Merging functional medicine with your ketogenic diet

October 2, 2023 By
Leanne Vogel

October 2, 2023

In today’s episode of the Keto Diet Podcast, we’re diving deep into how to merge functional medicine with your ketogenic diet with my friend and special guest, Allie Miller.

Allie is not just any registered dietitian; she’s also a certified diabetes educator, weight management specialist, and a therapeutic lifestyle healthcare practitioner. Through her food-as-medicine approach, she’s been successfully merging naturopathic and allopathic fields to create a health practice that is guided by nature and backed by scientific discovery. For those keen to learn more about the intertwining of these two health methodologies, this episode is a treasure trove of knowledge! Tune in to discover a holistic perspective on keto that goes beyond just “if it fits your macros.”

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Transcript

I am not a fan at all of exogenous ketones.

I am a fan of, you know, really teaching the body the metabolic process.

I know Leanne and I both agree in the sense that like more doesn’t mean better when we’re talking about looking at ketone values.

I know for me when my numbers get into the above 2.

8 I start to get squirrely, I call it like thin, like I just feel wiry and more like adrenaline epinephrine response and that doesn’t feel balancing for my body.

Whether you’re keto, low-carb, or somewhere in between, which I guess I am, you really want to be looking at your health by more than just if it fits your macros.

This is the whole point of the Keto Diet Podcast to really fill in the gaps because just because you eat 150 grams of fat a day doesn’t mean that you have all points of your health dialed in.

And today’s conversation with my friend Allie Miller is exactly that.

We’re talking about how to merge functional medicine, functional understanding of our health from a functional perspective in with your ketogenic diet to really merge these two conversations together so well.

Allie Miller is a registered dietitian, a certified diabetes educator, a certified weight management specialist, and a therapeutic lifestyle health care practitioner.

Allie developed her food as medicine approach to disease management through her background in natural food preparation and a degree in nutritional sciences from Baxter University, a renowned leader in naturopathic and functional medicine.

The diverse medical rotations available at the Houston Medical Center drew Allie to Texas where she implemented clinical treatment plans provided in some of the top hospitals in the country.

Allie has combined the strengths of both naturopathic and allopathic fields practicing functional medicine that is guided by nature yet grounded in clinical scientific discovery.

You can find more from Allie Miller by going to alimillerrd.com and going to Allie’s Instagram, Alliemillerrd.

Okay, let’s cut over to today’s episode.

Hey, my name is Leanne Vogel.

I’m fascinated with helping women navigate how to eat, move and care for their bodies using a low carb diet.

I’m a small town holistic nutritionist turned three time international best selling author turned functional medicine practitioner, offering telemedicine services around the globe to women looking to better their health and stop second guessing themselves.

I’m here to teach you how to wade through the wellness noise to get to the good stuff that’ll help you achieve your goals.

We’re supporting your low carb life beyond the, if it fits your macros conversation, hormones, emotions, relationship to your body, workouts, letdowns, motivation, blood work, detoxing, metabolism.

I’m providing the tools to put your motivation into action.

Think of it like quality time with your bestie mixed with a little med school so you’re empowered at your next doctor visit.

Get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn about your body and how to care for it better.

This is the Keto Diet Podcast.

Hey everyone, this is Allie Miller, registered dietician and functional medicine practitioner.

And I am doing a takeover of the Keto Diet Podcast.

So today you will be hearing my voice for this entire episode.

and I’m going to be sharing my unique food as medicine perspective addressing a lot of questions that came in from listeners.

So I’m super stoked to unpack all of the things, but for those of you guys that aren’t familiar with me, I’m going to give you a little 411 on my background, what I do and ways that you may have been introduced to me or at least by the end of this, you’ll know me pretty well.

So I am a registered dietitian.

I went to a naturopathic college of medicine, Best Deer University, and that’s where I kind of marry the world of functional integrative medicine, which combines your conventional allopathic addressment to conditions, as well as the more naturopathic science meeting nature side of things.

So I think I weave them all together in my clinic quite successfully, and my clinic is called Naturally Nourished.

I practice virtually and I work with patients of all demographics, all ages from actually even prenatal time of working with babes all the way through geriatric population.

I work with chronic conditions, inflammatory conditions, autoimmune disease, digestive disturbances and so much more.

And I have another practitioner, Becky Yu, who also works virtually in my Naturally Nourished Clinic, and she is the co-host of my podcast called Naturally Nourished.

So pretty much if you search Allie Miller RD or Naturally Nourished, you’re going to come up with a lot of fun things.

If you like what I’m talking about, go to alimillerrd.com, and that’s where you can check out my books and programs.

So I want to talk to you a little bit about my most recent book that I came out with, the Anti-Anxiety Diet Cookbook, which releases in September.

So I have actually done two podcast episodes with Leanne Prior.

One was on food as medicine and keto, and the other was when my book, The Anti-Anxiety Diet, came out last fall in 2018.

And that book, of course, was the pre-story or more of the science and the story of the approach of the anti-anxiety diet, whereas my upcoming book is a cookbook to kind of unpack and give you more application within the world of the anti-anxiety.

So I came up with the first book after working 10 plus years in my clinic.

And as I work with individuals, I really take on the role as the detective of the body.

So I am constantly seeking for, what was a triggering event in their health story that could have drove a symptom or a disease state or dysfunction within their body?

What was a potential metabolic genetic predisposition that would have drove this expression?

What would be underlying mechanisms or root causes?

Maybe imbalance in the microbiome or the gut bacteria, maybe imbalance with sexual hormones, maybe micronutrient deficiencies, maybe imbalances within their process of detoxification and their liver enzyme pathways.

So there’s so many whys to where we present, And I take so much passion and really that’s my B is being this detective of the body and working with each individual as a complex individual.

And so I love to seek the why.

