Podcast Cover with Jennifer Whitmire Ep 151
Jennifer Whitmire is on a mission to save body parts and transform lives. After overcoming a life-altering diagnosis of Graves’ disease, Jennifer co-founded The Jen Twins with fellow NEPT graduate Jennifer Swank, where they empower individuals to reverse chronic symptoms, reclaim energy, and find lasting relief through holistic, whole-food strategies.
A graduate of the Nutritional Endocrinology Practitioner Training and a key coach in the Unstoppable Health Community, Jennifer is renowned for her expertise in functional nutrition and her ability to make healthy living approachable, delicious, and effective.
Dr Ritamarie
Welcome back to the podcast. I’m excited to have you here with a very special guest that we’re going to be talking about a very special condition. Most doctors are taught that autoimmune conditions are irreversible. That’s just the way it is. It’s a diagnosis, and you just live with it. There’s medications you can take for some to keep it under control, but that doesn’t go away. I’ve had arguments with doctor friends about this who don’t believe me. They must not have had that in the first place. I’m like, no, it is reversible when we reverse the underlying causes. So autoimmune conditions can be turned around. We have lots of cases that demonstrate this.
I am so excited about my guest today. My guest and I will be delving into the world of food, autoimmune, and other chronic conditions that are often considered irreversible by Western medicine. Today’s special guest transformed her own health after a life-changing diagnosis. Now, as co-founder of thejentwins.com, she empowers others to reverse chronic symptoms, regain their energy, and find lasting relief from pain through holistic, whole food strategies that help them feel strong, clear-minded, and capable again.
She’s a graduate of our Nutritional Endocrinology Practitioner Training, and she’s a key coach and member of my team at Unstoppable Health. She’s a whiz in the kitchen, for those of you who know her. Welcome Jennifer Whitmire to the podcast.
Jennifer (01:56)
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Dr. Ritamarie.
Dr Ritamarie (01:59)
Well, I’m excited to have you, because you are a wealth of information and motivation, and you have a huge heart. And you come from a place of really caring about people and having gone through your own trials and tribulations, you know what the feeling is. You don’t want other people to go through that, and that’s so admirable. So I wanted to just talk a little bit about this diagnosis that you got and what actually was said to you.
What prompted you to even get checked for this diagnosis and then get that diagnosis, what was said to you? And then we’ll talk more about how you’ve gone and done a good job of reversing it. So tell us more.
Jennifer (02:35)
Well, thank you. Yes. It’s kind of a long story, so hopefully I won’t go too long on my story. I thought that I was in perfect health. I didn’t realize I had any symptoms at all. I actually went to the doctor, because I wanted the doctor to tell my husband he needed to change how he was eating and change his way. And so I said, I’m going to make doctor appointments for us. We’ll go in and have physicals. And he agreed. He was like, okay, I’ll go. And so we went.
Jennifer (03:03)
And the doctor told him he didn’t know why he was there. He was the picture of health, which side story, he was eating McDonald’s double cheeseburger and fries, super size every single day for lunch, every single day. They knew him when he drove up. And so that’s why I did it.
So the doctor said, you’re a picture of health. I don’t know why you’re here. And made him feel silly for being there. And then he told me, your blood test came back. There’s something wrong with you. I’m not going to give you a diagnosis, but if I had what you have I would only see doctor so-and-so, and so I was freaking out. I’m like, what? I have to only go to this one doctor? So I called that doctor.
They didn’t take my insurance, and I said, I’ll just pay out of pocket. And they would not even see me out of pocket and so then I was really freaking out. What is going on with me? So I finally found a doctor to go to who wasn’t the specialist that this doctor told me I had to go to, and he said, you have Graves disease. It’s an autoimmune disease. You either have to have
surgery or radiation. I was just a deer in the headlights, I had never even heard of Graves’ disease, and I just said, no.
And you know, I was freaking out. What do you mean surgery or radiation? I don’t even know what this is. And so I said, no, and I said what else can we do? And he told me that I could go on some medication for a little while. It’s not well tolerated, but we could try it. So I was like fine, I’ll do that.
Jennifer (04:27)
But I still didn’t even want to do that, but I did. And so I went on the medication, and my numbers started changing. And, I started reading about the symptoms, and I did have all the symptoms. I thought it was my personality. Unlike most people with Graves, they’re always really hot. I was always really cold, really cold hands, really cold feet. But I was very, very anxious, very high energy, I would fly off the handle so easily.
