Their Story Their Voice
Their Story Their Voice
Thrive in Health: Unlocking the Wealth of Well-being in todays world
In today's fast-paced world, maintaining a healthy lifestyle often seems like a Herculean task. The hustle and bustle of modern life force many to make convenience-driven food choices at the expense of their well-being. However, this episode dives deep into practical tips and advice to help you achieve a balanced, thriving life.
Joined by Petronella Ravenshear a health expert with a wealth of experience, our episode covers various facets of health and well-being—from gut health and dietary choices to practical supplement advice.
Please note transcription accuracy may vary.
Below are links to the materials mentioned in this episode:
https://thehumanbeingdiet.com/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Optimum-Nutrition-Bible-About-Health/dp/0749925523
https://www.ifm.org/about/profile/thomas-obryan/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ultra-Processed-People-Stuff-That-Isnt/dp/1529900050
So, it's been a minute, obviously, because I haven't actually uploaded anything this year. And ordinarily I would think I should apologize, but I needed time out for me. Because I was feeling overwhelmed. I think maybe one of my people that I spoke to said maybe I was a bit depressed. And do I know why I was depressed? No. And actually maybe that's okay. Maybe there doesn't actually have to be a reason for you feeling how you're feeling. But I just needed to come out of that in my own time without feeling pressured. So thank you if you have come back and if you're new, thank you. And to the people who emailed from the last episode in December, some of it did go into my junk. Some of it was spam. Not so much thank you for the spam, and sorry to the people who it went into my junk and I tried to get it back but I couldn't. I interviewed a lovely lady who is originally from the United Kingdom but currently resides in America and she was the first person I've spoken to since. I went MIA Her message is health is wealth. And I believe that health is wealth. If you're lucky enough to be able to incorporate that into your daily life, it makes a world of difference. I'm not going to say any more or keep going on I'm just going to get this episode out and I feel like that's the first step.
Petronella:So my name's Petronella, Petronella Ravenshear I am a registered nutritional therapist with BANT and I had a private practice in London for 20 years and I relocated to Florida last year and we're very happy to be here, love the sunshine. I was working in clinic one to one. I had a waiting list. I was very lucky. Everything was, um, by word of mouth and I had a waiting list and I kept putting my prices up and people kept coming. And eventually I started to think, this isn't really fair because people shouldn't have to be wealthy in order to understand how to eat to improve their health. And I was thinking about a way to democratize the process. And. The idea of a book came to me. I thought, well, you know, if people could read a book without having to pay for an expensive consultation and take matters into their own hands and improve their health, that would be wonderful. So almost with that thought, a journalist from the Daily Mail got in touch and she said, I'd like to do your program. So what was the program? My program was a weight loss program, but the weight loss occurred on the program as a result of less inflammation in the body and improved overall health. So she'd been commissioned to write this story about her experience of following the human being diet. And I thought, well, this is amazing. It's a three month program, which leads into the forever phase. So I've got three months to get this out there. By the time she's written her article, and it's published in the Daily Mail, I could imagine somebody reading it and thinking, Oh, Well, I'd love to go and see a nutritional therapist, but you know, I haven't got that kind of money. And then they'd scroll down to the end of the article and see that there was a book out. And they could follow the program themselves and get the same great results. So that was what spurred me into action. And I did get the book done in three months. It wasn't a brilliant version, but it was, it was good enough. Lots of people followed it. And I started doing Instagram Lives with a very good friend of mine, Donna Ryder. And Donna knew that I'd published a book. 2018, and she said to me when lockdown occurred in, I think it was April, actually, 2020, she said, What are you doing with that book of yours? Why don't we talk about it on Instagram? And I didn't really know anything about Instagram, but I thought, yeah, okay, let's give it a go. And so we did, and Donna Ida is very funny and she's very sharp. And the lives we did were, they were a lot of fun. And they were particularly a lot of fun for people because they felt more connected during lockdown. You know, they were part of a tribe and they all had the same, they all had the same aims. They wanted to feel better. Most of them wanted to lose weight and they were kind of all in this together. And they supported each other and cheered each other along. And things grew and grew, and more and more people started joining in our lives and following us. And then, you know, lockdown was over, everybody was sort of getting on with their normal life again. But