The Hidden Power Of Herbs Against Stress

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

It’s great to be here with you. Dr. Kahn.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

You could talk about many topics, but today we’re talking about Reversing Heart Disease. Naturally. Of course, nutrition is a fundamental component. My head is still spinning, not from a migraine. But last night I debated online with a cardiovascular surgeon, and it was on nutrition for heart disease. I presented the plant-forward approach, and he presented the carnivore approach. You would think it would be about 99 minutes for me and one minute for him, but I couldn’t quite get him to commit to just one minute of conversation because that would represent the scientific evidence or the different disciplines that will come out sometime time a month or six weeks. People who follow me online will know about it. But that’s just to indicate that my patients are confused. They don’t know if they should touch an egg white; they don’t know if they should eat an avocado. They don’t know if seed oil is toxic. They don’t know if these carnivores online are right. Just get to simple, basic evidence-based medicine. I want to reverse heart disease in my patients. How much time does it take to understand the role of nutrition and dietary patterns in preventing heart disease and in using them as a tool to facilitate, stabilize, or maybe even reverse heart disease?

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

It’s number one. If you look at all of the different medical disciplines—gastroenterology, neurology, and cardiology—I would say that heart disease is one of the first areas where we started to see that nutrition was an effective intervention. You and our colleagues, Dr. Houston, Dr. Whineray, and Dr. Sinatra, published an article looking at the recent science and clinical application of nutrition to coronary heart disease. You remember that earlier.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Of course, we write about that.

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

The Journal of the American College of Nutrition. We published that some years ago—not too long ago. But we unpacked; we looked at the macronutrients; we looked at fat, protein, and carbohydrate. We then went into the vitamins, the minerals, and the phytonutrients. I know that we’re going to have some focus there. But to answer your question, it’s the first line of approach. I do think that cardiovascular disease is implicated in many other diseases, and we can get at those other diseases as well by mitigating a lot of the different pathways and preventing them from happening with food. Food first, as I always like to say.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

You are voting that it matters.

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

There’s no doubt in my mind.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

You don’t have to declare it because we’re going to have people listening to this summit who follow a fully plant-based diet and a plan-forward diet of our Mediterranean diet. But if you had participated in the debate last night between the carnivore approach and the plant-forward approach, where would you generally settle in with your support?

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

I’d settle for the sciences, and science is where plants truly are. That’s why I have taken that position as a nutrition scientist because there’s much arm wrestling going on, meat or no meat. Soy, no soy. Eggs, or no eggs. You can pick any number of things, but the thing that we cannot refute for several different chronic lifestyle-induced diseases would be fruits and vegetables. Then there are a lot of different nuances, of course, and looking at nuts, seeds, and potentially whole grains, which aren’t for everybody. But within that spectrum, if we look at what I call the underdogs of nutrition, the phytonutrients, there are thousands of compounds. They’re doing a lot of different things. I even studied them as part of my graduate work, where we looked at carotenoids, and carotenoids are what make plants pretty.

They’re red, orange, and yellow, and sometimes a little bit yellow-green. You see them in the leaves that turn in the fall. That’s what’s underneath a lot of that chlorophyll. A lot of these phytonutrients have a role in cardiovascular disease because they’re hitting on multiple pathways. The biggest one, I would say, is inflammation, because the science of cardiovascular disease has progressed far enough for us to look at it as an inflammatory condition. It’s a disease that connects inflammation and oxidative stress. Two of the main pathways that can be improved upon through phytonutrients. that there is, just even one meal, this is the staggering piece of it. There are studies on what is called just the one meal where they give somebody a meal that looks like fast food and then they measure for hours on end afterward, what happens to them, what happens to their inflammation, their inflammatory markers, what happens to endothelial function, and all of it, as you can imagine, goes down. When endothelial function goes down, our inflammatory cytokines go up. Many times, this is why people feel terrible after eating poorly. That four to six-hour postprandial window after we eat something that’s not healthy, we start feeling low in energy. It’s taken our resources, and then it propels us into another cycle of eating similar food. We get the initial feeling of that. It tastes good, but in the long term, it’s setting the stage for inflammation, which we know is part of the root cause of cardiovascular disease.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

I hear you telling us that even one meal. Leaning towards a healthier choice for the bright colors and carotenoids leads towards maybe a highly processed, simpler, just reheat a tombstone pepperoni pizza because it’s simple but full of chemicals and refined foods and poor quality oils and the rest. Just one meal decision can trigger inflammation, cytokine release, and artery dysfunction called endothelial dysfunction. We should pay attention to the overall big picture. But even meal by meal, it makes a difference. Not everybody in the audience is familiar with the term phytonutrients. That’s what you won’t find in chicken. That’s what you won’t find in beef. That’s what you won’t find in pork. Just tell us about some of those phytonutrient classes and what the word phyto means.