Jennifer (04:54)
And now that I’ve read the symptoms, I did have all of them. But like I said, I thought that was, that’s just me. And so I went on the medication, I started investigating different things. And at the time I had a master’s in health science. I had studied nutrition in graduate school. And so I thought I was doing all the things, but I started digging in deeper and the person who did the lunch at my daughter’s daycare said, have you ever read the side of the box of what you’re eating every day for lunch?
Jennifer (05:28)
I was eating Lean Cuisines, and Lean Cuisine, it had a whole grain. It had a vegetable. It had a sauce. It has to be good for you, right? But number one, heating it up in black plastic in the microwave. But number two, the ingredients, there must have been 25 ingredients in this, and I didn’t even know what half of them were, right? And then she said, pay attention to the sodium.
Jennifer (05:51)
The sodium was the least of my concerns compared to all of those chemicals I was putting in my body. And so that’s where I started. So I started changing my diet, and the doctor kept telling me that I wasn’t taking my medicine, right? I’d go in to a visit, and he’d say, you’re not following your medication. Well, you know me. I’m very type A, you tell me what to do. I’m doing it. And so, I was like, no, I’m doing exactly what you’re telling me to do. He’d have to take me off the medication, because I had reversed my numbers.
Jennifer (06:20)
And so I was doing very well and then we moved. We moved, which is a lot of stress. I was in a car accident where a tree fell in my car. It was horrible and luckily we were fine. We survived, but my antibodies just shot off the charts. Just too much stress between moving and the crash and everything, and we moved, and I went to a new doctor, and she was like you have to have radiation. You have to do it, and I said, please put me on medication.
Jennifer (06:54)
Let me try what I was doing. I tried, but I dropped down. I was like 85 pounds. I was eating every single thing in sight, trying everything I could do. And she said, you’re going to die if you don’t do the radiation. And so then I was scared to death. And so I did. And so that’s what happened.
Dr Ritamarie (07:10)
And the antibodies they tested ,just as an aside, which of the antibodies were elevated for you? You don’t know.
Jennifer (07:17)
I don’t know, because back then, this was 2013, is when I had my car accident. And back then I didn’t know to ask for the labs and the paperwork and all of that. Right, it’s all of that, if I only knew then. But I remind myself, if I had known then, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today. And so there was a reason why it went this way.
Dr Ritamarie (07:41)
Wow. All right. So you were diagnosed with Graves, which is an overactive thyroid. It’s antibody-induced overactive thyroid. But also there’s other things which they didn’t talk to you about that could cause it, could be a viral thing. It could be any number of things that trigger it. Yes, in medicine, that’s their first jump to. But that’s not the first jump to looking at it from a holistic functional perspective.
So I want to hear a little bit more about, so you did the radiation. How did you feel after doing the radiation? Did your numbers normalize? Did they get off your back? Did they try to give you more medication? What was going on there?
Jennifer (08:20)
No, I didn’t notice much of a change right away. But six months later, I developed a horrible rash. And so I had a huge rash on my liver. And I told my doctor, my antibodies started going up. She said, you have to go on Synthroid. Everyone takes Synthroid. I started taking Synthroid, and immediately, three days later, I had this giant rash. I said, I’m allergic to the Synthroid. And she said, no one’s allergic to Synthroid. It’s one of the oldest medicines. You need to go to a dermatologist. No one’s allergic to it.
And so I was like, I know that’s what it is, because I just started taking it, and that’s what happened. And so, then she retired. And so six months after my radiation, she retired. I had to find another doctor, and I went to a functional medicine doctor, and I said, where were you a year ago? And she said, Exactly. Why didn’t you find me a year ago? She said, we could have saved your thyroid. And so I met with her. She put me on compounded T3, T4, and then I started working on improving my antibodies and improving my health.
Jennifer (09:22)
So after the radiation, it was horrible, I did bounce back and forth from going hyper and then hypo. And I was very upset, very angry at the doctor, number one, for telling me I was going to die if I didn’t do this. And I would ask her, I’d say, I went gluten free. And she’s like, food has nothing to do with it. And so there’s just so much I wish I had known so that I could have saved my thyroid.
Dr Ritamarie (09:48)
Right, and that’s what your goal is with other people is to really educate people. And I see you on Facebook all the time and on YouTube and doing talks about this, because the doctors are not trained in this, right? They don’t, they’re not trained in it. You’ve got an autoimmune hyperthyroidism, you shut it down. You either surgically remove it or you irradiate it. That’s all they know. If you have hypo, then you just go on Synthroid. Now going back to the Synthroid and the allergy, most synthroid has gluten in it at least it did back then and dyes right?
Jennifer (10:21)
Yes, and dyes, coloring. Yes, each prescription, 50 micrograms is one color, 75 is another color. That’s how they keep track of it. And so if I took the green or the blue, the rash would get bigger and bigger. And it’s because it had those food colorings in there.