And really after the last 10 years, whether I was working with a patient for leaky gut or whether I was working with a patient for PCOS or infertility or Crohn’s disease, I found this overlapping trend that if they were not managing their stress, and I would even take that a step further, if their HPA access was off, that they were going to be playing whack-a-mole with other symptoms or disease states in their body.

So I could address Crohn’s disease by putting the individual on a specific carbohydrate diet, transitioning them into more of an ancestral ketogenic diet, doing an elimination diet and looking at inflammatory food testing, testing their stool and working with a gut cleanse and strategic probiotics, putting them on a quality product like my GI lining support.

I also have a supplement line called Naturally Nourished Supplements.

And so maybe I put them on my gut lining support bundle or my inflammatory gut bundle I guess it’s called.

And they may drive into remission.

So they may get a really successful colonoscopy.

Their specialist, their gastroenterologist comes to me and says, “Allie, what have you done?

And I tell them all these functional approaches.

We worked the microbiome.

We addressed leaky gut.

We supported gut repair with the GI lining support.

We re-inoculated the gut with strategic probiotics.

So now the inflammation of the tissue is resolved.

But then I find six months later or a year later that either that individual goes into mini flare mode and they go out of a remissive state into an active state of disease or they’re dealing with something else like all of a sudden a new diagnosis of lupus or arthritis or chronic fatigue syndrome.

And I’ve found that this HPA axis is really the Achilles heel of our wellness.

And what that stands for is the hypothalamic pituitary adrenals.

And so the hypothalamus and the pituitary are in the brain.

And I know that this isn’t new speak to you listeners because I’ve also served for Leanne as a coach in the Happy Keto Body program.

And I know that you guys have modules on the adrenals and the thyroid and all these things.

And you’ve heard awesome guests talk about these things.

So I’ll give you a little foundation and lay this premise, but I’m not going to go too deep down this rabbit hole.

However, I saw a lot of you ask questions about adrenals and these things, and it’s probably because I’m an expert in that world.

So anyway, the hypothalamus and the pituitary are in the brain.

The adrenal glands are tiny little walnut-sized glands that sit above our kidneys, and they regulate the feedback of our nervous system.

They regulate the autonomic nervous system and whether we are in a sympathetic fight or flight state or a parasympathetic rest/digest state.

Now what’s really important to acknowledge and what may be new to some of you is that your parasympathetic state is your regulation state and your sympathetic state is your reactive fight or flight state, right?

And the regulatory side of things is not as simple as rest and digest.

We also are going to be in that parasympathetic state getting better outcomes with our reproductive health.

So sexual hormone is regulated in that state.

thyroid gland and our metabolism is regulated in that state.

A lot of mood balance is regulated in that state.

Cognitive function is regulated in that state, right?

And energy is regulated in that state as well as immunological processes.

If the body is in a chronic fight-or-flight mode and it’s in high reactive mode, the immune system or the surveillance system of the body responds much differently than when it has ample parasympathetic balance.

And that’s where the immune system does its best work while we’re in deep qualitative sleep because we’re honoring that pendulum swing out of that reactive stress mode.

Whoa, right?

So, when we think about that information we learned in anatomy or whatever in middle school and we learned about rest, digest, fight or flight, it was very simplified.

But we have to acknowledge that on a daily basis, all of us are probably wearing way too many hats.

We are trying to do all of the things, take on way too much, and a lot of us are running too thin.

And I don’t necessarily mean thin as far as a body type.

I mean overstretched, right?

Overextended and not able to cope.

And so we’re running on empty on a daily basis.

And that is where we can see excess reactive function, right, in that fight or flight mode and we get limited balance in that regulatory function.

So we start to deal with this metabolic disease.

We start to deal with reproductive health issues like changes in our cycle or hypothalamic amenorrhea, losing our period altogether, right?

Infertility, we start to lose with libido and we deal with things like erectile dysfunction.

We can start to deal with immunological issues and autoimmune disease.

And then of course, the digestive distress that’s noted in the rest and digest world.

So again, whether I was treating a condition that seemed to be a functional approach, addressing the root, working with XYZ, if the individual was not honoring their balance of their stress response, they were going to perpetuate that imbalance in that HPA access, which was only going to drive more chronic illness.

So that’s why I wrote the Anti-Anxiety Diet.

And it takes a very deep dig approach into six different entry points of addressing the chicken and egg relationship of our stress response on a particular area of the body and how that area of the body either perpetuates or regulates the stress response of the HPA axis.

So I I use six different R’s.

The first R is to remove inflammatory foods.

So I highlight the top five pro-inflammatory foods that also contribute to disturbing your mood.

And you can listen to the podcast episode I had with Leanne.

I highlighted all five there, so I’ll just lay that cherry out for you.

But the fifth one is sugar.

And so right away in the anti-anxiety diet, I start to present the research in the sense that when blood sugar levels are elevated, that that in itself can be a three-time likelihood of depression or anxiety.

And we know that blood sugar irregularities can also cascade with episodes of hypoglycemia or blood sugar drops.

And a lot of times that can express as like a panic attack, cold sweats, shakiness, palpitations, right?

So, blood sugar regulation is key to prevent the driving cause of anxiety and depression with blood sugar irregularities, right, and that impacting our mood and our energy.

But furthermore, when we go into a state of nutritional ketosis, ketones actually have the ability to cross our blood-brain barrier and favorably impact our brain.

They actually express GABA in an increased way.

And GABA is our primary inhibitory compound, which helps us to mellow out.

So when we’re having a high stress white knuckle effect, GABA really releases that neuromuscular tension and gets us into a “ah” state.

In fact, I have a supplement called GABA Calm in my Naturally Nourished line that I use if I’m taking my toddler to Target, for example, because I’ll get into the car and, you know, be fine.

We’re playing Lion King and all is happy.

And then we might be in the aisles and she’s losing it being a three-ninger and, you know, I’m getting uptight, people are listening, we’re disturbing people’s shopping experience.