I carried on doing the lives. Donna got very busy, so we weren't really doing so many together. And fast forward, I think it was, yeah, four years. People have been saying, can you write an updated edition, you know, a second edition of the human being diet? And so I did, I sat down, it took me a year to write. And it came out last October, also self published, like the first book. And it seems to be, to be going from strength to strength. And we hear incredible stories, not just about weight loss, which of course can be really life changing, but also about conditions like endometriosis, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto's disease, you know, all the autoimmune diseases. which are all underpinned by inflammation. And the World Health Organization tells us that 74 percent of annual deaths worldwide are attributed to avoidable lifestyle factors, and they're all underpinned by inflammation. So that's really what makes this this diet, this diet in its original sense meant way of life, not a weight loss diet. And that's what makes this stand out. It's not a quick weight loss fix. It's quite a strict three month program, which then leads into a new way of life forever so that people don't go back to their old ways and they carry on feeling better and better and better. That's the history of it. And the reason I got involved in nutrition in the first place was my son, who was, when he was little, he was quite often ill with respiratory infections. And I used to take him to the doctor, and the doctors always gave him antibiotics. And sure enough, the antibiotics worked for a bit, he got better for a bit, but then he was ill again. And it seemed that he was getting more ill more often. He started developing asthma, he had tummy problems. And I thought, I can't, I can't do this anymore. And that was a long time ago. That was like 30 years ago. And I started taking him to alternative practitioners, so osteopaths, kinesiologists, um, cranial osteopaths, homeopaths, and everything helped, but it didn't really help for long. You know, he'd, he'd be better for a while, and then he, he'd relapse and he'd be ill again. And he was ill so often at that point that the teachers at his school suspected me of having Munchausen syndrome, yeah, the mother pretends there's something wrong with the child because they want to draw attention to themselves and it was a very, very, very stressful time. Anyway, I was reading up about, I was reading all sorts of things, as I say, taking to all sorts of different practitioners, and I was in Waterstones one day. And I was looking through the books and I picked up a book by Patrick Holford, the Optimum Health Bible, I think it was called, the Optimum Nutrition Bible and I started flicking through it and saw some things in it about allergies and tonsillitis and I thought this looks really interesting and I bought the book and took it home and read it voraciously from cover to cover and at that point I thought well we'll try it. Taking my son off dairy, so no milk, no cream, no yogurt, no cheese, and also off gluten, and we'll give him probiotics. You know, antibiotic means against life, and probiotic is for life. And I thought, well, that sounds pretty good. I didn't know really very much about it other than what I'd written in the book. So I took him off wheat and dairy, gave him probiotics, and he began to get better. And I found myself reading much more than I needed to because I was fascinated that food really is medicine. You know, which Hippocrates said 2, 000 years ago, whatever it was, he said, let food be your medicine and medicine be your food. And at the back of one of the books I was reading one day, I saw something that said, a sentence that read something like, Are you interested in a career in nutrition? And literally my hair stood on end, because I thought, Oh my goodness, I never, ever thought that I, that I could even consider. a career in nutrition. You know, I've worked in PR and various things before. And in trepidation, I got in touch with the Institute for Optin Nutrition in London, and they said, yes, you know, come for the open day, come and hear more about us. And eventually I signed up for their foundation course, which was biology, biochemistry, chemistry for a year, and then started the main course. And it was three years, and it was fascinating. But I came out of there thinking, I don't know anything about this at all, but I opened a clinic and it's not until you start seeing people who come to you with different sets of problems and you start to research those problems and the drugs they might be taking that you actually learn and you also learn to make things simple. You know, you don't have to speak in jargon. It's, you know, it's much better with normal human beings to speak in plain English. And then as I said, my clinic gradually gathered traction. I saw more and more people. I got to the point of a waiting list, and that's what made me write The Human Being Diet, so that anybody could pick that book up. Maybe join us on Instagram, but know that they had the tools to really turn their life. and turn their health around So that, in a nutshell, is how it got to where I am today.
Adeola (2):Thank you for that. you answered quite, you answered quite a few of my questions. I wanted to ask you, you mentioned your son. Now, 30 years later, does he still have any issues? How is he now?