Dr Ritamarie (10:41)
And I’m going to take a little side step here. You said you had a master’s in health science. What did that master’s teach you, if not how to be healthy and what foods to eat and avoid and avoiding dyes? I want to hear more about that, because a master’s in health science, you would think you would not fall prey to this kind of mistreatment that you would know better.
Jennifer (11:05)
Right, right. Yes, so I took nutrition classes. And of course it was, back then, it was five a day. It was the food guide pyramid, which, as you know, today, I mean, it’s still today, it’s not a food guide pyramid, but it still says 50% of your grains should be the base, and 50% of those grains should be whole grains. And so that’s telling me 50% of the grains don’t even have to be whole grains. And so that’s not healthy. Right? And so that’s what I was taught.
Jennifer (11:36)
Back then, I was also taught some things that were helpful. Back then, this was in the 90s, I was working in the gym, high protein in the gym, and they told us you only need a small can of tuna to meet your protein needs for the day. And so I was like, wow. So the family started cutting back animal products as far as nutrition goes, because that’s all we needed. We didn’t need all this protein, and it could be harmful for the kidneys and cause inflammation.
And so we had made some of those changes as far as our diet goes. But I was also taught about food combining. If you don’t eat animal products, you had to combine certain foods to get complete proteins, and it could be dangerous to be vegan. And so I’ve had to unlearn a lot since then. A lot has changed. Nutrition science has changed since then too. But yes, we never talked about labels.
Jennifer (12:30)
We talked about creating food combinations to get the vitamins and everything that you needed. Like for a carrot, you only need a little bit of carrot. But I didn’t understand how do you put meals together, if I only need a little bit of carrot, and I need, you know, whatever else.
Dr Ritamarie (12:45)
Crazy, crazy. And it’s just as a reflection on what you just said, nutrition science has changed a lot. The body hasn’t changed a lot. So it’s our understanding of the body. What’s changed is what we’re putting in and on the body because of the chemicals and the pesticides and the pollutants and all that.
Dr Ritamarie (13:04)
So our bodies actually probably need a lot more of things we used to think we only needed this much, because we needed to support the detoxification process. Probably not what they taught in a conventional nutrition program.
Jennifer (13:20)
No, not even close. And we didn’t talk about gut health, so my daughter went to a doctor, he was fabulous, who focused on the gut flora back then. We’re talking about 20 years ago. You know, we would put garlic oil in their ears if they had an ear infection. And we would not take any antibiotics but lots of probiotics. And we would talk about gut flora, and I was like, What the heck are you talking about? And I had no idea what he was in. Now it’s common.
Dr Ritamarie (13:50)
It’s common. Back then, those of us in the know, it was common. I’ve been doing my practice for 33 years. I started working on my own health for 40 years, 38 years, something like that. And that was the first thing we did with people, right? But it kind of got lost in the shuffle until now, it came back as this new and exciting thing. No, it’s not new and exciting.
Dr Ritamarie (14:14)
Those of us who did functional medicine, before there was a term for it, knew about that, and we focused on that early, really early on. So it’s funny how things come around. Back then, I would talk to people about their mitochondria. And I was told, by a marketing person, he was helping me formulate some things. He said nobody wants to hear about mitochondria. That’s too complicated. That’s too sciency. Now everybody’s talking about mitochondria, talking about the vagus nerve, you know, sympathetic and parasympathetic dominance. And now everybody’s talking about the vagus nerve.
Dr Ritamarie (14:46)
Right? Had I known then what I know now, I would have really pushed on and become the fore mother of those things. But it’s just as I bring these things out because regardless of what your background is, you may think, well, you know, I know all this stuff, because I’m a dietitian, and I got trained in 2013, or I’m a this, I’m a that. And the body hasn’t necessarily changed, but our understanding of the body has changed.
Dr Ritamarie (15:15)
And we now know that what you eat and what you smell and what you think and all that has to do with how your immune system functions and can be triggers for autoimmune development. And we always have to keep this in mind, right? Whether you’re a traditional retrained doctor or an alternatively trained doctor, it’s really important to understand this.
Dr Ritamarie (15:35)
So you went through all this, you went from Graves, got irradiated and now you have a low thyroid function, right? Because your thyroid doesn’t work anymore, and you have to rely on external sources. And that’s the kind of thing we want to prevent people from having to do at all costs.
Yes, if it’s cancerous, and it’s raging, and it’s metastasized, you’re going to have to get it out of there. But barring that, there are far too many thyroid surgeries and thyroid radiations happening.