Oh, Stella, don’t touch that, do-do-do.

And it’s like, GABA Calm, and I will chew GABA Calm, and within five to 10 minutes, it’s like, you beautiful child of God.

So GABA can actually be expressed in our body as a neuroinhibitory.

It inhibits the stress and anxiety response and mellows out our neuromuscular system.

Also think of like Parkinson’s disease, right?

That’s where we don’t have ample GABA Our GABA isn’t docking appropriately to our receptors, and so those individuals will have more tremors, right?

So ketosis, being in the state of nutritional ketosis and making ketones actually favorably enhances your GABA expression.

So it gives you that mellow right there.

And then, you know, when we burn fat as fuel and we make ketones, there’s less oxidative stress to the brain.

So if the brain is in a less inflamed state, our neurotransmitters are going to fire at a more rapid pace or a more ideal way.

We’re not going to have any issues with receptors, you know, all hormones and even neurotransmitters working kind of a lock and key mechanism, right?

So we have appropriate docking and less inflammation in the brain, which also aids with cognition or thought process organization, task completion.

So we get a lot of bang for our buck just by regulating our blood sugar and reducing carbs to the level of producing ketones to have a favorable impact.

And then, you know, the other reason in general that I remove inflammatory foods is that we’ve seen in studies if our C-reactive protein, which is a marker of inflammation, if CRP is up, that that also is going to create, kind of think of like the neurotransmitters in the brain trying to fire through jello.

It’s like gunk, right?

There’s going to be distress in the signaling and the feedback.

And when the body is dealing with chronic inflammation, it’s also generally putting out more cortisol, which perpetuates distress.

Cortisol is made by the adrenals, the A of that HPA axis.

So reducing inflammation is key by ensuring that the brain neurotransmitter chemistry can fire appropriately and dock, and then reducing the sugar and getting into a ketosis state is going to help with the GABA and also reducing further the inflammation.

So that’s just the first R.

I also work to reset the gut microbiome.

So I do a lot of work in addressing where our microbiome status is at.

So a lot of you may tolerate probiotic-rich foods, and that’s amazing.

I recommend probiotic-rich foods are like nature’s Prozac.

Your gut microbiome is the production house for making your serotonin and GABA, those neuroinhibitory mellowing out feel-good neurotransmitters.

Also in the gut, if you’re in a state of dysbiosis, candida overgrowth, bad bacteria overgrowth from a pathogen, your gut is going to produce, instead of serotonin and GABA, it’s going to make more stress-driving neurotransmitters like epinephrine.

Epinephrine is also known as adrenaline.

So you actually put out fight or flight chemicals when your gut bacteria is imbalanced, and that in itself can drive anxiety, not to mention the fact that you’re not producing the landing gear serotonin and GABA that you would make if you had a balanced gut.

So in my book, I actually do a probiotic challenge, and that’s something you can Google.

You can just Google Allie Miller RD probiotic challenge, and you can learn about the product that I recommend and how to test where your microbiome is at.

And then I also have an ebook called “Beat the Bloat,” which is a six-week cleanse that can be used to plow the gut.

If you fail the probiotic challenge, you do have to plow the gut before you can strategically reseed.

And that may be why you have had an intolerance of probiotic foods, because you only have room in your garden bed for about three to five pounds.

That’s actually a lot, like hundreds of trillions of cells.

But you have three to five pounds of bacteria in your body.

And you have to sometimes remove some of that overgrowth before you can bring in the good players.

So that’s resetting the gut microbiome.

And I’ve hit pretty hard how that impacts our neurotransmitters and our stress response.

We also go into repairing the GI lining.

So I talk a lot about leaky gut.

The impact of the gut lining is where our immune system lives.

It’s called your GALT, your gut-associated lymphatic tissue.

And so we want to repair the gut lining to ensure that we’re not getting pro-inflammatory compounds in the bloodstream, perpetuating inflammation perpetuating the stress response, right?

And we also want to repair the gut so we can get optimized immunological function and then create a house for the good microbiome to live in.

So repairing the GI lining is another component.

Restoring micronutrient status is the fourth R and this goes deep down the rabbit hole into mood stabilizing minerals.

I talk a lot about different forms of magnesium and and zinc, the role of chromium, and the role of even iron as a mineral, B vitamins and methylated forms of B vitamins and why those are different than synthetic folic acid, which we should not take in any processed enriched foods.

It’s definitely something that can be disruptive to the mood.

So we only want the methylated forms of these B vitamins.

And then there’s other cases where we might do a hydroxylated or whatnot.

But now I’m going down the rabbit hole there.

I’ll pull back.

So micronutrient status I talk about, as well as strategic amino acids.

So amino acids are our protein building blocks, and these are what actually make our neurotransmitters.

So most popularly known is like tryptophan converts into 5-hydroxytryptophan, which converts into serotonin.

Or tyrosine, L-tyrosine can help to convert into dopamine.

So amino acids from our protein are the foundation of the building block of our neurotransmitters.

So super important, I give you a protein calculation.

And that’s one of the biggest pitfalls I actually see in the keto community, as well as just women that diet in general, is protein malnourishment.

So I’m a big advocate of getting ample protein and not being fearful of, you know, too much protein intake kicking you out of ketosis.

It would really have to be an aggressive intake, hitting over like two grams per kilogram a day of your body weight to hit excess protein and that’s not very likely.

Maybe you’ve heard of all the amazing things that apple cider vinegar can do for you.

Apple cider vinegar can balance your healthy blood sugar, banish cravings, and encourage fat loss.

It also can improve protein absorption and digestion, helping you break down animal proteins so that you can use those nutrients more effectively.

It stabilizes healthy blood sugar and helps improve energy and mood.

It can aid in the healthful aging process.

