As we age, our hormones make some drastic changes that can lead to some difficult symptoms. We all experience this, although women suffer the most with weight gain, sleep issues, and hot flashes. In her book, MenuPause, Dr. Anna Cabeca provides 5 unique eating plans to help you address these symptoms.
Transcript
Let's Say Hello
[00:03:27.790] – Allan
Hello, Ras.
[00:03:29.230] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, how are you today?
[00:03:31.110] – Allan
I'm doing all right. How are things with you?
[00:03:33.360] – Rachel
Good. As we recorded this, we're leading up to my race day, which is this weekend. This is my final week of taper, so I'm just going to enjoy myself this week.
[00:03:43.580] – Allan
Good, good. And unlike a lot of people that would be in your position, you're not carving up. You're not really changing anything about your nutrition. And that's a different take than what you'll read elsewhere of what you do for a long race like this. But you know, your nutrition, you're set, you've done the training, so you're set. And you have a plan. You have an actual plan for approaching this race, which I think is outstanding.
[00:04:15.850] – Rachel
Yeah. My trainer only suggested that I not changed my eating habits this week, that I eat, get in enough calories. I may not be as hungry as I would be as I'm running tons of miles and doing tons of drills, but just to maintain my standard way of eating. And in the past, I would do something very similar, and I just prefer to play it safe this week. So no restaurant eating, no crazy spicy dinners, nothing that I think could even possibly upset my digestive system. I just want to keep it status quo as I lead into race day.
[00:04:56.590] – Allan
Yeah, it's funny. There was this article they were talking about how they opened up a Popeye's restaurant in UK, and nobody was complaining that the mild was too spicy.
[00:05:09.430] – Rachel
Oh, boy.
[00:05:10.500] – Allan
Good. Don't get me wrong. I love the spicy stuff. I love it, love it, love it. In fact, I had been to Lou this weekend, and I have the sauce in there so I can put it on my eggs. So I love spicy foods. But it was just they were complaining that Popeye's chicken was too spicy in the UK.
[00:05:31.270] – Rachel
Oh, gosh.
[00:05:32.250] – Allan
Well, they might not make it over there, which is probably just the better because it's not the best food for you to be eating so good. You've got control. Yeah, well, things here are going pretty good. We're winding down to our big season for Bocas, so Lula's will start to probably wind down. We've been fully occupied pretty much for the whole time since we opened in November, which has been good. But it's just that point we're like, okay, go. Hopefully we're going to get a little bit more of an opportunity here to settle down. Tammy is planning a trip to Ireland, and then we're going to have our anniversary break, which will just be a kind of a staycation for us. So we're planning those things. Nothing huge. And then just being I am looking at launching my six week program again. I'm kind of going back and forth of whether I do it as a group thing, like where we literally have everybody come through together or whether I do it at their own pace over a six week period of time. So that's kind of where I am planning it. But I am planning on going live again.
[00:06:45.970] – Allan
I only take clients during certain periods of time, and that's really just to fit my lifestyle the way I want to. So if you are wanting to work with me, this is a good time to send me an email, allan@40PlusFitness, I'm sorry, coach@40PlusFitness. It's coach@40PlusFitness. And let's get you on the list. Let's make sure you're aware of what I'm going to be doing as I figured it out. But it is a six week program. The intention is to teach you what you need to know to lose weight, to get fit, to figure out where you need to be. And so it's an educational thing in addition to the direct coaching. So it's a very direct, intensive coaching for you about what you need, where you are with what you have to do, what you want and be who you need to be. So if you're interested in that, coach@40Plusfitness.com and we can start that conversation.
[00:07:41.830] – Rachel
Sounds great.
[00:07:42.980] – Allan
All right. So are we ready to have another conversation with Dr. Cabeca?
[00:07:47.680] – Rachel
Sure.
Interview
[00:08:23.660] – Allan
Dr. Anna, welcome back to 40+ Fitness.
[00:08:26.950] – Dr. Cabeca
It is great to be here with you, Allan. Thanks for having me.
[00:08:30.910] – Allan
Initially, you brought up the concept for me anyway. I mean, I talked to some other people, but in general, how there's pulls and pushes and there's a keto community and there's a plant-based community. And never, ever should we go between the two. You got to pick your tribe and you got to get on one side or the other. And then you come out with Keto-Green, which is basically saying, yes, you can have your meat and your vegetables, too, and you can do it in a way that promotes health. Your new book, MenuPause: Five Unique Eating Plans to Break Through Your Weight Loss Plateau and Improve Your Mood, Sleep and Hot Flashes. Love the title.
[00:09:12.710] – Dr. Cabeca
Thank you.
[00:09:13.820] – Allan
But it takes a lot of the concepts from your previous two books, and it kind of lays it out in a way to say, okay, food is medicine, so let's use it that way.
[00:09:25.310] – Dr. Cabeca
Absolutely. And bringing in these different pauses in our life. And I say there's magic in the pause. Right, Allan? We really have to look at it that way, and especially when it comes to a hormonal shift, whether we're talking about menopause or andropause or whatever. But there is magic in the pause. There's a rewiring or reshifting. And where I was, I certainly had fun with the title Menu Pause. So I thought that was great. My editor came up with that title as we were looking for a new title, and I just love it. So I laugh every time I say it. And the five different eating plans to each pause, something different. And that came out of women in my online communities doing keto green and me now keto green since 2014, 2015, and how that's changed my life, especially with hormone balance and seeing the changes. But sometimes we had a roadblock. Why isn't it working for this person or why did it stop working? And so that had me really looking at, okay, well, what are some of the pauses that we have to make that we've had to make or adjust to break through some of the plateaus that we can hit?
[00:10:37.560] – Dr. Cabeca
Because when what we're doing stops working or we stop seeing those improved benefits, we start seeing continued improvements or some of the problem, we need to look a little bit deeper, change things up, bring some variety as a spice of life, right?
[00:10:54.840] – Allan
Absolutely.
[00:10:56.150] – Allan
And there's a lot of good reasons for this book. But I want to say before the men tune out and I always say this in the preamble and I'll say it again to them is that this is first and foremost a weight loss book and a hormone shifting book, but not just for females. If a man uses these five eating plans as a way to structure their eating, they will lose weight too. So if you're in a relationship, not in a relationship, it doesn't matter. These eating plans will help you. And what you were saying about the pause is I think that's right. In Dr. Fung's book, The Obesity Code, one of the things he says is all diets work and all diets fail, and it's because our body will adjust to the way we're eating. So you start eating a certain way, a keto diet, and then something happens and your body just stops responding to it. You go vegan and your body's doing great, you're losing weight, and all of a sudden your body stops responding to it. So this ability to have these different eating plans, that structure pauses for various different things for various different reasons gives you a structure to say, okay, I'm going to go in, check this out, see if it serves me.
[00:12:05.420] – Allan
If it does, then I'll stick with it till it stops serving me. And if it doesn't serve me, I move on.
[00:12:11.690] – Dr. Cabeca
Absolutely. And we give it enough time to figure out every plan is designed to be safe. And we give enough time, the six days to just be the shortest, essentially amount of time to really get a benefit. And then also to see to be able to check in with yourself. How are you feeling now with this lifestyle, with this diet plan, it's always more than what we eat too. And I really established with my whole Keto Green approach, it's the keto green way, it's the lifestyle, it's the hormone oxytocin becoming more oxytocin rich in our lives. And that joy connection, that important physiologic effect of joy connection. Right. Pleasure and becoming more insulin sensitive. So when it comes to guys too, we'll see an improvement in their adrenal hormones, their testosterone, a decrease in blood pressure and sugar management and blood sugar as well in the short amount of times. And I expect it pretty much with every plan because again, there's a shift, there's a change up, except for maybe the carbohydrate up plan that I put in as plan number five.
[00:13:26.630] – Allan
Yeah. Now, I think a lot of women and maybe even men when they're going through some of these changes, obviously a woman's change is drastically different. So I'm going to try to compare what we guys go through, through what women go through. Not even close. So don't think it does, guys. I guess it feels bad, but not even close.
[00:13:46.820] – Dr. Cabeca
He's a wise man, right, ladies? He's a wise man.
[00:13:50.200] – Allan
But as they go through this, I think the knee jerk reaction today is what supplement do I need to take? What pill can I take? What surgery do I have to fix this problem? Why is food the better answer?
[00:14:10.910] – Dr. Cabeca
Definitely. Because how we nourish, our body is a whole framework for how we nourish other aspects of our lives. Right. And we have to give our body the fuel. We are designed to work with our environment, to interact and to respond to the energies of the food we eat. So beyond the micronutrient and macronutrient breakdown of what we're eating, there's a lot more to it than that. And I think when we set up, as we set up our eating plans, the key aspect is diversity. And I always tell clients, I interview a lot of people and selling when someone says, yeah, I eat a chicken salad every day for lunch, I just want that hand emoji to the top of your head. Like, I want that hand emoji because it is like, okay, we're eating the same thing every day, and that's just not good for you. I don't care how good of a health food you're eating. If you're eating the same thing every day, you can create a food sensitivity to it. So the importance of how we nourish our bodies, how we're going to do everything, and that sets the tone for hormonal balance.
[00:15:25.730] – Dr. Cabeca
Our behavior is affected by our physiology. So a balanced nourishing eating plan is key for willpower, brain power, love power, whatever it may be that we're working towards. So for physical and mental, wellbeing, how we nourish our body is key. And so having that as food, as medicine, it's absolutely true.
[00:15:53.510] – Allan
Yeah. Now the other aspect of this that I thought was really interesting and you brought science to bear. So this wasn't just you saying this is how you solve this problem or this is why this problem might be worse for you than someone else. I think we know is if you have a knee problem, you go to your doctor. Your doctor is going to say if you need to, you might want to lose some weight because the excess weight is causing knee pain. That's why part of the reason why you have the pain. So he encourages or she encourages you to go lose some weight. Why is weight loss part of a solution to the menopause symptoms that many women suffer with?
[00:16:30.390] – Dr. Cabeca
Yeah, because our fat is inflammatory and two of the things that cause worsening symptoms in menopause is inflammation and hormone imbalance, those two things. And fat is a contributor to both of those things. We naturally become more insulin resistant as we age, and that's why we can develop diabetes or prediabetes in menopause. And we've been doing really well up until then. And post menopause, that's because we're becoming more insulin resistant. And so type two diabetes becomes very prevalent in our age group, and that's got to stop. And that's why that's, again, why keto green eating is so critical for this. But fat holds inflammation and it creates basically cytokines storms within our body and inflammation creates increased hormonal imbalance. So what we see as people clear this up decrease inflammation through how we're nourishing the body, providing appropriate nutrients and not feeding it junk and sugar and inflammatory foods. We also see an improvement in hot flashes tremendous. Within two weeks, we can see 80% reduction in hot flashes through these lifestyle and nutritional changes. The other big thing I want to mention is, like, women will say, oh, I can't fast 13 hours. I'm hungry when I go to bed.