Dr Ritamarie (16:04)
And then you leave a person, like you, struggling for the rest of your life. Now you know what you didn’t know then, but now you have to really be dealing. Right?
Jennifer (16:12)
Right. And I rely on this medication. And I live in a state where I have to go to certain doctors to get compounded medicine. So my functional medicine doctor retired, and it took me a year to find another doctor who would put me on it. And I ended up getting so sick, because I couldn’t go on Synthroid. And so I would go to the doctor, and they’d say, I can’t help you. And it’s like, who’s going to help me? Someone’s got to help me. And so it’s, it’s horrible. You know, no one should have to rely on a medicine that much.
Dr Ritamarie (16:41)
Right, And there are times when that happens, but this is not generally a time. So what would you have done differently, had you known then, what you know now? What would you have done differently when you went in, and they said you have Graves’ disease and this is what your options are? What would you have done?
Jennifer (17:01)
So first, and one thing that I do with my clients now, is we put them on an elimination diet, and we go through a liver cleanse. And so we focus on cleansing the diet. We make sure that all the elimination pathways are open. Eliminatory pathways are open, because we want to make sure that everything, toxins, are all flowing out the way they should. There’s no blockages or anything like that.
But we focus on cleaning up the food. It could be food sensitivities, but it could also be chemicals in the food.
Jennifer (17:34)
My number one rule is to read the ingredients. So you have to go through everything, anything that’s in a box or bag. If it has ingredients, if it’s going in your body, if it’s going on your body, if you’re just using it, I mean, air sprays, you know, whatever, people put those things in there, the plugins to make the room smell good. Those are horrible. Yes. And so we focus on that.
Jennifer (17:57)
But we also focus on things like vegetable juices, because we need to make sure that they’re going to be absorbing nutrients, as well. Because a lot of times when someone has an autoimmune condition, like I did, there’s usually more than one. And there’s usually some sort of leaky gut going on, as well.
And so we need to work on repairing the gut. But if you do have leaky gut or anything, you’re going to be reacting to foods, and you’re not going to be absorbing foods as well as you should be. So I do work on vegetable juices, as well as cleaning up the environment, cleaning up the foods but also focusing on elimination and detox, as well.
Dr Ritamarie (18:34)
Those are critical pieces, right? Are there any particular food sensitivities or allergies that you find more common in people with autoimmune conditions?
Jennifer (18:43)
Yes, definitely gluten and dairy, they need to go. I also recommend that we take out eggs, peanuts, corn, as well, any of the common foods that people are allergic to. A lot of times we don’t realize how good we can feel until we eliminate those foods and not for a month. For me, when I eliminated them for a month, my antibodies didn’t change. It took six months before my antibodies changed.
Jennifer (19:11)
We don’t realize how good we can feel, either, until we let those things go. We say that it doesn’t bother me at all. That food has no effect on me. But if you eliminate it for six months, and then you test it, then you can tell right away.
It did cause problems with me. I have found with a lot of my clients in three days of giving up gluten, they noticed they don’t have pains they had before. They have no idea that it’s gluten. They went, how could that be affecting my shoulder? It should only be affecting my gut? So we just don’t put it all together.
Dr Ritamarie (19:46)
Right and elimination diets are so helpful that way. They’re also difficult. Do you find that testing for food allergies is helpful?
Jennifer (19:56)
No, no, because the way I see it, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but the way I see it, if you are reacting to foods, because you have leaky gut, you’re going to be reacting to everything that you eat. It’s all going to be going through there. So you’re going to get results back that show I can’t eat anything. And then you’re going to come to me and say, right, I can’t eat anything. And so we work on replacing everything. You repeat the test and then you’re reacting to everything now that you’re eating, now you’re reacting to everything new.
Dr Ritamarie (20:25)
Exactly. That’s exactly been my experience. And when I first started in practice, I started doing those tests on people and that’s exactly what happened. And they go, my God, that’s a lot of foods, but I’m going to do it. And they start eating new foods, and then they come back and then they want to throw me out the window when I told them, you’re fine with those. Now you’re allergic to these. And then I went, duh, we got to heal the leaky gut.
Dr Ritamarie (20:44)
So I don’t bother with those unless I’ve gotten to the point where we’ve done all the elimination, and there’s still some symptoms and like maybe there’s something that’s causing a reaction that we’re not seeing and then if you’ve done the leaky gut then when that person comes back with two or three foods then you go, okay let’s see what happens when we take those remaining two or three foods out, but I always tell people I haven’t found a good food sensitivity test that I can make friends with, I just haven’t.
