As a cancer survivor, I’ve always felt like aging is a privilege. But now in my mid-forties, I’m learning firsthand that perimenopause, menopause and midlife bring their own set of body image issues and health concerns.
My clients ask me questions like: Should I lift weights to stay strong? Is it normal or OK to gain weight in midlife? Will I ever sleep through the night again? How do I focus on my health and not get caught up in vanity yet still want to look good for my age?
I hear you! And we all know that we can’t trust anyone on Instagram to give us the answers.
So in today’s episode, Dr. Jannine Krause joins me to talk about the free, simple things you can do to support your body as you age. Because you don’t have to “go downhill” as is often the default expectation, and you can take control of your health as you get older.
In this episode, we will discuss:
- Jannine’s path to Naturopathic medicine
- Body image issues in perimenopause & menopause
- How to approach calorie restriction & the problem with extreme calorie deficits
- Diagnosing stomach acid issues & H. pylori
- Simple steps to heal your gut without supplements
- Why we need to pay attention to insulin sensitivity as we age
- What to do before you start fasting or biohacking
- Protein intake recommendations & sustainability
- How rest & recharge in a minute or less
More about our guest:
Dr. Jannine Krause is a naturopathic doctor, acupuncturist, and host of The Health Fix Podcast specializing in helping women over 40 not age like their mothers or society. She has a doctorate in naturopathic medicine, master’s in acupuncture, and bachelor’s in biology.
Connect with Jannine:
Mentioned in this episode:
Connect with Ali & Insatiable:
My Conversation with Dr. Jannine Krause (Transcript)
Ali Shapiro [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Insatiable, the podcast where we discuss the intersection of food, psychology, and culture.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:00:06]:
I was fascinated by getting older to a point like I was always like, oh, gerontology sounds cool. But the traditional sense of it was like, god, I don’t wanna end up in a nursing home. I don’t wanna do nursing home care. So it just came out of, like, I don’t wanna age like my mom. I don’t wanna age like society. And I’ve gotta help other people not to do that too.
Ali Shapiro [00:00:20]:
I’m your host, Ali Shapiro, an integrated health coach, 32 year and counting cancer survivor, and have radically healed my relationship with food and my body. And for the past 17 years, I’ve been working with clients individually, in group programs, and in company settings to do the same. Welcome. The information in this podcast should not be considered personal, individual, or medical advice. As a cancer survivor, I have always felt like aging is a privilege. And as I am in my mid forties now and really reckon with what is aging, aside from just being grateful to be here. When I opened my Instagram account, it is a shit show out there.
Ali Shapiro [00:01:10]:
Some people telling you don’t lift weights, slow down, worry about breaking bones. Right? So they’re kind of catastrophizing aging and saying certain things are inevitable. Or you get this fantasy selling you these solutions that aren’t really going to deliver. So where is the truth? It’s always somewhere in the middle. Right? And so that’s why I wanted to have doctor Janine Kraus on today. I was actually invited onto her show. And as we were talking, I was like, this woman really knows her stuff. And she’s not out here selling people a bunch of stuff they don’t need.
Ali Shapiro [00:01:48]:
Telling you the functional medicine space, the aging space, all 90% a waste of money. And what we talk about today with doctor Kraus, which I love, are some of the free simple things you can start to do to support your body as you age. So you don’t have to go downhill, like, as often the default expectation. But also, how do you focus on your health and not just vanity? And I’m not saying vanity is a bad thing. I’m just saying a lot of the stuff in the antiaging space is about vanity and not actually making your body healthy. So we’re gonna talk about that today and how our relationship to food changes because of some of the physiological stuff happening that if we know it’s happening, we can make some small but profound tweaks that help us feel more satisfied from our food, help us have less cravings, and to prevent the snowball that can happen with downhill of health problems if we don’t take care of the foundational stuff. So we’re gonna get into that today. Before we do, 2 things I want to let you know about.
Ali Shapiro [00:02:54]:
I am running my Why Am I Eating This Now live group program this September. It is an amazing program if you’re interested in consistency, staying on track and really addressing the root of your emotional eating triggers. And if you’re even curious what those triggers are and why they make sense rather than something that you have to fight and try to fix but rather understand and work through. Right? The same way that I was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. The solution wasn’t more antacids, which is what I was told, or a very restrictive diet, which I was told. No. The solution was addressing my gut health, which had a completely different orientation and approach. And so this is not about trying to white knuckle with more rules around food, have it in your house, don’t have it in your house.