Petronella:He does because he's still, unfortunately, he loves cheese and part of the reason that people might love cheese is because the dairy protein casein is small enough to cross the blood brain barrier and when it does that they can attach to the opiate receptors So it's like having a little, literally like having a little hit of morphine And it's quite hard to turn your back on that, so he'll be very good for a long time, and then he'll, he'll go a bit crazy on the cheese. He's quite good with gluten, but he's no longer ill, he's well. You know, it's all about healing the gut, taking all those things out that make the gut leaky, and then you can get away with a bit now and then. Like, I stopped eating gluten personally for probably eight years, I think, because of a lecture I went to in London by Dr Tom O'Brien otherwise known as the Gluten Doctor, and he was talking about gluten and leaky gut and autoimmune diseases and addictions and cancer and everything else. And I came out of there thinking, I'm not going to eat that stuff anymore. And I didn't. And I could tell if we were eating out, we'd gone to a restaurant, if there'd been any gluten in the food, I'd wake up the next morning with, like, a hangover. I'm feeling really depressed and lethargic and then I knew that there was gluten in whatever I had to eat. But nowadays I can get away with a bit of it, not very often, once a month maybe, not more than that.
Adeola (2):Can I ask you the most basic question for you, but generally I don't know what the answer is to this. So sometimes if I go to the supermarket and I'll pick something up and I'll take it home and say, It's gluten free. What does gluten free actually mean? Because I can't taste any difference, but I don't know what that means.
Petronella:Yeah, it doesn't mean much to be honest, and that, that's part of the problem with these so called ultra processed foods, fake foods, they're not foods at all. And very often you'll see something like gluten free, high in fibre, low in sugar, and you think, that sounds like a really good option, I'll get that. But actually very often it's highly processed and when we're eating highly processed food, our genes literally don't recognize it as food and I don't know what they, what they translated into. Really we're better off eating whole foods. And if like you, if you'd like to avoid gluten, don't go for the gluten free options. Just don't eat anything with wheat or rye or barley in it and really, really go for whole foods. Does that help? Does that answer?
Adeola (2):That does. That answers it. On your website, you mentioned, you put something on there that I wanted to ask you. Eat food as close to nature as possible. Is that really what you're referring to? as opposed to processed food, try just organic. I'm not saying become a vegan, but just, just organic food.
Petronella:Yeah. And even organic, you know, I don't want people to get hung up on thinking they have to buy organic. They have to eat organic because of course it is more expensive, generally speaking, but for children in particular, I'd say it's very important for them to eat organic dairy if they are eating dairy. So. Milk and cheese that comes from grass fed cows because that milk and cheese is going to be higher in omega 3, which is very important for their brain and eye development, so important for reading and things like that. But otherwise, I would say You know people often talk about the mediterranean diet as being the healthiest diet there is.
Adeola (2):Yes.
Petronella:And that's comprised of fresh fruit and vegetables, some fish, eggs, legumes, you know things like lentils and beans, nuts and seeds. a little red meat and nothing is, nothing is unrecognizable. Well, I mean, you could say that hummus is unrecognizable from a chickpea, but you know, we know, we know it's, it's chickpeas and that's
Adeola (2):we know what what it is yes.
Petronella:So there's nothing with any fake flavors or any fake chemicals or preservatives or anything else that's going to, because what those things do is they play habit with our friendly gut microbes. Our friendly gut microbes do not like all this fake emulsifiers. flavourings, everything else, and it makes them shrivel up and die. They're not very strong. They're quite weedy, our gut microbes, but they're really important for our overall health. Without them, we really don't have health at all. So it's always thinking about, what would they like to eat? They love fresh vegetables. They love a variety of vegetables. So if we get stuck on just eating say broccoli and carrots, we're only feeding a very narrow window of them. So we need to think about, like Tim Spector says, eating 30 different plant foods every week, including different types of herbs, different kinds of salads, different kinds of vegetables, and that will keep them happy, and that in turn keeps us happy. Because they make vitamins for us and they reduce inflammation by communicating with the immune system and they can even dictate our food choices. So if we have an overgrowth of the wrong kinds of microbes, like candida for instance, candida is a very sugar hungry bug and that will send us in search of sugar. And even though we're consciously thinking, I don't want to eat sugar, I know it's bad for my immune system, it's going to make me put on weight, it's bad for my skin, and so on candida says go and find sugar and find it now. So we don't want to feed bugs like that. We want to feed the goodies, whose favourite food is vegetables.
Adeola (2):I'm laughing because I'm, you are putting the fear of everything into me and making me just reflect how I've been treating my body. and not in a very, not in a, I have been treating in a very good way. So thank you for that.