Jennifer (21:14)
No, no, save your money, do it with the food, eliminate it, and test it.
Dr Ritamarie (21:19)
And test it back. And it’s harder, it can take longer, but if you have a good coach to coach you through it, you know, it makes life much easier. So what would you say, I mean, you’ve been studying over the years, you’ve studied with me, you did a lot of my food classes, before you joined our practitioner training, you’ve studied with Joel Furman and other people like that. So what are some of the key learnings you’ve picked up along the way that you now use with your clients to help them to have a much easier path than you did?
Jennifer (21:49)
Yes, yes. Well, number one is, like I said, reading the ingredients. But then we also focus on eating the rainbow to make sure we’re getting vitamins and minerals. And that’s really easy for people to do, because you can look, what am I eating in the day? Do I have all the colors? And so it just is something my kids, anybody’s kids, you can get them used to it, too. Make sure that they have different colors on their plates and things.
Jennifer (22:15)
And so that’s something else, because every color offers another chemical, which offers more nutrition. And so that’s something easy.
Something that I thought was difficult, but once you start, doing it is a lot easier. I remember learning back, I want to say 2000 or 2001, I was reading Dr. Andrew Weil’s book about eating 12 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. And I remember at the time I had learned five a day, right?
Jennifer (22:42)
Five a day may help you survive, but you’re definitely not going to thrive. But 12 a day, I remember thinking, what in the world? How could anyone get 12 fruits and vegetables in a day? And then Dr. Furman, he had a pound of raw and a pound of cooked vegetables every day. So once again, it was like a pound of raw and a pound of cooked. And now I see it’s not that hard, but we grow up like the SAD, standard American diet doesn’t have fruits and vegetables.
Jennifer (23:13)
The five a day would fit in. I can have an apple here, a banana there, an orange, and then maybe some green beans and a small salad. And I have my five a day. But that, like I said, that’s not providing nutrition. It really does have to be the 12 a day. You really need to be getting all those.
Dr Ritamarie (23:30)
No. It’s the bare minimum. Well, I didn’t even get five a day growing up. Unless you counted Kool-Aid as one of the servings or tomato sauce and ketchup as another one of those servings, which you can’t. Those are not actual fruit and vegetables or the pie, the Entenmann’s pies with the strawberries in it. I literally didn’t even have fresh fruit and vegetables growing up.
Dr Ritamarie (23:53)
Everything was from a can except on Thanksgiving and then we had apples and oranges and bananas and that was exciting. But I always asked why do we only have this on Thanksgiving? It’s expensive, and it’s this and that, whatever. So we needed to do that.
And when you talk about autoimmune, you look at somebody like Terry Wahls, Wahls Protocol, that’s what she’s doing. I mean, she had gone through vegetarian, vegan, whatever she went through.
Dr Ritamarie (24:18)
But until she focused on those micronutrients and getting those 12 servings a day, things didn’t shift. So more and more people are becoming aware of that. And there’s ways to do it. You show people how to make smoothies. And you can even make desserts that are loaded with vegetables, so it’s not that hard to do. Where does blood sugar fall in here with autoimmune?
Jennifer (25:43)
That’s a key component as well, is making sure that blood sugar, your hormones are not going to be stable, your thyroid hormones are not going to be stable until blood sugar is balanced as well. And so that is something else that we have to focus on. Early, early on is the blood sugar. So making sure that they’re eating low glycemic fruits, watching starches. We already have eliminated gluten and corn, but something else with the eliminating the gluten, and we have to make sure that they’re not swapping the gluten for gluten-free bread, right?
And so I have so many clients, well, what do I eat with my soup? And like, what do mean, what do I eat with my soup? I have to have crackers or bread with my soup. Well, you can’t just go out and buy gluten-free bread and gluten-free crackers and still eat the way you were eating before. It has to be a complete mindset change there. You know, no, you don’t have to have bread and crackers with that. Or we learn to make some seed crackers or something like that, right?
Dr Ritamarie (25:43)
Right. Or crackers with the veggies in them. And then you get some of your servings.
Jennifer (25:45)
Yes, make the onion bread in the dehydrator with the onions and some vegetables. And so then it’s crispy. It has a little bit of the salt flavor, and you can have that. But I don’t want anyone going out and swapping the gluten, the bread for gluten free bread made with rice flour and potato flour and tapioca flour, because that’s going to spike blood sugar.
That’s going to create inflammation, which is what happens when our blood sugar is too high. And so we have to focus on really looking at whole foods, shopping in the produce aisle, buying as much as we can from the produce aisle, maybe some frozen vegetables, maybe some beans, dried beans, if they’re well tolerated, and foods without a label, and keeping the blood sugar balanced.