[00:17:58.480] – Dr. Cabeca
I'm hungry when I wake up. That's just how you've trained your body. Your body is not designed to be like that. And so let's retrain it into a healthier way that's actually going to serve you. And we know this really important factor. So built into the plan, I do at least 13 hours of intermittent fasting between dinner and breakfast, but you start where you're at. But the reason I do that is because research has shown in women with breast cancer that if you have at least twelve and a half hours between dinner and breakfast, you have a significantly reduced risk of recurrent breast cancer. So that should be number one health guideline, all the initials that you want, but really should be promoting that intermittent fasting is a key component of our lifestyle. And that improves insulin sensitivity and then improves really all of our symptoms and age related diseases that can occur. So the hot flashes, the mood swings, the night sweats, difficulty sleeping will improve with these shifts and how we're nourishing our body.
[00:19:02.530] – Allan
Yeah. And the same is true for men. If a man is obese, it's affecting their insulin sensitivity and therefore, it's affecting their hormones. And so it's creating a similar effect to us, we call it Andropause but it's basically a very similar approach, similar thing happening in our body. If we can reduce our fat stores, we're going to improve all of that and improve our health. And weight loss is often a side effect of better health. But basically what we're showing is the main symptom we see is when we step on that scale.
[00:19:38.540] – Dr. Cabeca
Yeah. And we want the weight loss, but we want in a way that we don't gain Yoyo dieted from my teens through my 20s and into my 30s. And I think that especially others, I went to high school and College in the 80s. So that's when the low carbohydrate craze was in place and we would do all these crazy things like Apple juice fasting and just nut stuff, like you're fasting on sugar. What the heck? If you're going to fast anyway, now we fast on bone broth a little bit better or just fast on water. But the key thing is and what we know is that calorie restriction decreases your metabolism more than fasting does. And that's a really important concept for people to understand. So you're not going to Yoyo diet back. And being of the, I would say of the warrior body type because there's an epigenetic component. We know this just from observing friends, family, colleagues, et cetera. Some of us are designed to be empowered to be very conservative with our nutrient use. I would say I could survive in the Sahara for six months without food or water, and I'd still be fine.
[00:20:47.780] – Dr. Cabeca
I'm thriving. And I see that among many of my clients, I say they have Pocahontas or Warrior, Viking heritage or Amazonian. Right. Because you're designed to be metabolically conservative, so you're at higher risk. However, you're designed to live through a famine, right? Live through deprivation cycle. But in America, we don't have that right. And so then we think, oh, I just have fat genes. I have obesity and diabetes on both sides of my family. And I want that mind shift to switch to say, no, you've got Warrior genes, you've got Survivor genes. You're amazing. You've got leadership genes. Let's use them. Part of what I really want to empower people to understand this epigenetic component. So it's kind of built in into my plans and into my program. And that's where that whole individual bio individuality comes in, like, what's right for you right now based on what you've been doing up till now and the state of life you're in, how your hormones are, are you burned out? Is your DHA estrogen, testosterone progesterone? Are you tanked in your hormone levels? Are you pretty resilient? And I think with this, with changing up and my goal with this, with cross training in the gym, cross training in your diet is to improve your resilience.
[00:22:11.080] – Dr. Cabeca
So you improve the diversity of your gut microbiome, and with that, you improve your immune system and you improve your overall longevity and quality of life.
[00:22:22.590] – Allan
Yeah. Now you have in the book five plans, and each of them starts out with kind of a six day approach. And I like the six day approach because it gives you that opportunity to check in with yourself to see how it's going. And I think anyone can agree you can do anything for six days if you put your mind to it. So it kind of gives them that finish line, even though it's not intended to truly be a finish line. But it's just give it six days, see if it works. And I like all of that. Obviously, if we've gotten ourselves obese, it's not going to fix itself in six days. So don't think that these are magic pills that are going to make everything great in six days. But each of them gives you a kind of a phase. A pause is the way you like to put it, gives you a pause on something so you can start to see the results and move forward. I want to go through each one of them because I think each of the one of them is really important, but I think it's important for them to know why would they use this plan and what is the plan entail?
[00:23:21.590] – Allan
So the first one and it has extreme in the title because it is kind of an extreme one, is the Keto Green Extreme. Can you talk about that one? Why we would want to use it?
[00:23:33.320] – Dr. Cabeca
Yeah, definitely. First want to say why six days? And six days if we consider that the gut gastrointestinal mucosal lininging of the intestines of our intestinal tract, GI tract regenerates in 72 hours. So that's three days. So incorporating two, three day cycle should be very healing and restorative to our GI tract, certainly in the cleanse. But even as we remove some of these inflammatory triggers or these pauses, as we take these pauses, it gives our body those two full 72 hours cycles to regenerate, respond, react. I think that's where some of this checking in, checking in with yourself can really be powerful. So with Ketogenic Extreme, because I definitely have clients who have had autoimmune diseases and have reactions to night shades. I mean, I was sitting at dinner with Dave Ashbury the other day and he sent his plate back twice because one time it had peppers and one time they had mushrooms in it. So anyway, some people are super sensitive to nitrates. Right. And so I removed that. It's really an autoimmune, kind of following some of the autoimmune protocol dietary changes with restriction of nightshades and peppers and some of those other inflammatory foods, if we're sensitive to that.
[00:25:02.410] – Dr. Cabeca
So checking in on that one is the number one reason to do that, especially if you have an autoimmune issue.
[00:25:08.970] – Allan
Okay. The next one is and you're using a word, well, there are two words that you use in two different ones, and I'm talking about each of those, but it's not exactly what it would mean to somebody else. Is the keto green plant based detox. Now, a lot of us will look at detoxes and thinking, oh, this is one of those where I'm going to take this supplement thing, and I'm going to be going to the bathroom for three days really bad and then not feel good. But this is a detox, but it's not a normal detox. Can you talk about this one and why we would want to use it?
[00:25:40.410] – Dr. Cabeca
Yeah. This is a grain free plant based plan. So it's more of a keto green plant based plan. So again, low in carbohydrates also. And I wanted to address my plant based eaters because my keto green 16th book, I did a 16 day omnipresent, a 16 day plant based plan. So I got a lot of feedback. Right. And then people who are omnivores did the 16 day plant based. And they loved it, too. So being able to again, do that periodically, and this is why I put it in for all of us to just detox from meat. And that's where that comes in. Detox from meat. And plus, one of the biggest problems that keto eaters and diet and diabetics and et cetera have is constipation. And the number one thing I want to clear from your system without, ideally, additional drug support vitamins, et cetera, is having regular bowel movements. So I put it after ketogenic stream. You can do them in any order. Certainly. But I did have a method to my madness, as usual. So putting it there because right now we've just reduced a lot of inflammation. But it's been pretty ketogenic. And I want to make sure your bowels are resuscitated to 72 hours of a low inflammatory diet.
[00:27:04.020] – Dr. Cabeca
But let's work on this to add in fiber support the gut microbiome. To add gut microbial diversity. We know the more plant diverse foods you have, the higher diversity in the gut, the better your immune system, the lower your risk of all inflammatory diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease. And that goes again for men and women and all the menopausal symptoms. So that's why I incorporated a six day plant based diet, because we all need to do it periodically.
[00:27:31.290] – Allan
Okay. And now we're going to go to the other extreme because you have this carbohydrate pause. Can you talk about that? Because this is going to get some attention. It's like, wait, are we plant based or are we meat eaters? So where are we here? Can you talk about that?
[00:27:45.620] – Dr. Cabeca
Like I said, variety is the spice of life. And this is one of the things that I definitely had tried carnivore being keto green for a while and wanting to switch thing up, tried carnivore. And again, same thing felt good for a little bit, but then started gaining weight. I was like, wait, what's going on? Actually connected with another perimenopausal woman in the carnivore community. And she had run across this issue, too, again with women. Again, we talked about this before we started recording. It's really awesome to have diversity. There are certain plants that work for a short time and not for the long time. And that's why disruption. We want to disrupt what we're doing. And it's so good for us. But the carnivore knows to tail. And I wanted to show people how a healthy way to eat carnivore number one. Also, again, after I've just increased the microbial diversity of the gut that was powering you up. You're taking a break from all plant foods pretty much in the carnivore plan in just a healthy way, very carbohydrate restrictive. And again, we're pausing plants in this cycle.
[00:28:59.670] – Allan
And I can say this, if you go through the carbohydrate pause, when you finish it, you're going to be in the deep cut ketosis, which is going to help with your sensitivity. Whichever direction you go after this is going to make that next plan that much better for you.
[00:29:18.870] – Dr. Cabeca
Yeah, exactly. Right.
[00:29:22.720] – Allan
Okay, now the fourth one. And again, this is using one of the words that I typically don't like to see in any kind of eating plan is the cleanse, because it usually involves buying some very expensive juices and spending a lot of money and not getting many calories and rebounding after. But yours isn't going to do that. It's called the keto green cleanse. Can you talk about that?
[00:29:45.580] – Dr. Cabeca
Yeah, absolutely. And actually ran my pre release permission from my publisher to run my selected group, my girlfriend doctor club, through the six day cleanse. And the reason for the cleanse, too, right, we're in high ketosis number one from our carnivore for going in this order. And then so we're not hungry. We are not hungry. We're chewing. We've had good protein. The other part of carbohydrate pause the carnivorous plan is to give us more protein. Women, we don't get enough protein. And protein is so important for our muscle. And muscle is magic and menopause. So then going into cleanse number one, you're not hungry. And now we really want to detox the liver and detox your gallbladder and really work to support your body so the cleanse, we did this six days. I start you with an oil, lemon juice, olive oil, lemon juice, shot in the morning. And believe me, I had objections. They're very intelligent group of women, but they're like, okay, you're recommending it. So by day three, they're like, I can't wait. Can I stay on this forever? Can I do this? I'm like, no, just six days. We have to change things up.
[00:30:56.630] – Dr. Cabeca
So this liver, gallbladder flesh and very much it is a cleanse. So it is smooth, smoothies. It is teas, it is alkaline broth or bone broth. And making sure ideally you're getting enough protein and healthy fats during this. But it is a cleanse. So you are continuing to give your GI tract rest. You will see glowing skin, glowing complexion. You will feel higher energy. You'll start checking things off on your to do list that have been on your to do list. And so it's cleansing off the things that are weighing you down, as well as really working on an internal system. So, yeah, I'm excited for that. And honestly, you're not hungry. You're doing great. You're very supportive advice from my girlfriend doctor club because some of them were used to extended intermittent fasting. They're like, just follow the plan, as Dr. Anna says it, and you're not going to get hungry. And that's really key.