Ali Shapiro [00:03:46]:
No. No. No. No. No. We’re getting to the root, which has really little to do with food. So if you’re interested in that, I hope you will join. I have a free masterclass for you to really get a sense of the program, identify your triggers, and see if this is right for you and get to meet the type of women who show up to these groups.
Ali Shapiro [00:04:04]:
Because these groups, I’m telling you, the biggest feedback I get from my programs is that these groups are life changing. And when we’re working through this really tender, really complex stuff, it really helps to have a group of people doing it with you. So I’m offering a free masterclass on Tuesday, September 10th, and it’s called Untangle Your Food Triggers, Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track. You can register with the link in the show notes to this podcast episode, or you can visit my website at alleyshappero.com. Either way, you’ll see info there to sign up. And if you’ve been to any of my classes, you’ve been to any of the community gatherings, you know that this is 90% value, 10% sales. Right? A lot of these webinars you show up to, it’s 90% sales, 10% content. No.
Ali Shapiro [00:04:55]:
No. No. I don’t roll that way. I trust that if you come to this and you feel like, wow, I got a lot of clarity, I got a lot of awareness, that if it’s right for you, then you’ll know. I don’t do fear and scarcity tactics. So come get some clarity. Let’s get momentum and let’s harness these back to school vibes and help you really improve your relationship to food and stay more consistent. The next thing is, if you remember, I have had a goal to reach 200 podcast reviews by the end of summer, which even though it’s August and it feels like we’re winding down here, we still have a month to go.
Ali Shapiro [00:05:34]:
And I’m at a 191 reviews. So so close. So if you’ve loved the show, benefited from the show, and haven’t left a review, I’d really appreciate if you could take 30 seconds, a minute, if you actually write something on Apple Podcasts and lead a review. It really helps me because it helps the show reach more people and more people find the show. Okay? So we’re 9 reviews away. We can do this. We can do this. And I just wanna share one of the most recent reviews from Juicy Fruit TO Cute Bra.
Ali Shapiro [00:06:10]:
These names are incredible y’all. But she says, a favorite listen, this podcast is on my favorites list and I recommended it to my sister and girlfriends. Allie has great guests and content. I love how she addresses food and eating in such a holistic way, including body, mind, heart, and soul pieces of the complex interconnected puzzle. She is so wise and nonjudgmental and has helped me bring compassion to my own struggles and stories with food in my body. Thanks for the awesome podcast, Allie, and thanks for the review. I appreciate it. Alright.
Ali Shapiro [00:06:42]:
Before we get to the show, I just wanna tell you a little bit more about doctor Janine Kraus. She’s a naturopathic doctor, an acupuncturist, and host of the Health Fix podcast where she specializes in helping women over 40 not age like their mothers or according to society’s expectations. She has a doctorate in naturopathic medicine, a master’s in acupuncture, and a bachelor’s in biology. And her work has been featured all over, including Authority Magazine, naturopathic doctor news and reviews, True Health with Ashley James podcast, the Gutsy Health podcast, and the Less Stressed Life podcast. I think you’re really gonna enjoy Janine and today’s show. Janine, thank you so much for joining us today. I love talking to naturopathic physicians because, 1, you have an incredible wealth of information, but also you’re kind of renegades. Like, it takes a lot of hotspot to, like, be like, I’m going to go to medical medical school, but I’m going to do it in a way that actually to me makes sense.
Ali Shapiro [00:07:51]:
Not that not the traditional medical school doesn’t make sense, but it’s it’s around prevention and all that stuff. So thank you for for joining us today to talk about aging and and food and all the things. So thanks for being here.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:08:03]:
My pleasure, Allie. It’s it’s gonna be a fun one. Looking forward to it.
Ali Shapiro [00:08:08]:
So before we get started, I am curious about your story and how you, again, decided to get into naturopathic medicine. Because for listeners, I’ve talked about this when we’ve had a few other naturopaths on. You have to go to medical school, plus you have to study nutrition and really a lot of preventative medicine. So I’m always curious how people who and there’s not a clear career path for you. Right? So what made you get into naturopathic medicine?
