Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
Thanks, Dr. Sharlin. Thank you for having me. Yes, I am the dietician at Sharlin Health and Neurology, and work with patients through the brain tune-up program and see a variety of patients with neurological conditions and really try to teach them that foundation to have healing through food. And so Parkinson’s patients, we work with a lot and just really working with them with the concerns and goals that they have.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
Yeah, a lot of folks are concerned about gut health and that gut-brain connection. And ultimately a big part of healing or addressing those issues really comes down to food and comes down to not just those fats, carbohydrates, and proteins, but the micronutrients we find in food. The colors of berries that we’re going to talk about things like the key ingredients in green tea, green tea extract that’s been shown to offer some protection to the brain and people who have Parkinson’s disease. Well, I understand today we have a little opportunity to do some cooking here at the Sharlin home. We’re going to prepare what is it called.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
A nourishment smoothie.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
A nourishment smoothie. It’s kind of named after one of my books, The Nourishment Food Guide, the Brain Tune-up Food Guide. So right out of the book, if you choose to check that out. And Rachel, what do we what are we going to need to do to make our smoothie this morning?
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
To make this smoothie, we have some basic ingredients. This is a basic smoothie. You can individualize it to your preferences that we’re just wanting to have different components that it makes up. And so part of our foundation for an anti-inflammatory diet in the Nourishment Food Guide is we do remove dairy. And so I always start off my smoothie with eight ounces of liquid. So usually the smoothie will make 32 ounces with these ingredients. So this is unsweetened almond milk that’s organic. This is the brand, that any brand there’s a variety out there that are just a few ingredients. And that’s really what I teach, is reading ingredients to see what’s in your food and this is just the almonds, filtered water, and salt. So very easy, great ingredients.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
I always say that you know, read those labels and if you need a chemistry degree to understand what’s in that food. It’s not food.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
Food-like substances. There are a lot of things that are. And then also to add to your smoothie, you need to have a protein source. So this is really important to start your day. Or if you want to use this smoothie for lunch, you can too. But you really need to have optimal fat and protein in there to stabilize your blood sugars, and keep you full and energized for the day.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
So we have a protein source that is hypoallergenic. It does not contain any dairy protein. This is all and pea and rice protein blended together. Part of the reason for that is to make sure that you’re getting all the amino acids that you need on a daily basis.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
Perfect. Yes. So it makes it super easy. And just one scoop is 19 grams of protein. So we’ll just add that in and your nourishment protein powder comes in vanilla and chocolate, we’re using chocolate.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
Yeah. Reminds me of the old Bill Cosby routine about chocolate cake for breakfast. You know, I can have chocolate, right?
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
Yeah, I would love that. Another thing that has been shown in Parkinson’s research is the importance of adding more greens to your diet. So a lot of people, if you go through your day and look like how many salads do I have or green leafy vegetables, a lot of people are lacking in that. So adding to your smoothie makes it really super simple. And I promise you can’t taste it. Everybody always asks like can you taste the spinach, but you can’t taste it.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
You know, I love greens too, but this is a wonderful way to pack in more greens in your daily routine.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
So what I like to do in Dr. Sharlin is keep greens in the freezer at work, and that’s what I do is I buy a big bag. This is from Costco, in organic super greens and I keep it in my freezer because one thing I don’t like to waste food in sometimes when you buy greens if you don’t use them up right away, they get all wilted and gross. But if you throw them in the freezer, they freeze great. They’re just like little leaves. You take them out and I usually add two cuts because just to get it more greens.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
So two cups.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
Two cups of greens go in. Yeah. That’s great. Okay.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
It says Power Green, so you can kind of do that and you can strengthen your power, right? Right. And get your day going.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
This has baby chards, baby spinach, and baby kale. Okay. So then next for some anti-oxidants and to get more vitamin C in there, we do berries. So these are, again, just Costco, brand organic berries, blueberries, or strawberries. And I do about a couple of those.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