[00:31:57.210] – Allan
And then the final one is and I think this is really kind of a critical piece of all of this is at some point you're going to fit a level of health and maybe a level of weight loss where you're like, okay, this is a weight I feel comfortable. And maybe it was a weight that you were when you were 29. Maybe it was a weight you were when you graduated high school. And now you could wear the same size jeans, you were wearing then. But you get to a point. And now it's like, okay, I don't want to Yoyo, I don't want to go back to where I was because it worked so hard to get to where I am. So the last plan you have is the carbohydrate modification plan. Can you talk about that and how that works?
[00:32:36.810] – Dr. Cabeca
Yeah, and I love it. And I just opened my book to one of the recipes in the Carb modif. My Texas Rodeo Skillet. Skillets are big in Texas and everything's bigger in Texas. That's where I'm living now in Dallas. And so this is a modification for some of the beautiful skillet breakfast. So this has sunny side up eggs, Sriracha sauce, avocados and sweet potatoes and bacon mixed in. I mean, it's just so yummy. I'm getting hungry thinking about this plan. But the reason is because being in the keto green community for so long, sometimes we've been so restricted that we need the additional carbs. And when some of my clients have added in a sweet potato in the evening, they're sleeping better. Right. And I think it's really important to understand that. And some of them will lose weight once they do that because they have been really conservative and adding in a carb, at least it's a beautiful thing to do. And I think once you get through the plans, it's the principles of the plant and how balancing the fats, but also for flavor, the salts and the citrus that just makes things so much better, addressing your full taste palate so that you're really looking forward to your meals and even better.
[00:33:58.990] – Dr. Cabeca
So these concepts that have been built into the recipes that are all outlined in the book have really been designed to balance and nourish and set. You enjoy them, too. So I think that a lot of times we'll do a carb up, we'll do a carb up day periodically. That's absolutely okay. And it can be very good for you unless it triggers eating disorder. Unless it triggers an eating disorder.
[00:34:30.650] – Allan
Yeah. And just as you mentioned, you mentioned the recipe. So I'll kind of jump into that. You believe in variety. You talked about that several times today. And so this cookbook is really built on a massive variety of different foods. And each plan has some foods that fit. And some of the foods some of the recipes you have actually fit multiple plans. And you put that in there. In fact, last night for dinner, my wife and I had your egg roll soup because I love egg rolls. And I walked by the Chinese we have one Chinese restaurant here on the island, and I walk by there all the time. And I'm like, I just love to go in there and order their egg rolls. And I was just like, no, I won't do it. That's not what I'm doing right now. But I was able to make your soup and it was delicious. And I actually had a second serving of it because it was that good. So these are really good recipes. They fit each plan. So it's not just that. Here's a plan and go figure it out. It's like, here's how this works.
[00:35:30.100] – Allan
Here's a plan. Here's some tips. Here are some recipes. And so you build out recipes to pretty much fill the six days. And you give guidelines if you want to do it yourself. So it's really kind of a cool way that you're not going to get bored because it's not like a lot of plans. You're eating the same foods every day. In this case, I think the most I saw you like, you Cook something one day, and then maybe the third day you have it again as a leftover for lunch or something like that. But it's not eat the same food every day all the way through. You work through these plans, and maybe other than the cleanse, you're doing fairly similar things through the cleanse. But for the others, there's great recipes that are going to keep you interested. And you even give them a shopping list, which I think is also pretty cool.
[00:36:18.670] – Dr. Cabeca
Thank you. You know, my mom raising kids, was making things early. Sometimes having leftovers is just a one less meal I have to Cook. Right. So that's always definitely an option in the plan, too. And maybe if there's adding something a little bit more interesting, too, but to create as much simplicity and shopping as possible. But it's six days. So I want this diversity. I want this experience. I want it to be an experience.
[00:36:48.970] – Allan
Yeah. It is. That's what I'm saying.
[00:36:51.980] – Allan
Mine, it's something I would order at a Chinese restaurant. I'm like, I want egg rolls. So it's like cabbage. And I did it with pork and went through the whole process of making it. And I think it took me less than an hour to make the soup. And that included prep. And I'm a slow prepper. So I didn't even get to watch a whole TV series. I was watching a TV show. I didn't get to watch the whole thing because I had the meal ready before I finished. So really good recipes. You should check that out.
[00:37:22.400] – Allan
Dr. Anna, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
[00:37:31.510] – Dr. Cabeca
Thank you. Well, definitely get keto green. So incorporate the lifestyle, the nutrition into your lifestyle. That concept, that is by design, a number one way, certainly for me and for women going through menopause, and I think for so many, my kids are doing it. The second thing is make oxytocin the most powerful hormone in your body and so not stress. Really think, where do I see love today? Where am I loving, giving, grateful? What am I grateful for? Really focusing on that. How am I showing love to those I love? How am I receiving love? Sometimes that's even harder. So make oxytocin the most powerful hormone. And the third is just smile. Really smile, really genuinely feel good about yourself. And for women, oftentimes we have this, like I would say the negative, that nasty bitch on your shoulder talking down to you. So like, knock that nasty bitch off your shoulder and enjoy yourself. And that concept of truly, genuinely being happy in your own skin with whatever is in your life at this moment, it's a really powerful concept.
[00:38:43.750] – Allan
Well, thank you, Dr. Anna. If someone wanted to get in touch with you, learn more about MenuPause or your Girlfriend's Doctor club, where would you like for me to send them?
[00:38:54.220] – Dr. Cabeca
Definitely, just come to my website dranna.com. We have a MenuPause book page and some great bonuses to go along with the MenuPause book. So some trackers, some additional handouts and recipes and good things to support you in the videos, cooking videos, all this good stuff is there for you. So, dranna.com, and then join me on social media at the Girlfriend Doctor.
[00:39:19.120] – Allan
Awesome. You can go to fortyplusfitnesspodcast.com/533 and I'll be sure to have the link there. Dr. Anna, thank you so much for being a part of 40 Plus Fitness.
[00:39:29.970] – Dr. Cabeca
Thank you for having me, Allan. I love what you're doing. Thank you.
Post Show/Recap
[00:39:40.850] – Allan
Welcome back, Ras.
[00:39:42.380] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. That was a fun interview with Doctor Anna Cabeca. Anytime I hear anything having to do with menopause, my ears peek up. So her book, MenuPause sounds like a really good book.
[00:39:55.130] – Allan
It is good. Obviously, I will not experience menopause, can't and won't. And so for me, it's really just about understanding what my wife, with my clients, with my friends, with my family, what they may experience as they're going. And I think there are periods of time when we really have to ratchet in our nutrition. For the most part, most of us can go through life and not really think about what we're eating. But there are particular periods in a woman's life where I think it becomes really important. Obviously, when you're trying to get pregnant and you are having a baby, there are times when your nutrition is tantamount to having a healthy baby, dealing with any kind of major illness or recovery. So cancer surgery, something like that. Nutrition is going to be really important to make sure that you're addressing your body's nutritional needs so that it can heal properly so that you have a good, strong immune system, really important. And then, of course, during menopause, when you're going through significant, significant hormone changes, and those changes, the perimenopause process, if you will, can take minutes where they're actually pulling out your ovaries and uterus, or it can take decades as you're going through those.
[00:41:24.750] – Allan
This is month to month, day to day, week to week. All of it changes in your hormones. And if you are just eating about doing your thing, you don't have information. What you have is a symptom. And you don't know if it was directly affected by what you're eating, what you're feeling, the movement or, yeah, you're just going through a huge hormone shift that you really couldn't deal with otherwise. Those are important. And within approach, you literally can sit down and look at a swath of time, the six day plans and say, okay, I'm going to do this thing over six days and see if my symptoms abate. And if they do now you have data, now you have information to say, hey, if I cut out this food, yes, my body screaming at me, eat more chocolate, but I don't eat more chocolate. Instead, I eat more vegetables, I eat more meat. I make sure that I'm eating whole food, and you feel better. You didn't need the chocolate. And I know that's hard to hear. Sometimes you need the chocolate. I understand. But sometimes your body is telling you something, and the answer is actually the exact opposite.
[00:42:54.060] – Rachel
That's so true. And what's interesting, how Anna put it, is that instead of turning to supplements or surgery or something, that a lot of doctors will suggest a pill for this or for that, it's turning to food. And food can actually really be true medicine for you. And I appreciate how she created these five different eating patterns or these five different types of eating for a six day window of time. Six days isn't that long. You can get through some sort of change, and you never know how you might feel afterwards. If it works for you, then it's a tool in your toolbox for all these different times in our lives when our hormones will fluctuate. Like I mentioned earlier, all of us have different symptoms as we approach menopause. Perimenopause is kind of tricky. That way our hormones can fluctuate day to day, week to week, month to month symptoms could be different from another. But by trying food as medicine, at least you have another tool in the toolbox that you can pick out later on.
[00:43:55.880] – Allan
Yeah. The only caution I put out there is if you're making a fairly drastic change. So let's just say you're eating the standard American diet today or something close to it, and you immediately say, okay, well, I'm going to go to the hardcore, intense low carb thing. Six days might not be enough time for you to fully adapt to that change. And so just recognizing that if you find that this food is affecting you and maybe even in a negative way, you may need to lean in instead of pulling back and saying it's not working. The six days is a great trial. And for a lot of people that don't have, say, insulin resistance or some other health issues going on, they're going to start seeing some potential positive change, weight loss and some other things will be happening during that period of time. But you might not feel really good. And there's a couple of reasons for it. One, yes, could be that you're going through the change into keto, and they call it keto flu. I prefer to call it carb withdrawals because your body used carbohydrates for fuel and now it doesn't have as many it's got to shift fuel systems.
[00:45:12.710] – Allan
That can be a little disruptive for most of us it is. But there's also other things. Our body stores toxins in our fat. So if you're starting to lose body fat, your body now has to deal with those toxins that it shuttled away earlier and didn't deal with. And if you're under a toxic load at home or at work or whatever, now you're adding more toxins to the mix. You might feel worse before you feel better. So just recognize six days is a good rule of thumb because as you said, you can do just about anything for six days.
[00:45:46.600] – Rachel
Absolutely.
[00:45:47.630] – Allan
People can go without eating for six days and be fine. But that said, if you're feeling bad, you're making a change. If it's hard, just consider whether this is something you need to lean into or whether it is okay. You did your six days and it just didn't work. And let's say you tried that and it didn't work. That doesn't mean that tool is useless. If you needed to screw in a screw and the first thing you grabbed was a hammer, the hammer didn't work, but you get a screwdriver and it works. Later on, you got a nail. The hammer is going to be just fine. So just recognize that time and space and where you are now is different than where you will be later. So a tool today that's not useful can be a useful tool later. But there's really good eating plans in there. Really sound advice from Dr. Cabeca. And if hormones are an issue for you as you go through these changes, food will affect your hormone levels. What you think will affect your hormone levels, what you physically do will affect your hormone levels. All of that input, all of that information and it will affect how your body expresses hormones.