Petronella:I'm glad that's like food for thought because you know, it's, we, we evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago. The, the latest incarnation of a human being was about 50, 000 years ago. And when you consider what's happened to our environment and to the way we live, even since the second world war, it's unrecognizable. We've gone from grunting cave people, you know, hairy cave people, to, you know, stressed out like jet setters, basically, in the space of less than a hundred years. And our success as human beings lies in our adaptability. But our environment is really changing too fast now to allow us the time to catch up. And that's why all these pro inflammatory diseases are appearing. And why we really need to educate, especially our children, on the importance of eating real food. and not giving them junk like crisps and ice cream and things like that at home.
Adeola (2):It is going to sound as though I'm defending parents. Lifestyle now it's just so fast paced that if I've had long day work and I've been out for over nine, ten hours, I get home. I'm going to be honest, sometimes the last thing I'm thinking about is making myself a healthy meal. I will, I don't do it often, but I will just go and get something I can put in the freezer, take it out and put it in the oven because I've had long day at work. I'm too tired. It's harder now, I believe, for people and I'm not so sure we are in America now, but when I was in LA recently, I noticed their attitude was very health is wealth. Yeah. A lot more than, I don't feel like our attitude is health is wealth as much as it is over there. And I, I don't know why, but they promote smoothies, there's more smoothie shops, there's more healthy living options. I don't really see that so much in our supermarkets or our grocery stores. So I do believe that now, modern life has just made it harder for people. not making excuses.
Petronella:No, I completely agree. I think that, have you, you've got a freezer at home you said, so that means that you can put things like, you know, we've got an Aldi here and I didn't go to Aldi in London because I didn't know where there was one, but they have an amazing selection of, and they are actually organic frozen vegetables. Frozen vegetables are a kind of economical way of buying vegetables because you know what it's like, we go to the supermarket, we buy a bunch of broccoli or something like that, throw it in the back of the fridge and then maybe three days later we remember to eat it. But frozen vegetables are picked and frozen as soon as they are picked, so they contain many more nutrients in them. And it means we can take a small amount out of that bag of frozen broccoli or frozen carrots or frozen spinach or whatever. and just what we need and then put the rest back and we can do the same with berries and frozen berries particularly kids really like them sometimes they like them better than they do the fresh ones they like the crunch of them as frozen berries and it's so easy to put those in a in a smoothie with some yogurt or something like that and a good and easy way to disguise some frozen vegetables as well so it's really Thinking about what you'd like to have in your, in your freezer that's quick and convenient and easy. So if you've got some frozen veg and some frozen berries, and you've got some eggs, do you eat eggs? I do eat eggs, yes. Or something like that, or some tofu, you know, it's really easy to whip up a quick quick stir fry. It takes no time, no time at all, and um, I think that part of the problem is that the we've got used to actually having quite good, quite tasty ready meals. Whereas in America, they're not nearly as good as that, like what M& S offer. All right. Okay. So it's not so tempting.
Adeola (2):Okay. Make that make sense. But good to know about Aldi cause love and Aldi for people listening Aldi. I don't really know. what to compare it to. In my head, I've always found that Aldi is possibly the cheaper alternative to the Marks and Spencers.
Petronella:It's much cheaper. You're right. And you know, frozen fish, which again, you don't actually have to defrost before you cook it. You know, you can put it, just put it in a pan with a bit of olive oil. And again, it's ready in no time. Just add some broccoli or spinach or whatever. You're set to go. Yeah.
Adeola (2):Thank you. People listening are just great. She's going off on her own personal tangent. It's just, If I understand, then hopefully if anyone listening has the same questions, they can also understand. Thank you. Can I just ask, I saw that you sell supplements. So I wanted to ask you if you could choose, I know you can't really break it down, but I'm going to ask for three, what three supplements would you would you say are vital? Obviously it depends on what stage you are in life, but what would you recommend?