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:08:38]:
You know, ultimately, it was a combination of my mom having cancer and seeing her, you know, going to naturopath, seeing her go to acupuncture. And and the truth is it was her acupuncturist that really got me in. I was 15 years old, taking my mom to her appointments because I wanted my driver’s permit. Basically, I didn’t, you know, acupuncture, whatever. They do weird things there, you know, Midwest kid, you know, just like, Yeah, whatever. I want to be a pro snowboarder. I don’t really care. But I went in to the visit one day because, like, I was watching people go in there and they’re, like, hunched over and they’re gray and they look they look kinda like death.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:09:13]:
Right? And I’m like, oh, that’s weird. And then they come out and they’re, like, bright colored. They’re happy. They look like they’re walking on clouds. And I’m like, what kind of weird stuff’s going on in there? And so, you know, for a 15 year old, I’m, like, rocking out, you know, to my grunge music in the car thinking it’s, like, best thing ever because I can jam in my mom’s car while she’s getting an appointment. But at the same time, I was like, there’s something going on in there. So I went in and her doc was like, you know, saw that I was excited and was like, what’s this for? What’s that for? Why do you use this? You know, I was just asking tons of questions and probably ad nauseam, but he he loved it and took me around. And so literally throughout the course of my mom’s 10 year battle with breast cancer, which, God, poor gal.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:09:50]:
She had no passing in the end. Totally just insane. But I think she did have a pretty good quality of life for those 10 years of, like, constant remission. But the the doc just showed me so much and so many things you could do, and I was like, wow. This is really awesome. And then I was talking to her naturopath too and being like, oh, wow. This is cool. You guys got a lot lot of toolbox stuff.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:10:08]:
And I was like, alright. But at the time, I was still like, you know, I should probably look at conventional medicine, ditch some shadowing of medical doctors. And I was like, that’s all the tools you got? What about what about needles? What about energy? What about, like, homeopathics? And they’re like, what’s that? So, anyway, I was like, well, the answer is clear. I need more tools. I wanna practice the way I want to. Yes. I’ve always been a little bit of a push the the envelope don’t do things normal. Or or like as everyone else, I guess you could say I’m not a normie.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:10:39]:
So that’s what happened. That’s what happened. And I just ended up one day I was like, Oh, crap. I’m a naturopath. Here we go.
Ali Shapiro [00:10:44]:
How did I end up here?
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:10:46]:
What happened to snowboarding? Gosh. I still snowboard and ski. But, yeah, I learned that that was not gonna be my future.
Ali Shapiro [00:10:54]:
Yeah. I love that that framing of, like, you have more tools at your disposal. Like, because I think that’s, you know, we’re living in very polarized times and it’s like it’s this or that. And it’s like, but what if it’s all of it and it’s the right tool at the right time and you are equipped to offer so much broader tools? So I I love that. It’s like, yeah, I want options. I love options just in general. So and so then how did you really focus then in on aging and specifically perimenopause, menopause? Because that is even more complex because if you learn more tools, you have to learn more complexity. And then right.
Ali Shapiro [00:11:32]:
Oh, well, big reason women aren’t part of a lot of studies up until what? The 90, early nineties, 2000 is because we we have a more complex system because of our cycle. So what made you think of wanting to get into women and supporting them as they age?
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:11:48]:
You know, it’s funny. I started getting older and I was like, oh, I got to do something about some of these things, you know, because when you’re younger, you think you’re gonna live forever. It doesn’t really matter. You know? And and of course, I watched my mom, right, go through the whole process. My mom was older when I was born. She was 38. And when she died, she was 62. And so I saw her getting older fast, and I saw, like, the trajectory of, like, what the eighties nineties diet culture did to her.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:12:17]:
And I honestly got to a point where I was like, oh, shit. I don’t wanna age like my mom. I don’t wanna get older like her. I don’t wanna get older like the rest of the females in my family. Everybody was obese. Everybody had some kind of illness or cancer. Both my mom and and aunt died of breast cancer within 6 months of each Like, how crazy is that? And so I looked at that and was like, I don’t want that. I don’t want that.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:12:40]:
And just watching my mom go through the whole process of cancer and at one point having blisters like this big on her body and we’re, like, popping it in the shower, I’m like, oh, hell no. I’m not going there. So that’s what started it. And then, of course, my patients are getting older. And I was like, I need to stay on top of this. I need to know what bio identical hormone replacement is. I need to know what happens when you get older. Because I was fascinated by getting older to a point like I was always like, oh, gerontology sounds cool.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:13:05]:
But the traditional sense of it was like, oh my god, I don’t wanna end up in a nursing home. I don’t wanna do nursing home care. My mom was a nurse as the plot thickens, and she worked in a nursing home for many years. And I would go visit her there with my dad because she was working nights. And I was like, oh, God. I don’t want this either. So it just came out of, like, I don’t wanna age like my mom. I don’t wanna age like society.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:13:26]:
And I gotta help other people not to do that too.