[00:47:06.550] – Allan
So while you can't fix this change because it is what it is, it's coming, you can reduce the impact of it with the right foods.
[00:47:16.740] – Rachel
Yeah, well, you both were discussing bio individuality and what is right for you right now is going to be different from what is right for you later. And that's just the way our hormones fluctuate. I think every woman understands and agrees with me that like I said, week to week, month to month, our hormones, our symptoms, the way we feel just changes so greatly. So what works for you today may not work tomorrow, but the point is that you get to try something new and it sounds like Dr. Cabeca offers several different meals that you get ways to try to eat in order to satisfy those changes. It's a great idea.
[00:47:56.510] – Allan
And if you're listening to this and the guys have tuned out, they can eat this way too.
[00:48:02.710] – Rachel
Oh, for sure.
[00:48:04.670] – Allan
These are healthy, good ways to eat. This is not like, oh, well, here's an estrogen pill. I'm going to give it to my husband too. No, it's not like that. This is food. This is really good. These are really good meal plans. They're very easy. She gives you the shopping list, the whole set. So it's really simple for you to kind of go in and say, okay, this is my meal plan for the week. It's the meal plan for my family for the week.
[00:48:25.090] – Rachel
I love that.
[00:48:26.110] – Allan
And so they're getting what they need to be healthy. You're getting what you need to heal and be healthy. Just recognize this is not a woman's eating plan this is an eating plan that anyone can do and be more healthy for doing it.
[00:48:42.500] – Rachel
That sounds great. Sounds like a great book.
[00:48:45.040] – Allan
Yeah, it is. All right, well, Rachel, we'll talk next week.
[00:48:48.120] – Rachel
Sounds great.
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Allan (01:45): Dr. Cabeca, welcome to 40+ Fitness. Again.
Dr. Cabeca (01:48): Great to be here with you, Allan.
Allan (01:50): I'm pretty excited to have you here because you know when, when keto first came out, people started calling it the bacon diet and of course all the people that were on keto were like, yeah, you get to eat bacon, isn't that great. But it's not a bacon diet and your book, Keto Green 16 I think really is a good guideline for how you can eat keto and eat healthy at the same time.
Dr. Cabeca (02:15): Yes. And the intention was that through my experience going keto and then really struggling and going keto crazy as I like to say, was finding a really healthy way to do it because really getting keto in the healthiest way possible after, during perimenopause and well beyond is essential, is essential for women.
Allan (02:37): Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that is kind of a differentiator out there is whenever something like this comes up, be paleo or keto or even vegan, we like to batch everybody together and say, this is the diet, this is how you need to eat and keto is very much that way too. It said, okay, you eat this amount of fat, you eat this amount of carbs, you eat this amount of protein, go. And it really didn't give anybody any guidelines on how to get proper nutrition.
Dr. Cabeca (03:04): Right. Exactly. And one of the things I've done is, create a keto calculator, especially again for women. Women have to do keto differently than men Allan. And it's important to understand that because men have 10 times as much testosterone as women. But looking at our healthy fats and the kind of fats we eat, but always balancing it with high quality protein and lots of fiber from low carbohydrate greens that just, that's a shift. There's so many physiologic and chemical reasons for the shift. But for me it was game changing. And this was, gosh, way back when I was 48 and I was hitting what I like to call my second menopause because I was diagnosed with menopause at age 39. I have not had an easy medical, personal life, but at age 39 diagnosed with early menopause and then reversed it to go on and have a baby at age 41 and then at 48 experiencing these really harsh symptoms of weight gain despite not doing anything different. That weight gain, despite not doing anything different. Man, it is a complaint that patients would come in and tell me about. And until I experienced it myself humbly, I admit this to you, Allan, is that, you know, I was like really sure. How could that be possible? Right? But that happened to me,
Allan (04:26): right? And I think that's one of the kind of the misnomers out there. I guess myths out there is that, Oh, if you're, if you're gaining weight, you must have obviously be eating more. But the reality is that's not necessarily true in many cases. It just means that some of our key hormones are out of balance and we're not managing those well. But The keto green diet that you have, it can really help us manage these hormones in the book you identify and the 13 key weight loss hormones. And I would love to go back through those cause I think most of them I've talked about at one point or another on the podcast, but it'd be really nice to just kind of have them like wrapped in a bow right here. Could you take just a few minutes to go over what I call it, the weight loss hormones?
Dr. Cabeca (05:08): Yeah, absolutely. And I think like, you know, we just go over, these hormones work intricately individually and so they're so interconnected. They are so interconnected and we start with cortisol, and so really call it the weight gain hormone versus a weight loss hormone. But it is when we get cortisol and balance that can really help trim us down. But cortisol being our, it's the hormone of precedence right now during our stressful times and our stressful situation that we're in right now. And this is the stress hormone that increases glucose in our body because we need more fuel when we're stressed to survive, thrive, Brian move. And also it is, you know, whether it's a physical stress or mental stress or perceived stress, that inreases, increases cortisol and that will also cause weight gain. Cortisol will affect our thyroid and will affect our decrease our progesterone or neuroprotective hormone.
Dr. Cabeca (06:10): So we can have more emotional swings during this time, more moodiness. And it can also be when cortisol goes up, oxytocin goes down and that's one of the other hormones. Now oxytocin is one of my favorite hormones. It is the love connection hormone bonding hormone. It's the hormone we experience in abundance with orgasm, with pleasure, with laughter, with play. And it is a powerful alkalinizing, anti-inflammatory and regenerative hormone. We've looked at studies and older population looking at oxytocin on muscle cell growth and increased oxytocin, increases muscle cell regeneration, which we need, especially as we're getting older. So that hormone oxytocin, it's really important to understand. And in my first book, the Hormone Facts, I spent a whole, I spent a lot of time discussing the interrelationship between cortisol and oxytocin. And it's worth mentioning now, Allan, because in this stress time we're often, we're increasing cortisol, which also breaks down willpower.
Dr. Cabeca (07:27): So if we're experiencing cravings or I've had some clients who have relapsed and we have this discussion was like, look, this is a function of the physiology of what you're experiencing. So let's, you know, right back on, let's create the practices and principles that are going to keep us healthy, sane, and on course during this time. So it, you know, it's really that big, it's really a big deal. And when cortisol goes up, oxytocin goes down. It's kind of like the Seesaw. Cortisol goes up, oxytocin goes down. And so we feel more disconnected, less enthusiasm. And you know, we're really struggling already. Our healthcare providers are really struggling with burnout. And so add on the added stressors, we're experiencing that even more. But when cortisol is up for a longer time period, and this is really important, is that cortisol is up for a long time period an area in our brain are basically is saying, okay, shut down, you're frying me out.
Dr. Cabeca (08:28): So cortisol goes low and oxytocin goes low at the same time and we get into this dangerous disconnect, this dangerous cortisol. So I went oxytocin, slow burnout. It's the physiology of divorce, it's the physiology of burnout, it's the physiology of trauma and PTSD for a long period of time. And you know, and so it's often what I see very much in my clients who've experienced trauma or PTSD. I see this physiologic condition and oxytocin though as far as when it comes tying it back into weight loss hormone, we know when we fall in love, like we're not hungry, we lose weight, we feel better. That's oxytocin and we want to keep that stronger. And so the next hormone that I talk about in my book is insulin. The more insulin sensitive we become, the more resilient we become. And this is needed now more than ever.
Dr. Cabeca (09:27): Blue coasts can affect your immune system negatively. Too much sugar in your system. Yeah, and insulin. As we become more insulin resistant, that also negatively affects our immune system, but the more insulin sensitive we become through going Kito, Keto Green and intermittent fasting and extended fasting. That impact that again increases insulin resistance. What I've seen in my clients in that following my new book, the keto green 16 plan I've seen in in just as little as one month a woman at 50 year old woman's hemoglobin A1C go down from 60 to 5.4. 6.0 sorry, 6.0 to 5.4 in just one month, which is huge because if we move a point like a 0.1 if we move that work static, she went down six points in just one month so..
Allan (10:28): And so she's no longer diabetic.
Dr. Cabeca (10:30): She is no longer pre-diabetic. This is exactly right. Exactly right and just one month and so what a shift and the lower hemoglobin A1C, the less inflammation in our body, a gold target number for hemoglobin C is 5.0 and again a huge marker of insulin. So in Keto Green 16 we've really come a long way and to creating this in, you know, this increasing insulin sensitivity and the more insulin sensitive we are, the less hungry we are too, the more willpower we have, the less inflammation we have.
Allan (11:05): And that's because our body's able to pull our own body fat to basically give us the energy to do the things we're doing. We don't necessarily need that sugar for fuel to do it.
Dr. Cabeca (11:15): Right. Right.
Allan (11:17): Now you also talk about the other sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, can you talk a little bit about those?
Dr. Cabeca (11:25): Yeah, it's estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and DHEA. These are really well known as our reproductive hormones, our sex steroids, such as estrogen and testosterone specifically. But these are all involved and these are the hormones that we think about predominantly when we're thinking about reproduction. And as a gynecologist and obstetrician, these are hormones that I spent, and their pathways, I spent years studying. But this is where it kinda, you know, when I think about when it goes back to it, you know, cortisol, insulin and oxytocin are the major hormones and these kind of in under those. And so with all of these hormones, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone and DHEA, they all have a role in our metabolism and are, you know, they either they help to build us up, especially testosterone and DHEA, our more androgenic hormones and DHEA being pro- hormone that is needed to make testosterone and estrogen. So, and DHEA is a hormone that is depleted in times of stress, in favor of producing cortisol. So when we need to make cortisol, we're going to make cortisol over DHEA.
Allan (12:38): Yeah. Because we don't need to reproduce. If we're, if we're running for our lives, then we're not thinking about offspring at that point in time.
Dr. Cabeca (12:45): Exactly. Our body is conserving our reproductive potential. It's conserving everything to go towards the production of cortisol. And cortisol also will cause the depletion of progesterone because cortisol is made a derived from progesterone. So as we make cortisol, this very important progesterone is one of our mother hormones, not as it only, it's in men and women pro. It's comes from the words pro life essentially pro gestation, pro pregnancy, pro life. And progesterone is a neuroprotective hormone in both men and women. There have been many studies with progesterone in traumatic brain injury. Initial studies were done at my Alma mater, at Emory university in the ICU and the intensive care unit at Emory's, the neuro intensive care unit and looked at giving IV progesterone in clients with traumatic brain injury. And what the preliminary research showed is that when given bioidentical progesterone, patients who had traumatic brain injury fared much better. It's really fascinating on this aspect. This is a little tangent, but you don't mind Allan, do you?