It has been shown to lower morning glucose, fasting glucose, and help stabilize blood sugar by increasing the ability of our muscles to take up sugar from our blood.

The apple cider vinegar in Paleo Valley’s supplement is paired with turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, and lemon, all organic ingredients, to boost the effectiveness of this supplement.

Also far more convenient than drinking actual apple cider vinegar.

You can head on over to PaleoValley.com/Keto for 15% off your order.

Again that’s PaleoValley.com/Keto.

My last two R’s are rebounding your adrenal glands.

So the adrenal glands again being the A of the HPA axis.

So when we’re rebounding the adrenals, we’re focusing on all of the hormones that the adrenal glands make.

They make our cortisol, which regulates our inflammation.

Too much cortisol can drive belly fat.

Too much cortisol can drive anxiety and sleep disturbances.

Too little cortisol can actually drive bloating.

And too little cortisol can drive leaky gut.

Too little cortisol can drive chronic inflammation and chronic fatigue syndrome.

So it’s a sweet spot.

It’s not a hormone that we want to demonize.

We also think of aldosterone made by the adrenal glands.

This regulates our sodium retention in the body and we do see when we are new or even just adjusting things with our Ketogenic diet that salt is so important because we’re if we’re eating a real food keto diet Single ingredients that are put together to make deliciousness, which is what I advocate for Versus products.

We’re not going to be getting a lot of sodium in our diet So you have to be proactive with two teaspoons a day.

I’m a big fan of Redmond real salt.

It has a lot of trace minerals and it’s a really clean sourced salt from Utah.

So two teaspoons a day helps with regulation of blood pressure as well as supporting the adrenal glands so they don’t have to distress for the aldosterone.

They can regulate the other hormones cortisol and DHEA.

DHEA is another kind of wonder hormone that helps and is connected with the ketogenic diet.

So DHEA is metabolized as a converting factor into making and producing ketones.

So if your DHEA levels are too low from chronic stress over time and now you’re in a burnout mode, you may not be achieving that keto high that people talk about.

Or you may be in non-detected levels on your blood meter and that could be your limiting factor.

So DHEA plays a big role with ketone production.

It also is a hormone that builds your estrogen and testosterone.

So it plays a big role with sexual hormone regulation and I think of it as a primary stress responder as much so as cortisol.

And when DHEA levels are elevated, we’re often like bitey, short fuse, irritable.

When DHEA levels are too low, we’re often like a stretched out rubber band where a stressful project or task will be given to us and we’re just depleted, deflated.

We don’t have that resilience or we’re gonna kind of crash after taking on stress response.

And it is made by the adrenal glands predominantly, but it’s like gobbled up by the brain.

So, we do see it as a huge component of the aging process.

DHEA has been said to function similarly to stem cells in the brain.

So, really helps with clarity, thought process, organization.

And then the other thing to note about DHEA is this is a hormone that often can be elevated with insulin resistance and conditions like PCOS.

So, this is where the ketogenic diet with the state of nutritional ketosis using DHEA as a converting tool.

That’s why nutritional ketosis is such a great intervention as a therapeutic diet for PCOS or really any form of fertility or insulin resistance where DHEA levels are elevated.

It’s the best way to get that value down.

So that’s the fifth R rebounding adrenals.

And your adrenal glands not only make cortisol, aldosterone, and DHEA, but they also make your stress neurotransmitters, also known as catecholamines.

They make your dopamine, your norepinephrine, and epinephrine.

So if you’re in a state of adrenal fatigue, you might have low dopamine, which, you know, dopamine regulates your bliss center, your reward feedback.

So you might feel like you’re doing more food seeking or feeling dissatisfied with your current diet program or what you’re currently taking in, not getting that bliss feedback or just feeling a little apathetic or low.

Also, we can see that if norepinephrine and epinephrine are low because adrenaline feels good.

You know, not that I recommend racing a car or waiting, you know, for the last minute to meet a deadline, but that surge of adrenaline when occasional as a reaction versus that being your norm, right?

A surge of adrenaline can feel good.

It can rev libido and vigor and professional drive.

It’s good to have enough, but too much epinephrine or epinephrine that’s not managed by norepinephrine can definitely drive chronic anxiety and almost like panic, rumination, a feeling of electricity, just not feeling grounded and buzzed and wiry.

That’s all the adrenals.

I give you in the Anti-Anxiety Diet book quizzes to determine of which of these are you need to really hone in on the most and then some supplement strategy.

And the last R is rebalancing your neurotransmitters.

So beyond those mentioned, dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, GABA, serotonin, I go deeper into those and then I unpack others.

And I talk about things like acetylcholine, which is really like a transductor of signaling in the brain and so much fun, geeky stuff.

chapter also has food as medicine menu which is kind of fun to teach you and empower you about how to work with certain ingredients to support the area of focus.

So for instance I have like a bacteria battling chimichurri which incorporates olive oil, garlic, oregano, basil, a bunch of herbs and seasonings and ingredients that are antimicrobial, antifungal and antibacterial.

So those work really well during a period of a cleanse, for instance.

And the Anti-Anxiety Diet Cookbook just really unpacks all of this into application and then further troubleshoots some more keto stuff.

So I’m super excited for that to come out.

I hope that in this explanation of these six R’s, I’ve already addressed a lot of questions about this connectivity.

I think it’s just really remarkable to honor our response to stress and all focus proactively on being both resilient to the stress that we aren’t able to eliminate, but also work consciously to be able to say no and be able to put up the flag of surrender and understand our limitations and listen to the feedback of our body.

And with that, that means that we also have to be dynamic and fluid with our diet, with our supplement strategy, with our exercise, and with what we take on, right?

So you know, one day for an individual, it might be very appropriate to do a 16/8 intermittent fast, just doing water or black coffee or green tea, no fat in the fast, right?

And that individual might also be able to do a spin class and they might be able to get in there 1600 calories of you know, balanced low carb keto eating and that could work really well.