Ali Shapiro [00:13:29]:
There’s this nuance of, like, you are going to get older and there are certain limits. And I want to talk about how that interplays with our food struggles, like talking about how sugar, all this stuff. And you don’t have to age like our parents did or like we see a lot of people. You know, my husband used to work for AARP, and they were saying that the new thing is like, I’m healthy except I have 2, 3 diagnosis. Right? I’m healthy except for type 2 diabetes. I had a heart attack and, you know, something whatever. And again, this is not that everything is in our control. You and I both having experienced cancer in very intimate ways get that there’s many inputs into things.
Ali Shapiro [00:14:10]:
However, it’s just fascinating to me that we’ve normalized. I’m healthy except for these, like, three chronic conditions I have. There is some control that we have over aging and I and I wanna talk about some of that today because I think control gets a bad rap in the food space. It’s like, oh, you’re just trying for control. And I’m like, but we have some control, so I’m gonna use it.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:14:33]:
You know, I heard someone say that that word’s like negative a negative connotation, but, like, really, it’s a word. You know, you give it meaning. But, really, yeah, we have to have some control. We have control over how we age. We have control of what we eat. Basically, my big thing is, like, don’t give up your control, and that’s kinda what I keep seeing with themes on TV and every other commercial being a pharmaceutical commercial and looking for solutions outside of you. Like, no. No.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:14:57]:
No. No. No. Let’s bring it back here. You have solutions within you, people. We could do this.
Ali Shapiro [00:15:02]:
Oh, I’ve been watching the the Olympics not a lot because, you know, I have a kid, but I have been watching, like, network TV, which I don’t normally do. And I’ve been like I’ve been laughing at how, like, Eli Lilly, which I guess they rebranded Lilly. And it’s like in the midst of these, like, peak athletic, you know, like, experiences and, like, all this stuff. And I just can’t believe how many pharmaceutical commercials there are. Like, I’m like, oh my god. Do they own the networks? Like, I know they own them in the sense that they’re their major advertisers, but I’m like, did they just take over the network? Like, I don’t know.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:15:36]:
It seems as if
Ali Shapiro [00:15:38]:
it’s been kind of shocking. I’m like, oh, alright. So one of the big things that happens, especially in perimenopause and menopause, because of weight gain but also because of how we’ve been treating ourselves up until then, there’s almost a reckoning, I think, in our forties, fifties, sixties. You know, we have listeners of the majority are 35 and older. And they’ve shown that a lot of people’s disordered eating comes back during this time. And women really struggle with body image because you are you losing some of that youth privilege that maybe you didn’t even know you had. That was kind of that’s kind of been shocking to me. I’m like, I don’t care about aging.
Ali Shapiro [00:16:15]:
And then it’s like, oh, you lose some of that privilege you didn’t even realize, you know, you had physically and in society. So what do you see in your practice? How do you see aging contribute to food struggles with your clients?
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:16:29]:
Oh, my gosh. Well, you know, like you said, most women I I can’t imagine there’s very few women that don’t see their body changing slightly and being like, oh, God. Oh, God. You know? And and yes, it goes back to like, I need to go back to that 20 year old body. And we’ll and I’ll see it all the time where it’s like, alright, I’m a start food restricting. I’m a start exercising more. It’s that’s the first, right? And then because of the eighties nineties brainwashing of low fat, it goes to I’m going to cut out all fat and then it goes to, oh, and then I’m going to cut out carbs, but I don’t eat much protein. So at the end of the day, like, what are you eating? Nothing.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:17:02]:
Nothing. So I see that all the time where there’s confusion as to do I do macros? You do this, do that, and it’s all over the board.
