Nutrition for Inflammation and Autoimmunity: What Most Protocols Miss

 

What’s Inside This Episode?

• How inflammation silently hides in autoimmune conditions, heart disease, and brain fog

• The tests most practitioners miss when screening for inflammation

• Why food “sensitivities” go far beyond IgA or IgG testing

• The hidden downside of health foods

• Why ginger may be as powerful as turmeric and how both interact with the microbiome

• How oxytocin, hydration, and color diversity can be more anti-inflammatory than supplements

 

Resources and Links:

• Download our FREE Functional Food Guide

• Join the Next-Level Health Practitioner Facebook group here for free resources and community support

• Reserve your spot for ReInvent 2025 here for a deep dive into the impact of the microbiome on brain health including lab testing and genetics

• Visit INEMethod.com for advanced health practitioner training and tools to elevate your clinical skills and grow your practice by getting life-changing results

• Check out other podcast episodes here
  

 

Guest Resources and Links

Steph Jackson

• Join the Friendly Flora Collective – Microbiome Membership

Jennifer Whitmire

• Join the Culinary Healing Circle
  

 

Guest Bio

Steph Jackson

If you are ready to go deep with your digestive health and you need more than slippery elm, you will enjoy working with Nutritional Endocrinology coach, Steph Jackson. Steph loves customizing balancing programs for the micro biome, working with fermented foods, and looking at how the body systems work together. After finding and clearing the root cause of her severe physical pain and exhaustion, Steph has gone on to help others to do the same. She is also the proud founder of Crave Conscious, a non-dairy yogurt company based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Jennifer Whitmire

On a mission to save body parts, Jennifer Whitmire is a culinary coach, health educator, and master herbalist specializing in autoimmune and thyroid health. Since 2017, she’s taught women how to heal with food by restoring energy, balancing hormones, and repairing the gut through science-backed, whole food plant-based cooking and kitchen-based strategies.

 

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Transcript

 

Dr Ritamarie 

Inflammation is the underlying cause of just about all conditions. Now, what causes the inflammation? That's another question, and that's where you have to go deeper, deeper, deeper. But inflammation is finally getting its place, its rightful place, in medicine as being a cause of disease. 

 

So we're here today to talk to you about inflammation and the role of food in dampening and keeping inflammation under control and how important that is for all sorts of health conditions, not just autoimmune where we think about inflammation. What about heart disease, inflammation of the endothelial lining? What about brain conditions, neural inflammation, and just about everything, gastritis, arthritis, everything has that inflammatory cause. 

 

So we're going to talk about food. We're going to talk about foods that cause inflammation and foods that help us to control inflammation. So I'm excited to have Jennifer Whitmire here today. She's a food as medicine coach, and she just is passionate about using food to help people heal from whatever it is that they're working on. And I know we don't like to use the word heal. So we like to recover from or balance themselves. And inflammation is raging in most people, and most places, and a lot of places we don't even think about. 

 

So we're going to be talking about that, and Steph Jackson and I are going to grill her.  We're all passionate about talking about inflammation. So here we are, yay. 

 

So let's start with why is inflammation so important? How does inflammation contribute to disease? 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (02:06)

Inflammation creates so many different things going on in the body. Inflammation can raise your cortisol, which can raise your blood sugar. It creates damage in the body that we may not even know it's existing or feel it, either. And so it's something that's happening right now. 

 

Inflammation can be good. So we don't want to eliminate it. We can't say inflammation is a bad word. We need it. If you fall down and you break your leg, you want some blood circulation to increase to the area and cells move to the area that is supposed to be a part of a healing. Right. Right. But when we have chronic inflammation, it's going on and on. It can go on for years and years and years in autoimmune disease. I don't remember how many years, at least five or seven years. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (02:55)

Before we even know about it. Most people go five to seven years with symptoms, before they're even diagnosed. 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (03:02)

I'm saying like cancer, we're talking about autoimmune disease, it's brewing, brewing. We don't know what's going on. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (03:08)

Right. Until it's caused major damage. And there are markers, right? We can talk about some of that. There are markers to tell us, there's subtle inflammation. For example, I had my C-reactive protein tested last year, two years ago, and it was elevated. And I'm like, why is my C-reactive protein elevated? I eat anti-inflammatory foods, and I'm taking care of myself. And then I remembered I have all these old fillings and old root canals in my mouth, and they just periodically flare up. 