Dr Ritamarie (26:30)
Absolutely. I found that to be the case, and it’s the missing link in so many people’s protocols. They’ll be going to a functional medicine doctor, and they’re focusing on detoxification and gut health and all this, but nobody’s really looking at the blood sugar. In the meantime, it could be simple, healthy foods that are causing blood sugar spikes, and that’s thwarting your progress.
So I really want all of us as practitioners, we need to keep that in mind to be in the forefront of this, because it makes a huge difference. And then there was one other thing I was going to ask you.
Going back to the good old probiotics and the bugs. You said that’s right at the beginning, but how does that play into you working with people to help them get under control? And how do you incorporate that stuff into your diet?
Jennifer (27:20)
Right. Yes. And so I think it’s really important even while we’re eliminating these foods, making sure that we’re working on foods that are going to help rebuild the gut flora, putting in those prebiotic type foods, adding in things like a little green banana powder to a smoothie. Some people can tolerate psyllium husk, just different things that can help be a prebiotic, but then we also add probiotics.
We’ll put in yogurt, kimchi, or sauerkraut. I teach clients to make their own yogurt and their own sauerkraut and kimchi, because they don’t realize, you know, I eat yogurt all the time. Well, a Danon yogurt versus a homemade yogurt, there’s no comparison. The Danon, not only is it loaded with sugar, it usually has other chemicals in there, as well. I shouldn’t be on your podcast smearing a commercial name. But if you make it at home, you know exactly what’s in it. You can even decide what type of probiotics are going to be in there.
Jennifer (28:16)
And we teach you how to choose the right probiotics so that we’re working on really replenishing, building up the beneficial microbes as well, and then adding in things so that your body can help create those vitamins and things that are needed to be created in there appropriately. And your whole mood will even change. It changes those gut bugs to change the neurotransmitters as well.
Dr Ritamarie (28:39)
Well, everybody hears about probiotics. Prebiotics might be new to some folks, but postbiotics are what those good bugs produce. And a lot of that of the neurotransmitter precursors, or they actually produce some of the neurotransmitters like GABA. So it really does change the mood when you change the microbes. And you said yogurt. So I want to just be clear for anybody listening, but she said to get off of dairy. How am I going to make my own yogurt without dairy? So let’s address that.
Jennifer (29:09)
Good question, yes. So we make dairy free yogurt. Yes, and so with nuts and seeds. A lot people, right off the bat, they’ll make it with coconut. You can buy coconut yogurt in the stores or cashew or almond, or you can make your own with coconut, dried or fresh coconut. You can buy your own cashews or with nuts and seeds.
Something else that we like to focus on is getting the omega-3 fatty acids, getting those balanced with the omega-6s. Most of your audience has probably heard about the omega-6 seed oils. I need to avoid seed oils. But we can use seeds in the form of hemp seeds and make yogurt with hemp seeds and walnuts, things like that. So they’re high in omega-3s to help with inflammation, which is also something else that happens in autoimmune disease. Lots of inflammation, and we need to cool that inflammation.
Jennifer (29:59)
A lot of people with autoimmune disease have a lot of pain, and it can help with that as well. And so I do like to make yogurt with those combinations, balancing those omega-3s.
Dr Ritamarie (30:10)
And here’s the thing you’ve got to keep in mind is that it doesn’t take long. It’s basically an issue of throwing it in the blender, blend it up. When it stops, you stir in the probiotic powder, you stick it in a controlled temperature somewhere around 98 degrees. So it could be in a dehydrator, it could be in a yogurt maker, it could be on the top of the shelf of the oven when you’ve closed it, when you’ve turned it off and then closed the door. But some of these other things like the InstantPot.
So there’s a lot of ways to actually facilitate making yogurt. And what about people who say, I can’t eat nuts and seeds? What do you say to them?
Jennifer (30:44)
Well, you can make it with vegetables, as well. I like to make mine with sweet potatoes, and you say, but wait, what about blood sugar? But a lot of times with those probiotics, they will eat the sugars. And so it makes it a little more blood sugar friendly, or you can combine it with other vegetables, combine it with some zucchini or something to help lower the glycemic index. The sweet potatoes are going to give you some sweetness, but you can also make a yogurt with the sweet potatoes. I love to do that.
Jennifer (31:13)
A lot of people, when they need to repair the gut lining, they need to focus on eating vitamin A rich foods, boosting the vitamin A in their diet. We don’t like people to take supplemental vitamin A unless we’re testing, because it can build up in the body. But if you eat those orange foods like sweet potatoes, that can help to increase the vitamin A which is necessary for repairing the gut lining. And so I do like to use sweet potatoes, which are not nuts and seeds. And so that can be a good way to get in your yogurt, get in your probiotics that way.
