Ingredients, Inflammation, And Your Immune System

Introduction and speaker background 0:00

Who? Welcome back to the reverse Autoimmune Disease Summit series. Everybody. This is version 5.0 healing your energy body. I'm delighted to bring a dear friend and colleague, Myra Ducey, to the link to the series. She's the Ingredient guru, a holistic nutrition professional, author, and a public speaker. Her. She knows that it's not just what you eat, but what's in what you eat. Mira is a board certified and holistic health practitioner who has been working with clients for over 15 years, helping them with chronic health issues.

Find real food solutions for wellness. She's a member of the National Association of Nutritional Nutrition Professionals, the society for Nutrition Education and Behavior, and the American Association of General Practitioners. She's on the board of directors for the American Holistic Health Association, and as a member of the Professional Advisory Board for the Turner Syndrome Society. And she can be found online at the Ingredient guru.com. Welcome to the summit area. Well, thank you for having me here, Keisha.

It's always fabulous to see you. You know, just before I hit record, you were telling me a little personal story about your own journey with autoimmunity. And I said, oh, hang on, hang on. I always start my interviews in the Summit Series with how you know, how people get to where they are and are passionate about what they're what they're teaching. And you just had a really beautiful celebration that I would love to invite to you to share. Absolutely. So my journey into the holistic health realm began because I got really sick many, many years ago.

And I, through that process, learned that food and holistic health strategies had a lot to do with our state of well-being. But back at the beginning, when I was first diagnosed with a number of different issues going on, I was actually diagnosed with five different autoimmune disorders. And my primary I know well, but you and I both know autoimmunity does not live in individual little diagnoses. It's a spectrum, and people who have one typically have more than 175% chance risk. Once you have one of getting another and another and another, unless you deal with the root causes.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, and so for me, my introduction to autoimmunity was here you go. You've got five things which you know of course necessitated a lot of doctors and a lot of different things. But really my primary diagnosis was ulcerative colitis, which essentially meant that I had a very unhappy tummy,

Autoimmune journey and reversal mindset 2:51

never felt good, and I had to know where a bathroom was within 20 steps of where I was standing at all times. And I'm very happy to announce that all these years later, I recently had a colonoscopy and my gastroenterologist told me that there are no signs of ulcerative colitis in my system. Yay! And so the funny thing is, I said to him, my my healed and he said, you're in remission because he won't come back for. Well, that's what that's what I tell people to, you know, in my cured. And, you know, I always say there are four corner pieces to each individual person as a puzzle.

And that's your individual genetics, your gut health, your toxic burden and your trauma. And those genetics are still there. And so I could get rheumatoid arthritis back easily like I could I could probably have a diagnosis of RA within six months if I tried real hard. And so, you know, the genetics are still there. I can activate them. Right. And so I never say that you're cured. I, I always say that we've taken enough things off of the scale, the side that went this way. Right. So that you can balance again.

So yeah, I think I think, reversal is the word that I like to use instead of remission, because remission implies that there's a path back. Yeah, that it will come back at some point in time. And, and it's sort of like you have this other shoe that's about to drop and it hangs over you, you know. Well, and the thing that was so gratifying for me is that once I discovered the power of food and incorporating holistic functional health strategies, every colonoscopy got a little bit better, like the first one where I had some improvement.

You know, the doctor patted me on the shoulder. He's like, whatever you're doing, it's great. You got two patches in there that have no signs. And then the next time it was bigger and then this last time, he's like, there's none. And so it takes time. But I like to believe that for a lot of people, we forget how long it takes for disease to show up in our body. We have to remember it takes an equally long time for our body to be able to recover. Yep. And blown up joints with our eye or, you know, neurological changes and masks.

You know, these things as as they get measured first progression helps and then we can start recovering tissue. And it does take time and it takes a lot of patience. Yeah. And it and it's not a diet that does it. And that's the thing that I love about the work that you do is you're not talking about a diet. You're talking about ways to understand, food that you're eating in a way that is a lifestyle. And like, you're up leveling your knowledge base, your education, and your own empowerment around food.

And I love that you say that because unfortunately for me at least, and I think it's true for a lot of people, diet is a term that indicates, well, I'm going to I'm going to suffer my way through this for a little bit of time. And then when I get to the other side, I eat whatever. Then I'm going to stop and go back to normal, you know? And it's just like, no, that's how I would get my IRA back, is as I went back to the way I used to eat, which is not normal. It just happened to be the way that I ate, which does somewhat match the standard American plan.