 

Well, I notice it when they periodically flare up, but then it goes back underneath the surface, but that doesn't mean it's gone.

 

So I realized that I need to do something about this old dental work and cleaning up my mouth. because it was contributing to inflammation. And here's the deal, right? If it's contributing to inflammation in here, where else can it be contributing? Throughout the whole body. With my family history of heart disease, I was concerned, and there's a big link, and now we're talking about this a lot, between the mouth and cardiovascular disease. So it's really important.

 

So before we get into the foods, I really want to talk about the tests, right? How would somebody know that they have some inflammation that's going on? Is it found in the routine test? So how do we test for inflammation? 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (04:23)

I always look for homocysteine and highly sensitive CRP.  When we do the first round of labs. Right. I do those. Now I said they’re not in the basic labs, but I will look for trends in cholesterol. Sometimes that can give me a sign that maybe there's some inflammation going on if I see that it's trending. Certain cholesterol numbers are trending up over time. When I know someone's been doing quote unquote all the things. They're eating an anti-inflammatory diet. They're focusing on meditation and all the other things. But the cholesterol keeps creeping up.

 

We need to test this a little further and do a little bit of digging. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (05:07)

And look for hidden sources. That's the thing, the hidden sources, right? 

 

Steph Jackson (05:09)

We'll go to ferritin.  

 

Jennifer Whitmire (05:11)

Ferritin like you discovered in your case, right? 

 

Dr Ritamarie (05:17)

What else? 

 

So the other ones that I look at for inflammation that aren't really looked at a lot, uric acid. And people just think, oh, this person doesn't have gout. not. Yeah. They're not a male. They're not drinking too much wine and steak. So gout.

 

Uric acid can be elevated and that's an inflammatory marker. What about GGT? Do you ever look at GGT as an inflammatory marker? 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (05:37)

You know, not that often. Usually I will only use that if someone has a history of alcohol. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (05:46)

Or liver toxicity. That used to be a standard test. Like a lot of the tests that we used to just include on the regular blood panel aren't in there anymore. When you do a comprehensive metabolic panel, oftentimes in the past, I would always see the GGT, and I'd see phosphorus, and I'd see all kinds of things that are gone now. So sometimes you have to look more carefully and get those comprehensive inflammation panels, like sed rate. That used to be done all the time on everybody, and now it's not done very much at all. So subtle signs that there's some inflammation. And for me, the kickoff was, why the heck is my CRP high? That doesn't make sense. And now I'm going, okay, it's my mouth.

 

Right. And we look, you have to look for those hidden sources. So inflammation is important. know that testing for inflammation is important. It's not often done on a comprehensive basis on your standard blood chemistry. 

 

So as a functional practitioner, you should be helping people to talk to their doctor about getting those. Or if you are their doctor as a functional medical practitioner, you should be getting those numbers. And if you're a health coach or somebody else who's not in the primary care field is to help them to get it. And there's a lot of labs out there now that people can get direct access to, depending on what country and what state and all that, but really know that, know what labs you can refer people to go and order their own labs, because it's really important to do. 

 

All right, so that aside, inflammation's important. We've established that inflammation can be important in all kinds of conditions, in cancers, heart disease, they're the top two leading killers of people in the Western world.

 

So inflammation is at the heart of that, but anything that ends in -itis, nephritis, gastritis, arthritis, and encephalitis, it's all inflammation. So you've understood that. 

 

How do people get control of their inflammation? We mentioned a little earlier, they're eating an anti-inflammatory diet. What does that look like? 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (07:41)

Well, for me, the first thing I do is ask them, what are you eating? Show me your food diary. We're talking about food, but it could be something outside of the food, too. So I don't want everyone to think that it's just the food, right? It could be more. But when we're looking at food, I'm looking at what they're eating every day. 