Allan (14:00): Not at all. Not at all. I'm always out to learn something new.
Dr. Cabeca (14:04): Well it's so fascinating about this experience with pedestrian is that when they noted that women who were pre-menstrual had and had a traumatic brain injury, fared better than others who were not. So that's where the original research, a very observant clinician, made the observation and that led to the study of progesterone as a resuscitative measure, essentially in traumatic brain injury, both men and women. And from there, there's so much research on progesterone. We are in the infancy. I have no doubt that progesterone will be used and more highly recommended in the perimenopause menopause time period as well as a little bit for men. As we get older, for neuroprotective ability. It also boost our immune system supports TH2 immunity. So I just thought that was a fascinating point about progesterone in the brain.
Allan (15:04): It is. It is.
Dr. Cabeca (15:06): And so, so that's, that's pretty much that. And then when I talk about other hormones in the book, it's also the hormones of Thai tea and hunger. So leptin and Ghrelin are two other hormones that I talk about and we can be them resistant. I mean leptin resistant. So just like with insulin, like we never satisfied there in that song. Have you seen the musical Holton?
Allan (15:31): I'm sorry I haven't, no, I'm not a big, I'm not a big musical guy.
New Speaker (15:38): Oh my gosh, you've gotta listen to this musical. The music is bull and actually the producer perform for the white house for a bog, you know, and, and it's been, see, so it is, it just spending way, there's a song that I will never be satisfied that that's leptin resistance. That's leptin resistance. So that feeling of never actually like, okay, I've eaten. Why am I hungry again?
Dr. Cabeca (16:05): I'm never feeling satisfied. And that's kind of where leptin resistance comes in too. And then Ghrelin is our hunger hormone. When we start fasting, we can get really, really hungry and we know we're not going to die, right? We know that we're not going to die. We can go a long time without food. We can really go months without food, not without water. But we can go months without food. And Ghrelin hormone though when you're fasting peaks at day two of your fasting. So just like anything else, when we start doing more of the intermittent fasting and prolonged fasting, note that that is like increasing Ghrelin sensitivity so to speak is a muscle. Like anything else that we're going to exercise, we are going to work to build up to do longer and longer fast. But day two, Ghrelin this hunger hormone is peaking, making us think that we're going to die because we're, we're so hungry.
Dr. Cabeca (16:55): Just take some deep breaths, drink plenty of water and, do you know that will go away by day three you're like, Oh man, I continue fasting for quite awhile. So that's that Ghrelin hunger hormone. Okay.
Allan (17:09): And then you also in the book, I think you talked about adiponectin?
Dr. Cabeca (17:14): Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah, I left adiponectin now. I love adiponectin. This is really fascinating. I really just began to learn, I think there's so much to learn about adiponectin, but just like our sex hormones, adiponectin decreases as we age. There is an internal clock somewhere that manages adiponectin secretion because I think this is the reason why we gained weight as we're getting older without doing anything different. I mean there's a combination, but adiponectin to play right into this. This has to relate to our metabolism. And the higher adiponectin is the higher our metabolism is. So intermittent fasting can, and getting Keto Green, getting into ketosis in a healthy way can really help improve levels of adiponectin to we're actually increasing our metabolism.
Allan (18:05): Now, one of the things about the Keto Green 16 is that it's an alkaline style of eating. Can you explain why that's important.
Dr. Cabeca (18:15): Yes. Well, you know, it goes back to kind of my story. As I turned 48 and I was gaining weight without doing anything different, I knew, and I had been well over 240 pounds in the past. I've lost 80 pounds, kept it off for nearly that decade and just started gaining weight and anyone who's lost a significant amount of weight and starts gaining weight, often you feel like, Oh my gosh, when is this ever gonna stop? Like, I'll be 300 pounds before this weight gain stops because I, nothing I'm doing is causing and I'm not, you know, I'm like, I'm not going through Starbucks. I'm not going through Dunkin donuts. I'm not doing anything different than what I've been doing. And it's very frustrating. It has to do a lot with these hormones. And also again, the stress hormone, the stress hormones as well.
Dr. Cabeca (19:03): But I went straight keto. I'm like, okay, I've used this for my patients with neurologic symptoms and basically a modified form for my patients on candida protocols and, or who have had chronic yeast infections. And so I just really restrict carbs, increasing fats and protein. And within a few short days, I was feeling very, you know, it's not keto flu. It was really, I call it keto crazy. I was irritable, agitated on edge, and I was a single mom of teenagers. There's no way that I or my daughters could survive me going keto. And I was very interested. I'm a scientist. I was a scientist for the us Navy before I went to medical school, I studied metabolism and I worked in research and metabolism and I was like, well, what is going on here? Really what is going on here? And so I started doing what I asked all my patients to do when I detox them.
Dr. Cabeca (20:00): And as part of like a principle for like another vital sign is to check urine pH. And as I was checking my urine pH, I was acidic as the pH paper would read. And this is something everyone listening really should do. It tells us so much about our body, how we're nourishing our body and how we're controlling our stress. Cause lo and behold, the more stressed we are, the more acidic our urine pH is. So it's not just about what I, what we eat. But you know, I did not study that. I observed it. So as I was, you know, as I've recognized how acidic I was, I added in all these very low carbohydrate greens based on science for hormone balance. So the dark leafy, the charred, the collard, the kale, the beet cranes, and then the cruciferous vegetables. This is part of my Keto Green, 16. 16 key foods, scientifically studied and shown to help with hormone balance.
Dr. Cabeca (21:00): And so, you know, the cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cabbage and cauliflower. Oh my gosh cauliflower mash. So good. Yes. And so incorporated these in. But I also noted that on the mornings I walked on the beach or did my gratitude journaling and had my prayer time. My urine pH was more alkaline all day. So I recognized quickly like, okay, well what's the connection here? And that's where I found out that cortisol create by increasing hydrogen ion secretion across the renal tubules, it creates an acidic urine pH. So here we can use urine pH as a vital sign for how, we're affecting ourselves basically epigenetically even. So just that concept of how we are interacting with our environment, not just with what we eat, but with how we think about how we're living, how we're perceived, perceiving life, how we're appreciating each other and how that affects our physiology.
Dr. Cabeca (22:06): So the alkaline piece, I started shifting, getting more of the greens and becoming more alkaline and then pushing into ketosis. And that was like a light bulb moment because I felt so clear that, you know, the keto crazy went completely away. I felt like what I call energized enlightenment. I felt a higher connection to God. I felt just the sense of peace and calm and nothing in my external environment had changed, still had teenagers. Still was a single mom raising kids, solely supporting my family. But my peace and biblically we talk about the peace that surpasses all understanding the peace, which surpasses all understanding. I have a glimpse of that for the first time. And the first time I would say, yeah, basically a decade since I lost my son, I experienced this peace and profoundly so I also got my memory back cause from stress and you know, acidity.
Dr. Cabeca (23:07): I had brain fog and was thinking I felt like this early signs of dementia and as so many of my patients would come in and say this to me, right. But, like they were experiencing these symptoms. So that's this combination of getting an alkaline urine pH, getting more alkalinizes in your body, using it from the nutritional and lifestyle approach and getting into ketosis, getting into ketosis. Oh my gosh. That combination, energized, enlightenment, clarity. I could never have written a book, let alone two. And you know, I probably, you know, and even run my business. I just want to say exponential from near broke to a very, very purposeful and profitable business.
Allan (23:54): Yeah. And, and I'll also attest if you're, you know, writing a book is not an easy task in and of itself, but doing that while you're also running a business and doing the kids and everything else and trying to keep it all together that is a huge, huge thing.
Dr. Cabeca (24:12): Oh, I second that too. And I know you're writing a book right now too. I mean, it is a challenge. Kudos to you. Because for 10 years, for over a decade, I wanted to write a book. I never was able to get a page done. And this state of being and this clarity is just hugely transformative. And which is what we need. And especially for women. That's my area. Women are my area of focus and my priority, sorry Allan and all you men who are listening, but when women are better, you guys are better too. You know that.
Allan (24:44): True story. True story and I think the other thing that I'd like to mention is the foods that you're talking about, the leafy greens and the cruciferous and you also in the book you talk about some of the fermented foods as well. All of those are feeding your gut, which is a big, huge, I mean, it's a huge part of our immune system. So in addition to the clarity and the other things that are going well for you being in this keto alkaline state, you're also making sure that you're giving your body what it needs to protect us.
Dr. Cabeca (25:19): Absolutely. Absolutely. It comes down to the micro nutrients over the macro nutrients.
Allan (25:25): Now this diet, I mean, I again, I look at keto and I say, okay, you can't, I don't like to call keto diet because in effect it's, it's, it's more than that if you, if you want to stay this way. I mean, if you want some short term results, yes you can get it. But in the book you talk about 16 days and I see that as a kind of a bite size start where we're going to really learn some things about our eating and our health and our body. Can you talk about why you said 16 what's, what's the key there to 16 days.
Dr. Cabeca (25:55): Sweet 16. I love that number. 16 candles. All girls. All girls.
Allan (26:03): Well girls. Okay. Okay. All girls. Okay. There you go.
Dr. Cabeca (26:07): All girls, one son. Yeah. And and so the 16 has a lot of, like I was thinking about what number would really characterize this plan the best and how quickly can we get results. Right. And also something that's different. So we don't have like patterns of your 14 day or 21 day, so 16 is different. But also from a numeral logic perspective, it's a time of new beginnings. Really. It's time of like claiming your own strengths. And you know, for me it just resonated in a really way that in 16 days, you know, what's the shortest amount of time? Cause we always hear 21 days to change a habit. But I didn't buy that. So I went to the research and I also played around with all different types of programs and lacks of programs. And in 16 days we can get really tremendous results. And so that's my 16.
Allan (27:05): Yeah, and, and I completely agree. If you, if you get past two weeks eating keto and at that point you're keto, somewhat fat adapted, your body's starting to use body fat for energy. You're giving your body that the micronutrients that needs to do the style of eating here. Basically, yes, you're going to start seeing the initial results for this. And most people that I've worked with that go into keto and myself, when I go in and out of ketosis, when I go into ketosis, I'm almost guaranteed to lose five pounds the first week. And then by the 16th day I've probably lost anywhere from 10 to 15 pounds if, if I'm really on it and doing what I'm supposed to be doing. So I agree with you. I think you can see some tremendous results in just the 16 days. In the book you get into keto, clean and keto dirty. Could you take just a moment to get into those two concepts?