Petronella:I would say perhaps the number one most important supplement is something called betaine HCL and betaine HCL is a stomach acid supplement. And you think, well, that sounds a bit scary. I don't want too much acid. But what happens when we're under stress is we stop producing stomach acid because stress pushes us into fight or flight. So imagine you went out of your place and you saw a tiger. Well, you wouldn't say to the tiger, well, I would run away, but I've just eaten my lunch, so I need to digest that first. You take to your heels and you go. So that's any kind of stress, you know, whether it is a tiger or a traffic warden or a deadline, whatever, it pushes us into fight or flight. And if that keeps happening, we're spending a lot of time in fight or flight, then the body puts less energy into making this vital stuff which we need for digesting, in particular, proteins and minerals. And we also need more of it as we get older, because our levels naturally decrease. So I'd say probably that's the number one supplement. And then talking about stress and thinking about stress and how many of us are stressed out all the time. We're not sleeping enough because we're too wired to get restful sleep. I'd say magnesium. Magnesium is equally important for rest as it is for energy. So if we don't have enough magnesium, We can't relax because we can't go to sleep because the brain's literally saying to itself, I don't know if there's enough energy here to wake up, i. e. there's not enough magnesium, so it keeps, it prevents you from, from sleeping deeply. But magnesium, very important, a really cardinal sign of low magnesium stores would be muscle cramps or twitches in your eyes or restless legs, things like that, as well as not being able to sleep and feeling wired but tired. So that's another thing. And then probably vitamin C, because vitamin C is so important to our adrenal glands, which are the little organs that put out our stress hormones. Again, because we're all, most of us are stressed out all the time. All the time. Yeah, and the adrenal glands hold on to a small amount of vitamin C because it is so important to their function. And because it's encased in the adrenal glands, it means nobody else in the body gets to have a go at it. So it's really important, and not just for our adrenal glands, which are vital for life itself, but also for our immune system and for our skin and for our feelings of energy and well being. So those three, I'd say those three are possibly the most important, so the betaine HCL, the magnesium and the vitamin C.
Adeola (2):Thank you for providing an actual alternative to my current that gives me energy, which is an energy drink, or a coffee. That was really helpful. When I wanted to ask you that question, I thought to myself she's going to say she's going to say vitamin D Number one, she's going to say vitamin D, but actually you didn't you didn't actually say vitamin D
Petronella:vitamin D is is something that we really only get from the sunshine. So it is the summer now So let's spend lots of times time outdoors and that way we don't need a supplement. We absorb it We actually make it in our skin. So yeah But you're right, vitamin D is very important stuff. And let's also remember if you put factor eight or higher sun protection factor on your skin, the body can't make vitamin D. Yeah, so it's really important to go out before it's burny.
Adeola (2):I'm learning so much. In your book, Does it detail a lot of this information?
Petronella:It does. I mean, I always say to people, if they're following the human being diet, they don't need to take supplements. But a lot of people ask me about supplements and they're interested in taking them, like an insurance policy. And I take them myself, mainly because, you know, like we were saying, our environment has changed so much. we're faced with so much chemical pollution, you know, with pesticides on our food and nutrient sort of poor food because it's grown in nutrient poor soil. So yeah, you definitely don't have to take supplements, but I do offer the supplement shop. As a matter of convenience for people, and I did an Instagram live on supplements yesterday and also last, last Tuesday because so many people have questions about them. So I hope that was helpful for them. That was really helpful. Thank you. Well, it was helpful for me and hopefully it was helpful to the people listening as well
Adeola (2):you're mentioning things that I would not have actually considered and I'm probably not a particularly healthy person anyway, so I don't know if people listening are or if they're not, but it's always, it's always interesting and helpful to get a perspective from someone who actually knows a bit more, who can just give advice.
Petronella:The number one thing for anybody who's really serious about wanting to improve their health is to Say no to sugar and I know that sugar can be very addictive and it's a vicious cycle, you know, you have a You give in and have a bite of something and what happens is your blood sugar shoots up because it really breaks down to sugar really quickly in your in your bloodstream and Then you have a blood sugar crash and your energy is on the floor And typically we then reach for something, another sugary bite of something, and then the blood sugar shoots up and crashes down. And what happens when we break down sugar in our bodies is we use up B vitamins and magnesium and vitamin C and chromium, and those are the very nutrients we need to produce energy in our bodies. So ultimately we're just exhausting ourselves even further. Sugar also adds to inflammation and it's also like feeding the bad bugs in our gut that we were talking about earlier on. And it, it's very dehydrating and it lowers the immune system so there's nothing good to be said for it at all. And the same thing with having loads of, loads of fruit. We don't need very much fruit. We should really focus on eating more vegetables. A little bit of fruit's fine, but not to think well five servings a day of fruit is as good as, four servings of veg and one of the fruit. Vegetables are much, much more important and naturally much lower in sugar. So I'd say that's, that's the number one thing. Do you really care about your health? Get rid of the sugar. Just say, No, I don't care what you say to me, you horrible sugar monster. I'm not going to give you any more. That's it. We're finished. And it gets easier every day that passes becomes easier.