 

Processed foods, especially ultra processed foods, deli meats, right? Gluten and dairy. So anyone with an autoimmune diagnosis, I immediately tell them, I'm sorry, we have to go off of gluten and dairy. And maybe it's not going to be permanent, but if you are inflamed, we have to take these out. These are highly likely creating inflammation in the body. So we need to take those out to help your body to recover, and then you can test them later. 

 

But for now, since you're on quote unquote fire, we want to make sure that we're doing whatever we can. And so I do remove some things, but then I like to make sure that they are including a lot of things that are cooling to the body to help to bring the body back into balance and cool that inflammation.

 

Dr Ritamarie (08:45)

Do you have any other foods that you take them off of, Steph, that you think are for most people inflammatory? 

 

Steph Jackson (08:50)

Most of the people that I talk to are gluten free and have given up a lot of things. And so then there's a little bit of trying to figure out what else is going on. Maybe it's something they eat often. 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (09:05)

So you're looking at food cravings? 

 

Steph Jackson (09:07)

Cravings and frequency. So something they're eating frequently. If they're having something every day for breakfast.

 

Dr Ritamarie (09:16)

When you say that, it's like you're looking for foods that they're sensitive to, that they're having an immune reaction, or some sort of reaction to, because all of that's inflammation. 

 

Steph Jackson (09:26)

And you know, you create inflammation in other ways than being sensitive to a food. So I don't rush off and do the IgA, IgG, or IgE testing even. And there is a place for that, but it might be something that's happening specifically in their gut. When they eat the food. They might be sensitive to FODMAPs. It might be like a gas and bloating kind of situation. It might be offsetting the bacteria in there. And none of that's going to show up in an IgA. It's not going to show up. Sometimes it's a process of elimination. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (10:00)

And so anything can be inflammatory. There's certain things that are definitely inflammatory like the fats that are in processed foods, so why are ultra processed foods so bad? It's all those hydrogenated and processed and heated and altered fats that are in there. And it's not like the whole seed oil thing that everybody's up in arms against. 

 

Some oils, some fats are inflammatory by nature. Some are less inflammatory by nature. And it's a balance, like everything else. It's a juggling act. Those hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated and heated and processed oils become toxic to the body in that they create inflammation in the body. 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (10:38

And so as we're digging into the food, maybe they've gone gluten free and/or dairy free. So when we talk about inflammation, maybe they have gone dairy free, and they're focusing on almond milk, almond yogurt, they gave up gluten, they're eating almond crackers.

 

Almonds are really healthy foods, but A, that's a lot of almonds and B, what are they doing? Almonds can be very healthy, but they're very high in omega-6 fats. And so we need to make sure that we're balancing that out with some omega-3 fats. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (11:13)

So my understanding is that almonds are 72 to 1 Omega-6 to 3. Not that omega-6 is bad. They're essential. We need them for a lot of processes, but it's the balance between 3 and 6. And it's in general, it's balance in the body that we're looking for, right? So 72 to 1, how much chia seed or flax seed or hemp seed or walnuts or other things that are high in omega 3. 

 

Walnuts are considered the only nut that's close to balanced in 6 to 3. The others are all like 72 to 1 or even sesame seeds are in the 60s, too. You can even do hemp seeds and chia seeds. So, to give you a comparison, chia seeds are 1 to 20. 

 

I created a spreadsheet where I can put the numbers in, and I can help people make recipes where it shows you at the bottom what your ratio is. And you're trying to get a 4 to 1 ratio, or less, of 6 to 3. So it is more. It's okay to have more 6 than 3, but the average person with MS has like a 22 to one ratio, right? Really, really high omega-6. And when we balance that out, their inflammation starts to go down. 

 

I've literally worked with people who we start to see their symptoms of autoimmune disease improve, right? So that's part of it. 

 

So more about what foods. I have a whole booklet, or a chart of anti-inflammatory and inflammatory foods, and it's important for people to understand what they are, but not like to say, this food is bad, because it's higher in this, and this food's good. It's a matter of balance. It's always balanced. So what are some of your favorite foods to help people get the inflammation under control? 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (12:52)

Well, I always start with the Omega-3s. I like to increase greens for many reasons. It increases our minerals mainly, increasing minerals and absorption, right? Because in autoimmune disease, we have difficulty in most cases absorbing nutrients. So using juices actually is helpful. Green juices, not fruit juices, for getting minerals. And so that can help with inflammation. 

