Full-Spectrum Approach to Whole-Self Health [Interview][Transcript]
Guest: Dr. Deanna Minich
Presenter: Neal Howard
Guest Bio: Dr. Deanna Minich is an internationally-recognized lifestyle medicine expert, creative visionary and teacher, and author of five books. Her extensive background in nutrition, yoga, and personal growth led her to create a whole-self, colorful approach to health called Food & Spirit. She developed the Certified Food & Spirit Practitioner Program to provide health professionals with a practical way to apply the Food & Spirit framework with their patients and clients. She is author of Whole Detox, a book based on a whole-life, whole-systems, whole-foods approach to detoxification.
Segment overview: Dr. Deanna Minich talks about her full-spectrum approach to whole-self health.
Transcription
Health Professional Radio – Food and Spirit framework
Neal Howard: Hello and welcome to Health Professional Radio. I’m your host Neal Howard. Many of us are coming out of the holidays, lots and lots of news about nutrition, what to eat, what not to eat, how to feel about eating and some of the information says just eat whatever you want. Our guest in studio today is Dr. Deanna Minich, she’s an internationally recognized lifestyle medicine expert, creative visionary and teacher. Author of five books, her extensive background in nutrition, yoga, and personal growth have led her to create a whole self-colorful approach to health called Food & Spirit. She’s developed this certified Food & Spirit practitioner program to provide health professionals with a practical way to apply the Food & Spirit framework with their patients and their clients. How are you doing this afternoon Deanna?
Dr. Deanna Minich Doing great, thanks Neal. Thanks for having me on the show.
N: Thank you. Your new book ‘Whole Detox: A 21 Day Personalized Program to Break through Barriers in Every Area of Your Life,’ this is your fifth work is it not?
M: It is, yeah. I have four other, I call them children, these are books that I have written. And I’ve always written on something with food, nutrition, and lifestyle.
N: Well sometimes we learn from our kids but in this particular instance your kids are teaching everybody how to eat, or basically that get some of the gunk out of our systems that we’ve been eating on a daily basis, yeah?
M: That’s right. I think it’s really important. My journey started very young, I was nine years old and my mother started eating differently and our whole family was eating very healthily. And that really wasn’t common in the 1970s when I grew up. So healthy eating is just a part of who I am and how I was raised, and when I saw so many people getting sick, whether it was my extended family, where they weren’t eating very healthy or just friends and other people that I knew. I saw food as part of the conduit to healing.
N: You mentioned that it wasn’t common back in the 70’s for people to eat healthy, its’ not that common now although we hear a lot more about it with the advent of the internet and news at a drop of the thought. What is it about the culture that prevents us from eating, well when know what we should eat and it’s around us everywhere?
M: That is the million dollar question actually, I wonder that myself. I look at my parents just as a case study, my mom is incredibly healthy still, still eats well. My dad, I call him the kind of junk food dad because he knows what he needs to do but he doesn’t necessarily do it so when I look at even my parents as a microcosm of the larger macrocosm of society, the difference I can see is that many times people are stressed. I look at all the working moms out there who are juggling family responsibilities, their own personal health, working in any other number of things. So healthy eating is just one more thing that they have to think about so it’s a lot to really take in and change one’s life. And for other people I think we all know what we need to do. I mean I think that there are some basics about eating vegetables, and fruits and I think for some people, they just like the taste of other foods that perhaps aren’t natural healthy whole foods. So I think a lot of other things stand in the way, and I think there are many reasons as to why people don’t adopt a healthy way of eating.
N: Deanna let’s talk about your full spectrum approach to whole self-health. Is this something that is covered in your book? Or is this something that is simply a philosophy of yours throughout your practice?
M: Both. It’s definitely covered in ‘Whole Detox’ which is very colorful and embraces this full spectrum approach. And what I mean by full spectrum when I say that is that it’s everything. It’s not just what you eat, it’s how you think, what you believe, what you do, how you act, what you say. It’s everything, it’s full spectrum. And I really truly believe me being a scientist that we can contain all these different colors, and these different systems of who we are and it’s just a matter of tapping in and turning up the intensity of those colors to make them brighter so that we come off as more vivid and vital in our everyday lives.
N: How much does the way that you prepare these foods once you’ve got these healthy foods in your house? How much of the preparation is key to actually turning your healthy eating habits into a way of life?