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

Phyto is P.H.Y.T.O., and that prefix refers to plants. When we say phytonutrient, we refer to plant nutrients. when I say that it’s a little bit different than a vitamin, a mineral, or even fiber. Those are classes for themselves. Phytonutrients are considered non-caloric parts of the plant that have a variety of different effects, but they’re not considered vitamins, minerals, or even, as I would say, fiber. Some of the classes would be things like sulforaphane, which some people may have heard of. I mentioned carotenoids. Another big buzzword is polyphenols. Polyphenols are the largest class of phytochemicals or phytonutrients. Within polyphenols, you have about 8,000 different compounds. things like isoflavones, which I know your audience has probably heard of. We know of isoflavones and things like soy, but several other foods contain flavonoids, pro-anthocyanins, and resveratrol.

I know that many of you have heard of that. That’s part of the polyphenol category. Some of those polyphenols have multiple functions in the body. Some of them are phytoestrogens, some of them are phytoprogestins, and some of them are brain-active nutrients. Again, phytonutrients refer to things that you typically don’t see on a nutrition facts label. That’s a little bit of the challenge on a nutrition facts label. If you’re reading about a processed product or some product that you buy at the market, typically you see protein, carbohydrate, fat, the macronutrients that give us calories and give us energy, and then you find certain vitamins and minerals, but you don’t see polyphenols, carotenoids, or even beta-carotene, which is considered a phytonutrient. That’s a little bit of the challenge: you can’t directly quantitate. That’s why we have to rely on certain things, like color. We need to be looking at the colors of our food so that we can get a better sense of the correlations between these different phytonutrients.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

That was helpful. Number one, I love the word. Everybody listens and writes down phytonutrients. Plant nutrients are non-caloric. We can eat them, and we don’t get calories. I’m excited to hear that. Number two, that’s the big parent of phytonutrients, and the biggest subgroup is polyphenols. It’s pretty hard not to read nutrition articles, as they don’t all have to be in scientific journals. They could be in the New York Times or in the L.A. Times. You hear the word polyphenol all over. like what a lot of heart patients are listening to. They’re hungry for phytonutrients; they’re hungry for carotenoids; they’re hungry for polyphenols. Name some of the foods that they should focus on for their heart health.

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

Well, about the rainbow. My big thing is that I’m not connected to a specific dietary approach other than making sure that we’re getting the spectrum of colors. When talking about red foods, especially for heart health you’ve even talked about this one. Pomegranate is rich in one of the best polyphenols, a very big one, ellagic acid. We can get some of these polyphenols, which enrich the gut. But we’re getting a lot of other things in the pomegranate to help the heart. A pomegranate would be great. Cherries are great for reducing oxidative stress, especially if you’re exercising. Let’s just say that you’re new to exercise, you’re starting, and you feel a little bit inflamed. It’s good to have things like strawberries, cherries, or foods that are red and rich in polyphenols and vitamin C to help you with things like moving through your physical activity or even helping to reduce and quell some of the inflammation that you may have in your bodies. when of the color red, of inflammation in the body.

But when I see it in food, or at least in plant food, it reduces inflammation. But that doesn’t work for all foods within the red category because, some people, react to things like tomatoes, they react to nightshades, and they get inflammation from the nightshades. That’s a small percentage of people, like 10 to 15%. But in general, when it comes to red, I do think of some different heart types. Watermelon is fantastic for the heart and has many different activities. Oranges contain the carotenoids beta-carotene, alpha-carotene, beta-crypts, and a lot of these different phytonutrients. when of Orange I things, of things that are typically circular and citrus. things like Mandarin, oranges themselves, and tangerines—those three. There are powerhouses of certain carotenoids that are very good. Now, I would say exclusively for cardiovascular health, even for reproductive health. In carrots, beta-carotene is good because it’s a pro-vitamin A compound. that’s good. A portion of that beta-carotene that we take in will form vitamin A, but in general, beta-carotene is just a great fat-soluble carotene that can be very protective.