 

I also focus on rainbow foods, getting those polyphenols from all the different colors. And so an easy thing for people to do is to increase the color in their meals. And so if they look at what they're eating at every meal, is it a colorful dish or not? 

 

Dr Ritamarie (13:36)

And you're aiming for that, the purples and the reds. So let's talk about some of those foods specifically. What are some good purple foods? 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (13:41)

So purple cabbage, purple sweet potatoes, while watching blood sugar, purple kale. We have purple cauliflower, purple green beans. There's purple in a lot of them. Yes. Purple carrots. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (13:56)

Okay. So red. What's some good stuff with red?

 

Jennifer Whitmire (13:58)

Well, we can get red bell peppers, we can get tomatoes. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (14:04)

Someone says, but I can't do those, because I'm nightshade sensitive. 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (14:07)

Yes, well, and then you might be. Maybe it's something we need to look at, but we don't completely rule that out until we need to rule that out, right? But for reds, probably berries. Raspberries are really high. Those are wonderful for helping with inflammation. And so those I would choose over some of the others.

 

Though I don't want to call any food bad, we just need to make sure that it's right for you. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (14:32)

And you mentioned blood sugar, right? Some people can eat whatever they want in the natural food realm, and it doesn't raise their blood sugars considerably. And other people have sensitivities, partially genetic and partially all the M &M's they ate when they were kids. 

 

Steph Jackson (14:50)

And some people can eat tomatoes and be perfectly fine. Right. So then we have fermenting, right? 

 

So if it's an oxalate issue, we can also ferment to reduce over 90% in some food, depending on which bacteria we use and how long we go. And then there's also flowers. So if we can't tolerate it, there are very few phytochemicals in the natural world that make things those colours. So if we want to have something that's purple food, we can go for an edible purple flower like a dalia, or we can go for hibiscus for the reds. Violets, that's a great idea. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (15:22)

And I think that's something most people overlook. So as a health practitioner, a coach, somebody who's advising people on these things, it's to help people expand their horizon of foods rather than contract it and make it less.

 

Jennifer Whitmire (15:34)

Right. We don't want to just keep eliminating and eliminating. 

 

Steph Jackson (15:38)

And a lot of the time, too, the green foods, just like our leaves turn different colors in the fall, because the chlorophyll is gone, the green is hiding all of those other phytochemicals. 

 

So if we're looking for an orange food, we're looking for something that has vitamin A precursors. We can also turn to some greens, because they're green. The colors are fun, but we could also have a plate of strawberries, we could also have spinach if that works for you.

 

Dr Ritamarie (16:05)

So what else? What other foods do you have?

 

Jennifer Whitmire (16:08)

Lots of berries, lots of colorful foods. I always add in the herbs. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (16:12)

So what are some herbs that people use? ßome of them that people already know about, but what are some of the herbs that people use? 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (16:19)

I was thinking of yellow, and I was trying to think of yellow foods, but my yellow herbs, calendula is one of my favorites, right? So yellow, ginkgo, but that's not for everyone.  

 

It's hard to come up with a lot of the yellows. There's yellow carrots. Yeah, yellow carrots and lemons, yellow cauliflower, yellow beets. And then I was trying to think of yellow herbs too and calendula is always my go-to. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (16:48)

And the orange, some fun orange foods. 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (16:53)

Well, carrots and bell peppers. Bell peppers are in all of them.. Unless you have a nightshade sensitivity, which is something that we could consider. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (17:03)

Everything I've studied looks at maybe about 10% of the population truly has a nightshade sensitivity or less. Right. So it's a matter of elimination and then adding back. I tell people when we're suspicious, they're like, but it’s summertime. Just eliminate the tomatoes and all for a couple of weeks, and then go and make gazpacho. Right. You know, and then just see how you react, because gazpacho is loaded with tomatoes. Right.

