Dr. Laurie Marbas and Dr. Chris Miller from Plant Based TeleHealth answer live Q&A questions about autoimmune disease. Dr. Miller discusses how diet alone was not enough for her to find healing.
Questions Answered
- (02:28) – Can you please address hypothyroidism on your call today?
- (10:12) – Talking about rheumatoid arthritis and molecular mimicry.
- (15:25) – What about rheumatoid arthritis specifically?
- (21:37) – Discussion about psoriasis?
- (23:18) – Is it important always to remove gluten?
- (24:35) – Can thyroid disease patients potentially get off Synthroid?
- (25:37) – Can epilepsy improve with a WFPB diet?
- (26:54) – Can we get adequate nutrition with a diet comprised solely of vegetables and fruits, eliminating legumes and grains, add nuts and seeds?
- (31:36) – What about psoriatic arthritis?
- (32:18) – Talking about nightshade vegetables.
- (34:36) – Dr. Miller discusses the details of overcoming Lupus.
- (43:08) – How does altitude (above 8,000 feet) effect autoimmune disease?
- (45:15) – Discussing Multiple Sclerosis, MS.
- (52:07) – Can you recommend a good probiotic?
- (52:07) – What can we expect to improve with minimal hypothyroidism?
- (56:43) – How can diet influence ankylosing spondylitis?
- (58:51) – Is it okay to begin a whole food, plant-based diet while still a medication?
- (1:02:29) – Our immune system and COVID-19
Complete Transcript
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(00:07)
I'm Dr. Laurie Marbas, co-founder of Plant Based TeleHealth. I'd like to welcome you to the first of our weekly live Q&A webinars. This week, we focused on autoimmune disease. Dr. Chris Miller actually shares her story of lupus. She shares how a whole food, plant-based diet wasn't enough to actually heal her. But she goes into depth about all the different details and steps she took to actually find healing. We answer many different questions from our audience and this is where I'd like to invite you to also share in the comments below what you'd like to hear in future webinars. The webinars occur every Sunday afternoon, 2 PM, Mountain Standard Time, or 4 PM, Eastern Standard Time. So please comment below and we're looking forward to meeting you.
Narrator
(00:52)
We are making plant-based lifestyle medicine available to everyone who desires it. With telemedicine, we are removing barriers that prevent many people from accessing this type of care. Lifestyle medicine promotes healthy behaviors and when adopted, individuals can expect improvement and, in many cases, reversal of chronic disease.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:12)
Our bodies heal, so when we do this properly, when we remove all the toxins, and triggers, and everything that's worsening of us, our bodies want to heal. It's what they do. They're designed to heal ourselves. If we cut ourselves, they heal. And I knew this inherently, so that's been my journey for the past several years. And so I finally reached a point where I'm so much better and I don't need those medications and I can finally feel like I have my life back.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:36)
And really, I'm so grateful because right now, with COVID-19, it's really scary and it seems to be affecting people with weaker immune systems more than others. And so I'm just really grateful that I've been able to strengthen my immune system. So I feel like I have my army there to protect me if I were to get exposed and that's something that I want to share with others so that we all have our best chance, and we can get through this, and do just fine, and get on with our lives. So thank you for letting me be here today and I look forward to getting to talk to you guys and answer your questions.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(02:08)
That's fabulous. So do you guys have any questions? Looks like we got our first question from Andrea. She says, “Can you please address hypothyroidism on your call today?” So can you tell us a little bit about thyroid health, and food choices, and inflammation, things like that, Chris?
Dr. Chris Miller
(02:24)
Yeah, so thyroid is an autoimmune disease and there's a couple certain specific different things that are unique to the thyroid, I guess I would say. And so with the thyroid, first of all, we want to just have good thyroid health in general. And so that, again, brings us to something like eating anti-inflammatory foods and those tend to be our plants, of course. Foods that are rich in fiber. Foods that are rich in colorful phytonutrients, antioxidants and are known to be anti-inflammatory. Pro-inflammatory foods that we know of are foods that are high in saturated fats, trans fats and that's found in baked goods, processed foods, and animal foods, including animal meat and dairy products.
Dr. Chris Miller
(03:14)
So when we remove those pro-inflammatory foods and we really focus on the anti-inflammatory, fiber-rich, antioxidant-rich, colorful fruits and vegetables, and whole grains, and legumes, right there, we've already done a major thing for our thyroid and that would create an anti-inflammatory diet and the nutrients that it needs. From there, the thyroid needs a few specific nutrients. So we want to make sure that we're not iron deficient and that's a simple blood test that people can look and see. You can do simple screening tests, like if you're anemic or not. If your blood counts are normal, then we're not so worried without having to always measure the iron in people. We want to make sure we're not iron deficient. We want to make sure we have sufficient zinc. So zinc we get from eating things like pumpkin seeds, nuts, and seeds, and legumes. And those are rich sources, some whole grains like quinoa are rich sources of zinc, and some people need a little extra zinc as well from a supplement.
Dr. Chris Miller
(04:10)
And we want to make sure that we get a little selenium and we get that from… Brazil nuts are known to have selenium and selenium is found in, well, the Brazil nuts. It's also found in a few other nuts, and seeds, and legumes in lower amounts. And we want to make sure that we have enough iodine. And if we're not eating a salt diet where we're eating iodized salt, because that's the primary source of iodine for people, we often do recommend a little bit of a supplement for people to mix with the iodine. So these essential nutrients, in addition to the colorful fruits, and vegetables, and whole grains, and legumes that we get in a whole food, plant-based diet, will help ensure that our thyroid has optimal health.
Dr. Chris Miller
(04:50)
There's another thing though that really contributes to thyroid disease and to autoimmune thyroid disease, that is, and that is our stress. So stress, if you look at the thyroid, stress affects it in many different levels. It affects whether it's able to pick up the nutrients, whether it's able to incorporate the nutrients or whether it's able to secrete T for the thyroid hormone, and whether it's able to convert it into T3. So always, when I talk to my patients and what I want to say now is so many people, their thyroid, they're going to be hypothyroid, their thyroids will going to be acting up and when we really work on changing our diet, and working on our stress, and relaxing, and getting exercise, and changing our mindset from this worried, stress to a more positive outlook mindset, we see a lot of changes in thyroid function.
Dr. Chris Miller
(05:43)
So those are some basic tips about the thyroid that I like to share with people. Laurie, I don't know if you have anything else that you add.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(05:52)
Yeah. For those of you who know my story, I've been hypothyroid since the birth of my second child and he will be 24 this month and my husband just turned 50 today. So we're getting up there in age. But what was so cool is when I went to a whole food, plant-based diet in 2012, and that's 15 years into being a hypothyroid individual, suffering individual, just thinking that I would always have escalating numbers, need to take more medication, my thyroid actually got better, not a hundred percent, but I use a much less amount of medications than I did before and that was huge to me because I was like, “Wow, 15 years into hypothyroid disease and I still had some functioning thyroid left that was able… ”
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(06:44)
For me, when I stopped the train from beating up my poor thyroid by changing my dietary habits and that was the only medicine I take, and still that's the only one I take, I mean, that was phenomenal to me to tell how much my body really wants to heal and I didn't realize how much damage was I was doing because I didn't have a weight issue. I felt fine. Well, I thought I felt fine. I have way more energy now than I even did 30 years ago. But there's also some questions people have about goitrogenic type foods or they're worried about soy foods and certain types of vegetables. Soy is still a safe thing to consume. I would say you definitely don't want to maybe consume three to five servings a day. But it's very healthy for you, it's not going to be an issue, unless you're marginally taking the iodine.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(07:28)
And with your iodine, you want to do about 150 micrograms per day. So you can get that in a supplement. Some people choose to eat some type of kelp or something. The problem is it's really difficult to say how much you're consuming because you don't want to consume too much, but you don't want to consume too little. But that's just some thoughts there to think about. And if you're a pregnant woman, they expect you to have that level in your urine. So just something to think about. Eat those fruits and veggies, eat the soy, eat your broccoli. Flaxseed can be goitrogenic. Eat it. Just make sure you're getting an iodine really secure amounts daily.