But, you know, it's not a diet. It's it's, an up leveling of my my education, my knowledge and clarity around, you know, sure how our food is presented to us. Well, and and it's so much of it is tied up into this cultural perception of what we should be eating. You know, unfortunately, we have that, you know, acronym, Sad, standard American Diet. And it includes all these things that are so clearly harbingers for overwhelming and negatively impacting our body state. But it it takes a very long time.

And so then when it shows up, people are like, well, well now how do I fix it? And then, you know, we think we want a fast fix. And really the answer is to learn internally to make changes that allow us to, as you said, incorporate a healthy lifestyle. And that's how we live moving forward so that we don't have to be that sort of chemical canary that shows up from all of that high fat, high sodium, bad fat, high sugar. Petroleum is rattling off some of the harmful ingredients that we see in our packaged foods.

Why don't why don't we start with kind of listing out some of those ingredients that were in some of our food? And I like to think about it, some of the options that are on the grocery store shelves as not food, but, well, I think, you know, one of the biggest things that we don't really pay attention to, and I really see this as the number one thing that people have to learn

Hidden sugars and processed food traps 8:14

is to identify all the different kinds of sugar, because food producers just shove so much of it into everything we eat. I mean, you, you can look at things like ketchup and bread and other things that have sugar. They're supposed to be savory foods, but they have sugar in them. And so that's retraining our palate to think that we need more. And then we're up leveling continually how much sugar we're consuming. You know, part of the challenge is that it's not just listed on the label as sugar. It can be things like sugar or maple sirup or honey.

Those are fairly easy to identify. But other things that are sirups anything that ends in an OS Ossie, or even things like maltodextrin. You know, that's a weird one, but it's based on corn and is a sugar. So one of the things I really like to encourage people who are looking at learning how to change their their eating patterns and build a better nutritional plan is to start looking at the label and see how many different kinds of sugar can you spot on a on a label? Yeah, I mean, if you look at even something that you would maybe consider a healthy that you can get on the shelf like coconut milk, yogurt, for example, a lot of times it'll have things in it that are thickeners, like tapioca starch, you know, and and I just made the reason I brought it up is because I just made coconut milk yogurt this morning, you know, and it had coconut milk and it had collagen and it had a probiotic in it.

Yeah, a spot of vanilla and that's it, you know, and, and I stirred all that together and stuck it in my, my pre warmed oven. And I'll sit there overnight and I will have the most delicious yogurt. And it doesn't have any of the stuff that ends and a like dextrose or oats or starch. Right. So I, I think that we have a lot of gluten free junk food too. Oh yeah. Dairy free free paleo junk food. Yeah. Keto junk food. There's a lot of it. You know, part of the challenge is, unfortunately, food producers are in the business of making money.

And so, I mean, that's not a challenge. You know, it's like any other business. The challenge comes in where they spend literally tens of millions of dollars a year to see. What are we thinking about, what are we attracted to, what are the buzzwords and the ideologies that are going to grab our attention? And even more insidious, how do they get us addicted to a specific taste so that we come back and keep buying whatever it is they're selling? Oh yeah, it's really creepy. Like there I have read where they hook people up to MRI machines and put feeding tubes into their mouth, and then watch as their brain lights up when they feed them different things.

Like, that's truly creepy. Oh my God, I know. So so the challenge is, you know, if you think about it, if we go back, I don't know, back to like the 80s when whole grains were the thing, I would look at all these packages. There was like so many grams of grains, so many different kinds of grains made with whole grain. Like that was the big bread that had whole sunflower seeds. And it was like, oh, it's so good. Yeah, exactly. And so one of the more one of the things that happens now are big thing probiotics.

So many things were made with probiotics. I mean, I'm kind of joking that if they thought they would sell more, they'd make probiotic shoe polish, you know, but so so paleo, they've decided not a fad. It's sticking around. So now we have to create a whole bunch of paleo products because we want those people to just look at that one word and go, oh, this must be good with for me, because it's following that protocol, but it doesn't take into account how much of that is starch exploded, you know, molecules and broken down, highly processed to the point where our body actually turns it into sugar because it's consumed too rapidly.

