Dr. Steven Gundry:
Number one on my favorite Foods for healthy skin are foods that contain probiotics. Now, good health begins in the gut. Believe it or not, your gut, the lining of your gut is your skin turned inside out. And what happens in your gut is not like Las Vegas. What happens in your gut doesn’t stay in your gut and it’s reflected on your skin. So your gut health has a direct impact on your skin. So probiotics are the good gut buddies. So you really want good gut buddies to outweigh the bad guys. Now, there are lots of foods that provide either probiotics, which are living bacteria or postbiotics. And postbiotics are the fermentation products that bacteria make. And interestingly enough, as you’ll learn in Gut Check, my new book, dead bacteria, dead probiotics actually are incredibly useful for fostering good skin health. So fermented foods like vinegar, kimchi, goat and sheep kefir that are plain, goat and sheep yogurts, coconut yogurts, miso, sauerkrauts, and various probiotic supplements are a great way to improve your skin health.
There are some specific probiotic bacteria that have been shown to enhance skin thickness, skin health, hair growth, hair health, and that’s exciting new information that a number of us have been talking about recently. Number two, prebiotics. Now it goes without saying that prebiotics are important for skin health in that they support a healthy gut microbiome. Remember, think about probiotics as basically grass seed. The problem with grass seed is I tell my patients in the desert that if I give them grass seed and tell them to go plant it, unless they fertilize and water the grass seed, it’s never going to grow. And so many of us make the mistake that all we have to do is swallow probiotics and everything else takes care of itself. And unfortunately, that’s not true. You’ve got to feed the friendly bacteria what they want to eat, and we’re beginning to know exactly what these guys like to eat.
And these are called prebiotics. Prebiotics, primarily with soluble fiber. Now people say, “Oh, fiber is really good for you and you need lots of fiber,” but don’t make no mistake, there are soluble fibers and there are insoluble fibers. The problem with insoluble fibers like in grains is these are literally like swallowing razor blades, which will damage the wall of your gut, and that damage will be reflected in your skin. So soluble fiber on the other hand, is what your gut buddies want to eat. And soluble fiber will not damage the wall of your gut. Quite the contrary, it will help repair the wall of your gut, and as the wall of your gut gets happier and happier, that’ll be reflected on your skin. So flaxseed. Flaxseeds are a great source of soluble fiber. They’re great sources of a short chain Omega-3 fat, which is called alpha-linolenic acid, ALA, and it’s also a great source of protein.
There’s a recent study showing that the lignans in flaxseed or high lignan flaxseed oil actually change the microbiome in a positive way that suppresses breast cancer growth. Sounds good to me. Artichokes. Artichokes get a bad rap for being hard to prepare. Get the frozen artichokes and eliminate all the hard work or get them in a can. I particularly like them frozen because then I can do anything I want with them. They’re available in most grocery stores in the freezer section. They’re available at Trader Joe’s. Incorporate them into the meals you’re cooking. Put them in soups, cook them in stews. I like to saute them with olive oil. I like to bake them with olive oil and salt and pepper. They’re great with garlic sprinkled on them. It’s really easy to do and they’re just an amazing source of soluble fiber. Leeks, I just got back from England and France and I can tell you that almost every meal I had there had some form of leek, either as a part of the dish or in a soup or in a stew.
And it always reminds me how we really have never appreciated the ability of leeks as a great source of prebiotic fiber. They’re a cousin, they’re part of the onion family. And again, it was just amazing how many times I had leeks in a week in London and Paris. It should be part of our diet. And they’re really easy to prepare. Make sure you slice them in half the long way and rinse thoroughly before you cook them because they can contain some grip, but that’s the easy way to fix them. And then just treat them like you would treat onions. They don’t have the pungency of onions, so people who don’t like onions can actually do great with leeks. Now okra is one of my all time favorites. Okra, believe it or not, absorbs lectins. But more important than that, okra is loaded with mucopolysaccharides, with polysaccharides.
Now, a lot of people don’t like the slimy effect of okra. That’s okay. Buy it frozen, slice them in half, put them in a bag with olive oil, salt and pepper, some seasonings, throw them on a baking sheet, bake them at 400, 425 degrees, flip them over in about 10 minutes, you will have the tastiest okra potato chips. We have yet to get a batch to the dinner table because they’re gone the minute they come out of the oven. It’s here on my YouTube channel. Try it out. Jícama. Jícama is another great root vegetable that tastes like a cross between an apple and a potato. You can actually roast it or eat it raw. You can put it in a salad. I like to use it as a dipping chip for my guacamole. And reminder, please don’t put tomatoes in your guacamole. It’s not supposed to be in there.