Adeola (2):I'm glad you said that because anyone listening who is now considering, okay, I can start to cut out sugar. Would you advise though, if someone was going to do that, to do it gradually rather than cold turkey?
Petronella:That's a difficult question. I, I would say probably go cold turkey. That's what people do when they're following the human being diet. Right. And they go cold turkey on a lot, so all the sugar, all the dairy, all the grains, all the wine if they drink wine, um, all the processed food. And yes, they can feel, pretty rough. Like they've got flu or something for a couple of days, but then day three or four they suddenly get, suddenly their energy's much better and they, they feel better and they, you know, it's a feeling like you could conquer the world. And if you, you know, if gone for. The first two weeks, absolutely 16 days, actually, 100 percent sugar free. And for people who thought they could never, ever be free of the sugar monster, to get through those 16 days is such an accomplishment and such an achievement, and so good for our morale. But then I say to people, be very careful, because you're allowed to have a treat meal. In fact, you must have a treat meal when you get into the third phase of the human being diet. And the treat meal, you can have anything you like, but I always say to people, If you thought you could never give up sugar, but you did, you did it for 16 days, hold off. Don't have it at your first treat meal. Give your body a couple of months to really let those new habits get embedded before you try sugar again, because it's a very sneaky drug, really nasty.
Adeola (2):How many phases are there? Because you mentioned just now about the third phase.
Petronella:So there are four phases. So there's phase one, which is two days of eating vegetables only. No oil, no alcohol, no dairy, no pulses, no legumes, just vegetables. And then phase two is eating much more normal diet. So you'd have protein and vegetables with each meal, eating three times a day fasting for at least five hours between each meal. And fasting means having nothing, no tea or coffee, nothing except water. You can have tea or coffee with your meal, but nothing in between except water. And that's 14 days. And that's no oil, no added oil. So you can eat things like oily fish and avocado and foods like that, but no added olive oil or any other kind of oil. So that's, we're on day 17 now, which is when we enter phase 3. And phase 3 is when we reintroduce extra virgin olive oil. No other kind of oil because that is one with incredible health benefits and partly the reason why the Mediterranean diet is so good for us because olive oil is so good for us and also helps to nurture our friendly gut microbes And we stay in phase 3 for 10 weeks and the good thing about phase 3 is that we gradually reintroduce foods that we'd eliminated in the the first two phases And just tune in and see if our body likes them or not. So very often people are astonished to find if they've got rid of dairy for those first two weeks, and they have cheese in the first week of phase three, they might get diarrhoea, they might get very bloated, they might break out in spots, they might get joint pain, they might have nothing. But very often, first of all dairy, and then secondly gluten or wheat, those foods are unmasked as the very devil. And that's great, we get food feedback from our body like that, and we think, okay, well I'll stay clear of that for longer, then maybe try it again in a month or so. And then phase three ends after 10 weeks. It goes on for longer if people want to lose more weight. They stay in phase three until they, they're happy with their weight, happy with the skin they're in. And then they move into phase four, which is the forever phase. And that's really taking the lessons our bodies taught us in the first three phases together, forwards into the, into yes, this is, this is my life phase. I'm, I'm never going back to where I was before. And we've had incredible results with, as I was saying, like things like chronic fatigue, people getting rid of the foods that were doing them in, doing them down, and realizing how much better they feel without those certain foods, typically gluten and dairy, and just feeling full of energy and light and happy going forward in their life.
Adeola (2):I have another question based on what you were saying. When you said fasting for five hours, except water, what would be the benefit of that?
Petronella:So what happens when we, when we eat a meal, our blood sugar, goes up gradually and our insulin also increases to deal with the food that's coming in and it takes the sugar and various other things out of the blood and puts them into the cells. So what we want then is for blood sugar and insulin together, insulin is our fat storage hormone basically, to go down again and when insulin reaches a certain level gets to a certain low level along with our blood sugar, another hormone called glucagon appears and glucagon says there's no energy basically here. I know what I'll do, I'll break down some fat for energy. So anything that interferes with that process, that interferes with the blood sugar and the insulin going down again, and that's anything except water, can affect those two going down again, means we don't get to the anti inflammatory part and we don't get to the fat burning part. So that's why it's water. Right. Because even peppermint tea, some people are sensitive to peppermint, which means it activates their immune system because they're slightly allergic to it. And that, again, will put our blood sugar up, because again, that's fight or flight, and we need blood sugar to get away, even though there's nothing to run away from except a cup of peppermint tea.