Dr. Chris Miller
(08:11)
There's a couple more things that I can… I see [inaudible 00:08:15] milk could factor in hypothyroid. Milk is a factor actually in all autoimmune diseases, including hypothyroid. It's highly pro-inflammatory, the level of the gut and the microbiome, and that's the first level of the immune system. So just taking milk out alone can help many people with autoimmune diseases. That tends to be one of the major trigger foods and that includes all dairy – milk products, ice cream, butter, yogurt, all of them. So cream… I often have people are like “Oh, I just have a little bit of cream every day,” but even that little bit, unfortunately, is enough to cause that inflammation and worsen autoimmune.
Dr. Chris Miller
(08:51)
And another thing that people shouldn't know if people are hypothyroid, oftentimes, not always, definitely not always, but often, gluten can be a trigger for it. And so what it is, is there's an antibody that towards gluten, when people are eating gluten daily that is very similar to what the thyroid looks like. So when people start making antibodies towards gluten, they're now making to the thyroid and that worsens it. So usually for people with hypothyroidism, autoimmune hypothyroid, I take them off of gluten, dairy, initially.
Dr. Chris Miller
(09:24)
And as for this story about soy, I definitely keep them on soy. Soy is actually protective against thyroid cancer and, as Laurie said, it has been shown to be safe as long as your iodine is in a good level. So just like she said, but it is actually really protective. So you want to eat the unprocessed soy in the form of at edamame, soybeans, tempeh, tofu and maybe a little bit of soy milk. Beyond that, it's too processed to actually have health benefits anymore. So like about a serving a day if you like it or something, just like what Laurie said, I agree with that. And so yeah, those are the few things I wanted to add to hypothyroidism.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(10:05)
And that's great because is not hypothyroidism the number one out immune disease, I think, in the country?
Dr. Chris Miller
(10:10)
I think it is. Yeah.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(10:12)
Yeah. And, Chris, as we get to this next question too, I think it'll also… the question is, can you talk about rheumatoid arthritis? You mentioned it a little bit. Can you describe what molecular mimicry is? Because that's when you're describing the gluten and the thyroid looks similar. Can you just explain exactly what that is and what's going on in the body? This is the basis of autoimmune disease all together.
Dr. Chris Miller
(10:34)
Yeah, thank you for that question about rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is a very common autoimmune disease. Basically, what I have learned is that all autoimmune diseases… well, I shouldn't say all. [inaudible 00:10:46] all. But autoimmune diseases tend to start in the same place, which is our gut. That is where the majority our immune system is because think about it, that's the major exposure we have to the foreign environment. All the food we're eating, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks all the time, every single day is exposing us to possible environment attacks and to trigger exposures. And so right below our inner gut, we have the microbiome there, which are bacteria, trillions of bacteria there and those bacteria are there to protect us. They are detoxifying food, they're digesting food, they're making hormones and enzymes.
Dr. Chris Miller
(11:25)
And when our microbiome gets damaged, whether that's from a fiber less diets, so if we're eating animal products, if we're in processed foods, we're not eating fiber, and fiber is their food, it's their fuel and so a fiber less diet will damage them. Whether we take antibiotics ever in our lives, from when we're kids to all the way to now, whether we take things like ibuprofen, steroids, like prednisone, whether we're stressed out, if we sleep less than six hours a day For many nights in a row, all of these things, there are so many factors that damage our microbiome.
Dr. Chris Miller
(11:56)
Once the microbiome is damaged, its job is to protect the lining of the gut, which is called the endothelium, and it's one cell layer second, that's it. So if the microbiome is damaged, it's no longer protecting that endothelium and the endothelium could get damaged. It starts to get broken and it starts to separate. And so instead of being nice, tight cell side by side, it's now that little damage, little leaks in it and proteins and bacteria that aren't supposed to be able to go across are able to move across our gut. It's called it's called endothelial hypermobility. And it's when the… not hypermobility. What am I trying to say here? Basically, it's leaky gut. It's when-
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(12:43)
Poor junctions.
Dr. Chris Miller
(12:44)
Yeah, they're able to go across there and they shouldn't be able to. And right underneath there, that's where 70% of our immune system is Living on purpose, to be there to protect us. So the immune system is right there. So when we get these damaged guts, the immune system is right there and it's seeing these foreign particles come through that should not be coming through between the cells. And so it gets lit up. I like to think of it as like police officers that are working 24 hours, seven days a week and they don't get a rest. So people are firing at them. So they're firing, and they're firing, and they're trying to keep everyone safe, they're firing. But after day after day after day, they're exhausted, so they start making mistakes.
Dr. Chris Miller
(13:26)
And so they now start thinking that these foreign proteins are foreigners because they don't know what they are in there, so they start attacking them. They're making antibodies to them. They're trying to get rid of them, they're trying to protect us, which is their job to protect us. But they don't know that our bodies just have leaks and that really isn't foreign and so they start attacking it. And so what happens is they attack these foreign proteins and then they start making more cells to attack similar ones and that is the molecular mimicry where some of our own protein in our body mimics the protein that are coming across in these leaky guts. And so that's the thyroid. In lupus, which is what I have, that may be the double stranded DNA, the DNA inside of the cells are looking like some of the foreign proteins that are coming across in my leaky gut, or in rheumatoid arthritis, the proteins that are coming across are leading to antibodies that mimic the proteins in joints and so it starts to attack the joints.
Dr. Chris Miller
(14:30)
And so in all different autoimmune disease, it could be the thyroid, it could be in Crohn's diseases, the gut itself. In MS, it might be the brain, the tissues, the fat surrounding the neurons in the brain. And so that's how autoimmune diseases are formed and that's why it's so important what we put into our mouths. So we want to heal that leaky gut. That's the first step of healing an autoimmune disease and we want to repair that microbiome so it becomes protective again so we get that nice, tight junctions, the cells are closed up, the leaky gut is closed up, and we can eat food again and not have these symptoms and our inflammation, the immune system that's right below, quiets down. And that's how we have a low inflammatory state and we start to see the improvement of autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, including lupus, including hypothyroid, whatever autoimmune disease we might be facing.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(15:25)
Fantastic. We have additional questions. Everyone, instead of putting the questions in the chat, move them to the Q&A tab. Some people are doing Q&A, some are doing chat. So what I'll do is I'm going to disable chat. We'll still answer those questions that are here but if you'll put them all in the Q&A section that makes it a lot easier for us. But could you talk to us about specifically rheumatoid arthritis?
Dr. Chris Miller
(15:48)
Anything unique to rheumatoid arthritis?
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(15:50)
Yeah.
Dr. Chris Miller
(15:51)
With rheumatoid arthritis, people, I start with the diet just like what I just described. And so we would go with a plant-based whole food diet to start with. And depending on how many food sensitivities that person has, we may have to do an elimination diet with it. So that would mean it's more of a vegetable heavy diet instead of allowing all the beans, and the grains, and the whole grains, unprocessed grains. We can we condense it down to a lot more vegetables because those are what heal autoimmune diseases, typically, and people who have food sensitivities, it's often to some of the other, the higher protein foods, even plant-based foods, the higher protein plant-based foods, which are the beans and the whole grains.
Dr. Chris Miller
(16:36)
And so we may do lots of things like green juices for people with a lot of food sensitivities who have to get all of these antigens, these triggers out for a little bit. Green juices, which are vegetable-based juices. We might need green smoothies, which is a way to flood the body with lots and lots of greens, and fluid so they get nice and hydrated. And we might do lots of green salads and with a little bit of cooked veggies, maybe in forms of vegetable soups or steamed veggies, things like that. And so we do a vegetable heavy to start with. And then we start adding some of the beans back in the grains back in over time. So that's one thing that I do for rheumatoid arthritis.