You can also supplement with prebiotic fiber. I like inositol, myo-inositol, and inulin, and they’re readily available is supplements. All right, the number three food. Foods that are high in silica. Now, silica is basically sand. Dark, leafy greens are full of silica, arugula, Swiss chard, bok choy, radicchio. They also pack a powerhouse of polyphenols and antioxidants that your skin needs. They all provide the body with vitamin A, which works against dry, flaky skin. They provide vitamin C, which undos the sun’s damage to collagen and elastin, and they have vitamin E, which helps keep your skin calm and comfortable. But what most important in these greens is, it’s high in the content of silica in dark leafy greens. What else is high in silica? Artichokes. So there’s a double good reason to get these little guys into your diet. And again, it couldn’t be easier now that we have frozen artichoke hearts.
Number four, mushrooms. Mushrooms are loaded with biotin, but perhaps more importantly, they’re loaded with these polysaccharides, which are one of the favorite foods of your gut microbiome. And the happier and more diverse your gut microbiome is, the happier the wall of your gut is, and that’ll be reflected once again in how great your skin looks. Number five, olive oil, high quality, organic, extra virgin olive oil is brimming with nutrients that benefit your skin, including essential fatty acids and vitamin E. But more importantly, it’s loaded with polyphenols like hydroxytyrosol and tyrosol, that have been shown to improve skin quality by improving the wall of your gut. There’s an exciting new paper that shows it even improves the ability of your blood vessels to expand and contract properly and more blood flow to your skin means your skin looks more radiant. And don’t forget, you don’t have to just drink olive oil.
Sophia Lauren credited her incredible beauty to putting olive oil on her skin daily and I recommend you do the same thing. Number seven, sweet potatoes. It’s rich in betacarotene, which is the precursor of vitamin A, vitamin E and antioxidants. Vitamin A fights skin discoloration. I bet you a lot of you are putting retinoic acid on your skin. That’s vitamin A and retinoic acid is also, by the way, an interesting mitochondrial uncouple. Vitamin E supports the collagen production in your skin. Finally, walnuts. One ounce of walnuts contains 8% of the daily recommended value for zinc and zinc is incredibly important for skin function. Walnuts are also an excellent source of short chain Omega-3 fats like alpha linoleic acid. Avocados. Before I go, avocados are a fantastic source of oleic acid, the same fat in olive oil, but they contain vitamin E and a ton of fiber, prebiotic fiber that your gut buddies are going to love.
Turmeric. Let’s not forget turmeric. Turmeric is also shown to fight fine lines and wrinkles. There’s an abstract in a dual study random clinical trial that the application of topical turmeric extract reduced the appearance of facial hyperpigmentation and fine lines and wrinkles. And it was actually a split face study among Caucasian women. Turmeric was combined with niacinamide, women put it on one side of the face and a placebo on the other, and the combination product was significantly better at improving fine lines and wrinkles than just alone. So tell you what, why not try a turmeric mask at home and let me know the results.
First things first. What is bloating? Well, the truth is bloating is a natural consequence of bacteria eating the foods they want and fermenting them and producing gases. They’re producing these gases which we now call postbiotics. These gases are actually incredibly beneficial to your health. In fact, I devoted an entire book, The Energy Paradox to try and convince you to step on the gas. Now, the whole idea that we should try to eat foods to prevent bloating is actually one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard. Just this past week, a beautiful study was published showing that hydrogen gas, yes, that gas that the Hindenburg blow up with is incredibly important for forgiving bacteria that make butyrate, which is the holy grail of short chain fatty acids that I wrote about in Unlocking the Keto Code, the substances they need to make butyrate and that the more hydrogen gas that you have that you produce, the better you are at making butyrate.
You think that’s not important? Well, as I’ve written about before a study in Japan looking at Parkinson’s patients and mild dementia patients, they did not have bacteria that made hydrogen gas as compared to people who didn’t have these problems. They had bacteria that made hydrogen gas. When they gave these individuals hydrogen water to drink, hydrogen dissolved in water, they got better, their symptoms improved. So the idea that we don’t want to form gas, that’s completely wrong. Now you hear that gas production is a marker that you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO. Now, where did this idea come from? First of all, up until a very few years ago, we had no idea that there were any bacteria that lived in our small intestine. We knew that there were bacteria in our mouth. We knew that there were bacteria in our colon, our large bowel. We even knew that there was a bacteria that liked to live in our stomach, H. pylori, but we really had no way of sampling whether bacteria were in our intestines or not.
