Introduction (1s):
Welcome to the Wellness Surge podcast with Dr. Adeola Oke. Each week we discuss our wellness journey with real people like you and me. We have conversations about food, fitness, mental health, financial wellness, and much more. So you can get back to the real you to make sure that you’re up to date with this and other wellness topics, visit wellnesssurge.com. Information presented here is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease. Please do not apply any of the information presented here without first speaking with your primary care provider.

Introduction (31s):
Now let’s head onto the show.

Dr. Adeola Oke (35s):
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Wellness Surge podcast. My name is Dr. Adeola Oke, and we’re going to be talking today about how to eat to live. Alrighty. So what are the main things we’re going to discuss? One: foods that can prevent and possibly reverse disease. And then two: the one thing you can do starting today to prevent diseases. Alrighty, so a little snapshot about myself. Well, I’ve worn several hats in the healthcare field. I have a nursing degree. I was a nurse before I have a public health degree.

Dr. Adeola Oke (1m 6s):
I’m a clinical pharmacist specialist. So, but I’m not a nutritionist. So what makes me qualified to talk to you about this today? Well, as a clinical pharmacy specialist, I work with patients so use their food choices to improve their health. So when it comes to like using food choices, to help improve diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, and even possibly in pain. So like reducing foods that increase inflammation and reducing those diseases. Alrighty. So when it comes to eating to live, right, we have to talk about inflammation because, research has shown that inflammation is the basis of many diseases associated with our modern lifestyle today.

Dr. Adeola Oke (1m 45s):
So what is inflammation? If you’ve ever caught your finger or you’ve ever been stung by a bug you’ve experienced inflammation. So the familiar sensation of pain, redness, and things like that, that’s all inflammation. Inflammation is the body’s natural response to protect itself. That’s it! But if this level of inflammation at too high, or if this inflammation keeps going, it goes on and on and it’s on checks for a long time. It feels like your body is on fire and this can lead to disease.

Dr. Adeola Oke (2m 16s):
Alrighty. So certain diseases associated with inflammation include diabetes, Alzheimer’s -some people actually consider Alzheimer’s to be diabetes of the brain. And other diseases include chronic pain. So often this diseases can be prevented or reduced. If you focus on eats and certain foods and avoiding all this. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. So how can you eat to live? One: you gotta be tenacious! So what does that mean? Well, there’s junk, junk, everywhere.

Dr. Adeola Oke (2m 46s):
Fast foods are way easier to buy. They contain artificial ingredients that make us want to eat more and make us want to feel good. Right? Well, the golden nugget here is this. Did you know that over 60% of all chronic diseases can be prevented if you eat certain foods and avoid orders, right? So even though the junk food is everywhere, but our body needs us to treat it well and give it what it really needs. So in order to be tenacious, we need to adopt something called the anti-inflammatory diet.

Dr. Adeola Oke (3m 17s):
All right? So that’s a little different, right? Well, this diet is not meant to help you lose weight. It is used to improve and support your health in other ways, which may eventually lead to weight loss. So it has so many benefits. Weight loss may be one of them. Alrighty. You may be thinking I’m young and beautiful. Why do I need to change? Well, guess what? Chronic diseases don’t start in your old age. They start way when you’re younger. So it just keeps building on each other. You need to start young now, right?

Dr. Adeola Oke (3m 49s):
And then, so that eventually this things would happen. You won’t get this chronic disease. I know it’s kind of hard to look so far ahead in the future. Well, your body will thank you for it. So I’m a pharmacist, right? And so that’s my background. So when developing medications, you know, most medications come from foods and plant based products. So we know that in pharmacology, in order to prevent or treat a disease appropriately, you need multiple targeted approaches. And the same goes for the anti-inflammatory diet.

Dr. Adeola Oke (4m 22s):
When you’re just going to do one thing, we’re going to do several things to be able to benefit the body. So what is the anti-inflammatory diet? Well, it involves, one: eating more fiber. So fiber lowers inflammation in your body. Mmm. The good sources include like your vegetables, your fruits, your oatmeal, really good. And if you don’t usually eat a lot of fiber, you want to start to increase your fiber intake slowly so that it does not upset your stomach, right? Because if you just give your stomach BOOM!

Dr. Adeola Oke (4m 53s):
so much fiber at the same time, it can really do a number on your stomach. All right. So another is protein. Michael Pollan in his book, Food Rules, says ‘eat food in moderation and mostly plants’. Okay. So when it comes to choosing your protein, it’s usually good to choose most of your protein from plant based proteins, like your beans and your nuts and things like that- because they help reduce inflammation in your body.

Dr. Adeola Oke (5m 24s):
If you choose to eat seafood, try to choose wild caught fish, as opposed to farm based fish. All right. So, because if you think about it, farm based products, right? What are they putting in? What are they feeding those fishes to make them really big? What are they putting in all that? But when it also comes to wild caught, you have to think about mercury and things like that. So everything in moderation. So try to eat at least 2 servings of fish or 3 to 4 ounces each, weekly.