Dr. Chris Miller
(17:15)
Another real important thing is working on stress and we're going to talk about that I think a little bit more. But stress is such a trigger. And that was one thing for me. I did all these dietary changes, but as long as I was stressed out, and worried, and had all this anxiety about my disease and my illness, I wasn't getting better. And stress became the major thing for me where I had to work on my mindset. I had to do my meditation. I had to learn how to meditate. I had to go out for walks. I had to start doing yoga. I had I started doing things like coding books and reading books for fun and taking baths. Things I never did. I never thought I had time to do, it turned out to be so important for me.
Dr. Chris Miller
(17:54)
So I really work on that with patients and you can evaluate yourself. I think we all know how much stress we're feeling every day. And I always ask people, what are you doing to actively relax and calm down your immune system? Because it actually directly decreases cortisol. We have over 100 stress hormones and every one of those stress hormones is lighting up our immune system. And so we're on all these, I was on all these immune system depressing medications and, at the same time, I have these stressful thoughts and I'm lighting up my immune system all day long, basically, because I'm thinking of them all day long. So that's a huge trigger for it.
Dr. Chris Miller
(18:29)
And then another thing specific to rheumatoid arthritis is joint work. So when our joints get swollen, and red, and hot, and painful, we really want to move them. Our joints are meant to move and be lubricated. We want to increase blood flow to them. Often, joints are in the knees, the fingers, the wrist, the feet. So we start real gentle with daily little bits of movements and there's actually really good study supporting yoga for rheumatoid arthritis. People did a yoga class three days a week for one hour for eight weeks, so two-month yoga class, and had 50% reduction in their amount of payment that they were going through.
Dr. Chris Miller
(19:12)
In my mind, because I read that study that's why I went to yoga, I thought, “Oh my god, really, I had to go to yoga?” So I started yoga, three days a week for at least an hour and I noticed the same thing and I thought while I was moving and lubricating my joints, and some of it hurt, I couldn't do everything, but I just did what I could do. And so it was painful at first and it really wasn't that fun, to be honest. But another thing it does is it focuses you. For that hour, I was just so focused on trying to hold a pose or trying to breathe the way they told me to breathe and that in itself, I think, was helping my immune system down regulate itself. It was teaching me things that I didn't know. And so I think I can understand now why those Studies, why yoga truly is so helpful for rheumatoid arthritis. And the study was done for rheumatoid arthritis patients, specifically with their joint pains.
Dr. Chris Miller
(20:02)
And two other things, I guess I would say, specific to autoimmune people as far as supplements go, I tend to put people on a probiotic just at the beginning, not forever, because our guts tend to be so dysfunctional. And if we have this many food sensitivities, and leaky gut, and we're having our inflammation so high, I tend to use a probiotic twice a day for a couple months, at least at the beginning. And the second thing is vitamin D3. I now live up here in New England, I just moved in New Hampshire six months ago, and the sun in the winter, anything north of Boston, we know that there's not enough sunlight. So a low D3 actually worsens your immune state too. You don't want to be super high, but you want to be in the optimal level just have immune support. So those are two things that I would definitely pay attention to. I think that's rheumatoid arthritis.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(20:52)
Yeah, that's fantastic. And I think rheumatoid arthritis is probably one of the most quickly responding autoimmune diseases to a plant-based diet, at least that's been my experience with patients.
Dr. Chris Miller
(21:02)
No, absolutely. Yeah, it's totally true. And Laurie, I hope we can start getting data when we work with people on our website.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(21:08)
Yeah.
Dr. Chris Miller
(21:10)
It is true. Rheumatoid arthritis, once the leaky gut heals with dietary changes, people tend to do really well. So we just want to get that good healthy microbiome in, we want to remove the pro-inflammatory foods, get starting our fiber rich foods, and people tend to do really well. So yeah, if anyone with rheumatoid arthritis wants to work with Laurie or I and if you're one of our states, we're so happy to help you, guide you through the steps to get you to feeling better.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(21:37)
Absolutely. And another question here is how about psoriasis?
Dr. Chris Miller
(21:42)
Great question. So there's been some articles actually came out about psoriasis in the International Journal Disease Reversal and Prevention and there's been some good studies that people going on a whole food, plant-based diet who have psoriasis and the diet was also gluten-free and anti-inflammatory. And what that means is avoiding the food triggers, like I talked about, people have certain food triggers like gluten, and when they went on this whole food, plant-based diet… and another big trigger for psoriasis tends to be sugar. So people are eating still maple syrup, especially where I am in New Hampshire, people are still eating maple syrup but they're doing this diet, but that in itself can be a trigger for people to rise. In addition to sugar, it was the flours, the processed flours. And I find that whereas oatmeal, people can do great with whole oats, like steel-cut oats or old-fashioned oats, when they start grinding it into flour and say baking it into muffins, even that can become too much sugar and their psoriasis starts to flare.
Dr. Chris Miller
(22:49)
So whole food, plant-based diet means intact whole grains, without any sugar, that's the anti-inflammatory part of the diet and then just, yeah, focusing other veggies, and fruits, and their stress, and their movement and great relief with psoriasis. In fact, I have several patients right now, I think, Laurie, you probably do too, but their psoriasis patches completely go to either real light pink are completely resolved.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(23:13)
Yeah, majority of them disappear.
Dr. Chris Miller
(23:16)
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, there's good odds with that one too.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(23:18)
Absolutely. Next question. Is it important always to remove gluten from any autoimmune disease to begin with?
Dr. Chris Miller
(23:28)
Yes. So that's a tricky one. The data so far right now is not necessarily supporting that all autoimmune diseases need to remove gluten. So I want to say that right off the bat if we're following evidence-based medicine. But that being said, when I work with my patients, I've noticed that gluten often is a trigger and what we do know about gluten is gluten can worsen leaky gut. It can cause loss of the tight junctions to form, to no longer be formed, I guess I should say. And so, yes, gluten is something I take out in all my patients when we're starting the diet and that's what I call part of the anti-inflammatory healing diet.
Dr. Chris Miller
(24:03)
A normal healthy person who goes plant-based who's doing it to reverse diabetes or heart disease, I don't take gluten out. I think it's a wonderful healthy food, eat whole grains. But an autoimmune person, I definitely would take it out at least for three to six months probably while they're healing. Once they're healed, they can try to reintroduce it and some patients can tolerate it back in just fine, other people can't. So yes, if you have an autoimmune disease and you're struggling with and you haven't got the results that you want with a whole food, plant-based diet, I would definitely take it out in and see if you notice a difference.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(24:35)
Perfect. And then we had another question about the thyroid, which we did discuss at the beginning of the conversation, and yes, you can potentially get all Synthroid, I would say. Chris, we didn't address that specifically. Someone is asking you know, Hashimoto's, which is what I have, I improved, not able to get off meds, but some people early in the stages of Hashimoto's I've seen actually remove themselves from medication. Has that been your experience?
Dr. Chris Miller
(25:00)
Exactly my experience. So the thyroid is unique in that, and it is with all autoimmune diseases, once you get end organ damage, you can't really repair it as far as we know, although we're starting to see some regeneration so I should never say never, right? We'll hope for that. But in general, once you have end organ damage, so if the thyroid is damaged… what you're looking for is anything that's not end organ damage and you can start to get that to repair itself, but quite often, people still need their Synthroid. But they can cut it down, just like Laurie did, and [inaudible 00:25:33] actually get off it. I've seen it too, definitely.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(25:37)
Yeah, I'm definitely lower, but it's many decades. And then we had a question regarding epilepsy. Someone mentioned that they had an improvement, fewer seizures. is there connection with epilepsy? I mean, this isn't an autoimmune disease. Epilepsy is a difficult thing, but if you think about decreasing inflammation, I would say that would maybe be the start of maybe part of an improvement. But I don't know of any studies. I haven't really looked into that myself. Chris, do you have any ideas about this?