Same thing for keto, same thing for gluten free. You know, one of the biggest problems with gluten free, there's so many people, there's a growing number of people who are eating gluten free, not necessarily because they have celiac disease, according to the research I've done, the the percentage of population that has celiac is still hovering around 3 to 3.5%. However, there are a growing number of people who have non celiac gluten sensitivity and an enormous number of people who have discovered that they are sensitive to glyphosate, which because it's used on so many grains, they're being forced to go gluten free in order to be able to avoid it.

And then we have massive amounts of, as you mentioned, starches. There's also a lot of gums, food, gums, which are not great for the gut. I mean, in moderation, okay. But in the quantity that we're consuming them, it's not a great choice. I'm going to be making some bagels today, which I usually only make at Thanksgiving. It's a very I have a guest coming into town who has psoriatic arthritis and eats a lot of bread and gluten bread, and so I'm making some options homemade. And you know, I, I have to sort of wind when I, when I think about using yeast and arrowroot starch again, you know, it's like, okay, this is a special occasion, you know.

But to have something like that every single day, it's converting rapidly into sugar in your body. And then as you and I both know, unfortunately sugar increases nerve pathway signaling, you know, boosts pain. And then whatever your particular variant of autoimmunity is, chances are your body's going to get overwhelmed because we're not nourishing on that deeper foundational level. We're merely feeding. And that is not supportive, right? Yeah. There's a difference between nourishing and putting calories in to make the brain function.

So, so what other ingredients would you like to talk about. You know I think one of the other things that is really important to remember is the quality of the fats that we consume in our diet. Our body needs fat like the biggest, most dangerous myth that ever came out of the government attempting to interfere in the food supply was that fat was bad and we needed to be low fat. And luckily we are starting to come out of that, and we're beginning to go back to recognize that fat is healthy. Our body needs it to make hormones for our brain, for nerve pathways, all those kinds of things.

But the challenge is a lot of people aren't paying attention to the quality of the fat that they're eating. And there are so many poor quality vegetable fats that are really bad for us and that aren't nourishing. You know what those are, I'm sure. Absolutely. You know, so I happen to be a really big fan of for those who can tolerate it, I think ghee is a great fat. If you can tolerate dairy, it's it's wonderful. It's a very nourishing food. Well, you don't have to tolerate dairy to eat ghee because you're taking out those milk solids.

So I feed ghee to everyone on my retreats. Oh, and there you go. Even if they're dairy intolerant, because I've taken all the dairy out of it. Yeah. So in Indian ghee, in a big tub, a jar, a crock is made and put up in the top of a dark closet when a baby is born. And when that child is grown and gets married, that crop comes down and is given as a wedding gift. Like, wow, there's no animal in there, you know? So they think old as gold. Like the older the ghee, the more the healing properties of it are.

Your Vedic medicine uses a lot of ghee for carrying the the nutrients in your food to your tissues. Yeah. The you know how we digest and and use those fats as, as carriers then inform how healthy our tissue layers are. So ghee is really an important one. Yeah I think it's fabulous.

Healthy fats and better ingredient choices 16:48

And then I also am a fan of, you know, the standard three olive coconut and avocado and both not just in their oil forms but in their food forms as well. You know, I think one of the things people get so wrapped up in the oh, gotta get healthy fat, gotta make sure that I'm getting enough fat. And they're looking only at either the liquid fats that they're using to cook with or to incorporate into a recipe. And they're forgetting that we can eat those foods too. And that is another really wonderful way to get them.

We really want to avoid things like corn oil, canola oil. Those tend to be the most genetically modified crops on the face of the planet. And one of the biggest challenges with that is the reason they're genetically modified is to be able to spray them with glyphosate, which is a chelating agent. It's bad for the gut like and soy oil, too. And soy is also another one that is really not a good choice. Peanut oil? Yeah. Peanuts. Peanuts? Not even a vegetable. It's a fatty little legume, you know? And part of the challenges in America, we have a love affair with peanut, and I'm guilty as charged.

I love peanuts, and so I, I'm always like, ooh, peanut butter. That's yummy. Organic or the almond butter. Okay. Almond butter I, I was raised on peanut butter. I love it so much. So well. And and you know, I guess one of the things that I'd like to point out to people is if there are certain foods that are either culturally or or celebration highly important to you, then the goal is to figure out how to make them the absolute best that you can. So you just said a very important thing. Is it organic peanut butter? Is it made from.