Dr Ritamarie (31:47)
And there’s so much more. And we can have you back for another whole thing on foods, which foods and how to make those foods, because as practitioners, and maybe you’re a self healer listening to this for yourself, but if you are a practitioner, you may be like, I don’t know enough about food to be able to help people with this.
Dr Ritamarie (32:05
And it really is important for you to learn and understand the foods and what nutrients, but how to make those special foods that are geared towards people on special diets, gluten-free or dairy-free or whatever, but are focused on nutrition.
And Jennifer and I are kindred spirits in that we try to get as much goodness packed into something that’s in a package that tastes like, this is my old comfort food, right? We have a whole book on Dried And Gone To Heaven. It’s on making comfort foods, crackers and cookies and candies and pies and all this kind of stuff.
Dr Ritamarie (32:36)
But what people don’t know is how much we sneak in to those things and that’s what people need to learn. And when they learn how easy it is, they go, I don’t have to give up pizza. I could still make pizza, my goodness. I had no idea. Right?
And beyond an autoimmune diet. And I know there’s a lot of autoimmune, there’s autoimmune paleo out there, there’s vegan, there’s a lot of different ways to do it. You have to find what works for you and for your clients. Everybody’s going to be a little bit different in terms of their sensitivities and their microorganisms and their blood sugar sensitivities and all that sort of stuff.
So I’m going to leave with one controversial question. And with all this, you’re talking a lot of plants, and what do you say to these folks out there that are doing YouTube videos and telling people that plants are dangerous, and those phytochemicals are actually dangerous, and they’re danger signals to the body, and we don’t need them?
Jennifer (33:31)
Great. My skin crawls when I hear that actually. So many people are afraid to eat the vegetables, and I go back to beans and grains, lectins are in all of these as well. A lot of it comes down to preparation. As if you’re talking about beans and grains, but these foods are not harmful for everyone. You know, anybody can have a sensitivity to any particular food.
Jennifer (34:03)
I have a nephew who can’t eat apples, and it’s like, what? I’ve never heard of anyone who can’t have apples. He actually has an allergic reaction when he has apples. So anyone can have a sensitivity to something, but that doesn’t mean that that’s harmful for everyone.
And so when people come to me and say, what have you thought about lectins? I can’t eat this, that, and the other, because it has lectins, or I can’t have oxalates and things like that. We can dig in, and we can test as part of the elimination diet.
For the most part, you should be safe to eat these foods. They’re not causing a problem. There are other things that we can rule out. When it comes to meat and carnivore, which is huge right now, meat is highly, highly inflammatory. And if you have an inflamed intestinal tract, you’re already under inflammation. And we don’t eat meat raw. And I don’t want anyone to eat meat raw. But when we cook meat, it’s congealed. Those proteins combine, and they’re very tightly combined.
Jennifer (35:00)
And you have to have strong stomach acid, strong digestive enzymes to be able to break down those meats, so that you can break down into those amino acids, so that you can even use those amino acids. And if you are already inflamed, then that’s something we probably need to boost, help you with absorbing and digesting these nutrients and breaking down these proteins and things like that.
Eating a high meat diet is not going to be beneficial for you. It’s going to create more work. Your body’s going to have to work harder to break down those proteins.
Jennifer (35:30)
And it’s going to create more inflammation, more byproducts in your body that you’re going to have to handle. And so for me, it’s more important that we work on the nutrients, which we get from those colorful fruits and vegetables, get those in as often as we can. And in the best ways we can, like focusing on absorption, juicing, having those green juices, green smoothies, things like that, where our body doesn’t have to work so hard to get those things in. And something we haven’t mentioned at all.
Jennifer (36:00)
Hydration, when you eat a carnivore diet, then you need more water. And so if you’re not already not drinking a lot of water, and you’re eating meat, you’re losing a lot of water, and you need to be drinking even more.
Dr Ritamarie (36:15)
Well, there’s so much and there’s no one right diet that’s exactly right for every person. And that’s why it’s important, you know, as practitioners that we’re really digging in with people, and we’re helping them to customize for them.
You know, her nephew can’t eat apples. I mean, is there a problem with apples, because her nephew can’t? No, it’s not. It’s his body somehow. And there may be some inborn inability to break down the malic acid or who knows what it is in there that causes a reaction. And so there’s going to be those things. And so there may be some foods that you’re going to avoid, but to just eliminate a whole category of foods because someone said that some of their patients got sick from them.