And I won’t go into why we didn’t know, but let’s just say we didn’t have sampling techniques. We now know that the small intestine is rich with bacteria and a lot of those bacteria just so happen to be fermenters of post biotic gases. Gases like hydrogen, gases like methane, gases like CO2 and gases like hydrogen sulfide. And I spent a whole book trying to convince you that these gases are really good for you. So the idea of trying to prevent this is actually counterintuitive. In fact, the FODMAP diet, that diet that’s designed to take away all these fermentable sugars, actually stars your microbiome to death, absolutely, positively does. So I’m not sure why anyone would ever want to adapt a FODMAP diet because that microbiome is going to give you not only long-term health, but attention please, butyrate is actually what’s going to help seal your leaky gut and keep it sealed by the action on the lining of our gut cells.
So do not starve your cells to death. So you don’t want to have drinks that are going to stop bloating. What you want to do is drink drinks that are going to support the health of your gut and stop drinking drinks that are going to destroy gut wall. Now after all, a healthy gut, a healthy gut microbiome leads to more comfortable digestion, which is actually what you’re trying to achieve. In fact, there are multiple published studies looking at people who had gas and bloating and who were told through tests that they had SIBO. Half of them were put on a FODMAP diet. The other were given more of these digestible fibers. And can you guess what they found? Well, if you said there was absolutely no effect in the amount of gas and bloating or the symptomatology regardless of what system was used, you’d be right.
So the idea of starving bacteria just doesn’t click with studies. Now, before I reveal what drinks can help, I want to set the record straight on drinks that will not help you. In fact, these drinks will make you bloat even worse. Number one, wheatgrass or barley grass. Now a little bit of history. Where did the idea that wheatgrass was good for you come from? Well, it actually came from Ann Wigmore who was the founder of the Hippocrates Institute in Florida. Some of you may know that this was founded as a place for cancer patients to get natural holistic treatments. And Ann Wigmore noticed that when dogs wanted to vomit, they ate grass and she was convinced that her cancer patients as part of their therapy, should vomit. Now, fun fact, human beings cannot digest grass any more than dogs can. In fact, we can’t absorb the nutrients from wheatgrass.
Now cows and [inaudible 00:19:12] have four stomachs. They have four fermentation chambers to break down the cellulose in plant walls and in grass. So they are what are called for gut fermenters. Top of the gut fermenters, gorillas and apes in general are mid-gut fermenters. They do most of their fermentation in the small intestine, that ought to tell you something. We’re primarily hind gut fermenters. We do most of our fermentation now in our colon. So the reason a gorilla has this giant belly is that his small intestine or her small intestine is devoted to being the fermentation site. So we have evidence that fermentation was designed to happen in the middle of our intestines, in our small bowel. Now interestingly, no animal can actually break apart the cell wall of a plant. Termites can’t break apart wood, they actually have to have bacteria in their little guts to break down these plant compounds.
So fermentation is actually part and parcel with breaking down plants. Now, why do we have much smaller guts than apes? It turns out that cooking, fire, heat is the only other known way of breaking the cell wall of a plant. And so cooking made predigestion possible. So we had predigested foods with cooking that allowed us to minimize that mid-gut fermentation that great apes have. And in fact, there’s very, very strong evidence that homo sapiens actually happened because of the advent of fire. So yes, wheatgrass is a really great way to upset your stomach, but it’s even worse than that. Wheatgrass contains gluten, so does barley grass. Gluten is one of the best ways to cause leaky gut that anyone has ever found out. Alessio Fasano from Harvard proved this when he was at the University of Maryland. That’s the mechanism, one mechanism of causing leaky gut.
So if you don’t want leaky gut, which will really give you bloating, then get the wheatgrass and barley grass out of it. A ton of my patients who are otherwise doing great, when we look at why they’re not getting better, I can’t tell you the number of people who are having a green drink with either wheatgrass or barley grass as one of the ingredients. And when we get rid of that green drink, that was one of the culprits. Okay, now number two, this is going to surprise you. In fact, most of these things I’m going to tell you will surprise you. Ginger. Ginger is thought of as calming for the stomach, but we do food sensitivity tests on our patients looking for IgG and IgA, antibodies to a hundred, 200 different foods. And one of the things that popped up very quickly in all of these patients, and we’ve done thousands of them, is a great number of my patients with leaky gut are sensitive to ginger.