Ali Shapiro [00:17:10]:
It’s interesting that the default is restriction. But how does that backfire? Because now you’re as when you’re going through perimenopause, menopause, you become cortisol dominant. Right? They’re sympathetic drive dominant. Right? So you have to factor in that that’s a stress on the body that you didn’t have beforehand. And then often in our forties fifties, peak caregiving, the peak of our, you know, careers are often we have the most responsibilities. And then you throw in just, you know, how rapidly life changes today. How does that restriction actually backfire in a way that maybe we could get away with it in our twenties, you know, early twenties, even your teenage years where you didn’t have a mortgage, you didn’t have kids. Can you talk about that? Why restriction backfires now? I mean, for lots of reasons, but just extreme calorie deficit in and of itself is not the way to go right now.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:18:02]:
The biggest thing if we’re looking at food, right, we’re looking at cortisol and it’s a stress to the body. So the body thinks like I am never going to get food again. So it starts to have some issues in terms of while stress on the gut. So we’ll have microbiome imbalances. We can have leaky gut. We also have a big stress on the liver. Not many people are talking about metabolic fatty liver disease. It’s it’s kinda my own ish term.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:18:26]:
The conventional world’s gonna call it nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. This is a big issue in in women. I’ve seen more towards perimenopause. There’s an end of perimenopause, upper forties into fifties and beyond, where we’re starting to have the body change where the belly fat’s putting on there. We’re getting that. We’re getting more of, like, let’s put it this way, difficulties with the gut, whether it’s constipation, diarrhea. It could be all it looks like IBS, but we’re having all of those different issues. And so what happens, we go back to restriction.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:18:56]:
Right? Because we’re like, well, if I don’t eat anything, I’m not gonna poop. You know, I’m not gonna have diarrhea. Right? So that’s one thought process. Or the other side of it is if you have constipation, now you’re gonna think of, like, all the different fiber and things you can load yourself up with, and that messes with the gut too. So, ultimately, the impact of restriction on the gut can be imbalanced blood sugar because what they’ll happen too, and I’ve seen this because I’ve got the Lumen in in in my office. Have you heard of the Lumen, the breast sensing device with carbon dioxide?
Ali Shapiro [00:19:23]:
No. Okay.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:19:24]:
So it’s it tells you what’s going on with your metabolism in terms of are you off putting, excess amount of carbon dioxide that would go with, you know, carb burn, or would you be in a fat burn state where it’s less carbon dioxide off put? And so what we’ll see is a lot of women are fasting and they’re, like, blowing on this device. They haven’t eaten anything that day, and it looks like they’re in full carb burn, which makes no sense because they haven’t had any carbs. So what’s happening is their body’s dumping the muscle glycogen out, creating carbs into the bloodstream, and now we’re ending up with insulin resistance because of prolonged fasting. And, yeah, people have talked about the fasting being a hot thing. Gotta do it. You know, everybody should be on the bandwagon, but now we have issues with that. So I’ll start to see that. I’ve kinda went in multiple directions.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:20:11]:
The fatty liver goes along with that. In fact, in myself, I think I started to create a fatty liver situation from fasting too much, and and that’s a whole another thing. I’m 46. So, you know, I I see a lot of this in myself too. So I’m kind of an n a one too. I’m also following that pattern. But the other side of this is, like, gut microbiome imbalances because of, like, I’m eating only keto. I’m eating only this.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:20:34]:
You know, we’re all over the dang place, and now we’re shifting the gut bugs pretty fast and then add stress, leaky gut on top of it, and we’ve got a whole mess going on with what how our body metabolizes food.
Ali Shapiro [00:20:45]:
So what I’m hearing you say and again, if I’m I’m thinking of a lot of people in my audience want they do wanna lose weight in a healthy way. Right? And and I have I’m someone who’s just lost almost £30. I mean, it took me 3 and a half years. It’s like slow, slow because I didn’t understand what was happening to my body in these phys physiological changes. But it sounds like if you do wanna lose weight, like, cutting back calories should be the last thing. Like, if there’s a sequence. Right? I always say sequence over strategy. There’s all these tools.