Adeola (2):Thank you. I love that, I'm asking all of these questions. It's just, because I don't know what people, who will be listening, questions they have, and because I just have questions all the time anyway, where do you see the future? of the food industry in the next five, ten years. As a society, are we making progress? Are we improving how we eat, what we eat, the information that's out there? How do you see it?
Petronella:I don't think we are. I think things are, things are getting steadily worse and we need to really become avid label readers and look at labels of the packets that we're picking up and if it has anything unpronounceable on it or if it says contains, you know, preservatives or emulsifiers or whatever. Just put it back on the shelf and say actually, I've got more respect for my body than this. I just want to eat wholesome, good food that my genes and my body and my brain understand. And I think we're very, very far away from that. And I think part of the problem is that, you know, we think that the food companies are interested in our health. They are not. They're interested in the health of their profits for their shareholders. That's all they're interested in. And if they can make stuff that kind of makes us want to eat that stuff because we like the flavour or the feel of it in our mouth and then makes us crave more of it, they're on to a winner. So we really need to take control of our health and that's what the book's about, it's about putting our health back into our own hands and educating people on, you know, choices, good, good food choices, because I think its tragic what is happening and particularly with our children. So we're told that 62 percent of the calories in an average person diets is made up of ultra processed food, i. e. non food, but that rises 70 plus percent for children. And that is not going to do their health any good now or in the future. You know, it's up to us to, to protect our children's future health by giving them wholesome natural foods. And I know it sounds difficult, but just step by step, getting the freezer full of good vegetables and berries and things like that. Making sure we've always got wholesome, healthy food to hand. And it doesn't have to be expensive. Things like tofu, you know, tempeh, cannellini beans, lentils, all those kinds of things. They're not, they're not processed. We can process, like we were saying before, cannellini beans into hummus, but it doesn't mean that it's a processed food. It's just us and a food, food blender, you know, so it doesn't have to be difficult. but we do need to take it seriously and we do need to do something about it and stop buying all that packaged food with all those horrible additives and fake flavours in, really key.
Adeola (2):You're right, because really every time that we're doing that, yeah, we're making them happy. And I, Our bodies, not so much.
Petronella:No, not so much at all. Really good book that came out, the same time as my HBD cookbook, so HBD is a human being diet. Chris Van, I don't know how you pronounce his name, Tolkien, it's called Ultra Process People. And, you know, the facts that he dispenses and shares with us in that book are really shocking, really horrifying. And I think that will be enough to put most people off eating ultra processed food, and getting us searching through the freezers for stuff that's unadulterated. Going to farmer's markets, you know, supporting our local farmer's markets, things like that and just choosing market Yeah, just choosing real food and not getting a hung up on organic, you know, that that's like the the cherry on the top But first of all, let's just eat real food And then to begin to feel better and we realize actually we're saving money and all that rubbish that we used to eat and all those cappuccinos and you know protein bars and all that kind of thing that we'll have more money and we'll have more time we'll have more energy and that way we can start to streamline things and yes make make our diet even better and start to eat more organic foods but for now let's just focus on wholesome natural things. real foods, organic or not.
Adeola (2):Thank you. I know your purpose isn't mainly about weight one of the reasons I was interested in finding out more is just because I'm a big believer that what you eat affects how you feel. Yeah. So, um, and that was very educational and slightly scary. Um, but that's fine. But so thank you so much. Thank you.
Petronella:Thank you. And it was a pleasure talking to you
Adeola (2):Bye. Thank you so so much for tuning in to another episode. I just wanted to add in this really really quick bit just to say I'm a person who could be described as an individual who is multi marginalized. Basically meaning I belong to more than one.minority group. So because of that I just thought it was the right thing for me to just speak up about what's happening in England at the moment where people are being attacked because of the colour of their skin, because of their religion, and is it scary? It really is. No one should be attacked. or be fearful because of something they didn't choose. But we'll be okay because we will do better because we have to do better. So, thank you, thank you, thank you, and be safe, be kind to others, and most importantly, to yourself, always.