They have antibodies to ginger. And when you eat something that’s supposed to calm your stomach and calm your intestines, a number of my patients react to ginger. So if you’re interested in ginger tea, adding ginger to your smoothies and you have gas and bloating, think about eliminating ginger as one of the culprits. Number three, here’s one of the big culprits, smoothies. Now there are plenty of people out there who love their morning smoothies. Now, sorry folks, smoothies are just not healthy and they’re not going to help with bloating. First of all, fruit is loaded with sugar, especially the pineapples and bananas which are common in smoothies. Interestingly enough, when we do food sensitivities, a huge number of people have sensitivities to both pineapples and bananas. In fact, it’s interesting that these are tropical fruits and almost all of us were never exposed to tropical fruits until about 500 years ago.
They were not part of any of our ancestors’ diets. And it’s fascinating to me that both of these fruits come up very high in the list of foods that people are sensitive to. So that sensitivity sets off a reaction in your gut that causes leaky gut. Now let’s call a spade a spade. Sugar is sugar. Sugar feeds bad gut bacteria. When your bad gut bacteria overrule the good, you’ll get bloating and other digestive comfort. You’ll get cramping and it’s not the benefit to keep eating these things, get it out of your system. Now what about green smoothies? I am a huge fan of green smoothies because number one, they have very little sugar. But here’s another shocker that I talk about in the next book, Gut Check. There are a class of lectins that I haven’t written about before because I didn’t want to cause even more widespread panic.
There’s a class of lectins that are called aquaporins, water pours, and I don’t have the time to tell you about them today, but spinach happens to contain an aquaporin that a number of people have an antibody to. And aquaporins are known to cause leaky gut. They’re known to cause leaky brain and they’re known to cause damage to the myelin sheath if you have antibodies to them. Shockingly, a number of my patients with MS, when we tested them had antibodies to the spinach aquaporin and they were big spinach eaters, spinach smoothies, spinach salads, and eliminating spinach from their diet made a big difference. Now, I’m not telling you to eliminate spinach from your diet. Not everyone reacts to the aquaporin and spinach, but if you have an autoimmune disease or if you have MS or symptoms of MS, get rid of that spinach in your smoothie.
Number four, lemon. Now this is another shocker. I would’ve never believed this in a million years, surprisingly in my patient’s food sensitivity, lemons rank very high. It happens all the time. Now, is there an alternative? Yeah, you can use a lime. Most people who react to lemons do not react to limes. All right, what about drinks that can help? Well, first of all, have a shot of olive oil. There’s more and more evidence that the polyphenols in olive oil support the growth of good bacteria and support the growth of bacteria that make butyrate. And the more butyrate you make, the healthier the wall of your gut, the better you feel. So have a shot of olive oil, have some apple cider vinegar mixed with water or have some psyllium husk. Psyllium husk, it turns out, may be the favorite food for your gut buddies. And there’s some beautiful studies done out of Stanford University by the Sonenberg husband and wife team that shows psyllium husks combined with fermented foods like yogurt or kefir, really, really improve gut diversity and improves inflammatory markers in human volunteers.
So have some cilium husks dissolved in water. Better yet, take some basil seeds and dissolve them in water. You’re going to get all this phenomenal gut buddy feeding fiber in the basil seeds and polyphenols as well. So three great options for your morning drink that’ll actually improve your gut health rather than hurt it. And please, please, please, avoid the FODMAP diet. It is lethal to the guys that you want in your gut. Believe me, it’s true.
Number one, here’s one you probably never heard of, fermented long pepper. What the heck is that? Well, studies have shown that long pepper… Look it up. A traditional Chinese spice herb has remarkably good effects on blood pressure. In fact, if you ferment long pepper, it is one of the more effective ways of lowering blood pressure traditional Chinese medicine has found. Most peppers contain a compound called piperine and you’ll see also lots of supplements.
For instance, turmeric will have BioPerine or piperine added to improve the absorption of bioactive compounds like turmeric. And so just the piperine or BioPerine in long peppers has a benefit. Also, there’s some interesting studies on fermented long pepper. Anytime you ferment polyphenols, as you’ve heard me say before, you make them more bioavailable than if you took them in their regular form. Now the good news is your gut bacteria will ferment these compounds, but if you ferment them before they get to your gut bacteria, you’re one step ahead and will probably even improve the absorption even better. Okay, number two, rosemary. I can’t say enough about the benefits of rosemary. This was really brought to the forefront a few years ago by the study of the people of Acciaroli, Italy, a small town south of Naples on the coast of Italy that I’ve visited, there more people over a hundred years of age in this town than anywhere in the world as a percentage of population.