Ali Shapiro [00:21:15]:
But the first thing you need to do is actually create physical safety in your body by giving, like, microbiome stuff. Right? You actually support your microbiome by adding more variety of foods and not taking out carbs, not going keto. Right? All this stuff. Like, it’s actually adding this stuff in so that your body can support your liver to detox. It can support your gut microbiome. But it’s really making sure that you’re physically sound before you start cut. And and would you even say with cutting calories, it it like I have found and this is my own experience because of the stress, because I have a full play. I love my life.
Ali Shapiro [00:21:54]:
Right? But there’s a lot that’s going on. I have a toddler. I run a business. My husband was laid off. Right? Like my parents are aging and they have some issues and all this stuff. It’s like I found that I could only really cut like 250 calories a day max. Otherwise, my sleep would be I would wake up starving. And I was like, I’m not willing to sacrifice sleep because that’s important.
Ali Shapiro [00:22:14]:
So I just have to trust that I can go slower with this. But again, I was I also have all the foundations down, but I lost £10 just by, like, strength training and not changing my diet. And then I lost another £10 by, like, okay. Let me get my protein right. All of this kind of stuff. So and and actually, I had to eat more carbs to ensure that I slept. But I found that, like, the restriction you’re talking about, it took me almost two and a half years to get there. And I was still losing weight in the process, but it was too it’s still a lot of stress on my body.
Ali Shapiro [00:22:45]:
So I have to go slow and low. I just think that’s going to be what people are asking. Like, but you do need to restrict to lose weight. And it’s like, yeah. And in a proper sequence. Yeah. Would you agree with that?
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:22:57]:
Oh, yeah. You got to figure it out first. Now, I would say neurologically to like getting in touch with someone like you, working with someone like you so that, you know, we’ve got the mind right around the food because we’re all programmed. Right? Default. Like I said, restrict, work out more if if that’s your thing. You know, go on, find some diet and try to, like, do some crash diet, whether, you know, it’s the old cabbage soup diet, whatever it may be. Like, there there’s I mean, I’ve done them all. I’ve done them all.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:23:23]:
I have a very wacky history with food too. But the same thing like you’re saying, it’s a slow process, and and that’s the thing that nobody wants to hear because they see on social media, you know, I drink this juice, and I lost £20 in 3 days. Yeah.
Ali Shapiro [00:23:36]:
Okay. But your point, what are you dumping into your system now that you have to clean up? Like, I mean, I think it gets harder to lose weight, but and every a lot of people can lose weight but not keep it off. So that’s a different question, right, that people need to be asking. The other thing I’m curious about, I mean, there’s a lot of things that I that I wanna ask you about is I think with aging and if you don’t have all these systems right, can we I wanna talk about sugar cravings because one thing that I’ve realized and I and I am relatively healthy person. Right? Like I, you know, for decades, I’ve had a truce of foods. I’ve consistently just been kind of boring with my food. Right? Like eating what I need to, not anything measuring, not restricting. But I have found since going through menopause that my satiety, because from the lack of estrogen, Like I have to get my protein right.