From the yellow category, I think about ginger, about lemons, and pineapple. about prebiotic fibers that you might find in squashes. about a lot of the digestive aspects there. of the heart. Dr. Kahn: The color that I would say I most primarily think about is green. I’ll tell you why. If you just take a leafy green, whether it’s arugula, spinach, or kale, whatever it is, you pick your favorite leafy green. What it typically has is many different heart-healthy nutrients, like folate and calcium, which are very helpful for a process in the body called methylation. That’s important for the heart because it will help reduce homocysteine. We all have high levels of magnesium, vitamin K, and the next vitamin D, vitamin K, which is named for coagulation. That K was for the German word coagulation. It’s very important to help with healthy blood clotting. That’s why, many times, and maybe you can speak to this, patients are told that if they change their leafy green intake, they need to change some of their medications.

If you keep them at a consistent level, I usually think that is good. But of course, we want people to increase their greens because of the magnesium, the potassium, and the folate. vitamin K, all of those things, and much more, even the nitrates. When it comes to greens, some of the high-nitrate-containing foods. Nitrate in greens is converted into nitric oxide in the body, which acts to open up the blood vessels and help us feel more relaxed. We do get some of that. Celery, and arugula—are some of the heavy hitters. But we see that in beets. It’s not exclusively in greens, but I would say predominantly in leafy greens.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

We’ve learned just in a few minutes that you believe nutrition is the number one impactful decision on cardiovascular health, cardiovascular prevention, and cardiovascular treatment. Phytonutrients are plant nutrients. I’ve always heard of Fido like they’re fighting for your health, but they’re unique to plants. They’re not caloric; there’s a whole diversity of them. By eating the rainbow and trying to get multiple colors in every day, maybe in a week, you’re getting a whole range of healthful, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and pro-health ingredients. You mentioned such delicious ones. I’ve never asked this before. Somebody says, Doc, I’m doing everything I can, but I am constrained. I’m on the run. I’m raising kids. I’ve got a job. What do you think about a good organic green powder or a green and fruit powder? Is there any role they still have? They won’t. The fiber will have been broken down because it’s not crunchy anymore, like a celery stick. But do you think they retain any of the phytonutrients? A beetroot powder, or green powder, if it’s a last resort or if it’s the last one or two servings to get over five servings in a day.

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

The short answer is yes. But let me give you some principles with that. It’s food first. There’s nothing that compares to nature and what nature provides. Secondly, what humans can create through a powder could just fill the phytonutrient gap, as I like to call it. Yes, if you’re on the run or you’re feeling run down and, whatever the thing is where you just feel stressed out and you need a little bit more, it’s like the way about it. Dr. Kornberg used to talk about how sometimes, as we go through life, we have these potholes where we just need more nutrients. We’re moving on the road of life; we’re getting older, we have more stress, or we just don’t have the time. How do we fill those gaps? That powder could be a good strategy. Now, rules of, just the principle with powders would be number one. You said it organically. If it’s not organic and you’re concentrating all of these fruits and vegetables, or sometimes they put in their mushroom powders, you can be concentrating toxins as well.

First and foremost, go with a reputable company that gives you organic powder. Secondly, I like it for some people, and this is just a clinical thing; this is not a science thing. But some people, don’t do as well with grasses. a lot of the wheat grasses or barley grasses. I have one powder that I like that takes out a lot of the grasses and puts in more vegetables in place of the grasses. You can find powders like that. Then, thirdly, I would say, look for diversity. You set it; you may be like, Put my finger up, because I was thinking that was a message I don’t think many people realize is how important it is to get diversity because, at the end of the day, people are in food ruts. They’re eating the same thing for the most part. Day after day, the average American gets anywhere between five to seven different recipes, or they cycle through like five to seven different meals that they just make and do on automatic pilot. A powder enables dietary diversity. The thing about nature and plants is that they work well together.

When we just isolate and only have beets, then we’re just narrowing down what we could potentially be getting from a full, complex, and diverse array of phytonutrients. We’re just getting what we get from beets, not that complexity. Dietary diversity is protective against cardiometabolic dysfunction. If I recall correctly, there was even a study showing that if you had eight or more diverse, different plant foods, you could help lower systolic blood pressure. There was a correlation there. It’s not just the colors of food; it’s the diversity. Some people will say, well, Deanna, I eat tomatoes every day and I have carrots every day. I’ll ask, Well, what are the other red-colored foods that you’re eating? What are the other orange-colored foods? Because it can’t just be one thing, because then you’re just hammering on a very select number of phytonutrients and not the whole array, of which, as we just discussed, there are thousands of them.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

I appreciate that because sometimes, frankly, on the run, it is pretty easy to open a packet, drop it in some nice filtered water, and know that you’ve provided your blood and your endothelium with some extra nutrients. I will say to people that the one green powder I hear all the time on podcasts is sponsored, and I won’t name it, particularly because I don’t want to create any damaging effects. It is only partially organic. If you look at the ingredients, others are fully labeled with the USDA organic label. You might want to just look at the packaging and do a little bit of research. one last question before we take a quick break, which is: Give us three quick steps. The audience is hungry for information. I have this smart woman here now, and I want three steps to enhance my heart health. What would your quick three bullet points be?

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

Number one: more spices. Spices are a way to get more concentrated phytonutrients. Number two: more herbal teas and other types of teas. Tea: one cup of tea. The water I’m drinking right now is loaded with thousands of different phytochemicals. For people who are just like you said, they’re on the run. Maybe they can’t spend a lot of money. They don’t want to think about it. Just get a variety of different herbal teas, and you’re getting the complexity of phytonutrients in that way. Thirdly, aim for one food that you haven’t had regularly every week. Like, just allow yourself one new, diverse food. For example, I was in the grocery store just this past weekend, and I bought some cilantro. It had been a while since I had bought just a nice little bundle of cilantro, but I was conscious, like, okay, what have I had over the past few months that I could be bringing in? Just trying to think outside the box, try to bring in just one more thing, one simple thing, but then again, the other two strategies will help you get concentrated amounts of phytochemicals at a very low cost.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

That is great. We got the spices, and again, I’d stress trying to buy organic spices. They’re going to sit in that glass jar for a little bit, and you want high-quality pesticides. Get yourself some tea again; I’d stress organic teas. They’re available, and they’re just pennies a cup more. Then try something you haven’t tried for a while. That’s good. I had some fermented cabbage today. I haven’t had that for a little while. 

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

Nice. Good for you.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Everybody, I’m going to say thank you. Go over to deannaminich.com D.E.A.N.N.A.M.I.N.I.C.H. dot com. Take a look at her beautiful website, look at her books, and follow her on social media. Please. Do take a look at the companies she’s working with now as chief scientific officer. It’s a long name, but it’s a good name. symphonynaturalhealth.com. Take a look at their high-quality products. When I come back after the break, I’m going to ask Dr. Minich a little bit about sleep and heart health and a product that Symphony Natural Health makes. But if you don’t catch her interview because it’s for the premium members, take a look at a product that the company makes called Herbatonin, a phytomelatonin, a plant-based melatonin. We’re going to dive into that in a minute. Thank you all. We’re back for a few more minutes in depth. We’re going to talk now about more phytos. We were phytonutrient-focused before, and now we’re going to talk about phytomelatonin. You’re working with this great company out of Australia, but they source some of their products from Peru. I know you were just in Peru posting beautiful information you had there. But tell us, what’s the difference between phytoplant-based melatonin and I went to CVS and bought Melatonin?

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

Well, melatonin is a very popular supplement these days, and it’s only been increasing in popularity. Because it’s popular, there is great demand. What has happened is that there have been all kinds of synthetic melatonin that have emerged to help with the cost of melatonin and to help produce it faster and cheaper. If you look at a lot of those different processes to make synthetic melatonin, they involve things like chemicals. In that process, more chemicals are produced. It can potentially be unhealthy. There’s always that dividing line between synthetic and natural compounds. Sometimes you can have things that are synthetic, like certain vitamins, and they perform similarly in the body to their natural forms. But in the case of melatonin, there can be some, I would say, untoward effects of producing melatonin.

If you do buy melatonin, which is a better option, it is plant melatonin. What most people don’t realize is that melatonin occurs in the foods that you eat. In a lot of the rainbow of different foods, you find teeny tiny amounts of melatonin. What Herbatonin is: It’s H.E.R.B.A. TONIN  in like herbs. There are three different plant-based materials. There’s rice, chlorella, and alfalfa, and all of them have been optimized in their growing environments to just naturally make melatonin. There are ways to do that just through the environment, in a healthy way, in an organic way. It’s not adding anything that’s chemical. It’s allowing the plants to do their thing, to optimize those plants in their environments, and then to concentrate them and put them together. One of the things I like about herbatonin, Dr. Kahn, is that it doesn’t just have the plant melatonin, which is the same melatonin in our bodies; it also has other actives from the plants like phytonutrients like lutein and zeaxanthin. some of the carotenoids that we need for the eyes, especially for the artificial blue light that people are getting at night, suppress their melatonin synthesis, just small amounts in the herbatonin but still, because it’s from the whole plant matrix and not just isolated melatonin, you’re getting a lot more of what nature naturally produces in that plant.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Probably people listening, have never in their life heard that there are different types of melatonin, and it’s just a generic word. They didn’t even give it a proper introduction to heart health. You need sleep health for heart health. Nutrition may be number one, but sleep is very close to number two. The science bears out that in modern society, with stress, phones, iPads, and light, there is a lot of noise and dogs, cats, and all kinds of things going on in my house.

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

Just working too long and too hard.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Caffeine, maybe alcohol, maybe late meals. All these things should be regulated. You’re not giving your sleep secondary importance. Nonetheless, many people are reaching for a sleep aid, and it shouldn’t be Ambien, and it shouldn’t be a prescription drug. Tell us a little bit more, like, what’s the dosing of herbatonin? The number one distinction from the typical vitamin shop is that this is plant-based melatonin, which is alfalfa, chlorella, and rice-based, and it has phytonutrients. What about the dosing?

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

There are two doses. One is a physiologic dose of 0.3 milligrams. That’s the one that most people need just to fill the gap. As we get older, our melatonin production goes down, and that often coincides with sleep disturbance, which goes up. It’s melatonin, as it becomes darker out at night. Our eyes signal that darkness and it naturally starts to signal the brain to produce melatonin. Melatonin changes our body temperature. We start to get sleepy, and that sets in motion the circadian rhythm. That’s why the circadian rhythm is essential for hormones, brain detoxification at night, and melatonin. Many people don’t realize this, but it’s for more than just sleep. When we are sleeping, we have many different repair processes that take place.

Glutathione is increased, and that’s one of the antioxidants that’s very powerful. We get a lot of other antioxidant enzymes that are all boosted at about 2 a.m. when the body is in its repair state. Melatonin is part of that rest-repair rejuvenation process along with establishing that healthy circadian rhythm. The way that we are the next day after sleeping is how we’re going to eat. However we slept the night before will determine whether or not we have carbohydrate cravings the next day, how socially connected we feel, how stressed we get, how fragile we might feel, and just greater irritability and changes in mood state. I would say it’s very important to be sleeping well, especially since I’m going to call on this part of the population. Dr. Kahn perimenopausal women, because during this perimenopausal period, which is typically in the forties and fifties, can start as early as in the thirties. For some women, what ends up happening is that we start to lose estrogen, we start to lose progesterone, and we start to lose melatonin. All of that sync together makes for not a lot of good, healthy, restful sleep.

Then we see night sweats and hot flashes. Having something to help smooth that over can help with her function the next day. There are certain populations. We know from a cardiovascular perspective that perimenopausal women start to have greater risks for cardiovascular disease as their hormones start to change. We do know the science of melatonin: it’s an antioxidant, it’s an anti-inflammatory, and it’s a mitochondrial regulator. It helps the immune system. Some studies are looking at its cardiometabolic effects. Seeing changes and helping to regulate things like blood glucose and looking at changes in blood pressure. Melatonin may be a missing link for some of the listeners.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Many people are struggling with their sleep. In my clinic, it’s a big source of conversation.

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

It’s a big issue.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

For every patient. You’re right, the perimenopausal group gets special shoutouts. I will say that because this is such a special company, you’re a special person; you’ve given us special information, but you have chosen to be the chief scientific officer of a company that I have just been very bullish about, symphonynaturalhealth.com, and they have this herbatonin 0.3 milligrams. If we were secretly transported into my bathroom before I go into my nice bed with three dogs, you’ll see a big package of 0.3 milligrams of herbatonin and lots of little bullets that I’ve popped the herbatonin out. I use it nightly. I do want to shout out to Symphony Natural Health, which makes some of the best natural perimenopausal support vitamins, of maca which you have become a world expert. Go over to that website. I’m allowed to say this. There’s a discount on KAHN-10. Go use it. Save a few dollars. What the heck? It’s not going into my pocket, and there’s going to be a few dollars left in your pocket for those of you who are listening. everybody give a big thank you. I know you can’t do it because it’s being recorded. They get a big thank you to Dr. Minich for taking her time. A busy person traveling all over doing wonderful things with her acupuncturist husband. Thank you very much. I hope to see you soon at one of the medical conferences.

Deanna Minich, MS, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP

Thank you, Dr. Kahn. Thanks for having me.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Such a pleasure. just grateful for all you do.