One of the unique things about the Acciarolians is that they eat large amounts of rosemary. They chew rosemary, they use it in their cooking. Scientists, cardiologists, particularly from the University of California San Diego, have found fascinating compounds in rosemary that may account for some of the benefit. One of course is rosmarinic acid. Rosmarinic acid is one of the most potent antihistamines ever discovered. Rosmarinic acid and quercetin, I give my patients with allergies and we’ve had remarkable success with both of those compounds. There’s also a compound in rosemary called [inaudible 00:30:38] acid, and this actually dilates blood vessels. Studies in animals show it protects from myocardial ischemia, basically a heart attack. Rosmarinic acid has lowered cholesterol levels and rosemary extract in one study has had a mild diuretic effect. And as most people know, one of our first treatments of high blood pressure is giving you a diuretic to lower your blood pressure.
So those smart Acciarolians are doing a lot of great things for their heart just by adding rosemary to their diet. Now, you can go and chew rosemary. It certainly has a pungent flavor. I like it. I cook with rosemary a lot. You can even add dried rosemary when you’re cooking just about anything or even think about getting it fresh and sprinkling it on your food. Worse comes to worst, get yourself some rosemary extract capsules and you’ll be fine. Basil. Basil is part of the mint family. And basil in ancient Rome was called salvia, and salvia was so named because it saves your life. Basil also has some very unique properties in lowering cholesterol, in lowering blood pressure. Basil is a great source of vitamin K, both vitamin K1 and vitamin K2. It’s also a really good source for potassium. Potassium is one of the two main compounds along with magnesium that helps regulate blood pressure, that helps regulate heart rhythm.
Whenever I have people with skipped heartbeats, extra beats, the first thing I is put them on a potassium magnesium supplement. Basil’s a great way to get potassium into your diet. Now it’s also great for your gut health. Basil is loaded with fiber and your gut bacteria, as you’ve heard me say over and over again, need to eat prebiotic fiber to produce compounds that affect your heart health. Things like nitric acid, things like hydrogen gas, things like [inaudible 00:33:12] hydrogen sulfide. The rotten egg smell is actually really important for blood vessel protection. So get some more basil in your diet. Another easy way of getting basil in your diet is using basil seeds instead of chia seeds. And you may have seen my episode on Zen basil, where basil seeds are just a great way of getting prebiotic fiber and the benefits of basil into your diet every day.
Number four, garlic. I can’t tell you how important garlic is for your health. High blood pressure is one of the key factors in heart health. And as many of you know, high blood pressure is out of control in this country. I can’t tell you how many people I see on a daily basis who are our one, two, or three high blood pressure medications when I first see them in my office. This is a very real factor. Now, interestingly enough, in 2019, a study published in experimental and therapeutic medicine showed that garlic supplements helped lower blood pressure. Researchers in this study showed that the blood pressure lowering ability of garlic supplements would actually reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by 16 to 40%. Not bad. Now, also really exciting is studies of aged garlic extract have shown that the soft plaque inside arteries, and quite frankly, it’s the soft plaque that causes heart attacks.
But one study in patients, 55 patients age 40 to 75 were tracked taking an aged garlic supplement for a year. The researchers found that those who took the supplement had an 80% reduction in soft plaque. And quite frankly, I take an aged garlic extract every day for exactly this purpose. I recently had a patient who does not exactly have a healthy lifestyle, let me put it that way. Very overweight, very insulin resistant in his early 70s, despite my best efforts, continued his unhealthy lifestyle. One day he developed very severe chest pain, was taken to the hospital, taken directly to the cath lab, and lo and behold, he had absolutely no plaque in his coronary arteries. And the cardiologist was shocked. He came back and brought his film with him to show me. I was shocked until he opened his mouth and said, “One thing I never told you, I chew two raw garlic cloves a day and I have for the last 40 years.”