Yes a percentage of the population needs to be avoiding oxalates or down to very low in oxalates. Everybody needs to avoid massive amounts of oxalates, because they latch on to calcium and other minerals. So it’s finding that balance. Where do you fit in the spectrum? People are walking around with food phobia these days. They can’t eat this, because it has lectins. They can’t eat that, because it’s high histamine. They can’t eat that…. And when it comes down to it, what do you have left? Water. But then we can’t agree on what kind of water is best.
Dr Ritamarie (37:24)
It really comes down to understanding how your body works, how your client’s body’s working, asking all the right questions so that you can help them to eliminate the things that are hurting and then consume more of the things that are helping and know that that’s going to shift over time as you get the mechanism working better. So you can eat those foods. I don’t mean that you can go out and eat cotton candy again and drink Kool-Aid and all the bad stuff.
Dr Ritamarie (38:53)
Somebody asked me that the other day, isn’t there some commonalities? I’m like, nobody does well on ultra processed foods. Nobody does well on sugar. Nobody does well on… They’ll say, but my uncle eats a pound of sugar a day, and he is fine. There’s unique people. Everybody’s a little different genetically, but we’re also different in what we grew up eating. My body, having grown up eating nothing but canned vegetables and just very little of it and no whole grains. I didn’t even know what a whole grain was.
You know, just lots of Wonder Bread and Ronzoni macaroni. There I go with another brand name, but that’s what we ate. And my body fell apart in my twenties as a result. And I feel very fortunate that it did, because that’s what got me on this path and where I’m able to have a mass the knowledge and be helping so many people. So any last parting words that you want to leave our practitioners with?
Jennifer (38:48)
Well, first of all, there’s hope. We started talking about autoimmune disease, and you can reverse autoimmune disease. Unfortunately for me, I did have the radioactive iodine, but that doesn’t mean it has to happen for everyone. If we start cleaning up the diet, cleaning up the environment, and looking at what is triggering this autoimmune disease for you, which can be different for everyone, right?
Jennifer (39:14)
So I have the genes for celiac disease, all of them. I had no idea. And so I was a baker. I was baking all these foods all the time and eating them, right? But it didn’t bother me at all. I didn’t have symptoms of celiac disease. I didn’t have digestive problems. It can show up in other areas as well.
And so we have to look and see what is your trigger and find out, but it is possible. It is possible. You just need to make sure that you find someone who is knowledgeable about autoimmune diseases and knowledgeable about the immune system to help you. And so we can save your thyroid, and you don’t have to go through this, and you don’t have to rely on medications for the rest of your life.
Dr Ritamarie (39:53)
Awesome. This has been an amazing conversation. I really, really appreciate you sharing all this. And it just come back to, we really need to understand how the body works in detail so that we can help each person to customize a plan. There is no one autoimmune diet that works for everybody. There is no one anti-inflammatory diet that works for everybody.
And everything we said, somebody can come along and argue with that they’ve seen people who do fine on eating nothing but sugar, who do fine on eating nothing but meat, right? Jennifer’s autoimmune didn’t manifest when she was five years old and was running to the bathroom all the time and had doubling over pain or ADD or whatever. Some it’s ADD and some it’s gluten intolerance shows up as ADD. Some of it shows up as autoimmune. Some of it shows up in constant eczema and skin rashes, right?
It’s all over the map, and we can’t just rely on the conventional medicine diagnostic criteria to say, this person doesn’t have celiac because…, or we tested this person for celiac, so they’re fine with gluten, because there’s non-celiac gluten sensitivity, right? So we just have to keep our minds open, our hearts open, because we really care about helping people to live a better life and be open to new and amazing possibilities.
So Jennifer, I’m thrilled to have you in our community. You’re just a blessing to me and to our whole community. And I thank you. I thank you for all that you do.
Jennifer (41:24)
Thank you so much. Thank you for teaching me.
Dr Ritamarie (41:28)
My pleasure. It’s my mission. So we are the future of healthcare. Jennifer and I and all of you listening who are dedicated to helping people really get to the root cause and are sick and tired of this chasing symptom approach and the misinformation, you have this, here’s a medication, that took away part of her glandular function, and she’s not alone. So we want to be able to put the care back into healthcare.
Right? Put the uniqueness, really identify what this person needs to be able to get them where they’re going. So if you’re ready to take your practice to the next level, visit our site at inemethod.com.
If you want more information about autoimmune and insulin and digestion and all that, we are loaded with information there that is at the blog, et cetera. And let’s together continue this movement to reinvent the healthcare system. We know it needs reinvention, so let’s work together, reinvent it. And until next time, shine on.
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