I love the fact that these strawberries in particular are organic because we do have concerns from the environmental working Group that Dirty Dozen and year after year those non-organic strawberries are on the list. So if you want to make sure that you’re eating clean when you’re adding your berries, it probably is kind of important to use organic strawberries.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
That’s right. It always seems like every year with that environmental working group Dirty Dozen comes out and greens and berries are always on there. So good, better, best. It’s best to get organic. So, yeah, to limit your pesticide exposure. And this is something common that I don’t see that I really work with patients to include. A lot of times they’ll say, I drink a smoothie, doesn’t fill me out. Then a few hours later I’m hungry and it’s because there’s not a fat source in there. So fat is very satiating and healthy fat from avocados. Monounsaturated fat is what we like to use in our smoothies.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
They do. Well, I must say that sometimes I’ll put some olive oil in my smoothie.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
Oh yeah. Some polyphenols.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
Yeah.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
So you can do either the avocados, I like to get because avocados have this one period where you’ve got to use them or they don’t, they just turn really quick. So some stores I have already seen this, have frozen avocado chunks, right? Yeah. And so you can just keep them in your freezer. So all of this, you just kind of pull out and dump in and you’re ready to go.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
Now, what I also really like about those avocados is we’re definitely in that now was really helpful the on the cut of thickens the smoothie up considerably and I find that that that’s really a nice dimension to the smoothie I don’t feel like I’m just drinking you know that very thin watery kind of drink, which is fine but you know somehow a smoothie should almost have that sort of milkshake consistency and the avocado does that. You.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
Yes, I like to get the thick straws too for those. Okay. So do you want to talk about any additional? So this is kind of the basic recipe and then you can add on.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
Right. And that’s the idea is that the nourishment smoothie, really, is foundational. It’s great by itself exactly the way Rachel has explained it. Sometimes folks want to add a couple extra things. So I have a product from Ortho Molecular. This is one of the nutraceutical companies that we work with very closely. They have something called BioPC Pro this is a mix of various phosphatidylcholine, inositol, and Phosphatidylethanolamine, you know that one is. We need that chemistry degree. Phosphatidylethanolamine, these particular fats are really important for making up cell membranes. Dear friend, Terry Wahls has her PC smoothie that she uses. This is just nice because you can use a liquid that works really well. Obviously, we’re not wanting to throw capsules ideally into a smoothie, although that could be done. But this is just a powder. So you could, you know, add an extra scoop of that in there just to sort of boost your levels of these healthy fats.
And another thing that I like to do is sometimes, we have another company that we think their product is really good. This is from the Livden Folks, LIVEDEN and the product is LIVIDEN One. Now this is an all-in-one complete superfood, so you could actually just use it by itself in almond milk or something like that. But what’s kind of cool about this is it adds those extra antioxidants and it has live cultures in there as well. So you’re getting your probiotic, you’re getting some of your greens. It’s a super green-type product as well, and it has some extra protein in there. So it’s kind of a mix. It actually smells really, really good. So if I want to just, you know, do some extra stuff in there, I’m going to put a scoop of my LIVIDEN One superfood into that smoothie. I love it. Yeah. Good. Really good. Yeah.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
I’ll let you even turn it on. Blended it out.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
Right? Yeah. We’re going to get the lid on there real good. And so our Vitamix blender in the Sharlin household. It has seen a lot of good activity over the years. And I don’t necessarily blend in a really long time. The one thing about the Vitamix is if you do leave it on a well, actually, your drink will get hot.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
It warms up. Investing in a good blender makes all the difference. And I love the color of it. And I can smell that LIVIDEN One.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
Here you go.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
So if I have some left over a tip that I know is I put the leftover smoothie in my ice cream tray. So then later have already got it pre-made and I can just blend it up.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
So thanks, Rachel. Okay, well, cheers to your nourishment.
Rachel Wemple, RDN, LD, CDCES
There you go.
Kenneth Sharlin, MD
All right. Thank you.
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