And what do you think? Maybe I did something. Well, an anecdote is an anecdote, but again, giving people age garlic extract pills dramatically resulted in reduction of salt plaque. And my one patient, I can assure you is going to continue to chew his garlic cloves every day. Before you put that big slice of turmeric into your smoothie, listen up. We all know I’m a great fan of spices. They offer many unique health benefits and they’re absolutely delicious. Now, you’ve probably heard of the one I’m going to focus on today, but I guarantee you you’ll be surprised by how much this spice has to offer, but the ways you’ve got to use this spice to get the benefits from it. Now, after you listen to this, you might want to go grab a big bowl of curry rather than throwing the root into your smoothie. What am I talking about?
I’m talking about turmeric. Now, number one, turmeric is full of polyphenols. And if you’ve read my books, if you’ve listened to me long enough, you know that polyphenols are those compounds from plants that were designed by plants to protect their mitochondria from damage from particularly sunlight. And the elements. We in turn, when we eat the polyphenols in plants, we actually don’t absorb them very well. And that’s the point of all this talk. You could eat the polyphenols in turmeric, particularly curcumin, and you will very likely not get any benefit from it because it is very poorly absorbed and it’s very poorly broken down by our gut bacteria into absorbable compounds. Now, what’s interesting about that is it needs a helper to get absorbed. And remember I told you, let’s have a bowl of curry. Well, curry contains both turmeric but also black pepper. And as I’ve written about in my books, there’s a fascinating study in Singapore looking at people with improved memory as they get older versus mild cognitive impairment.
And people who ate one bowl of curry per week had dramatic better memories than people who did not eat that bowl of curry per week. And the reason for is the two essential ingredients to make turmeric work is black pepper and curcumin. So when you are putting your turmeric in your smoothie, please believe it or not, shake in some black pepper. When you’re adding turmeric for a seasoning, shake in some black pepper, you’ll activate it. And when you are buying curcumin or turmeric as a supplement, either look for the presence of black pepper. The active ingredient is BioPerine and look for that word or look for turmeric that has been activated and has been shown in a clinical study, a human clinical study to be absorbed. And there are several active ways to make curcumin absorbable besides black pepper. But most of the time you’re going to see the word BioPerine.
And if you see that, that’s your key, that you’ve got the agent to absorb it. Why get curcumin in your body? Number one, it’s one of the few polyphenols that has been shown to cross the blood brain barrier. Most drugs, most compounds cannot get through this barrier called the blood-brain barrier. And turmeric is one of those rare ones, and that may explain why it has been associated with improved memory. Now, turmeric curcumin also is a strong mitochondrial uncoupler. That means it actually tells mitochondria to repair themselves and to make more mitochondria called mitogenesis. And it has the additional benefit in having mitochondria waste fuel. And there are a number of studies suggesting that curcumin actually helps maintain a healthy weight or helps with weight loss through thermogenesis. Speaking of thermogenesis, there are numerous studies that show changes white fat into beige fat. Now, there are three types of fat.
There’s brown fat, beige fat, and white fat. The fat that we store fat in is basically white. It’s fat. Brown fat is name brown fat because it’s so loaded with mitochondria that it literally looks brown under the microscope. Brown fat is used to generate heat. In fact, when we’re babies, we have a lot of brown fat in our body and we use that brown fat to generate heat through mitochondrial uncoupling. Beige fat is white fat that’s becoming more and more and more filled with mitochondria. So guess what? Turmeric curcumin actually makes that transition happen. And the more beige fat you have, the more brown fat you have, the healthier you are. And you’ve seen in my last books like Longevity Paradox, Energy Paradox, Unlocking the Keto Code, how important activating brown fat in beige fat is in your long-term health and longevity. Moreover, there’s some good evidence that turmeric improves your mood and who doesn’t need a mood boost in this day and age, there are physical benefits with turmeric.
It provides joint support. And there are several studies, human studies that show that turmeric can actually improve mobility. So it’s a win, win, win. Again, don’t just throw a piece of turmeric into your smoothie. It’s really not going to do much for you. On the other hand, throw in the black pepper, sprinkle it on your salad when you put it in. Use turmeric on just about everything you cook. Personally, I love it on chicken. Many Indian recipes use turmeric as that flavor ingredient for their chicken dishes. Make some curry. We’ve got lots of recipes for curry in all of our books. The benefit is you get the black pepper and the turmeric simultaneously. Here’s a fun thing to do, sprinkle it on your goat or sheep yogurt or [inaudible 00:44:05] yogurt, try it on coconut ice cream. It’ll give you a fascinating kick. If you’re worried about getting it enough in your diet, take a turmeric supplement like I do every day and just make sure it’s an absorbable form or that you’ve got BioPerine on the label. More amazing episodes just like this one. Watch now.