Dr. Chris Miller
(26:04)
I don't know the studies either, but I have worked with patients with epilepsy who went to whole food, plant-based and actually do feel better. And just like you said, I think that has a lot to do with overall health status. So once you're feeding the colorful phytonutrients and antioxidants, you're putting on inflammation and you're fueling the body with what it needs. And then you remove things like caffeine, and alcohol, and triggers. You remove the triggers, and you improve your sleep, and you start filling each cell with the nourishment that it needs to be its optimal, healthiest self. I feel like I've seen it with my own patients. I don't know what the studies say either.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(26:42)
Yeah, that would that'd be interesting though just to dive into the neurology type thing. That might be a good… another discussion.
Dr. Chris Miller
(26:52)
Yeah, I think it's interesting.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(26:54)
And we have another question. Does the patient get adequate nutrition initially with a diet comprised solely of vegetables and fruits, I.e., eliminating legumes and grains, add nuts and seeds as well?
Dr. Chris Miller
(27:06)
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely. That's a great question and yeah, we wonder that. First of all, these are short term diet plans and they're healing plans, so we know that we can do well with that and there's different ways we can do it. So if we do juice fast, people can do that a week easily. Well, I shouldn't say easily, it's not easy, but you can do a week without feeling any malnutrition. People water fast too, but we're not talking about that quite yet. As far as fruits and vegetables, yeah, there's a lot of people who are highly inflamed with many food sensitivities who have really severe autoimmune diseases or inflammatory states and we'll do all raw diets at that point.
Dr. Chris Miller
(27:47)
And what that is, is when you eat it all raw, It's the highest amount of living phytoenzymes and phytonutrients that you lose some of those when you cook them. And it's the easiest to digest because it's still in its raw state. And so people on an all-raw diet includes raw greens, trying to aim to eat at least a pound a day of raw greens, and then any other raw vegetables, raw fruits, in addition to those raw vegetables, and nuts and seeds, about half a cup a day. Yeah, people can go for on a diet like that for years and do well on it.
Dr. Chris Miller
(28:28)
I myself when I was so sick with kidney disease, I did an all-raw diet for five months. Anecdotally, I had a low protein in my blood because I was peeing out protein because I had lupus nephritis and so my kidneys were leaky and they were peeing out protein. I saw that in my doctor, actually, who did not know about whole food, plant-based diet, he's an internal medicine doctor who's very kind, but he just didn't know. And he told me I need to eat animal protein because he knew I was vegan and I said, “Oh my gosh, I can't eat animal protein.” That'll kill me because protein is really hard, animal protein is really hard in the kidneys to break it down because of the nitrate group on it. And so I was freaked out that he even told me that. I was like, “This is horrible advice. He obviously doesn't understand how the body works.” And this is me the patient, not me, the doctor, but me the patient. I was panicking. I was like, “This is terrible. I can't follow that advice.”
Dr. Chris Miller
(29:26)
And so I then worked with another physician who helped guide me and I did an all-raw diet for five months, just eating basically vegetables with a little bit of fruit and flax seeds, chia seeds, and nuts and seeds, and that was it. Nothing but that five months. And I did smoothies, I did juices, I did salads, I snacked on carrots. I reached My blood in three months and my protein was normal. So it had gone up, my blood protein, it was in a total normal level. My albumin was normal. It had corrected.
Dr. Chris Miller
(29:58)
And what that means is I wasn't eating animal protein. There's such a balance in our bodies. It's not just what we're taking in, it's how we're losing it to or excluding it out, whether we're picking it out or we're not. Many people don't digest it and they're not absorbing it. So actually, going whole food, plant-based improves their absorption of animal protein and heals the gut. Anywhere from the esophagus, the stomach, all the intestines, all the way down to the colon, and even the kidneys, as I just showed you, but anywhere you heal, it can significantly improve your protein status.
Dr. Chris Miller
(30:30)
There's bodybuilders who are in these plant-based diets eating just the vegetables. So there's many different ways we can build it to make sure that you're getting enough nutrition. And even with people on diets like this, when I work with people, I can assess them, if they're feeling fatigue at the beginning it can be withdrawn. There's a whole lot of reasons why people have fatigue. But after going a couple weeks into it, that's where we see energy improving. So yeah, we can do just fine. But the ideal diet for long term is to have a more diverse microbiome. Diversity is key to long term health and longevity. And so once we've healed our autoimmune, the major inflammation, we really do want to start to bring in things, I think, like grains and legumes to really diversify our microbiome to give that disease protection from. We can go for a while without it.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(31:19)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think beans are the one food associated with longevity around the world. So as Chris said, for a short-term, it healed your kidneys, allowing you to turn off the faucet so you weren't losing any more, but you were obviously getting enough protein from plants.
Dr. Chris Miller
(31:35)
Absolutely. Absolutely. There's [crosstalk 00:31:36].
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(31:36)
Excellent. And so the next question from Mary Thomas, if I think it's Emory Thomas from Florida, who I know well, what about psoriatic arthritis?
Dr. Chris Miller
(31:47)
Great question. Psoriatic arthritis affects the joints and it's a form of psoriasis. Psoriasis can be in the skin, causing rashes and plaques, or it can be in the joints. And so it also responds quite well to a whole food, plant-based diet, just like what we talked about with psoriasis. So going for the anti-inflammatory healing, whole food, plant-based diet, which is removing gluten, and eating lots of extra vegetables and fruits, and a fiber rich diet and you should see some results with that as well.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(32:18)
And before we get to the next question, can you just talk a little bit about nightshades vegetables? Because some people may need to remove those as well, but not everybody but just a few.
Dr. Chris Miller
(32:28)
Yep, good question. Thank you for bringing that up. So you'll see a lot on the internet about nightshade vegetables and what the Nightshade vegetables are, it's tomatoes, eggplant, white potatoes.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(32:43)
Bell peppers.
Dr. Chris Miller
(32:43)
Bell peppers, goji berries, those are some-
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(32:46)
And paprika.
Dr. Chris Miller
(32:48)
And paprika, right. Everything in the pepper family and all the spicy peppers, unfortunately, as well. So those are the nightshades and what it is is the nightshades have a protein and that can actually trigger people's immune system and they can lead to joint pains. It's known for that. The data shows I think about 10% of people with inflammatory arthritis have reaction to nightshade vegetables. So that means 90% of people don't. So 10%. And what I found in my own practice and experience is it's just like other food sensitivities. Some people have a reaction and some people don't. So you may at the beginning, if you're not getting… I typically don't take it out anymore on everyone right at the beginning because I find more people can eat them than not and they're such healing foods. If you can eat tomatoes, I want you to eat tomatoes. They're really anti-inflammatory and good for you. If you can eat eggplant, eat eggplant. But those 10% of people will need to remove it.
Dr. Chris Miller
(33:47)
So if you find that you're not getting the results you want, you'll want to do a trial, do three months, maybe take out all the nightshades and you can also start with taking them all out. So at any point, do that trial. But for me, again, a doctor told me, “Don't eat nightshades, don't eat nightshades,” so I didn't eat nightshades and for about two years, I avoided all of those and I just kept reading about how nutritious these foods are. So I thought, you know what, I'm going to try it because I don't know. And not that many people react to it. I don't know if I do or not. So I tried tomatoes and I did fine. In fact, I feel great. And then I add the peppers the peppers and I felt great. So after all that… and I had a lot of joint pains. So it was not a trigger for me and I'm really glad I reintroduced them back in.
Dr. Chris Miller
(34:27)
But that's a great question, Laurie. Anyone with any joint pains who aren't getting the results, we start to look at food triggers and there are certain ones, such as the nightshades that can be can be a trigger.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(34:36)
And this next question goes back to your own story. Would you please elaborate on your lupus story and tell us about the additional steps you took in addition to a whole food, plant-based diet to improve your condition?