Dr. Cabeca (28:02): Well, yes. So when we, as you started this podcast with, you know, the concept of when we think about keto, keto dirty eating bacon, bacon and butter and processed foods and processed cheeses, it certainly will get us into ketosis, but it's not providing our bodies the micronutrients that we need to thrive on. Yes. Can we survive? Sure. But will we thrive, no. And so that's what I call keto, dirty. So there's again, so, so many ways to be keto right? We'll go into ketosis by eating nothing. Right. That's fascinating. We'll go into ketosis by eating nothing but with keto I say Keto Green, keto, dirty versus keto clean, which clean eating healthy food, ideally free range, wild caught, fresh, organic, grown in your backyard. Now I don't know about you, but I'm growing a garden and it is keto. So keto clean is Keto Green and that's the concept of a really balanced, nourishing approach to keto.
Allan (29:03): Yeah. Now you define those other way. I saw you list them in the book, I think you called them the 16 sexy, slim younger foods. Could you take just a minute to kind of go through those really quickly?
Dr. Cabeca (29:14): Yes. Yeah. Happy to. So the 16 foods that really can help support our bodies. Definitely the, I'm a fan, it's an omnivore diet, but in Keto Green 16, I also have a 16 day vegan plan. So substituting out my first three foods, which are B for bison, chicken and fish substitute and got out for black beans, white beans and chickpeas in my vegan plan or Tempe or tofu can always be a non-GMO, can always be substituted. So B or bison, chicken, fish are the key protein sources. And for healthy fat we're looking at our oils. So as another ingredient, for example, our olive oils or nuts or seeds, oils are fine, but olive oil in particular has so many great oleic acid is good for our heart. It's good for our flexibility or blood vessels. So I incorporate that in there as well as healthy fats from avocados.
Dr. Cabeca (30:12): Avocados get a special place in my heart. They're just amazing. They go from making a hearty sandwich to like a key lime pie dessert. I should share my key lime pie avocado recipe. It's really amazing. And so, you know, avocado put into your smoothie just makes it so creamy and delicious is seriously a super food. So, and then nuts and seeds, so nuts specifically that I recommend are Brazil nuts cause they're rich in selenium or pinoli nuts, which are high in fat and fiber. But zero, low, very lowest carbs. And it's just a really delicious nut, and so the certain nuts are available, but also then the cruciferous vegetables and then the dark leafy greens and they each get their own category because I really like the incorporation of a variety of foods. And then we have some citrus lime or lemon as another key ingredient.
Dr. Cabeca (31:12): And I'm missing, and then of course the alliums for sulfation such, so allium such as onions and garlic and the different groups to understand the reasoning for my composition of my recipes as well as choosing these foods. I wanted to cover every pathway for our body to helpfully detoxify our hormones. And so again, whether we're getting hormones exogenously through like hormones we're taking or Xeno estrogens from, even pesticides, herbicides, plastics, parabens and cosmetics and stuff that we're detoxifying them as safely as possible and efficiently as possible. So the food groups I chose were to help with these detoxification pathways, methylation, sulfation and glucuronidation. So that's the, the bulk of the 16 sexy, slim and younger foods.
Allan (32:12): And you do, you have recipes in the book, you have a full meal plan. So it's, it's all out there laid out for us. And again, the vegan version as well. So it's not like you have to go through and decide that you're going to eat the beef and the chicken and the fish if you prefer. You approach us from a vegan perspective, which I think is a new relatively new concept when we start talking about keto. Is that they don't seem like they get along, but you can in fact be keto and vegan.
Dr. Cabeca (32:39): Yeah, you can. And it's, it's really good periodically to lay off the, you know, animal meats, I say at least once or twice a year. I mean, we can all do that, you know, and its just to give your body and a chance to rest and increase the fiber to help with Kalanick health and that can make a big difference too, to do periodic fasting from meat in general.
Allan (33:04): Well, there you go with that. There you go with that F word again. And I just want to explain why you have another F word in the book. So you do talk about fasting, but you also talk about feasting.
Dr. Cabeca (33:14): Yeah.
Allan (33:15): Because we don't just fast or we don't just eat keto. You do have periods of time when you kind of, I guess for lack of a better word, the way we would say it in the bodybuilding or the exercise field is, is that you basically carb load or you actually do bring in more carbs for a period of time. Can you, can you talk about that process?
Dr. Cabeca (33:33): Yeah, that's essential. It's essential. That's what bodybuilders know, right? The importance of carb loading, but also metabolic flexibility and that's the reason we feast metabolic flexibility. Plus I'm a natural glutton. I love my feasting. I love it.
Allan (33:52): Now you are a big fan also of measuring, so measuring your glucose, measuring your ketones and as you mentioned earlier, your pH. You talk a little bit about that measurement and how we should go about that, particularly during these 16 days.
Dr. Cabeca (34:05): Yeah. You know if anyone has access to get the freestyle Libra prescribed by their physician, it should be over the counter, but it's not, it's a continuous monitor that goes in your arm. It's like a patch basically that sticks on your arm. It has a small filament that goes into the tissue and stays there for two weeks. But that's a way to continuously monitor your blood sugar. I wore that, I've worn that basically on and off for the past year, almost continuously for measuring the food and the food choices and the menu combinations and my plan for Keto Green 16. And it's so fascinating to see how, what increases your blood sugar and what doesn't. So in the keto world, you'll often hear, we'll have a cup of coffee while I had, you know, also in where, you know, I knew that coffee was impairing me from weight loss.
Dr. Cabeca (34:58): It was creating a plateau and I struggled with it. Cause every time I would take my coffee break, I would easily lose three to four pounds in a week. And I was like, how does that make sense? Coffee has no calories. But yes, in some of us it increases and most of us it increases cortisol, which will then increase glucose. So that was by theory. But when I started wearing this patch, Allan, I saw my blood sugar in the morning just drinking a cup of coffee. And even if I was reading or whatever, but just to drinking a cup of coffee, my blood sugar was going up 20 to 30 points, easy in the morning. Isn't that fascinating?
Allan (35:32): You're right and it's taxing your insulin because now your pancreas has to pump out a bunch of insulin to say, Hey, let's fix this problem. So the brain doesn't freak out because you know, no one wants to get mom mad. So we gotta clean up this mess. And yeah, so you, you're not losing any body fat at that point. And it's actually probably then putting you back into a point where now you're, your blood sugar drops too fast because you didn't actually eat anything. And then now you're wanting to, you know, now you're hungry now, now you're hangry. You're wanting to actually add that sugar. So yeah, I could see that being a big trigger for folks to know. And so measuring your blood glucose, measuring your ketones, measuring your pH will give you kind of the, the general scope of knowing that you're on track with this.
Dr. Cabeca (36:19): Yeah, it absolutely will, and you know, I'm a big fan of exactly what gets measured, gets managed. And so periodically, you know, weighing and definitely measuring urine pH and ketones to start is essential to discover what's working for you and what's not working for you and personalizing your nutritional and lifestyle plan.
Allan (36:44): Yeah. And you actually have on your site, I think you have, you sell some strips that you can measure your pH and your ketones all at the same time.
Dr. Cabeca (36:54): Yeah, I made them, I had them manufactured for me because I didn't like having two separate strips. And what's really unique about these, then I found out because ketones and pH, that's an acid and a base. They were running into each other. So I had to put a blank strip in between, blank pad. So on one strip you can measure both your urine ketones and your urine pH.
Allan (37:14): Okay, good, good. Now I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
Dr. Cabeca (37:24): You know, we just talking about test don't guess, and I'm going to tell you that especially now in times of increased stress is really getting control of our mental and personal mental atmosphere by testing, testing, urine, pH. I mean, it's just easy to do. It's so enlightening. So that's number one. And number two is that second part is gaining control of our mental atmosphere. Where we direct our thoughts is where we go physiologically. So shifting that to being the healthiest, most brilliant, sexiest selves we can be is key for resilience and managing cortisol and increasing oxytocin. So that's key. And the third part is regarding a strategy or tactics to get and stay well is it's, you know, so many, but you know, I'm trying to debate between sleep and, and movement. And I would just say movement, movement, flexibility on a regular basis, working out, dancing, exercising, getting up and moving together is so critically important. And especially now as the first couple of weeks of quarantine, I was like, I was, you know, definitely not moving so much. And now I've made it a principal to get on my walking desk treadmill to get outside when I can and to really make sure that in my life and in my children's life, we are moving and moving together.
Allan (38:55): Cool. Well, Dr. Cabeca, thank you so much for being on the podcast. If someone wanted to learn more about you and your book and all the things that you're doing, where would you like for me to send them?
Dr. Cabeca (39:06): Ooh, I would love them too. I would love them to, so come to my, DrAnna.com. That's my website. And there's lots of good information plus the book bonuses and information you can get Keto Green 16 anywhere books are sold. But one thing that I do encourage also is creating this healthy community. So join me on my Instagram page and in Facebook where I have my, keto green community and it's just likeminded people working through this together.
Allan (39:37): Okay. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/433 and I'll be sure to have links there. So Dr. Cabeca, thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.
Dr. Cabeca (39:48): I'm honored. Thank you for having me.
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If you're not managing your hormones, your body probably won't get the signals that your lifestyle changes were intended to send. Today, Dr. Cabeca and I discuss her new book, The Hormone Fix.
Allan: 01:18 Dr Cabeca, welcome to 40 plus fitness.
Dr. Cabeca: 01:20 Hi, it's great to be here with you, Allan. Thanks for having me.
Allan: 01:23 I'm a fitness guy, personal trainer and whatnot. But one of the things that I've come to recognize is that we can only do so much in the gym or on the beach or in our homes doing exercise and things like that. If we're not managing the other aspects of our lives, particular hormones, we're not really going to get to the point of health that we want to go. So I was really excited to be able to feature and talk about your book, The Hormone Fix.
Dr. Cabeca: 01:49 Oh, I'm glad. I love talking about it. And you're absolutely right. And even in my practice, right? It takes more than hormones to fix our hormones. So these are all important components that work together.
Allan: 01:59 And that's where when I got into your book, I was thinking, okay, we're going to talk about testosterone. We're going to talk about estrogen. We're going to talk about thyroid. And that's where most of the time when you start this hormone conversation, particularly for people over 40, that's the direction that conversation goes. And there's just kind of an expectation that those were going to solve everything. But you have a very different view, in my mind, of how we can fix and manage and balance our hormones.
Dr. Cabeca: 02:27 Yes, absolutely. You know, it's so true, especially as a gynecologist, I'd love to say it's all about progesterone, estrogen, even testosterone and data. But the truth is it's not. And through my own personal journey and just working with so many patients through menopausal transition, we have to get to the underlying reason, the underlying major players and those major players are insulin, cortisol and oxytocin.
Allan: 02:53 And I want to dive into each of those because I think on the show I've talked about insulin a good bit when I talk about Keto a lot and they understand that Keto is a way to manage insulin, to manage insulin resistance, so we've talked about that a good bit. I've talked about cortisol lot because that was kind of my last thing that I've been working on trying to get myself as healthy and well as I can as the stress relief of moving to Panama, having a slower pace of life, not having as many moving things that are going on you know, getting rid of a house that could get hit by a hurricane.