You can soak peanuts before you grind them to make a peanut butter. And the other thing is you can. They have so much fat in them you don't need to add. Like if you look at a regular jar of peanut butter on the shelf, it's got added fat, which it does not need. Added salt also does not need added sugar. Why? You know so it is. It's America and we need butter, sugar and everything. Exactly. But you can you can make things. So if there are certain foods that are important to you or that's what I do and it's, you know, but you have to source mold free, you know, peanuts.

So it's a little you have to really be conscious about it. And, and I think one of the other, one of the other important things for people to keep in mind, and this is just so important because when we have some sort of health challenge that we're facing, we become desperate for answers and we feel like we have to do everything all at once. We have to say, okay, I'm taking notes here. I'm going to go grocery store after this, and I'm going to fix everything. But that's a great thought and I commend you for wanting to do that.

The challenges it is this is a journey. This is not a sprint. So the goal is to figure out what are the changes that you can easily implement right now, make those changes and then over time begin to make more changes. As you feel better, you'll have more energy and more brainpower and more ability to make those changes. But please don't exhaust yourself feeling like you have to do everything all at once, and that it has to be perfect because this is a learning process, I just felt compelled to insert a little fun oil.

Tip from a Persian friend of mine who taught this to me of, you know, taking avocado oil and and putting it in kind of a stockpot. And then she cuts up 12 onions into dices it. And I do this every year now too. And, and, puts it in that oil and then simmers that for a long time. And it, it in for people that have a lot of issues with onions and garlic and the sugars that are in them, you get an, an onion infused oil. Ooh. And it's delicious. I can't even tell you, how much I enjoy my onion infused oil.

It's so good. And then you strain those onions, and you know, they're they're really nice to use as, in your recipes, so. So it's a really nice way of, getting, a little taste. Pop in your oil. In your avocado oil? Yeah. No, I wrote that down. That sounds amazing. So good. Yeah. And and one of the other things that I, I also encourage people to do is to there's a couple of other oils that I like which are great in moderation. If you get good quality ones. I am a huge fan of both walnut oil and hazelnut oil because they just have this really warm, rich flavor.

And so when you're making certain gluten free baked goods or whatever, adding a little splash of those is a wonderful way to add more flavor to something. Nice. So how oh. And we've gone through sugar. We've gone through oils gums. What are some of the other ingredients that you see. Are things that people ought to get educated on and avoid. Sure. And so I'd like to back up to gums a little bit, you know, in, in addition to recognizing the excessive consumption of gums is not good for you, there is one gum that I really strongly want to encourage everyone to avoid.

It's called carrageenan. And it's it's made from a red seaweed. Here's the fascinating thing carrageenan as consumed by the indigenous cultures that use it. Pulling it out of the sea. It's fine. It's the way we process it that turns it into something that is not healthy. And not a good choice. And and a little bit good. A lot must be better, I know. Well, absolutely. Because here's it's. So this is a really weird fact. Carrageenan is now so ubiquity is as an emulsifier, as a thickener that it can be found in almost every single aisle of the grocery store, including the pharmacy section.

It is in everything. And the biggest challenges a lot of gut health issues. In laboratory studies, it has been shown that, you know, excessive amounts can cause renal bumps. So that's definitely not great for your poor kidneys. And the and the problem is, you know, they say oh, a little bit too. Okay. So this is under generally recognized as safe to have this amount in this part. But who's keeping track of how much you're eating if you're eating it in your lunch meat, in your baked goods, in your in your dairy, frozen confections, whatever.

Reading labels, produce codes, and organic shopping 23:58

So I really do strongly want to encourage people to avoid carrageenan as and that falls sort of under that gum category. You know, the the other thing is just learning some of the, the regular bad guys, things like monosodium glutamate. And I also am vigorously opposed to anything with a number. So that includes the artificial colors. Polysorbate 80, those kinds of things, you know, if it has a number on it, that means it came from a lab. It's some sort of laboratory formula. It's not any kind of a natural extract.

And it's not good for us. Our body can't utilize it the way that it really needs to. And then you should probably tell people about the number, produce if it starts with. Oh yeah. Absolutely. So this is really for one year, the number is helpful. Yeah. Numbers. Numbers can be very helpful. So when you go to the produce section it's kind of annoying. They have a sticker on everything. It'd be good if they could figure out a different way to do that. But with the stickers, if it's a four digit number, then that means that it was conventionally grown.