Dr. Chris Miller
(34:47)
Yeah, thank you for asking that. I was excited when I learned about whole food, plant-based diet that people were able to reverse autoimmune, and I knew I would get better and I was so determined, and I was beyond excited about this. I just jumped in it with both feet forward, and changed my diet, and I never went back, and it didn't get better. I mean, I lost some weight and the inflammation went down, so that was amazing and I wasn't complaining about that, but I still had joint pains. My lupus affected my lungs. I had pleurisy, so it hurt me to breathe, it was around the sack of my heart. I had pericarditis, so it hurt me to lay down. It was in my kidneys, so my blood pressure shut up and I was peeing out that protein I talked about. It was in my joints and it would move. It would it would be in my elbow, and my knee, and my Achilles tendon, and my hands all the time. I mean, it was terrible and it didn't go away with the whole plant-based diet.
Dr. Chris Miller
(35:40)
I was so determined that you look online you see all these people reversing their autoimmune disease in three months and oh my god, my health is back. I was like, “What the heck, what am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong?” And so I kept tweaking my diet and I started to realize when I ate certain foods, not the nightshades, I did fine with those, but if I ate certain foods, even plant-based foods, I would flare. So I would get worse joint pains or worse pleurisy when I was breathing and so things like brown rice, I couldn't eat brown rice. I couldn't eat oats. I couldn't eat beans. And that's why I take that out with a lot of my patients. I find a lot of patients early on when their guts are so leaky that they can't tolerate these foods. And so that was exactly what was happening to me.
Dr. Chris Miller
(36:20)
So it took me a while because nobody really guided me. They just said, “Oh, you got to go whole food, plant-based. You'll get better, you'll get better.” So I started removing those and even then, I was doing these green smoothies and when I was doing the raw diet, I still realized I didn't feel great. I still had joint aches, I still had it, and so I started juicing. When I did the green juices, which are filled with things like kale or bok choy or broccoli, they have a little bit of green apple, celery, cucumber, sometimes carrots, lemon, ginger, turmeric. That's my basic go-to green juice, but it depends on what have in my fridge also. But I would make these juices and I would drink it and within a day of having green juices, my inflammation would go down. And so I knew it was related to what I ate. I knew it. All this terrible pain and symptoms, it was my food. So I was so sure of that, but I couldn't figure out how to overcome that.
Dr. Chris Miller
(37:15)
So I started incorporating these one day a week of juicing for three days once a month of juicing, which is not easy. So when I work with my patients, and they complain, I get it. You're hungry, you're cranky, you can't think well, you don't get a lot done. So it's not easy to juice, but what's great about is how good you feel. After I juice for a day, my inflammation and my body's just like, “Ah, thank god.” It's amazing how fast it heals me. And so I started doing that more often. So that's one trick that I use. And from there, we just slowly bring back in the vegetables. And when I do that type of diet, and I still do, today was a day of juicing, so Sundays are my day I just have juice, and it really, really helped me. So I do that. That's one thing that I do.
Dr. Chris Miller
(37:57)
And then another thing that I had to do was really work on my stress, like I talked about. I was so stressed out and maybe because I'm a doctor, maybe it's because who I am, probably both, but I know the complications of lupus, I know what can happen and I saw it happening myself and I was panicking inside my head. It was like it was always there on my shoulder and I know it might be with you too. Even in a good mood, when you're having a good day, you still know you have this terrible autoimmune disease. And so I had to start learning to break free from that and disassociate myself from the disease. So I picked up things like… I couldn't even meditate because my mind would just go right back to how terrible my life was. And so I had to start with things like coloring books and drawing, doing puzzles. Just simple basic things where I focused on that instead of me and that helped.
Dr. Chris Miller
(38:42)
From there, I was able to jump into visualizing and listening to audio tapes for meditation. And then from there, into meditation. And now I do meditate. I've been able to break free and learn that I'm not the disease and my body is different. My story is different. I can't expect the same results. In gratitude, in journaling, and I really played with a lot of this. I studied mind-body, I studied meditation, I now do yoga regularly. So that was very, very important to me. And I would say a lot of people talk about whole food, plant-based diets and whenever I hear people talking, I think that's all great, but it's not enough. For many of us, that's not enough. The mind-body part is so crucial and anxiety, and maybe past traumas, maybe things that happened when we were kids, they call them aces, which is acute childhood events that people have.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(39:38)
Trauma.
Dr. Chris Miller
(39:38)
Yeah, and it's any trauma that they have as a kid that affects us when we're adults. And so a lot of us with autoimmune disease have things like this, we may not even realize it and so we have to deal with that too. So that's a second really important thing. And the third really important thing that I also had to work on is sleep. I was an emergency room doctor, I stayed up all night. I used to drink a lot of caffeine, now I don't. So I had to teach myself how to sleep again, which took a long time. It wasn't easy at all.
Dr. Chris Miller
(40:07)
And so I built this whole plan where I think of it like our bodies, it's a terrain, it's this environment and when you put in everything that's good, and loving, and kind, and beautiful to your body, it heals, and it grows, and it becomes what it's supposed to be doing. And that is food. Absolutely that's food. But it's so much more. It's our thoughts, every thought. It's how we sleep and allow ourselves to repair. It's how much we move it. It's how much we connect with others. It's a whole meal you that builds a healthy body. And so I really focused a lot on that and it's helped. Every step that I've done has really, really helped me, so I don't downplay any one of them.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(40:54)
So I've been a friend for Chris for the majority of her journey with lupus and I can't tell you how much when she's grown as a person, but just her knowledge base. And so I've seen Chris try different protocols that are out there and get worse. But when Chris actually looked at the time as a doctor and investigated her own case, she has done so phenomenally well. And that's what gives her such a unique position in this type of Plant Based TeleHealth to help others who have really tough cases or even those who don't have cases. I always told Chris, I said, “Chris, you're going through this really difficult journey for a reason,” and I think we're at that point. From the very beginning, Chris was like, “Why am I not getting better?” It's because you have a place. There's a future that you're going to help people with your journey. And it's such a wonderful thing to be a part of where she is now to see that. So Chris, thank you for sticking in there really just sharing your story. We just so appreciate you.
Dr. Chris Miller
(41:55)
Thank you, Laurie. It's always my pleasure because I see people like me struggling and we can understand why. We're not getting the same results as others and we take it on ourselves, like what's wrong with me, just like I did. And I love working with people to take a look at themselves and we figure out what it is, what that person needs. Because when we give our bodies what we need, all of our bodies will heal. All of them.
Dr. Chris Miller
(42:18)
But it can be tricky. And there are other things that can affect autoimmune diseases like toxins. So people who have high mercury levels, whether that's from cavities or having eaten fish in the past, that can cause the immune system to still be triggering itself, or if people have occult infections, like Epstein–Barr that's still active or Lyme disease. Lyme disease is known to be a trigger for rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmunity. There are other triggers and other reasons, environmental toxins, pollutants. If people aren't getting better with all of these initial things, we do look into some of this as well. But that's a lot more rare. So the more common things, we start with that, obviously.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(43:00)
Fantastic. And I think that the next question is about MS, if you could speak to it. But could you just mention the last little bit You did? Why you moved away from Colorado?
Dr. Chris Miller
(43:08)
Yeah. So I moved from Colorado. I lived in Aspen, Colorado for 13 years and I loved it there. I really loved it there. We had a great community, and neighborhood, and really nice people, and it was so beautiful, but I didn't feel well. And I started to realize that whenever I was in Aspen, my fingers were always swollen, all of them. My fingers just had a base… even when I felt good, even when I was juicing and meditating, doing all these things, I had baseline swelling. And I would go to Denver or I'd go to Chicago to visit my family or I'd go on vacation or even to a conference and my swelling would completely resolve and I would feel good. I would just feel better. I started notice this and as soon as I got back to Aspen, the joint pain would come back. It's basically right away when I got there, almost immediately and so I started to see a link.
Dr. Chris Miller
(43:57)
And so I did some research with Laurie. We both did that together and started noticing that at high altitude, which is 8,000 feet, which is right exactly where I was living, they have seen increase in autoimmune lupus symptoms, and worsening organ damage, and worsening kidney involvement, which I had high more high blood pressure and I had a lot of those symptoms. I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is me.” So I realized it was time to move out of Aspen. So it was hard. It was not a fun journey. But I'm here in New Hampshire and it is beautiful and there's a lot of wonderful people here and family, so that's all been good. But I do feel better. My swelling is completely resolved. So it's been pretty awesome to be here for that reason that the attitude affects me.
Dr. Chris Miller
(44:45)
And I saw that in a lot of my patients too. People with even gut issues, IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, other autoimmune diseases, at altitude, in Aspen, they would notice the symptoms and even just going down to Denver, they would feel better. So if you're living at high altitude, like somewhere in Colorado or other places, just keep that in mind and play around with it. See if you notice a difference. I'm not saying everyone has to move, not at all, because it's really hard to move and stressors are not good in our immune system. But if you notice a difference, you may want to start playing around with that a little bit.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(45:15)
Perfect. And so the next question, could you please talk about multiple sclerosis or MS?
Dr. Chris Miller
(45:20)
Yeah. MS is a tough disease. Just dramatic, traumatic, terrible symptoms with MS. The amazing thing is we've seen responses with MS with the whole food, plant-based, anti-inflammatory diet, basically. So I follow the same plan, the same protocol. I start with just a whole food, plant-based, anti-inflammatory diet, which means no gluten and no sugar products in it, like even flour. So it's all unrefined grains. I go back vegetable-heavy, make sure your vitamin D is okay. I put them on a probiotic and go from there. Yeah, and just really hammer the colorful fruits and vegetables.
Dr. Chris Miller
(46:04)
I always encourage all of my autoimmune patients to try to get in a pound of raw greens a day. The raw greens really are the most healing and I can feel it myself. So that's where the juicing, the smoothies, salads come in. Whatever works for you and playing around with the variety. Maybe that day of juicing if you notice a difference. But yeah, just that alone. People have reversed it still eating beans, still eating green. So it depends on the person. But we should see a halting, at least, of symptoms and often resolution of symptoms where you start to see it go down. But again, everyone is different, so really pay attention to stress. Really pay attention to gentle movement when you can, when your body allows you to do that. Pay attention to sleep. And if you're having trouble, I hope you can work with me or Laurie and we can help guide you for that.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(47:01)
Absolutely. And I've had MS patients that they halted. They had a weakness in extremities or something and that actually halted and they reversed their diabetes and all the other chronic diseases that often come with the foods that we're eating that cause the enemies. So there's benefits in many ways. Sherry raised a really good question, I think. This is something good. Can you talk about some of medications that are used treat these diseases like Humira? What do they do? What are the side effects and are they capable of doing harm?
Dr. Chris Miller
(47:33)
That's a tough question. Yeah. I was on a lot of them myself, Sherry, so I understand that. I took prednisone. I took some CellCept, which is an anti-cancer drug, to protect my kidneys and I took methotrexate and other anti-cancer drug and I had to do by shots because the oral medications weren't working. And then Humira is another one you asked about. So what they are, there's different ways that you can block the immune system. The immune system, the way it works is it binds to a transcription factor, which binds to cell, which lights up a whole bunch of cells that are your army. That turns on your army.
Dr. Chris Miller
(48:10)
There's different levels that you can turn off that army in different types of places. So things like prednisone, which is a strong immunosuppressant, if any of you have ever taken prednisone, you know we feel good when we take prednisone because it blocks the whole dang immune system, but it's so dangerous because it blocks the whole damn immune system, right? And so it blocks it up high up on the chain and so everything is turned off. And that's one reason that your inflammation goes away, the joint pains go away. But if you were to be exposed to COVID-19 or to a cancer cell in your body, your body has no army anymore, right? It's been knocked down. So it's really a scary drug, plus the side effects – diabetes, osteoporosis, psychotic breakthroughs, not sleeping. So many bad things with prednisone. But I've taken it for years so I get all that. So that's up high.
Dr. Chris Miller
(49:05)
Then there's the anti-cancer drugs and they're blocking at a different level. And then there's the more specific ones like Humira that you asked about, they actually block some antibodies. So they find different antibodies. There's different antibodies for different autoimmune. Humira is used a lot psoriasis. It's used in skin reactions and some joint type things as well. And if there's a certain antibody that it's targeting, which is if this is the immune system, again, it's up here, it's up here, it's up here and then it goes to all these antibodies and so Humira, it blocks right in this area. And then that goes on to have other inflammatory effects.
Dr. Chris Miller
(49:48)
So it seems like okay, well, that's good. It's a little more focused than prednisone. But what it is, is it's powerful right there. And these antibodies are important to us. They still have causes, they still protect us against cancer and these infections. So that's why if you listen to the ads for Humira that come on at nighttime when the news is on or whatever, it'll talk about all the side effects, including high risk of getting infection and certain cancers like lymphoma. And that's because that's your immune system that's preventing you from getting cancers and infections, so they're very dangerous in that sense. And, in fact, people who are on Humira for 20 years have a very high risk of having a lymphoma or other cancer.
Dr. Chris Miller
(50:27)
And I don't mean to scare you totally by saying that because I was on my own inflammatory for a while, but enough to say that they're scary drugs. And especially right now, anyone on any of these drugs really has to be home, isolated, completely quarantined, basically, because if you're exposed to COVID-19 and you're taking these, you don't have the army that you need right now. So be really, really, really careful, please. Don't stop them. Here's the thing about those medications, you cannot just stop them. What happens is, especially prednisone up here blocking the whole team or the individual ones that they're working down here.
Dr. Chris Miller
(51:03)
What happens when you stop them is your immune system rebounds. And so for the Humira, you'll have a rebound in that specific antibody. For prednisone, you will have a rebound in all of these and one thing that happens is your immune system goes home and whatever pains you were having before are intensified tenfold. Like my lupus would go absolutely crazy or joint pains would go crazy. Everything goes crazy. Plus, with prednisone, there's another problem that you get a depletion in cortisol and low blood pressure and all that as well. So you cannot just stop these medications. You have to work with your doctor and you have to slowly taper them back. But you can. Once your immune system is getting healthy, and once you feel so well, and your antibodies start going down on their own in your blood because you don't have the inflammatory triggers anymore coming in, then you start tapering them down and with each taper done the correct way, you get your army back. And so they're really protective of your immune system when to stop it is what I'm saying.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(52:07)
That's a very good question and a very good answer. So the next question is, can you recommend a good probiotic?
Dr. Chris Miller
(52:17)
I think so. There's several good ones out there, but I have been using Metagenics Ultra Bio something. It's the only ultra one there, but it's on Metagenics. I also used… what else have I used?
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(52:42)
This Garden of Life brand for short-term, for patients that seems to do well. I'll look up the Metagenics. Is that metagenics.com?
Dr. Chris Miller
(52:50)
Yeah, metagenics.com is the one that I have been using. It's UltraFlora, I think, is the name of it.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(52:54)
Okay. And then the next question-
Dr. Chris Miller
(52:56)
And there are good ones, I should say. Just because I don't know, it's just the ones that I've done that have data on it. So there isn't enough data yet to know which ones are good or safe. So often, what I do is if you have a probiotic, I go to consumerlab.com and I look it up because if they've done a test on it, it'll tell you whether it's been approved, whether it has what it says it has, whether it's safe. And so often, if someone comes in with a different probiotic, I'll look it up on that and see if it's a good one.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(53:30)
Yeah, that's actually a great device. I've been on the ConsumerLab for a long time. So patients bring it in, it's a foreign brand to me and I'll look it up. It's very helpful because they actually do independent testing, which is phenomenal.
Dr. Chris Miller
(53:42)
Right. That's a big deal.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(53:44)
All right, so Kip is asking, interesting question here, and I'll put my two cents in after you've answered. I began taking 50 micrograms of levothyroxine a year ago for a minimal hypothyroidism. So when we say minimal that could be also described as subclinical. TSH was 4.4, which is just right at high level normal or just outside of that, depending on which lab, prior to medications, which now I suspect was caused by low iodine. And now that I take an iodine supplement and decreased stress, I'm tempted to stop taking the meds and retest my TSH and also iodine. Thoughts on this approach.
Dr. Chris Miller
(54:25)
So you started taking it because your TSH was 4.4 at the beginning? Okay.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(54:30)
Right. So he's subclinical. It's treating a subclinical case.
Dr. Chris Miller
(54:33)
Yep, yep. And how are you feeling now? Or I guess you can't… I guess you could type it.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(54:39)
So Kip, I'm going to… let me find Kip. Did we lose Kip? There he is. I'm going to allow him to talk, okay?
Dr. Chris Miller
(54:46)
Sure.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(54:46)
Let me unmute you. Okay. Well, why is it? Hold on. I'm sorry. I'm attempting to unmute. All right. Disable. Nope, I did that. It's unmuting. Kip, maybe you've muted yourself. I can't unmute you. I'm trying to click the unmute, but it won't let me, but if you would like to ask. If you want to go and start answering, I've allowed him to talk, I just don't know how to… it wouldn't let me unmute him.
Dr. Chris Miller
(55:18)
Yeah, for hypothyroid with a 4.4, those are the people that I think I see people resolve or improve more with a whole food, plant-based diet. So if you're following a whole food, plant-based, anti-inflammatory diet, and you're feeling good right now, and you're taking your iodine 150 micrograms a day, however you're getting that in, whether it's through a supplement or through kelp or sea vegetable, then yeah, you're in a low dose, I believe you said so. I would have someone do an experiment and see how they do. We could try cutting it back and watch how they're doing. Yep.
Dr. Chris Miller
(55:55)
But since I'm not our physician, I would not tell you that without you talking to your physician to let them know if you were going to make a change like that because I don't know your whole health history. I don't know if you have something else going on with you. So to be safe, I would want you to work with a doctor who knows-
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(56:11)
And we have licensed physicians in California, so it sounds like you need an appointment. But he says I don't have a mic microphone set up so I cannot do it and he goes, “I generally feel unchanged.”
Dr. Chris Miller
(56:22)
Okay, yeah. So you would be someone who might do really well rechecking it and seeing where you are. But like I said, I would definitely do that with his physician because there are other reasons, there are other things going on with people and without knowing your whole health history, I would hate to just say that and have something go wrong. But yeah, I would think you'd have a good chance of doing well.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(56:43)
Excellent. And looks like another question from Tody Gaynor. Diet and ankylosing spondylitis.
Dr. Chris Miller
(56:52)
Yes. Ankylosing spondylitis is a tough one. I have seen some patients just severe, severe back pain. What that is in, for those of you who don't know, is the vertebrae of the spine actually fuse together so people get really stiff, and can't move, and it can be extremely painful and limiting. But like all autoimmune diseases, it's inflammation and it starts in the gut. So a whole food, plant-based diet is really, really strongly important to reduce that inflammation. The results of that depend a lot on how early and how late once it's end organ. So once it's really fused, that will not be able to resolve itself. So what you want to do is halt it immediately because you can stop it from worsening and that's really the goal.
Dr. Chris Miller
(57:36)
But the other thing with ankylosing spondylitis, as well as all of these autoimmune diseases, and I should say that, even if we don't fully reverse, like for me, my goal is to fully reverse. I have to fully reverse where I failed. But I realize now that the comorbidities are just as bad and so people with autoimmune diseases significantly have a significantly increased risk of heart attacks, and strokes, and blood clots, and cancers, and all these other things, diabetes. So it's really important for us to change to the whole food, plant-based diet to reproduce these comorbidities. And I bring that up with ankylosing spondylitis because a recent article just came out about increased risk of heart attacks in people with AS. And so at the least, we can reduce your risk of ever having that again and we can halt it from exactly where it is right now to never get worse. And if you notice that you're still worsening, or having acute inflammation, then we want to look at your diet and really get to whole food, plant-based healing diet.
Dr. Chris Miller
(58:29)
And so yeah, it's really, really important. And I have seen people do well with it, especially earlier on or medium on, but at any point. Another strong link, which I always forget to bring up, is smoking. So you really don't want to smoke and you really don't want to be around smokers because that's been shown to significantly worse in it as well.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(58:51)
One more question here and then we'll turn it over for Chris, for you to talk about immunity. Real quick while we're in this COVID bit, Andrew has another great question. So only if we have time for another question, which we can go as long as we need. Is it okay to begin a whole food, plant-based diet while still a medication? Any risk of putting someone at risk of excess medication toxicity if they improve quickly on a whole food, plant-based diet?
Dr. Chris Miller
(59:15)
Awesome questions. Thank you for that. So the answer is no, there's no risk and it should be done, to me, and actually, when I was in Aspen, I'm working on that now again, but I worked with a rheumatologist. The way it should be done is if someone has a severe autoimmune disease, if they need a prescription for medication, which sometimes we do, they're bridges to help us while we're so acutely sick, but if they need that prescription for medication, they should also have a prescription to a whole food, plant-based diet. They go hand in hand. Early on, you just start with the diet. When it's really severe and if you need a medication, you need it. But yes, you should be doing the whole food, plant-based diet with it. Really, really, really important because any of the toxicity of the medication, which those are there in every single medication you ever put in your body, including something like ibuprofen, Tylenol, it's always going to have a result that you don't want, that's the toxicity. And the whole food, plant-based diet is one of the most protective things you could possibly do.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:00:12)
And so what happens typically with autoimmune people is you start to feel better. And people always ask me, “What does that mean?” Well, whatever symptoms you're having, you'll start to feel decrease in that and even if you're not feeling pain, your energy starts to go up, your mental clarity starts to come back, your digestion starts to regulate, and you just feel different. And I would just say that, often I didn't even know why I felt different, but I can always tell my inflammation was down. I knew. I knew when I was getting my blood drawn that my inflammation was going to be down or if I was stressed out, I knew it was going to be high that day. I could totally feel that. So you'll start to feel that feeling, whatever symptoms you're having, going down then you know the drugs… well, the drugs are always going to be toxic in our bodies, but you won't get an increased risk just because you're eating healthy, but you don't need it.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:00:58)
So at that point, what happens when you start to see your antibodies go down, when you see your inflammatory markers go down when you're working with rheumatologists or your doctor, and your markers are improving, and you're feeling well, that's when you work with them and you start cutting it back in a slow, stepwise fashion. That is the right time. That means you're getting the results that you want. And if you don't get the results right away, then we start troubleshooting, like I said, all these other things, whether it's diet, whether it's all the other factors that are affecting, until we start to get the results and we don't cutback any medications until we're getting those results and then we start cutting back on medications.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(01:01:32)
That's fabulous. There was a question regarding Plavix after stroke and wanting to know if we should take. That's not really related to autoimmune disease, but just a quick side note from that. Kimberly, that really needs to be discussed with your neurologist regarding your risk factors. So I would never stop a medication like that without speaking to them first. Others who take Plavix or people who've had bypasses and things like that.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(01:01:58)
So it's a medication that can have significant consequences, especially if you have AFib, atrial fibrillation, could have been the cause of the stroke. So there's some really caveats to stopping a medication like that, so it's not something that we should be answering here, but it's certainly something we can discuss in an appointment or discuss it with your doctor saying, “Hey, I've eliminated all my risk factors,” and maybe your cholesterol is well-controlled or your blood pressure is controlled, you don't have atrial fibrillation, and that might be something to discuss with your doc. But that's a great question.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(01:02:29)
Do you want to talk a little bit about our immune system and this COVID-19 that we're all worried about and that type of thing and stress that you were mentioning earlier?