And then the oxytocin is kinda the one that, I know what it is, I guess, but we don't talk about it a lot. And I'll say this, I define wellness as being the healthiest fittest, happiest you can be. And this really kind of fits in that notch of that third one. But could you just kind of walk through each of those and talk about what they mean to us and our health and how getting those balanced actually kind of juxtapositions us to get the rest of them in order?
Dr. Cabeca: 03:55 Yeah, absolutely. And for so many people we don't really understand oxytocin. It's a hormone. It is the most powerful hormone in our body. At least that's my point of view. I call it the crowning hormone, the real light of hormones, and it is the hormone many women first come into contact with externally with oxytocin during labor. It's the hormone we give or we inject in women during labor and delivery to increase the amount of contraction strengths to help the baby come out and be born.
And that is that hormone, whether we've had injectable oxytocin or not that really that contracts the uterus, but that forms that bond that really defies all words, right? We can talk about this bonding with the infant, our babies, but when we feel it, when we look into that baby's eyes and we feel this imprinting, this connection, it's undeniable.
That's oxytocin. That's the power of oxytocin, the feeling of love, happiness, and I love your, I love your pillars that health, healthy, fit and happy, right? So happy is oxytocin, that happiness hormone and we can't have high, crazy stressed cortisol levels and burning ourselves out then depleting cortisol or suppressing it and healthy, happy oxytocin at the same time. It doesn't work. Not Without a lot of discipline, practice meditation and I think maybe the Dalai Lama's got it down, but for most of us, certainly for me, we feel that we find that we have that suppression oxytocin is low and cortisol's low at the same time, especially if we've been under stress for a long time and now we have this burnout phenomenon which is when we feel disconnected.
When like that person that we've loved and wanted to spend our whole life with, we no longer feel love for them and I heard my patients say that so many times and I felt and I experienced this myself, post trauma. This disconnect, this feeling of not loving the things you always loved and not wanting to do the things you've always loved doing. So that's the power of oxytocin. We also associated with joy. It's a natural pain reliever. It's a natural appetite suppressant and even studies in age, elderly, we have shown an increase in muscle growth. So this oxytocin hormone is one that we can for free, increasing our body through some great principles and practices and managing cortisol as well.
Allan: 06:28 One of the things that really, when I was reading through that, I was thinking, this makes so much sense because if you've read the blue zones or Dr Day's, The Longevity Plan, they talk about how the longest lived people on Earth have these social bonds and they're spending time socially with their family and their meals. They're sitting down together and they're having this time together where they're having that joy. They're having that laughter and that fun, and that's what's creating this hormone in circulating this hormone and it's keeping them alive longer.
Dr. Cabeca: 07:03 Yes, absolutely. That sense of community, that connection, that energetic bond. And one of the things I always tell my clients to give them a real perspectives, you know, we always talk about resveratrol right? Beautiful Antioxidant, powerful superfood resveratrol found from grapes, right? Red Wine. So we talk about have your glass of red wine, you'll get your resveratrol and that's heart healthy. But is it really? I believe that it's the community that we have that glass of wine with, the laughter, the joy, the celebration that makes that a medicinal food, right? Versus if we're drinking glass of wine by ourself tonight. That's not medicinal
Allan: 07:41 Or in your or in your pantry eating dark chocolate.
Dr. Cabeca: 07:46 Right. But I always say I love dark chocolate. I love red wine. I love coffee. And I as a researcher, I have researched thoroughly the benefits of my three vices.
Allan: 07:58 I do too. So now, you got into a concept in the book, which I've read a little bit about but not a lot. So I'm going to profess ignorance on this one and I'm going to ask you to take me down the line because we talk about having a diet that's alkaline versus acidic. And what I've known before I read the book and you kind of confirmed in the book was that our body has a pretty good mechanism for making sure there are blood acidity or ph is at a particular range and it's a very, very tight range. And if it gets outside of that range, we've got some major health problems.
Our body is very protective of making sure that we stay in the range. So I just, I guess I was confused to say, okay, if I eat the wrong foods, and obviously the foods you named as acidic, I was like, okay, well you shouldn't need a whole lot of those or any of those in some cases, the things that are alkaline, like yeah, you should be eating a lot of those where you can and it all kind of made sense. But I was wondering if I eat something that's acidic, does it affect my body that much? And in the book you kind of explain how it does.
Dr. Cabeca: 08:59 Yeah, it really does. And over time it's the wear and tear phenomenon that we experience, especially as we're getting older. So one of the things that, you're absolutely right, our blood Ph is maintained as a doctor, as a physician. If someone came in my emergency room crashing, I pull a blood arterial blood gas and I'm looking at the Ph of that blood gas. And that's from the artery in the wrist pumping, right? Blood fresh from the heart. So that's what we're talking about. That ph is so well maintained slightly offline at approximately 7.4 and it doesn't shift very rarely at all, but now the question is how do we maintain that very exact ph when the conditions are not optimal?
When we're under stress for a long time, maybe dehydrated for a long time, maybe in starvation mode for a long time eating inflammatory foods for a long time. How do we maintain that blood ph and we have to maintain it from our electrolytes, right? Our minerals and nutrients our muscle or bone and they were seeing the results of that because that's kind of like a standard American diet. So we see Osteopenia, osteoporosis in 30 year old women. I thought that was a disease of 65 year olds, you know? That's what I learned, right?
Allan: 10:20 Osteopenia typically for a healthy person, wouldn't start until they're 30 35 years old. When you go get a dexascan, the actual increments they use to base you as a 35 year old woman.
Dr. Cabeca: 10:36 As the optimum, right?
Allan: 10:37 You shouldn't be losing a lot of bone or muscle mass before the age of 35.
Dr. Cabeca: 10:42 Now ideally, but we're seeing it. And so that has a lot to do with it. So what we find is that, you know, measuring urine Ph. Urine Ph is a fabulous, easy, inexpensive way to monitor. Just like if we were checking our temperature, if or how our thermostat works on the wall to kind of maintain the good room temperature. But if we check our urinary Ph, just like the weight on the scale, it's kind of fluctuate if we've had an inflammatory food or were swollen, or for me, if I eat any dairy, I'm three pounds heavier the next day, right? So I can tell that that didn't work with my body, but I can also tell in my urine if I'm stressed, our urinary Ph drops.
So one simple thing I've had my clients do in my menopause program now, this is true for men and women because over the past several years now, I've been working with clients and working through this Keto Green concept that I talk about in my book, The Hormone Fix. And that is check, you know, test, don't guess, but check your urine because urine Ph is a marker is a guide, is an indicator of okay, bodies doing great. No, maybe is under a little bit stress. Maybe it's pulling some nutrients and urinary Ph will tell us that.
Healthy urinary Ph is seven or seven to eight and it will naturally go down after your intense workout, right? We expect to see lactic acid secreted in the blood during a workout and also cortisol during the workout and Cortisol sensitizes these receptors and the kidney, and we get a decrease in urinary Ph. So that's expected. But should it be expected after we eat, you know, depending on what we're eating. Say for example of I eat some dairy, my urinary Ph drops because it's a food sensitivity to me and it creates an inflammatory markers.
So it's interesting. It's part of just those clues, just being able to discern. Okay, this works good for me, this doesn't work good for me. And our body or cellular Ph is different at different places in our body our skin's a little acidic, the vagina's acidic, the stomach's acidic, the urine typically should be alkaline. And so different areas of our body will have different pages or saliva should be outlined. Our tears are alkaline. And so that's why when we jumped into a pool, it's slightly alkaline so it doesn't irritate our mucus membranes.
So it's interesting how we can look and see what, how our body is reacting to our nourishment and our environment. And this is true in both men and women. And so when I came across this easy and expensive marker, right? Cause I've done the guy's position, I've ordered thousands of dollars of testing and functional lab tests for my private clients and this tells us so much more. This helps the patient. This helps each individual figure out, okay, this is working for me, I need more alkalinizers in my diet, so more of the low carbohydrate. Dark, leafy green, mineral rich organic veggies as much as possible to help from that aspect. I also need to stress manage, and sleep well, and meditate. And get outside more.
Those are other things that help our body become more our urinary ph increase in alkalinity. The research has shown that when we see a healthier urine Ph that a higher urinary Ph is associated with less metabolic disease, less hypertension, less diabetes and less inflammatory conditions. So that's why I love it.
Allan: 14:13 Yeah and you got to that section and it was so interesting cause like measure for success and then you know that's kind of a standard business monitoring and I get 30 years in the corporate and it was, what you measure gets managed, the whole the tenant there. And I was thinking, okay so here's going to be a list of labs that we can run out and we can get tested and figure it out. But you took a little twist to that as well in that a lot of the stuff, a lot of the things that we can measure that they're free.
I mean how you're sleeping, how you're doing, and you have a series of almost like quizzes and tools in there to go through a series of tests as you will, that don't involve you getting pricked with a needle or going through anything kind of crazy like spitting into a tube all day long. Can you talk a little bit about some of these measurements that we can do? You talked about Ph of the urine and then you dropped the bomb on them too, as we're talking about Keto here. So can you kinda talk a little bit about some of those measures that we can do that are cost effective and will give us a lot of information about how our hormones are balanced?
Dr. Cabeca: 15:14 Yeah, This is something that I practice. When I went to medical school, I really didn't know how it was going to pay for it, but I was blessed and I received a National Health Service Corps Scholar scholarship. So after residency, my ob Gyn residency, I came to southeast Georgia, small area. So I had quite a diverse range of clients, but I was the only bilingual obstetrician. So I had very much wide range of clients and also from the islands, the Sapelo island, the shrimping area, so very low economic areas. And I had to get really creative.
So really found that the art of medicine is in listening to the patient. Right? And it sounds so simple, but it's absolutely true. So these inventories that I created, or checklists, I hope people love checklists as much as I do, but I know if I have something on a checklist, I've got to check it off. And so I created a checklist but also inventories questions like how am I doing today? How am I doing in a week, a month from now? And that's where these inventories really help at a fraction of the cost. And I can see despite what the labs are saying, cause we always say treat the patient, not the labs, right? We look at the labs for guidance, but want to treat the patient, not the labs. And that's really important because normal is not optimal and we want to be optimized.
Allan: 16:34 So let's look at a normal is not optimal. I love that because I mean, bless them. Seven minutes in and out, everything looks fine. See you next time. You know, I don't feel fine. You know, my energy level's down I'm fatigue, I've got pain, my joints hurt, you have these issues and you're normal and we are kind of taught a little bit to kind of accept that that's normal.