If it is a five digit number and it starts with a nine, that means it is organic. Produce. And then if it is a five digit number and it starts with an eight, that means that it is genetically modified. Produce. And here's one of the really sad things I actually once had a number eight label, and I lost it in a move because it was so little. And I'm still looking for another one. They are not legally required to use an eight on the code. It's just if they want to say that it was genetically modified.

And in a weird twist, they know that so many people are upset about GMO because there's been this huge push for many years now. What they're doing instead is they're putting the words bioengineered on the label because they think maybe that sounds a little bit better, but, well, it's close to the word biodynamic, which is the farming we want to get our produce from. So that's really tricky. It is. Oh, it's very sneaky. Oh, they're doing that trying to misdirect people. So everybody biodynamic good.

Bioengineered. Not good. My gosh I didn't realize that was happening. That makes me sick. Yeah. And then and then one of the things to keep in mind is and this changes every year. So you really do have to stay on top of it. There are certain produce items that are highly laden with pesticides. And so, you know, anyone with an autoimmune disorder, your total toxic body burden is hugely important. You want to make sure that you have as few toxins as possible in what you're consuming. So for those things on the Dirty Dozen list, you do want to make sure that you're buying those organic.

I will share apples almost always on the list. Strawberries almost always on the list. A couple of years ago, sadly, kale made it on the list. And so those are things that you want to make sure that you're buying organic. You can check the environmental working group every year. They put out the new list, usually in March or April. It takes them a while to go through 16 and the Dirty dozen, but the the clean usually has a has a scan over at the top of it. Yes, yes way. Like a banana or an orange, you know.

So exactly. Now one one other really important thing, however, is to make sure that you are following that all the way through the food chain. Please don't buy organic apples and then turn around and buy conventional applesauce. Because those conventional apples are used for the applesauce. And so they're going to be highly, you know, laden with toxic pesticides. If grapes are on the list, that means you need organic wine, you know? So think about all the different variants that that food is in it.

It does require a bit of a mental shift in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it, you can pretty much. And if you have an autoimmune issue, please note lying. Yeah, right. But I'm just saying, you know, and and I also I also really think one of the biggest problems is the food producers use front of package labeling on so many things. You know, like I, I've seen the other day, I was at the grocery store and there was a spaghetti sauce and it said gluten free and I'm like, I don't think I can try yesterday because I'm going to go back country camping.

And I was getting the dehydrated food packets and I was looking for, you know, labels that is that gluten free, dairy free, organic, locally sourced. You know, there are so many labels now that you have to be looking for on the front of that package, and then you have to turn it over and take a really close look at the rest of the label. Yeah. And I'm so glad that you mentioned that, because front of package labeling is one of the biggest ways that food producers try to mislead us. They they try to put the words, the colors, the styling, the, you know, the buzz, whatever they think will convince us to reach out and grab that package without turning it over.

Because a lot of times when we turn it over, we discover that there are things in there we may not really want to be consuming. Yeah, I turned mine over several of them and put them back because, you know,

Mini class and hydration bonus 29:38

also where things show up in the lineup is, is, important. So if cane sugar is your first ingredient, it's step away from the packaging. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So, you know, some of these. Yeah. It's interesting how this educational process is so important. So you have, one page mini class on ingredients and autoimmune reversal for our audience. And do you want to talk a little bit about that? You're. Absolutely. So, this is a like you said, it's a one page mini class. And the reason I love doing these, it's a great way to have a one page document that gives you something to read, something to watch, something to listen to, and something to do that are all geared towards supporting your health and well-being.

And this particular mini class, of course, is focused on auto immune health. Thank you so much for that. And then for those of you that are taking advantage of the All Access pass, where the all of the talks you want to hold on to, so you can rewatch them and, and grab the bonuses that go with them. Mirror is also providing a bonus for people that purchase that bundle. That's a hydration guide. Hydration. That's an important one. Oh, yeah. You know, one of the things that I love about that particular example is I there's so many people who don't like water.

They're so bored with their water. I came up with so many wonderful combinations and ways to put things together. Green apples and rosemary, for example. Yum. Nice. And just all these different trial things. And then talking about hydration during different seasons, as well as different ways to create these, you know, whether you're using an infuser or some other kind of of appliance or whatever. So there's just a lot of information in there. Beautiful. Thank you so much for spending this time and sharing even just a little fraction of your wisdom here.

I really, really appreciate you. Well, thank you so much for having me here. I am grateful for you and the work you do in creating this beautiful summit and helping so many people. All right, everybody, until next time, be well.