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:02:38)
Yeah, this is just a general thing for all of us, but especially those of us that are immunosuppressed or don't have the healthiest immune systems, this is the time to do it. So for anyone who had any doubt or wasn't sure or really wasn't going for completely, even me, I've stepped up my diet right now, I've really stepped it up, and there are limitations right now because it's hard to go out and get fresh produce and so we're making some changes, but it's really, really important right now that we take care of ourselves. In fact, I would say even to make it your priority.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:03:10)
So what that means to me is I'm right back on my healing anti-inflammatory diet. I am eating a lot of vegetables, many of them are cooked because I'm only going to the store once every two weeks and I'm not going myself. I'm really hibernating away right now. But I'm only going once every two weeks and so we're buying stuff that last longer in the fridge like heads of cabbage. Cabbage lasts like a month. So you can be cutting cabbage and eating a little bit of raw cabbage every day. Carrots, carrots last like a month in the fridge. Celery lasts a little while in the fridge. And then when I buy the leafy green vegetables like kale and collards, that won't last but maybe five days or something, pushing it. So that stuff I'm blending, I'm chopping up, and I'm cooking into soups so that I can heat the soup and get those micronutrients in through a soup.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:04:01)
So I'm pre-preparing all of these foods that I can then freeze and then have a little bit of fresh… romaine lettuce will last a couple weeks in the fridge if you've ever bought those. So buy those longer lasting things that you can keep for a little bit longer and get a little bit of raw in your every day, raw crucifers. I want to say that I'm eating broccoli every day but that goes bad. So that'll last maybe a week in the fridge and then after that, I don't have the broccoli but I still have the cabbage so that's good.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:04:29)
So just do the best you can. That's all I tell people. But it's really important to get your vegetables in right now. Cook some soups when you do get to the store and freeze them, and have your raw veggies, and have your whole grains. If you tolerate whole grains unrefined, intact, whole grains and your legumes, especially if you tolerate legumes as well, and a little bit of nuts and seeds, it's really important to eat cleanly. So that's the first step.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:04:57)
And then the second thing that is really, really important, I'm feeling it myself, so I am guessing many other people are feeling as well, is the anxiety. This is a really stressful time. Watching the world, financially, we're all totally stressed out right now about it and it's scary what's happening. Every day watching the news, it's so horrific and we're worried for our own health because we have this compromised immune system. So this is terrifying and it's one of those things that's on the back on my shoulders all the time. And so I'm really focusing on my mind-body work. So that means meditating again in the morning. That might mean pulling out my puzzles again, which I haven't used in a while, but I'm pulling them back out because I got to just take my mind off things. It might mean finding good books on Kindle, so I can be reading something fun to just lose my mind. I'm connecting with friends, maybe by Zoom or FaceTime or whatever means I can to still stay in touch. A cup of herbal tea. I drink herbal tea all day long because I always feel calm when I drink my herbal teas.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:05:55)
So whatever you need to do, make sure you're doing it right now. If you need to talk to someone about it, definitely do. If you want to talk to a doctor about helping you really get your nutrition and your lifestyle on track for your autoimmune, this is the time to go for it. But I would really pay attention to that. If you're feeling the stressed, if you're not sleeping well, if you can feel it all the time, it's a major factor. And it actually caused me, my joints started acting up a little bit, which I hadn't really been at all and so I've had to step up my own mind-body tricks to help me, so that has been a big role.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:06:29)
And so that was that was my main message to everyone was one, we have to stay home. Really protect yourself, isolate yourself, stay away from exposures. And two, make sure that you are eating very clean, make sure you're getting sleep, and really work on that mind-body like not else. Healthy people don't have to do what we have to do, but we really have to do this. So I would say really pay attention to that.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(01:06:55)
I think that's fabulous advice. And just a couple of other things that might be helpful is, guys, check out drjud.com and also his YouTube, it says Dr. Jud, and he's put together some if you guys are familiar with the podcast, they've interviewed him multiple times, but he does it a five-minute every morning help to calm the nerves and mindfulness during this time. So it's really cool. Check him out. He's an addiction psychiatrist. He has some really helpful hints.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(01:07:24)
And the other thing is, it's called Hamama. If you go to hamama.com, it's H-A-M-A-M-A.com. You get these little sheets and you can grow microgreens over a course of 10 days. Literally, you just add water. We have them going all the time. So we'll have one and then we just put in the next in. The great thing about it is people just come by like, “Oh, I made a chickpea salad sandwich. I want to chop off some greens and throw them on there.” So that's another way. They have kale, and broccoli sprouts, and that type of thing. So that's another thing that might be super helpful.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:07:56)
I forgot, thank you for reminding me. So that hamama.com is awesome. You told me about that. And another one is, I tell people now, grow your own greens, yeah. So if you have a pot and you have any dirt, anything you can throw together, things like kale, lettuces, they are weeds, basically, and so they'll grow in a month. You'll get them in a month. And I'm not a gardener, I do not have a green thumb, but those are the only things that can grow are my greens. I have little pots go around my house right now, so within the next couple weeks, I should have a little of something. So we you can't get out to buy it, we still have something fresh. So that's a great idea.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(01:08:32)
And we have a few other suggestions as well. Jean says if you put a damp paper towel in with your leafy greens, then put them in a slightly open Ziploc bag, they will last longer in the fridge. I work for a veggie farm.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:08:45)
Awesome. Thank you for that tip. I'll try that.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(01:08:47)
I think I need to interview Miss Jean about some things.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:08:50)
Yeah, love it.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(01:08:51)
And then Kip says, “Thank you both so much for being generous with your time and sharing all the wisdom.” But no, thank you, guys for actually joining us. We really appreciate that. And you guys, I really hope that you share this information and share that Chris is now available on here. And really, we want to encourage people to do as much as they can for their own health, but when you need that extra help, that's why we're launching this and thanks to Anthony for being the constant like let's get it done.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:09:16)
I wanted to say too that it means a lot to me to have you all here because it's also hard for me right now. I can feel it. And so it's really helpful to connect with other people to know that we're in this together. I always say together we're healthier, like you're helping me just as much as I'm able to share what I've learned to help you get you there and watching other people improve and we guide each other we're all… so it really means a lot that you're here and I hope that you all are feeling great, and staying healthy, and getting better and better during this time. Maybe this is just what we need to really step up our health. So thank you, everyone.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(01:09:53)
Yeah, thank you, everyone, for joining us. So what we'll be doing this will be making this recording available and we'll be posting it also on our Facebook page, the Plant Based Telehealth, and we'll also place it on YouTube. We're having a little issue about streaming to both at once and for some reason, it didn't stream live to Facebook this time, but I'm going to let the computer guy to figure that out. And yeah, so thank you again. And Anthony, do you have anything final to say?
Anthony
(01:10:24)
Nope. Just thanks again to everyone for joining. It was great. Wonderful discussion. Thank you, Chris, for answering so many questions. And Dr. Miller, Dr. Marbas. Getting used to that. Yeah, I thought it was fantastic. And thanks, everyone, for attending.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(01:10:38)
Yep. So thanks, everyone. And Chris, any final words of wisdom?
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:10:44)
I would say to everyone what I've said before, just to take care of yourselves and don't get stressed. If things aren't perfect, just do your best to have gratitude and realize this is a moment in time, it's part of history, and we're going to get through it, and stay strong, and really self-care and reach out to others. We're here for you. We're a community too, and we're all in this together, and we'll get through, so take care of yourselves.
Dr. Laurie Marbas
(01:11:08)
Absolutely. And we'll be here every Sunday, unless something happens or travel or something, but then I'm sure one of us can continue it. So thanks again, guys, and we appreciate you and we're signing off.
Anthony
(01:11:21)
Have a great night.
Dr. Chris Miller
(01:11:23)
Bye, everyone. Take care.
*Recorded on April 10, 2020