But if that same individual is going through a divorce, and they’re not sleeping well, and they’re in a state of rumination and high mental occupation, right, with dynamics of stress response, then that individual is going to have to shave, they’re going to have to decide if they’re going to cut the spin class and just walk outside because walking outside is especially access to sunshine, getting your feet on the ground and moving in a rhythmic manner like walking is going to balance that pendulum back to parasympathetic versus that fight or flight sympathetic like the spin class is going to surge, right?

That individual might even have to shave off their fasting and either transition that to a fat fast, right, adding nourishing fats to honor their hormones, and/or they might need to be eating eggs and avocado and bacon every morning and up their calories a little bit further so that the body feels safe.

And ultimately, that’s really what I’ve found when I’m working with individuals as a functional practitioner is when we’re managing this HPA access, we need to honor our allostatic load, or basically what we take on in the body, what we restrict, what we challenge it with, we burden it with and find a balance where a healthy exercise that is stressing like using an infrared sauna, fasting, exercising, cutting carbs.

Keto itself is a hormetic stressor, right?

We have to all acknowledge that.

So if we’re taking on these health supporting activities that are all to some level stressing and then we’re taking on a big burden of stress like a book deadline or a divorce or whatnot, We have to be mindful that we need to get the body back to a safe regulatory mode and not overburn the reactive state.

So we have to be able to whittle out some of those hormetic stressors that we may read about as being beneficial.

Or we may have personally experienced to be beneficial in a different chapter of our life, but we need to honor when it’s not working for us at the time being.

And often when we’re under mental emotional stress, those are times to mellow out your exercise, to feed yourself more, to sleep deeper and try to get the body again to feel safe versus in survival, which is going to ultimately drive chronic illness.

So I hope that that resonates.

And with that, I’m going to unpack some questions, but I want to just say also, this is obviously a huge passion of mine and it’s driving a lot of what I do on a daily basis, the way I look at every clinical case and what I’m sharing with all of you on my social media and in my own personal podcast and in the projects that I take on.

And I’ve decided that as the anti-anxiety diet cookbook comes out, I will be recording a virtual class specifically.

It’s not going to be a program because I won’t be teaching it live.

It’s going to be like a virtual class that you have access to an online classroom and you can watch the videos, but I’m going to specifically go into all of these R’s of the anti-anxiety diet.

I’m going to be doing some cooking demos and I’m going to be really having just deep conversations about where you can do a life inventory assessment, I guess.

Really check in with yourself to connect and adapt.

And I think that that’s really where healing happens, when we can actually listen and connect with our bodies.

And that’s where Leanne and I really connect.

I think, you know, when I first heard her talk at KetoCon about carbs and like no one threw a tomato at her, I was like, “Whoa, this girl’s talking carbs at KetoCon.”

What is this all about?

And I had been doing in my ketogenic approach a phase one, phase two protocol where phase two was like a low glycemic diet.

It was 60 to 90 grams of carbs slide that individuals could do to carb cycle in to help support hormones or just for food freedom or to phase quarterly for a week window and then dig back into ketosis.

And so it was really freeing to hear Leanne really pioneer that out loud within the community that, “Hey, women might need to keto differently first and foremost, and all people might need to.”

We don’t need to demonize a macronutrient so much so that it’s either on this pedestal where don’t look at it, don’t touch it.

And we have this fear monger connection with it, or also where, you know, we demonize it so much that we can’t find any, understand or wrap our mind around any benefit.

And that’s kind of when we get to this, what I like to call doctrine creates disconnect, where we get so doctrinated with this being a perfect diet, that anything that doesn’t follow that must be wrong.

And that’s when, you know, when you’re dealing with hair loss, when you’re dealing with waking them all the night after initially keto was helping with sleep, but now you’re getting distressed sleep.

Or now you’re dealing with panic attack, or now you’re dealing with other feedback where your body’s yelling at you.

You have to be dynamic.

You have to listen.

And ultimately, food should be used to empower us.

Ultimately, food should be used to empower us, not to have power over us.

And so that should always be your perspective.

food to support a metabolic process, maybe it is ketosis, likely it is, that’s going to support optimal outcomes within your body.

And that’s what I think food is medicine really is.

Consuming more health supporting compounds or ingredients than health depleting and strategically working through your journey to remove as many health depleting and increase as many health supporting as possible.

So I’ll take a couple questions.

Let’s see here.

you carb cycle if you this is mrs.

Harvey 620 when you carb cycle if you don’t have your period and don’t know Oh when to carb cycle if you don’t have your period and don’t know when ovulation should be I love that question I always say if you are of an age of a cycling female that first thing you want to make sure you’re doing again likely if you’ve lost your period it may be due to hypothalamic amenorrhea so I would recommend taking at least two months off of intensive exercise I know this wasn’t really the question yet, but take two months off of intensive exercise and transition to gentle movement therapy.

That could be a flow yoga class, that could be walking, could even be a hike, but just keep it moderate.

And make sure that you’re eating enough fat, because you need cholesterol and fat ultimately to make hormones.

So if you’re not cycling, it’s probably that there’s some suppression going on with hormone production.

And you may also consider taking a supplement that supports your HPA access, and that’s going to really help your body again to shift back to feeling safe where it will be more prone to reproductive hormone productivity.

And I’m a huge fan of a supplement in my line beyond like Adaptogen Boost and whatnot.

There is one called Relax and Regulate and it’s magnesium bisglycinate and inositol.

And inositol is like magic for so many people, but especially for women getting at minimum four grams is in one scoop of mine, but upwards of like 12 grams, 1200 milligrams, that would You know, we’re really looking at inositol and its effects of aiding in ovarian function and sexual hormone balance and also being anxiolytic or anxiety reducing in the body.

And there’s so many other benefits to inositol as a cousin of the B vitamin family that can be really beneficial if you’ve lost your cycle.

That would be something I’d recommend.

Okay.

And that’s called relax and regulate powder.

So if you don’t have a cycle, you can follow the moon.

So when the moon is a full moon, you can consider that ovulation.

And I generally recommend carb cycling about four days post ovulation.

In some people, four to six days.

So if you ovulate around day 12, you might do your carb cycles day 17 and 18 or day 19 and 20.

Kind of is going to depend, but somewhere between five, I guess instead of four, five to seven day window after ovulation.

So follow the full moon and then carb cycle five to seven days after that.

And then the new moon is thought to be your period.

And I always say that your period could be an optional time to carb cycle.

But the four to five days, five to seven days post ovulation is really where you want to play with those windows of maintaining a full cycle length.

Because if your cycle goes shorter than 28 days in length, if you are cycling, that generally means that it’s anovulatory.

So we like to keep that at a longer length.

Generally shows more balanced hormone.

Okay.

So another girl said actions to balance female hormones.

I think I just answered all those.

So see, I did two in one.

That was good.

Okay, let’s see.

Why she does not recommend therapeutic ketones.

Oh, so I think that this person, BitByBitFarm, is asking about exogenous ketones.

So I am not a fan at all of exogenous ketones.

I am a fan of, you know, really teaching the body the metabolic process.

I know Leanne and I both agree in the sense that like more doesn’t mean better when we’re talking about looking at ketone values.

I know for me, when my numbers get into the above 2.

8, I start to get squirrely.

I call it like thin, like I just feel wiry and more like adrenaline epinephrine response.

And that doesn’t feel balancing for my body.

And I like to promote my body’s biochemical processes of producing ketones rather than giving the downstream compound.

So, I’m not a fan of BHB.

And honestly, I haven’t found to date, I mean, all the BHB products out there, I won’t name any brands at all, but all of them have, in my opinion, some form of a chemical shitstorm or a food-like product and not a whole food ingredient, whether it’s a binder, a filler, a stabilizer.

Many listeners, if you’re familiar with my brand, you know that I don’t do any non-caloric sweeteners.

So, I don’t do Stevia, I don’t do monk fruit, I don’t do RebA.

I’m not a fan of non-caloric sweeteners because I believe that they really interfere with our ability to break up with sugar.

I think that they, you know, we have GLP-1 receptors.

We have taste receptors on our tongue that respond to sweet taste and there is a psychosomatic response like the Pavlov’s dog response where we taste sweet, our body physiologically and metabolically responds.

And that can interfere with satiety or feeling of satisfaction.

That’s why we’ve seen in so many studies people that consume diet products tend to eat more calories.

We also know that this psychosomatic connection could interfere with our insulin signaling in the body and that can drive hypoglycemic response or insulin resistance.

And it’s just continuing and perpetuating a craving of an unrealistic food group.

I want my people in my community when they transition to ketosis to channel savory.

So when I do baked goods, I incorporate real food sweeteners in very moderate amounts.

I have a chocolate chip cookie recipe in the anti-anxiety diet cookbook that uses one tablespoon of molasses as the sweetener.

One tablespoon and it makes 16 cookies, you know?

So you’re not even getting two grams of carb from the amount of sweetener added to my cookie and it tastes more like a shortbread, right?

It doesn’t taste hyper sweet.

It’s made with almond flour and it has coconut oil and it has coconut butter in it and it It has egg and baking soda and vanilla extract pretty much and that’s it.

A pinch of salt just gave you the recipe and gelatin and collagen.

And so, you know, it has grounding fats and all of the recipes that we’re talking about to balance mood stability and hormones should drive with fat.

And allowing the palate that has been so, I guess, sterilized or just dumbed down by industrialized processed foods, allowing the palate to reset I think is where the magic happens with the sustainability of your diet compliance.

Compliance is a harsh word, but the sustainability of you committing to feeling awesome in your body, how about that?

And so you know, if you can appreciate the natural sweetness of an almond, that’s amazing.

And then you know, if you get the natural sweetness from your apple with almond butter, while you’re doing a carb cycle, or something like that, and that’s totally appropriate.

And I think a balanced approach to get best metabolic outcomes and still honor and nourish your body with whole real foods.

Summer or actually any holiday season is such a delightful time, isn’t it?

A chance to take a break from the daily grind and just enjoy life.

However, all the fun aside, we often find ourselves taking a break from our health routine during the summer too.

Things like late nights, irregular eating habits, indulgence, a lot of alcohol, maybe even cutting down on sleep or not having good sleep because of the alcohol we’re drinking.

But when the vacation season winds down, it’s time to get back on track with our health.

Although it may not be the easiest thing to kind of sit down and go through how to make these shifts, it’s absolutely essential for our well-being.

If you struggle to return to your health routine, I have a valuable lesson to share.

For now, just focus on the majors.

Prioritizing healthy eating, exercise, good quality water, and quality sleep.

Sleep is the key to your body’s rejuvenation and repair process.

It controls hunger and weight loss hormones, boosts energy levels, and impacts countless other vital functions.

A good night’s sleep will improve your well-being much more than anything else.

In fact, if I had a choice, I would choose a sleep in versus an early morning gym session.

Yes, that is true because sleep is a major to focus on.

And that’s why I recommend you look at starting magnesium daily.

But not just any magnesium supplement.

Get magnesium Breakthrough by BiOptimizers.

Magnesium Breakthrough contains all seven forms of magnesium designed to help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed.

Not to mention, it’s a phenomenal blend to regulate your magnesium levels overall, something we can all benefit from.

The sleep benefits are truly remarkable and once your sleep is optimized, you’ll find it much easier to tackle all the other aspects of your health.

Trust me, Magnesium Breakthrough is a game-changer.

To learn more just go to magbreakthrough.com/ketodiet that’s m-a-g-b-r-e-a-k-t-h-r-o-u-g-h.com/ketodiet and use the code keto diet 1-0 to get 10% off your first bottle.

Again that’s magnesium breakthrough.com/ketodiet and use the code keto diet 1-0 to get 10% off your first bottle.

– Okay.

Which of her supplements does she recommend for hyperthyroidism?

Thanks.

Oh, so I would also recommend that Same Relax and Regulate as well as Adaptogen Boost and a product called Cellular Antiox.

So that reduces oxidative stress of the overdrive mode.

It has glutathione in it, N-acetylcysteine and B6 is the active ingredients.

And I’m really big into for hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism, but hyperthyroidism like with Graves’ disease is where we really want to get that glutathione level regulated, so we’re not burning out the tissue and making too much oxidative stress.

And then within that world, I would potentially consider also like my super turmeric or inflammazine with the proteolytic enzymes to reduce the tissue inflammation.

Okay, let’s see here.

How to support the HPA access, adrenals in particular?

So, I talked about salt already to you guys, And I talked about the connection of all of those drivers of stress, right?

Like the spin glass, the not sleeping enough, the over-restricting, right?

So if you’re dealing with adrenal fatigue, if you’re gonna do any kind of fasting, it has to be a fat fast.

You can’t fully restrict and give zero calories because that’s gonna put the body in more of a food insecurity state.

And that’s going to be more of a signal of panic for the body and not going to be regulating.

So you could get 200 calories plus of fat if you wanted and do like a fat bomb or a fat-fueled latte of sorts, and that could be fine.

But also if you’re looking to support your adrenals, I would cut caffeine.

You could play with matcha as a swap out for your coffee, or you could play with like an adaptogenic blend and doing that with a tea, like rooibos tea with different adaptogens and blending that with coconut oil and coconut butter, and that would be very tonifying.

I have a recipe on the blog called Adrenal Rehab Shake, and that brings me to my next point for adrenals, which is vitamin C, high-dose vitamin C.

Of all of the glands in your body, your tiny adrenal glands actually store most of the vitamin C.

And, you know, we know that we demand vitamin C at times of stress, and we also know that the immune system gets taxed with stress, so there’s definitely a connection there.

I like to encourage incorporating like citrus zest.

So this recipe blends full lemons with the like pith and the, you know, peel intact.

It has a lot of salt, full fat coconut milk, and it actually has grass-fed whey protein in this shake because grass-fed whey is a great source of glutathione, especially if it’s non-denatured, so it hasn’t been heat treated.

You get all of the immunoglobulins intact as well, which supports the immune system and reduces inflammation and food sensitivity.

So that’s an awesome recipe.

It’s called Adrenal Rehab.

You can check it out at alimillerrd.com on the blog.

And you might consider supplementing with a vitamin C supplement as well to support your adrenals.

And then if you know you’re low, you’re likely gonna need a glandular.

I actually have a bundle on my website called Adrenal Rehab Bundle.

You can check that out.

Okay, let’s go on to how to navigate provided daycare lunches for toddlers.

Good question.

So I’m pretty staunch with food.

I just did a big rant, and I think I’ll take this rant and address the toddler questions, ’cause I got another question on toddler snack recommendations.

And then I’m gonna probably close off there.

But when we’re talking about food, and I’m using air quotes here, and allowing a child to have a real child experience, that was all air quoted, okay?

Or we’re talking about, in air quotes, food freedom, all foods fit.

– I think that that is absolutely BS.

And I think that we are not creating freedom by doing that, especially when we’re talking about processed products that have been shown time and time again in various studies on the impact of the ingredients.

So if we’re talking about like a unicorn cupcake, right?

That has food colorants, that has soy lecithin in the frosting and partially hydrogenated oils, And we’re talking about high fructose corn syrup and just high amounts of sugar in general.

And we’re talking about gluten and other inflammatory gut ingredients in there.

And you’re going to tell me that that’s freedom for me to give that to my daughter.

And then in two hours, you’re going to be frustrated as a teacher of why the children won’t sit still and listen.

And then half of these children are going to get diagnosed with ADHD and given pharmaceutical drugs to regulate a cause that could be resolved by regulating blood sugar and removing food colorants and inflammatory ingredients that interfere with our neurotransmitters.

Like what the what?

I just have a big issue with that.

So I think, and you can use that in adults, right?

Like when people look at healthy eating and they say that that’s a form of disordered eating, I think that we should start to think through how we define freedom.

And I have found with my clients and within myself personally that when I stay connected to my body is when I experience the most food freedom.

And when I listen to the feedback of my body and I consume health supporting foods and I wake up feeling good in my joints and I’m thinking clear and my mood is balanced and I have the energy to get through my daily tasks, that that is freedom, right?

If I consume gluten and I decide to have a pizza binge, which I haven’t done in years, I would be constipated for four days because I have an inflammatory response to gluten.

I’m going to be distended, I’m going to be bloated, and I’m going to feel miserable and cranky and I’m going to have anxiety and guilt and shame.

To me, at the end of the day, I think that it is misleading to, as a society, say that all foods fit and that that’s food freedom.

Because if anything, that consumption of that food just imprisoned me in my body to feeling like garbage.

And that’s what many people do is they kind of drive in this mediocre to crummy mode, and they never restrict to experience excellence.

And I think that the shaming of the health and wellness industry is highly catapulted by the fear and the connection of pharmaceutical and industrialized foods, knowing that that’s imprisoning us as a society and keeping us burdened to the ball and chain of the pharmaco industry.

So, sidebar and rant.

And anyway, so I choose freedom with every bite that I take.

And I’ve said to patients, you know, the beautiful thing with having a plan, you know, so whoever you’re following as your health guru and you’re doing their program or whatnot, is that you know what’s on and what’s off.

And that in itself, standing in line at Starbucks and just knowing what you’re ordering versus battling back and forth of whether or not you can have that chocolate scone of like, “Oh, well, I did spin and I do feel good.”