 

Jennifer Whitmire (17:29)

One of my favorite orange foods is sweet potatoes. We have to watch our blood sugar, but they have that precursor to vitamin A, which is very important in autoimmune disease. Well, anytime we have inflammation. So that is also important for increasing that. Pumpkin as well, but we have to watch our blood sugar. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (17:50)

Again, blood sugar control. What about turmeric? We hear a lot about turmeric. 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (17:54)

So turmeric's highly anti-inflammatory, which ginger could have been a yellow for us, right?  It is a yellow. I love both of those. Ginger doesn't get the credit that turmeric does. Oh, they're both anti-inflammatory and super. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (18:06)

Turmeric, is it hype that turmeric is like the answer to everybody's prayers? It's like, oh, turmeric, oh, turmeric, it's antioxidant. Can we talk about that?

 

Jennifer Whitmire (18:14)

I feel like it is a little, which is why I said ginger. It's like, wait, maybe, because I just love ginger. I like them together. 

 

Steph Jackson (18:24)

I feel that things that just get thrown around about turmeric. And I'm wondering about all the studies that I've seen that are on curcumin. Right. A certain amount of the extract. Extract of the turmeric.

 

And then there's our obsession with its absorption. A lot of the absorption, our gut flora and the turmeric interact, and then it's the post-biotics from that, that are quite often the anti-inflammatory or inflammation modulating thing. So then we're taking the liposomal or adding black pepper or doing their fancy, whatever. 

 

Fermenting though, I do think that's a good idea. Just for the oxalates and lots of other reasons too, and for the absorption for the ginger and the turmeric. But then it's not all about what we absorb. A lot of these inflammation modulating actions are through our gut flora. And so then it doesn't even sort of matter if we're absorbing it or not. And a lot of the orange foods as well.

 

It's more about those vitamin A precursors and how those influence our gut flora. And then that sends like a post-biotic signal to our immune system to reduce inflammation. It's not even something we absorb and then make something with like it's a Lego. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (19:43)

So if you are taking a sublingual, for example, that it's not getting into the gut.  That's a really good point.

 

Steph Jackson (19:58)

Yeah, some of those colourful foods too, like the red foods we were talking about, like the ellagitannins and the red foods have to go through the gut where they're converted to urolithins, which then we absorb and can help us with our mitochondrial energy. And then we're taking the extract. Sometimes it's good to have both. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (20:17)

And variety is the spice of life, as I say, but variety in your food and colour and the various phytochemicals and all that, we need a variety, right? 

 

There's no one food that's the magic bullet. And that's what I was trying to get at with that question, right? Turmeric is king or queen or, it's the best, right? 

 

Ginger can be so anti-inflammatory. I've had people who I've recommended do ginger juice to help with pain and inflammation. You know, when I was doing a lot of hands-on work with people and one guy came to me, and he said, my God, that ginger is amazing. I had ginger juice and he said, my dose is every three and a half hours. Cause if I go longer than three and a half hours, my back pain came back. We were addressing the underlying causes and working on his back pain.

 

Inflammation is a biggie. And it was like, wow, that's so cool. Right? It never occurred to me about the timing. 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (21:24)

When I would take my daughter to get her braces tightened, she would drink ginger tea when we got back in the car, and she never had pain. Like I remember getting braces tightened, and it hurt. And she never experienced anything. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (21:36)

So some of the external symptoms we hear is we hear about color and all this. So pain, inflammation, redness would be a sign, but what about if you have it on your skin, obviously you're going to see your cut. You see all that, right? And feel all that. 

 

How do we know if we have hidden inflammation? Are there other symptoms we might be seeing that say, huh, inflammation might be at play here? 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (22:05)

Well, it could be you're tired, brain fog. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (22:09)

That's a point. Right. So I think, it goes back to eating an anti-inflammatory diet, whatever that might be for you, getting rid of the obvious inflammatory foods, and I'm going to go back and summarize those again. 

 

I want to look at, how do you feel? How do you feel when you eat certain foods, but how do you feel in general? Like you said, the brain fog, the fatigue, gut imbalance, gut discomfort, but pain, like joint pain, et cetera. Shoulder pain, back pain. It doesn't go away. 

 

You said at the beginning about acute inflammation. I mean, it's important to have it. You have a broken arm, you have a bug bite, your body's trying to expel and clear it, but when it doesn't go away is the problem. 