M: Neal, that’s an excellent question. I think it is key, often times we think about the food but if it’s prepared in a certain way, it can either enhance the effects or reduce the effects. So I’ll give you an example of that, we can take something like purple potatoes, right? Purple Peruvian potatoes and they are low in glycemic index, they’re not like a big starchy white potato, and they are also full of phytonutrients – a lot of the blue purple phytonutrients that people don’t get in their diets commonly. But if we take those potatoes and we cut them up and we fry them in oil, especially, recycled vegetable oil that is of low quality, and we get them kind of brown and crisp, what they actually turn into is an inflammatory product in our bodies. So they’re not so healthy anymore, they will actually gonna create inflammation, but…
N: So you’ve reversed the effectiveness of the food?
M: You take it away, absolutely. However, there are certain cases we’re a little bit of cooking and steaming can enhance the availability of certain nutrients. Like broccoli, rather than having broccoli raw, when you steam broccoli to where it gets that very vivid color green and that color?
N: Oh yeah.
M: You know what I’m talking about, right? Yeah, I mean actually you potentiate the detoxification enzymes and the different things that are in broccoli that help with the detox – just that little bit of steaming, about a minute and thirty seconds.
N: You’re gonna be in Sydney Australia as a keynote speaker at the 4th BioCeuticals Research Symposium this coming April. Talk a bit about your involvement with this symposium, is this the first time that you’ve gone or is it a regular gig for you?
M: This is my first time not to Australia, I’ve been there’s twice already. But this time, yes, speaking with my co-presenters at the BioCeuticals Symposium, I’m really excited. There are gonna be hundreds of different practitioners there. And I get to talk about something that I love, which is food. (Laugh)
N: Yeah, I understand that you’re also gonna be a sort of myth busting when it comes to nutritional detox. Tell us a couple of myths that are floating around that need to be done away with.
M: Yeah, well the big one is that detoxes are dangerous. People say “Oh, that’s so unhealthy, what do mean detox? That sounds scary. Isn’t it what people do with drugs and alcohol?” And I say “well, detox has taken on a new meaning in the 21st century.” Detox is now looking at how do we shed all of those chemicals and contaminants that we’ve taken in from our environment? And even produce within our bodies. And we need help to do that, we’re not eating foods that are a hundred percent healthy all the time, and we don’t have perfect bodies. Even if we’re young and agile, typically we have different genetic variability that doesn’t make us well-equipped in order to get these toxins out. So I think it’s just the opposite, I think that detox has been around since the beginning of time. If you look at the use of saunas and sweat lodges and clays and baths. Even in ancient Indian medicine, panchakarma, the use of foods to induce sweating in order to get toxins out so we’re just carrying on from that.
N: Do you address, this full spectrum talking about what you think, what you believe. Do you provide, I guess, a method to get back to healthy eating once you’ve started healthy eating? You’ve been doing it for a couple of three years but something happened, I don’t know, maybe stress, maybe a job change, maybe a little occasion change and you begin to kind of “fall off the wagon” as it were. Do you address in your book “Whole Detox” a way to get back on the wagon?
M: Absolutely, I think many detoxes focus on what to take out and that can be very challenging for people with busy schedules if you have always have to think about what you have to avoid. So within the Whole Detox program, I focus on what you put in. And for many people that’s a much more positive message, they like that. And because I focus so much on color, that’s an easy message for everybody to get whether it’s for children, or elders, or busy working people – it’s just to get the rainbow variety of different foods.
N: Great. And where can our listeners get a copy of your latest book ‘Whole Detox?’
M: They can pre-order a copy of the book, and they can get a lots of different bonus gifts for doing that. And they can get it Whole-Detox.com, and you’ll see the tab for the book there. So you can go there and pre-order there at any number of sites Barnes and Noble, Amazon, IndieBound, there are so many different places to get it. So when you go to the website you’ll get an excerpt of the book, so you can see a little bit, a little teaser, and don’t forget to do the “Spectrum quiz” which is also on Whole-Detox.com where you can find out which of your seven systems is needing balance.
N: Great. You’ve been listening to Health Professional Radio, I’m your host Neal Howard. We’ve been in studio talking with Dr. Deanna Minich, Functional Nutritionist, Author, Artist, Yoga Practitioner, and Internationally Recognized Lifestyle Medicine Expert. We’ve been here talking about her brand new book, “Whole Detox: A 21 Day Personalized Program to Break Through Barriers in Every Area of Your Life.” And also talking about the full spectrum approach to whole self-health. It’s been great having you here with us today Deanna.
M: Oh thank you, it’s been my pleasure.
N: Transcripts and audio of this program are available at healthprofessionalradio.com.au and also with hpr.fm and you can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes.