welcome i'm dr mike hansen and i'm excited to share with you some pretty fascinating stuff that
most people don't know not only in this video but in upcoming videos as well hippocrates was
a greek physician and philosopher from 400 bc widely regarded as the father of medicine and
for the physician's mantra of first do no harm as well as the greatest medicine of all is teaching
people not to need it and along those lines if we could give every individual the right amount
of nourishment and exercise not too little not too much we would have the safest way to health
and now more and more studies are coming out that are confirming this to be true
and underscoring the importance of nutrition and exercise and its role in preventing diseases and
for optimizing physical and mental health so that might not exactly be news to you but the
studies are honing in on the exact foods that we should be eating and why we should be eating them
with that said there are a ton of misconceptions and misinformation that persists in this field
particularly about what constitutes a healthy diet when there's so much deception out there
so much information that contradicts itself fats are bad fats are good carbs are bad carbs are good
and so on what ends up happening is many people have unhealthy eating habits even when they're
trying to eat healthy or they think they're eating healthy also the nutrient content of the food
is not on most people's minds neither is what's been done to the food there are many important
factors that go into the decision-making process when deciding on what you put inside your stomach
how accessible or convenient is it what does it cost is it acceptable to the society that you live
in is it familiar to you do you know how to cook it does it taste good and last but not least how
much time does it take ultimately unhealthy eating habits leads to chronic inflammation in chronic
disease and people simply not feeling their best in the short term unhealthy food makes you feel
lethargic in the long term it leads to things like metabolic syndrome which goes hand in hand with
type 2 diabetes hypertension high cholesterol fatty liver disease obesity heart disease
even dementia and some types of cancer it's also no coincidence that the biggest risk factors for
having severe covid illness besides old age and being immunocompromised it's diabetes hypertension
obesity basically those who are metabolically ill in fact of all the covid patients i've seen
in the icu all of them fit into one of these categories meaning that they were metabolically
ill at baseline old or immunocompromised of course being vaccinated dramatically helps matters but
it's not a hundred percent and here's something that's very alarming to me it's estimated that 88
of the us adult population is metabolically ill the vast majority of adults are metabolically ill
and maybe someone who's not overweight thinks themselves well that doesn't apply to me because
i'm not overweight but that's not necessarily the case because there's something called
thin on the outside fat on the inside and they are in fact metabolically ill why are so many people
metabolically ill well metabolic syndrome happens when insulin resistance increases and that happens
when people eat unhealthy foods yes exercise plays a role in that as well and it's a big role but
it's not to the extent of nutrition the unhealthy eating leads to fat being deposited in places
that it doesn't belong like the liver and inside of muscles but what is healthy and unhealthy
eating and how do we truly know what's healthy or not in order to answer that we have to one define
what nutrition is two understand how nutrition studies are conducted and three how to interpret
a study that's how we get to the truth so let's start by defining some terms nutrition is a term
that refers to the nutrients in foods they occur in how the food is ingested absorbed and used in
the body and its effects in the body nutrients are categorized as macronutrients micronutrients
fiber and water macronutrients include carbohydrates fats and proteins which provide
energy to the body and are required in relatively large amounts their intake and expenditure are
measured in terms of calories which are units of energy in comparison micronutrients are
required in much smaller amounts we're talking vitamins and minerals required by the body
they don't provide energy but are usually required for metabolic processes related to the body's use
of the macronutrients they also serve many other roles that are essential for normal body function
fiber doesn't get absorbed so technically it's not classified as a nutrient but it's
super important for gut health and overall health both the soluble fiber and the insoluble fiber
metabolism refers to the full range of biochemical processes that occur in living cells including the
body's use of nutrients when you eat food it's digested meaning broken down into its smaller
components and then it gets absorbed across the cells of the digestive tract and eventually they
make their way to your bloodstream and then they get transported to various organs and the first
stop is the liver the entire process involves complicated biochemical reactions bioavailability
can be defined as the proportion of a nutrient that can be absorbed during digestion and used
within the body so certain nutrients have certain bioavailabilities just like certain drugs have
certain bioavailabilities macronutrients are typically highly bioavailable meaning a large
proportion of that nutrient is absorbed during digestion now on the flip side micronutrients they
have a much more variable bioavailability that depend on many factors if you asked me what is
the most practical way to make sure that you eat enough quantities of all the required nutrients
my answer would be to eat a balanced mixture of mostly whole foods so although the answer is easy
for most people it's easier said than done public nutrition education it's an ongoing challenge for
many reasons one website that is useful for this is the usda's my plate site as well as
this website the basic food groups traditionally been categorized as fruits vegetables grains
proteins and dairy in most classification systems fats and oils are represented in a separate group
based on the evolution of studies of fats and oils over the years some classifications have
refined sugars as a separate group or sometimes it's added to the group that includes fats and
oils that fall under the umbrella of foods that should compromise a very small part of the diet
the food recommendations have been evolving as we learn more and more with new studies that come out
so advice on which types of food to eat as well as the amount to be consumed from each group
has varied throughout history because of this to further complicate matters new fad diets
big companies social media misinformation netflix documentaries with an agenda they can all leave us
feeling more confused we're told to avoid eating this or eat more of that but we really need to
separate the facts from fiction in order to know what we should put in our bodies two of the more
common representations of the types and quantities of foods that should be consumed are the food
pyramid and the more recent my plate initiative my general recommendation is this avoid heavily
processed foods mostly because processing removes the fiber especially the insoluble fiber and food
and most processed food has added sugar and that's the core of the problem when we're talking about
insulin resistance and thus metabolic syndrome imbalance is important too because no one food
or food group provides all the necessary nutrients personally i try to stick with a mediterranean or
flexitarian diet or as close to that as possible so eating unprocessed food or minimally processed
food that consists of whole intact grains legumes vegetables fruits nuts and seeds as well as fish
and chicken in a reasonable balance that's the general rule of thumb and drinking water not
soda or juice 99 of people on this planet don't know how to properly analyze scientific studies
because it takes time to learn how to understand all that science and studies on nutrition are
very complex because of the different types of studies the reliability of the studies and
because there are so many variables that have to be accounted for before you can draw meaningful
conclusions but this is how we truly separate the facts from the fiction so if that's something
you're into you're going to want to check out my upcoming videos where i go more in depth on that