 

I've had people who have had a car accident and all that. Everything seems to be back in place, and it's years later, and they're still having the inflammation. That's inflammation out of control that we really do need to look at. And again, going back. I'm sensitive about this, because of my family history of heart disease. It could be silently building up inflammation in your endothelial lining, right? Your blood vessel linings. And you don't know it until like my parents, you just die suddenly of a heart attack, right? 

 

So these are the reasons that we want you to be on top of it and get a lot of this testing done. We'll have some other videos on testing and some of the important testing that is so often overlooked that can help people to find these hidden sources, right? 

 

And then there's autoimmune, right? People all of a sudden have these symptoms and how do we know it's autoimmune? Well, we test the antibodies, or we test inflammation markers, right? So all of these things are important. And a lot of times the autoimmune is brewing for years sometimes, before it's actually manifesting in symptoms, right? So we can actually test for antibodies in certain areas. 

 

Steph Jackson (24:01)

I have some questions. Like we were talking about the 3s and 6s, right? Just making sure that a person has balanced or has at least a 4 to 1 ratio of the omega 6 to 3, it's not going to make their inflammation go away. Or like we know about the endothelial lining, how important potassium is, for example. So let's say we eat a lot of whatever, avocados and apricots. That's not going to make it so that the person doesn't end up with a heart condition.  

 

So what are the other things that need to be balanced? 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (24:34)

Stress right off the bat. So not food related, but well, we could have stress from food. Exactly. Yes. And so we do have to look for those food sensitivities, which you mentioned a little bit earlier, too. Watching food sensitivities and things like that, doing an elimination diet, right? But then stress from work and everything else, too. That creates inflammation. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (25:00)

Taking your question a little further is there's no one thing that if you do it, it's going to heal. So, oh, I'm going to balance my omega 3s and 6es. Why do I still have inflammation? Right. Oh, I'm eating turmeric three times a day. Why do I still have inflammation?

 

Steph Jackson (25:14)

But this is what, this is what people will say. I'll get a message that says I'm eating this and this and this, what's still wrong with me?

 

Dr Ritamarie (25:24)

It's a matter of balance, right? You're trying to get balance. And for a lot of those people, I say, I'm drinking my green juice, and I'm eating that stuff that I don't really like anymore, and I've given up ice cream, and I still feel like crap. 

 

We're going to listen to how you're speaking, and how you're stressing about this. Right. Attitude is so important. And I love the people I work with who come in and say this is going on, and I know that we're going to find an answer. I know we're going to figure it out, because my body is smart, and we're going to figure out how to heal it. Those are the people that heal. And the ones that are like, you just have to go back to the doctor and get surgery, or get this thing, and they're like okay, so we have to be the voice of reason. There's no one thing. 

 

I talk about the seven pillars, right. We have to be having fun. We have to be sleeping and resting and having a good environment and exercising and having a good diet, having a good outlook, a positive outlook, and then mindfulness practices, whether it's meditation or tapping or whatever works for that person. And it's important for us to be looking at what we can get, not like what's the best mindfulness practice. What is the one they're going to do that's going to get them results? And I can tell somebody to meditate for three hours a day.

 

Most of them are not going to. I could tell somebody to meditate for 15 minutes a day. A lot of people will do that, but some of them are like, I can't meditate. I just can't meditate. I don't want to, what else can I do? Right? For some people it's prayer. For some people it's gardening. For some people it's hugging their pet, right? And getting the oxytocin going. So it's all about balance, not just balance in the diet, obviously. Balance in the stress levels, but balance in their whole lifestyle and identifying, really asking questions, and figuring out what are the key things that are going to move the needle the most. 

 

If you can identify the things that are going to move the needle the most, and they get results, they're going to go, okay, what else can I do? 

 

Food is critical. Sadly, in our society where autoimmune conditions are an epidemic right now.

 

Most doctors are not trained in all the underlying causes. They're just like, oh, test the antibodies. You have these antibodies. We're just going to have to control the symptoms, right? Here's the anti-inflammatory medications and that they're not really adept at helping people to change their diet, to change their lifestyle, to do all those things. 

 

I was very fortunate that I had health issues in my twenties, and it changed early on. So for the last almost 40 years, I've been doing amazing stuff for myself. Am I perfect? No. Are there still remnants of old stuff like dental work that are stressing my body? Absolutely. We all have that and nobody's ever going to be perfect, right? And occasionally you're going to eat a food and say that caused me to get inflammation. I overate, I ate too late. Whoops. And then you get back on track. 

 

When you, as a practitioner, have techniques and strategies and ideas that you can share with people to move the needle, move the needle, help them to do what they can do right now. And then a little bit more, and a little bit more as they start to trust you, feel safe and get results.

 

So how can we wrap this all in a bow and give it to people? 

 

Jennifer Whitmire (28:57)

Well, it's important. One of the things I was going to say when you were saying that the conventional medicine system doesn't really help address that, when I went to a couple of different doctors after my diagnosis, and they all said food and lifestyle have nothing to do with it. Yeah, it doesn't matter what you eat. 

 

We have to change that. Because food definitely does. 

 

Steph Jackson (29:21)

So you don't have to be a doctor to look at an apple and an apple pie to figure out which one is better for you. So I actually don't understand. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (29:35)

And connecting to that, the food, the cigarettes. It took a long time before they agreed that cigarettes were damaging. Right? Now most people agree on it, except the ones that are totally addicted and are in denial, but the same thing with food. 

 

People don't want to give up their habits. I read a bunch of stuff about coffee, and I'm not saying coffee is bad for everyone, but I think there's a lot of negative sides of coffee. 

 

Alcohol, I think. It helps with the French paradox and all that kind of stuff. Alcohol harms brain cells. It harms liver cells. It harms the pancreas, right? What do pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer come from? Alcohol, right? So there's all these things that people want, they want to do, and they don't want to give up. Right. And they go into denial, and a lot of doctors are like that, because if they start to share with their patients that this is not good, you have to stop it. Guess what? They're going to have to do it themselves. Right. 

 

Coffee got a resurgence over the last 10 years and most practitioners were saying get people off of coffee, get them off of alcohol, get them off of this and that and sugar. And all of a sudden coffee's good for you. Maybe you like it, great. And you can drink it once in a while, great. But what about the addictive nature of it? What about the headaches you get when you stop it? It means that there's something that it's doing that's not quite right in your body. 

 

Again, talking to your clients and patients when you're interviewing them at the beginning, are there any foods that you're unwilling to give up regardless of the health implications? When you ask that question, the answers you get give you a clue as to what they need to give up, and how you're going to be having to work with them, because they're kind of addicted to it. I love chocolate, don't get me wrong. I have my own addictions, but not really an addiction, because I went a long time without chocolate, but I love chocolate. And to me, it's like, look at all these studies that show all the great chemistry. I don't have a CYP1A2 gene, so I can handle the caffeine, which is not really caffeine, and it's theobromine. I can handle it. But if I had a CYP1A2, or I had a particular thing that made chocolate bad for me, I'd give it up in a heartbeat. Seriously, because I don't love it enough to be willing to take the negative effects on my body. 

 

And that's what we have to get at with people. Help them. Not to say you’ve got to stop that, you're going to die, but it's more like helping them to see what that's doing and helping them have trade-offs. And I'll tell you a quick story about somebody who was trying to get her off a coffee because of some adrenal stuff and hyper stimulation and all. And when we got her genes tested, and we saw that she did have CYP1A2 homozygous, and she had a family history of breast cancer. And I said to her, you know, this is the deal. She goes, I'm done. Yeah. I don't like it that much. I'm done. And she gave it up. 

 

And the same thing with alcohol, with wine, you know, I don't have any of the genes that make it so that I just absolutely can't process it, but I won't do it, because of what I know it does to my microbiome, and what I know it does to my brain. I like my brain. I don't want to kill my brain just to have a glass of wine and feel kind of woozy. And that's the kind of stuff that we as practitioners need to be just giving them choice, right? 

 

I'll say, which do you like better? Your boobs or your coffee? Well, I definitely want to keep them, you know. So it's learning how to help people in those ways and not be like wishy washy about it, but also not be mean about it. 

 

Steph Jackson (33:26)

I think you can also find reductive studies that show there's one good thing in beer, coffee, wine, although those are totally messed up. Those studies are wrong. Anyone can find justification, and it's not a reason to give up on a client, because most people say, I will not change my diet, I will not change this. I will not give up on that. Sometimes they will. They will when you give them the right information.  Sometimes they won't. But usually over time, like with love and care. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (34:13)

And that brings us around full circle to hormones, right? Oxytocin. What can you do in your practice to help people to produce more oxytocin, because oxytocin is a feel-good hormone? It counteracts cortisol. It helps to produce more dopamine. It's a feel-good hormone. 

 

How do we help people? Right. And when you have to care for them, you’ve got to be careful about touch, because you know, hugging your patient. Women talking, right? This is an oxytocin boost. Absolutely. And you know, just rubbing your own arms, right? Or teaching them the little things like that. If they have a pet, giving them an action step that isn't like, today we're going to give up gluten. I want you to go home and sit on the couch for 15 minutes and hug your cat. And we did that with one person. The cat came over to her during a group call. And then she was like sitting there, and I'm like, that's your answer. right. You got to spend more time with that animal, right? So animals and children and partners and all that stuff. 

 

So we'll combine that. Those things are anti-inflammatory, right? Those things are anti-inflammatory. So when you ask, what is it besides the food? And that's a big piece of it. Yes, it is. It's huge. 

 

So closing, what are some of the things that as a practitioner we can do early in the relationship with someone and a couple of things that we can advise them to do to help get their inflammation under control?

 

Jennifer Whitmire (35:47)

Well, for me, I'm all about the food. So the first thing I do is I look at their diet. I mean, everybody eats. And so they write down what they have been eating for the last three days? Or it can be even as simple as, what is your regular meal, what do you normally eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Or do you eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Do you eat snacks? What all do you have to eat or drink, which is one that I skipped one time.

 

Right, and what is your meal timing? Are you getting up in the middle of the night and snacking? Are you eating late at night? All of those things can affect inflammation. And so it's not just the meal timing. It's not just what they're eating. It's all of that in combination. And then going through that and helping them see what they can change and discussing that. And then increasing the things that are anti-inflammatory. Making sure they're eating leafy greens in a way that suits them best. Maybe raw is good for you. Maybe they need to be juiced. Maybe they need to be lightly steamed. And so we see what is going to be right for you. But first we need to look at what they are eating and what are they doing? Because a step that I did miss was asking about what they were drinking. 

 

So I had one that was drinking coffee till noon and then diet cokes from then on. And that wasn't even a part of my question. I was asking about the food. I never asked about the drink. Right. So are they hydrated?

 

Right? And so making sure that they are well hydrated and drinking that water and then looking at the foods and seeing what needs to be tweaked. Do they have lots of vegetables, lots of colorful vegetables throughout their day? Are there foods that are going to be promoting inflammation, raising blood sugar, or are they blood stabilizing types of meals as well? How does all that affect inflammation, as well? 

 

So I'm looking for rainbow foods, I'm looking for greens. like greens three meals a day, or if they eat three meals a day or two meals a day. And I do like the rest in between the meals if possible. Right? And then I like them to stop eating three hours before they go to bed. Not eating overnight, not snacking while they're watching TV. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (37:52)

Good, good things to start with. And find out where they need help. Right. What about you? What can you add to that? 

 

Steph Jackson (38:00)

I think a food journal, that's amazing. Not doing that would be insane. Yeah. And then I think it's digging, just really listening. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (38:11)

So again, we as health practitioners, as functional health practitioners, are really dedicated to helping people find root causes, correct root causes, and use the tools that nature provided us, the food and the sleep and all the things, right? Those are really important as opposed to just jumping in and looking for the right supplement for handling their stuff. 

 

Supplements can be very important, and they're a supplement to a healthy lifestyle and a healthy diet. So helping people to see that. 

 

We're the future of healthcare. We are the people who are done with covering up symptoms and all with whatever medications or procedures and herbs or supplements, right? We're not looking to kill the symptoms. We're looking to balance the whole body. And so keep doing what you're doing. The world needs us big time, big time, and keep doing and shining your light. And until next time, shine on.