I’ll exercise extra.

I’ll make sure I did that.

Well, I did have a stressful day.

No, don’t do it.

You’ve been doing so good.

You’ve been eating so “good,” right?

Whereas if you’re doing something where you just know, “If I eat that, I’m going to feel like garbage, done deal,” not even ruminating on it.

So staying connected with our body I think is where real freedom happens.

And maybe there is a carb that kicks you out of keto, right?

Like maybe it’s a dates wrapped in bacon or prosciutto with melon or something like that, that you’re craving and you desire and you eat it and you carb cycle with it.

And that’s a real food.

And I think that that’s where you’re being intuitive and flexible with your intake and not being too rigid.

And that’s food freedom without harming yourself with food.

So I think unfortunately, the daycare lunches provided, all going back to your question, the daycare lunches provided for the toddlers are probably not optimal.

And so for me, I’m very staunch with my daughter.

She’s three now.

I’m doing 100% gluten-free, grain-free, and that’s where we’re at.

She’s now at an age where if she is at a birthday party, I will let her make her own empowered decisions.

And then we have conversations about things if there was a consequence.

in my household and especially if it’s a daily lunch, that’s something that I would not compromise on.

So I think what I would do is I would write a letter and I would send my own lunch every day and if you needed a letter from your doctor, I would just get one.

Now on toddler snack recommendations, you know, or advocate on the PTA for there to be a health supporting meal, but there’s just, it’s very difficult because, you know, things that could be “healthy” for someone might be an allergy for another like nut butters and so forth.

And so it can be a slippery slope and I acknowledge that.

But when we’re choosing meals and snacks for toddlers, always drive with proteins and fats.

So some of Stella’s favorites, she loves pork rinds, the Epic pork rind Himalayan salt, very mellow flavor.

She calls them her crunchies.

And so when other kids are eating pretzels or other, you know, processed carb stuff, she eats pork rinds and she loves grass-fed meat sticks.

So we cut those up in her lunch.

She does raw aged cheeses.

She likes avocado, but that’s not something I offer as a snack away from the home.

I will often at home do avocado pieces cut up with blueberries or blackberries, but for her lunch I don’t send that because it gets brown.

I do send though, also sometimes I’ve sent like the Peterson’s bacon.

They have individual packed bacon or I’ll bake bacon in the oven and throw a slice or two cut up in her section with their vegetable and that helps her to eat like her roasted broccoli.

also an option of a raw vegetable like cucumber slice, bell pepper, carrots she’s into as well and then I always send a fruit.

So that’s her standard lunch and then her snack is just a version of that you know so she just pulls from her lunch bag a fruit and a nut butter.

Luckily for me Stella’s school the yoga school of peace so Austin it is there’s a pecan tree in the backyard so it’s not nut-free for that reason.

So I do get to send her, I haven’t sent her nut butter packs because they’re kind of sloppy still.

I need to kind of help her still with those.

You have to massage them, you know, kind of knead them and then feed them to her.

But she loves F-bombs.

She has one like every day.

But I do send her nut butter balls.

So I actually put this recipe in the anti-anxiety diet cookbook.

It’s just nut butter, collagen, I open probiotics, and cinnamon.

And then I just ball them up together, roll them into small balls, set them in the freezer, and then store them in the fridge.

And those are really great for them to grab with their fingers and eat with like sliced up fruit or something like that.

And I started empowering her honestly as early as before she could talk, talking to her about food.

And I think that that’s a really important part of the process for adults too, but for toddlers is building that autonomy of, you know, choose your protein.

Would you like wild salmon or would you like grass fed burger patty?

Or if she says, “I want dried mango.”

Okay, I will pull out some dried mango.

Now what healthy fat would you like with your mango?

You can have avocado, you can have nut butter ball, or you can have a nut butter pack, or you can have some cut up raw aged cheese.

And then she selects.

And what’s really interesting is she participates now at the dinner table where, like she was saying last night, “I’m done, Mama.

And I said, “Okay, well maybe you could take,” she’s really into dinosaurs right now, so I said, “Well, maybe you could take a T-Rex bite of your steak.” And she said, “Oh, yeah, mama, because that’s my protein, right?” You know, so I just think it’s really cool for her to make these connections of this is why I need this macro and this is what it does for my body and this is what a carb is.

And for kids, my philosophy is no naked carbs.

I just want them to pair their carbs with protein and healthy fat.

Because you know, the idea of ketosis and its benefits is really on regulating insulin being fat dominant.

And for children, we also often don’t have to restrict carbs so much so because they’re not coming at us with metabolic injury, like many of us have done to ourselves over years of eating a standard American diet.

So think of that when you’re working with your household and, and determining that each member, including yourself has some metabolic flexibility.

So that’s kind of what I’ll sign off with you guys as is go on over to Allie Check out my website, follow me on Instagram, it’s @allimillerrd.

I’m always posting in my stories, literally at least one meal a day of what I’m eating and something with my daughter, Stella.

And it’s just real authentic sharing of my day-to-day as a functional medicine practitioner and how I try to also balance my household and my own body and work to wear all the hats yet drive resilience in this process so that I’m not feeling a victim of my body.

I’m feeling that I’m in full on thrive mode.

And I really wish that for each and every one of you listening.

So check out the anti-anxiety diet.

I hope it’s a great resource for you and all of you just take some time to honor and nourish your body and explore.

Be open to exploring what works for you today will very often be different than what works for you tomorrow.

Awesome.

I hope you enjoyed our time with Allie.

If you have any questions for me or you have suggestions for upcoming episodes, head on over to healthfulpursuit.com/contact and post it there.

And I will see you back here for another episode of the Keto Diet Podcast.

Thanks for listening.

Join us next Tuesday for another episode of the Keto Diet Podcast.

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