And if that's not going to answer for us, well here's a pill. This will deal with the pain or the inflammation. So I like that you have these kind of measures where we can look at this because most of the folks I'll deal with, I'll be honest with you, they come to me because they want to lose weight and I'll say, okay, wait is one measure, but it can't be the only measure because you're going to love yourself one day and then you're going to hate yourself the next if that's the only measure you have. So I like that you've given us these inventories so that we can go through and say, okay, how did I sleep? How do I feel? What's my energy level? What's my Ph? I like the fact that you've given us a lot of these little tools that we can measure so we can know that there's progress.
Dr. Cabeca: 17:35 Yeah, you're exactly right. Like we want to look well, right? But optimally we want to feel well in our bodies and so many of us have Yoyo Diet and over the years I was a fat kid. I struggled with my weight my entire life, been over 240 pounds and was diagnosed menopausal. Reverse that as part of my journey that I talk about in my book, but I've been there. I've struggled with my weight. The most important thing is that we feel well because feeling well gives us willpower. Feeling well helps us make right choices. Feeling well is sustainable long term. We have the clarity of thought, we have the financial success, which comes with clarity of thought and those are, those are part of living an optimal life, right?
Allan: 18:20 Yes. So your book, basically the plan or where we're going to go with this is that you said, okay, there's a place for Ketosis to help balance hormones and there's a place for an alkaline diet to help and there's evidence to support both of those. But you marry them together to come up with what you call Keto Green. Can you kind of explain the Keto Green way of eating and how it's going to help us feel better, be better and optimize our health?
Dr. Cabeca: 18:48 Yeah, absolutely. So when I hit in reality, I hit menopause a second time in my late forties, 48. And after having kept 80 pounds off for nearly a decade, watching the weight creep on, but struggling with focus, struggling with memory, struggling with relationships, all of that. But yet I knew I needed to get this weight off. And so that's when I pushed for getting my body into ketosis or doing a ketogenic diet. And however, you know, I've known about ketogenic diets, low carbohydrate diet types for decades and for my neurologic patients, Parkinson's, seizures, etc.
But whenever I would put, especially a peri-menopausal client on it, she would come back and say, I feel irritable. I don't like how I feel on it. And that's what I experienced to Allan. I call it go and keto crazy. And I talk about this in the book, but let me tell you, if you're a mom, you've got teenagers, small kids, you cannot afford to meet irritable on edge and Keto crazy, that's for sure. So I wanted to figure out what was going on. And so that's when I just said, okay, well what's happening to my body? And I just started testing my urine again cause there's a functional medicine doc I always have my clients check their urine, get alkaline. And that's something that really helped me and restoring my health in my late thirties so I started checking my urine. It was persistently five. That's the lowest Ph on my strip. It was five. Who knows what it was, but it was five or less. I'm like, no wonder I feel crappy. Right?
There's probably inflammation going on and don't have the nutrients to nourish myself. Cell function membrane, not to mention neurotransmitter support. And so it was like, okay, well let me add in Greens. It's adding the alkalinizes the Greens, and let's just bump this up, get alkaline and focus on that and then go back into ketosis. And that was a huge combination. That was a huge awakening for me. An aha moments like, wow man, this feels amazing.
And I looked in literature like half the world, over half the world fast, regularly Orthodox Christians fast, 250 days a year. Catholics on general, if they're following it fast or some type of fast every Sunday to have breakfast after communion, there's fast and lint, 40 days of fasting. There's fast built into traditions over the millennia and tied to spirituality. Because what I experienced was this, I call it energized, enlightenment, this real clarity. This spiritual connection, and from going to a place where I used to have excellent memory, a hundred percent visual memory, to having brain fog, losing my memory, losing my focus to regaining that at a higher level was incredibly enlightening as well.
And that led me to look into the research and say, surely I'm not the only one who's put these two together, but there was one paper published in 1924 out of Cambridge that looked at combining alkalinity or alkalosis with ketosis and it was an Aha moment for me. It's like, yes, this is the key. This is how we really can create a healthy cellular and hormonal balance and it helps to modulate cortisol. If we're looking at our urinary Ph, a healthy or urinary Ph is associated with a healthy circadian rhythm or healthy cortisol levels versus high cortisol is associated with low ph and we know, again, high cortisol over time burns us out, does not give us that happy feeling and kind of fights with oxytocin on the battlefield, so to speak.
Allan: 22:16 Yeah, and the fact that you're in Ketosis means you're managing your insulin at a relatively low level, you're making and potentially fixing insulin resistance, so it's a kind of a win win.
Dr. Cabeca: 22:27 Yes, exactly. That insulin sensitivity with the Ketosis, the green component, helping with cortisol management, and then bring in oxytocin, the principles and practices to create a quality, happy, joyful life. Then we have your healthy fit, happy mantra.
Allan: 22:44 Yes, I'm sitting back and I'm on social media and I'm following a lot of people and seeing what people out there doing to kind of get an idea of what the trends are. And one of the kind of the trends that I'm really, really struggling with right now is this carnivore diet and its keto, but it's just meat and eggs and it's kind of a scary because I don't know what that train wreck is gonna look like when they're done. You need nutrients from vegetables and fruits at some level. Now, not a lot of fruits necessarily, but you do need things from those. If you're not getting those, I just don't know what the long term ramifications are going to be.
Dr. Cabeca: 23:19 I agree with you and believe me, I speak at KetoCon and will be speaking there in the summer at the end of June again. And I love those guys. And Brian, the Creator of KetoCon he is a keto Carnivore and I was like, Brian, I don't know about your, you know, maybe we should be checking your neurotransmitter, we should we watched in your hormones. But bottom line is men and women are different, but all diets throughout millennia that have been successful have a strong plant based component.
I mean we need the micro nutrients from plants, but what could someone who is not able to get those plants, what do they do in order to nourish their body? And that's what I've researched. I'm like, well, you know, they talk that Ketogenic people talk about the Inuits, Alaskan natives that eat basically fatty fish, right? And that's their diet, but they don't only. They also have the huge bone broth going nonstop that they will sip on. That's minerals, that's fish bone broth that's rich in minerals to renourish their body. So intuitively or through necessity over time, they added in that alkaline or that green component through the mineral broth or bone broth. Isn't that cool?
Allan: 24:29 Yeah, it is. Because one of the things that I was kinda going through structurally, my mind, and I talked about this in my book, is I believe that we're opportunistic eaters and that's one of the problems with having a Mcdonald's and a Starbucks on every corner is that our ancestors would eat what was available in the season it was available. And so I could see being from northern Europe or the northern Americans, there would be whole periods of time when there wouldn't be much plant matter at all. So you are at that point relying on animal products to sustain you.
But then yes, the springs can roll around and there's going to be some foliage is gonna be some plant matter that you can eat. And I think that would just be a time when we would effectively go nuts because it was available. And so I just kind of looked at it and say, okay, maybe being carnivore for a period of a few weeks or a month, a couple months maybe. That might've been something that would've happened in our ancestors past. But it's when the plants came around again and were available because they don't fight back and they're easy to catch because they don't run or swim away. So I just think that when you look at what our ancestors did and try to look at it reasonably even talked about this a little bit about the different ways that people ate and the study that I guess looked at several of them and 87% of them were alkaline.
Dr. Cabeca: 25:46 Yeah, exactly. I mean how cool is that at some point. And then you think about traditions again thinking as the fasting time periods, when are the majority of fasting time periods based in regions and the winter months? So lent is typically at the end of the winter season, so most likely fresh greens, lots of foods aren't available. The resources, stocks, stocks piles or the pantries are very, very low so to speak. And so there's a practical component.
So as you were talking, it just brings to mind that we had the keto carnivore, again, some people can do it. But I think, you know, if they can do it. Men and women are different women who are my primary clients that I work with and and suffer with and feast with we have to recognize that we are different and we can't do things that guys will do. Guys will do my program with their wife and or partner and they will do two, three times better, faster. They will lose two to three times as much weight faster they will feel better, faster.
That's just it. We are different. Men and women are different. All hormones are different, but I created the Keto Green way, the diet and lifestyle component to really optimize how we are as women as well. To really get into these little nuances, the insulin, the cortisol. And then of course the oxytocin, what really matters to us most and bring that into this place. But when you were talking I was thinking we need responsible eating, right? Responsible moderation or responsible feasting as we are as a community and as a society to be able to enjoy and indulge, but really nourish our bodies in ways that make sense. And this is when I teach physicians, I always say practice medicine that makes sense. We need to take that internally to our life. Okay, well what really makes sense? What's sustainable and how do I know what's working for me specifically?
Allan: 27:41 I couldn't agree more. And I liked what you said there, that food Keto Green way of eating is kind of the base for this program. But there is an entire lifestyle component I kind of wish we had some time to get into, but we're running low.
I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well,
Dr. Cabeca: 28:06 Wow. I definitely, initially I would always say we want to start we want to go Keto Green, right? That's really important. I've been in this moment of reflection, just looking at my life over the past years and decades, you know, going from that struggle, dealing with to menopause as early menopause at 38 going through another transition time at 48 and struggling at that point with so many aspects of my life till I turned it around, this Keto green way.
And the first thing it came down to like this mantra for myself, this strategy is number one, pause. We have to pause, take pause, be present. Really, I'd be able to just be in the moment. So I would say pause and then pray and the third is prioritized. So pause, let's get in the moment. Let's really understand where am I right now. Be able to accept that. Pause, like let everything else that's going around to stop the busy stuff stopped the racing. And for myself, I always say I went around the world to find out that everywhere you go there you are right? So pause is a real big one for me. I had to settle, I had to stop and really evaluate.
And then the second again, pray. Just being able to meditate, pray, listen to that still small voice within you. The one that knows. Oh yeah, I thought so. Oh, you know, I've been thinking about that or, I've been wanting to do that for years. So give yourself that time to get into that space and then prioritize what means most for you in your life. What are the things and people that mean most for you and your life? Allan, I admire you for leaving everything that you had and moving to a new place, a new land so that you prioritize your relationship and the rest of your lives. And that's key. That's goes a big way. Big, long way.
Allan: 29:46 Yeah, those are great. And it was, you know, I'm here on an island and in the morning time it's really, really quiet. There's a lot of activity during the day, and you probably can hear some of that on this, on this interview, but I got up this morning about sunrise and went out and did a walk on the beach and just kind of just enjoyed nature, enjoy being there and feel really good about it. So I like all three of those.
So thank you for sharing that. So Dr. Cabeca, if someone wanted to get in touch with you, learn more about the book, The Hormone Fix, where would you like for me to send them?
Dr. Cabeca: 30:17 Well, I would love for them to take a look at my book. I really feel there are gems in there for everyone and it's at dranna.com/book and there'll be information and a free sneak peek into my book, The Hormone Effects.
Allan: 30:33 Okay, well this is episode 381 so you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/381 and I'll be sure to have the link there. So Dr. Cabeca, thank you so much for being a part of 40 plus fitness.
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