place to be. And so through many different modifications in terms of my lifestyle, in terms of, you know, what I eat every day, the nutrients that I take in, being mindful, have made all the difference, that even in the setting of having to multitask and do all of these different things, I’m able to manage it. But we have to be cognizant, we can’t just accept it and say, “Well, I’m just stressed out and this is how it is.” No, you’re going to have stress, but having enough recognition for that stress, because remember, sometimes we think, “Well, maybe someone higher up is going to notice that I’m stressed out.” They’re not because they are stressed out themselves, even though from your, you know, point of view, you may not look and see that they’re stressed. But everyone has stress. So it’s identifying it in ourselves and then saying, “What can I do about this? Because I’m obviously, you know, I’m not going to change my job. I can’t change my job, which is the position that many workers are in. So how do I manage this better? What can I do to not allow myself to become withdrawn and to start to have this apathy towards everything? I have less motivation feeling drained.” Having a difficult time to put any type of effort into what you’re trying to do every day. And it matters to your overall longevity. At the end of the day, it truly does. We can see the, not only the mental health toll that this has, but the physiological effect of burnout. When it comes to the cardiovascular system, when it comes to our cognitive abilities, so we need to reconnect. And in Part 2, that’s what I’m going to talk about. What are things that we can be doing to better support all of the different stressors in our life to try and stop burnout from occurring? So that will be covered in Part 2. So do make sure that you tune in and listen to that.† [00:14:23]
[00:14:23] I want to thank you so much for listening to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast. You can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting invitehealth.com/podcast. Do make sure that you subscribe and you leave us a review. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And we will see you next time for another episode of the InViteⓇ Health Podcast.† [00:14:23]
*Exit music*