Dr. Adeola Oke (5m 55s):
All right. Fish, all supplements are also available widely available and usual doses are about a 1000 to 2000 milligrams per day. Right? And when you choose to eat red meat, eat, it’s a moderation. No more than about eighteen ounces of red meat per week. We also talked about Michael Pollan. He’s a really smart guy and in his book, he talks about how about… (in his book called Food Rules). He talks about the fewer, the feet, the better. So you also want to include lots of fruits and vegetables, right?

Dr. Adeola Oke (6m 26s):
Vegetables, reduce inflammation. They also have tons of other benefits. When it comes to fruit, choose to eat the actual fruit, as opposed to eat drinking the fruit juice, because when you are drinking the fruit juice, you’re only getting the sugar and you’re not getting the fiber. An easy way to get in lots of fruits and vegetables is to make a vegetable fruit smoothie. So strive for a minimum of about five cups of fruits and vegetables each day, most people can get by with two cups of fruits and about two and a half cups of vegetable per day.

Dr. Adeola Oke (6m 58s):
So if you’re trying to figure out how much cup on fruit versus vegetables. It is usually in your best interest to have more vegetables than fruits, especially if you’re a diabetic and choose to eats, cook with a lot of anti-inflammatory herbs and spices- such as like your cumin, turmeric, your dried peppers. And then when it comes to fats, right? Fats, it’s a, it’s a different one and a difficult one. You want to just avoid trans fats because they cause inflammation. Basically you should avoid foods to have the label partially hydrogenated ors on the label.

Dr. Adeola Oke (7m 34s):
Trans Fats are often found in your margarine, you’re shortening ,your cakes, donuts and things like that. Naturally occurring trans fats are produced in the guts of some animals, right? And then this animals then produce things like your meats and your milk. So this animals may have some trans fats in them. This products like the milk and the meat. We have some trans fats in them. On the other hand, artificial trans fats, are made in an industrial process that adds hydrogen to the liquid, and vegetable to make it more solid.

Dr. Adeola Oke (8m 4s):
And this then increases the shelf life. So what does that mean? It just means that when they do it in the industry, it just makes the product last longer in your supermarkets. Okay. As opposed to getting a rancid really quickly. But, not all fats are bad. Fats are actually pretty good, but if you want to eat fats, choose to eat monosaturated fats, and they include like your avocado, your olive oil, olive oil is known to reduce inflammation. It’s known to reduce blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels.

Dr. Adeola Oke (8m 34s):
So that’s five bangs for your buck right there-by just eating olive oil. Oh goodness. Oh my gosh. Bring up the chocolate. Eat dark chocolate. It has been shown that about eating about 1.5 ounces or about 42 grams, dark chocolate daily decreases both inflammation and blood pressure. Righty. But if you want to eat dark chocolate, make sure you choose the one that has 70% or more of cocoa in it. Okay. So not just any dark chocolate. What if the right choice type of dark chocolate?

Dr. Adeola Oke (9m 6s):
So what is the other thing you need to do? Well, you need to choose one tip. We’ve talked about a lot today, but just choose one. You can choose to start with like the juice, right? Instead of drinking juice, a full glass of juice, you can say, let me do well, quarter water, three quarter juice. Then maybe when you get used to bake and then say half juice, half water. And then, Hmm. Quarter juice, three quarter water on to say, man, I can totally do without this juice and just go with water and eat the actual fruit.

Dr. Adeola Oke (9m 39s):
So that’s the, you can just choose one thing today, starting today to do. And when you get comfortable with that, you can then implement an add on based on the other things we’ve talked about, but choose one thing. Just make sure you choose one. All right. Alrighty. So keep in mind that compared to taking medications, the effects of foods and natural compounds, work in a slower and more long lasting way, you may not feel the effects immediately, but trust me, believe me, your body will think you mean the long run. All for the same prevention is better than cure.

Dr. Adeola Oke (10m 11s):
Who is with me there?Okay. So we’ve talked about a lot today. Back in the days I used to be the one that I used to eat chocolate for breakfast chips, for lunch and cereal for dinner. So if I’ve been able to make some of those changes, I’m not telling you I’m totally a hundred percent, but I’ve been able to make a lot of changes in my diet. If I can do it, you can totally do it. All right. So if you want to ask any questions or have any concerns, you can always hit us up on a Facebook page and Wellness Surge Family, all on Instagram at Wellness Surge.

Dr. Adeola Oke (10m 44s):
Or, I’ve made things a little easy for you. If you go to my website, www.wellnesssurge.com, you can get a free anti-inflammatory sheet. I just told you the foods to take, what you can eat, which to avoid. Foods to eat in moderation and all you just need to do is a popup will come up, you put your email address in and it will send you the anti- inflammatory cheat sheet! It’s as easy as that. Alrighty. It was wonderful. Hanging out with you all today. Y’all have a wonderful week. I’ll see you in the next video.

Dr. Adeola Oke (11m 15s):
Bye.

Ending (11m 21s):
Join our Wellness Surge Facebook community so that you can implement what we learned together. I am because you are thank you for listening and sharing your precious time with us. If you enjoy the show, then follow us and subscribe on iTunes, YouTube, or any app that carries podcasts. Have an awesome week. Best wishes to see you thrive!