Ali Shapiro [00:24:29]:
Whereas when I started tracking my food to lose weight 2 years into my process or no, maybe it was a year when I was working with my sleep coach because that she was like, you have to get enough protein. I was like, I’m eating keto. I’m not really eating keto because but, like, I just was eating so much fat and so little protein, but I could get away with that prior to menopause. Like, I was just like, I thought I was getting enough protein, all this stuff, it didn’t bother me. But now if I don’t get my protein or my carbs, I am still hungry. So what happens when we lose estrogen that contributes to not feeling as satisfied from food? And then why does sugar become harder as we age? Is kind of 2 part questions because of what’s happening underneath.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:25:12]:
Sure. You know, with estrogen, I think part of it has to do with how we digest food just in general and our gut lining health. Because what I hear from a lot of women and and why fat seems yes. There’s the keto phase and a lot of us have gone low carb and kinda run ran towards keto. I myself am guilty because I’m part squirrel. I love nuts. You know, it happens. But I think the other side of it though is having less digestive enzymes and in particular hydrochloric acid being produced.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:25:40]:
And what I see happening with a lot of women is, is less hydrochloric production. And then we end up with not being able to tolerate protein as well. So it sits kind of like a food baby there and it’s not breaking down. I’ve got quite a few patients, you know, that that I will be like, so if it sits yeah. Does it feel like a food baby? You know, does it feel like really bloated right under your left side rib cage? Yeah. You know, so I believe that that’s part of it. Now going along the estrogen pathway, as we use estradiol, our most useful estrogen, to help strengthen our gut lining. And I think from there, what ends up happening is we digest the foods, the foods get in, and now molecules of food are getting across the bloodstream that normally didn’t get from the gut lining into bloodstream.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:26:24]:
And now we’re having immune reactions, and it might mess with our brain a little bit more, I’m convinced. And I’m also convinced that we also have a lot more inflammation just in general in the body, but also bloat in in that local area. And so if we tie it to, like, cravings, I think what happens ultimately is that our bodies are super intelligent. They know that carbs are easier to digest. And so it calls on carbs to try to get that stuff going. At the same time, our intelligent parts of our brain that know in our on our nervous system that know we need protein for our bones. We need it for our muscles. We need it for our energy.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:27:00]:
We need it for building blocks for all kinds of things. I think we’ll have that call for more protein. But the problem is is that so many people struggle to digest it in the 1st place that I think we default back to the carbs. And then, you know, add sugar, you add sugar, and now you get the spike and drop in the blood sugar issues on top of it. I mean, we’ve got a kind of a 3 part, 4 part process going on in the mess. So do you
Ali Shapiro [00:27:22]:
think for someone who might suspect they have low hydrochloric acid because they have the food baby or they’re getting reflux because also for listeners and, Janine, you can tell me if this is incorrect, but I think most people actually have not enough stomach acid Even though culturally, we’ve been told you have too much. But when you don’t have enough, the protein just kinda sits there and pushes the acid back up. So I know when I was diagnosed with IBS, they were putting me on antacids. And then once I discovered all this stuff, I was like, what am I doing to myself? You know? But I often tell clients to, like they can experiment with, like, raw apple cider vinegar to see if that helps. Do you agree with that, or do you think everyone needs to go right up to some digestive enzymes or low dose HCL, hydrochloric acid? Like, what how if someone wants to that resonates. Right? The food baby, some some GERD, heartburn. Where what are some first couple steps to that they can experiment with?
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:28:17]:
I’m all for dabbling with the apple cider vinegar, lemon, water, things of those natures. But what I will tell you, because I’ve seen it happen, is enamel does get worn off of the teeth when we’re drinking straight. This so I’m always like, you gotta do a straw. Now, of course, then the big thing is fucking with a straw. We get wrinkles here. So we got to think about these things. Right? So that’s the only time you want to have a straw in your world because you don’t want to have smoke or lip. So thinking that we’ll get yourself some estriol or estradiol cream and put on your face.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:28:47]:
But anyway, side note, yes, I dabble in the lemon, lime, you know, citrus waters. I will dabble in apple cider vinegar. There are some clean companies that have gummies out there now. Granted, there’s sugar and all those things, but I have seen to save the teeth. Some of these things do help in that case. But, yes, I’d start there. And if that’s not strong enough, then there is a hydrochloric acid test that you could do where it’s it’s rogue. Right? We’re taking pills of hydrochloric acid.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:29:15]:
And until you get a burn in your stomach, as long as you have 10 grams of protein in your stomach each time, I could totally send over the PDF on that. But nevertheless, it’s a test to see how how low is your stomach acid. Like, what is going on? Or the other thing could be h pylori, the bacteria that can overgrown the stomach that is very common, very, very common in stressed individuals. And that would be when none of the enzymes are working and when the the lemon’s not working, when the apple cider’s not working. Now you’re thinking, oh, I might need to see if there’s a little h pylori and there’s breath tests and insurance covered tests to see if that’s there.
Ali Shapiro [00:29:49]:
Well, that’s interesting because when I work with my sleep coach, she was a functionally trained nutritionist because h pylori can contribute to insomnia. And I tested for h pylori, and I took some I took some supplements to help it. And, you know, and it was kind of like I was getting better and better. She got me like 70% better. Right. And then HRT kind of got me to 90%. And but isn’t H. Pylori really hard to kill?
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:30:12]:
It is. And there’s a lot of debate as to whether we need to really kill it or just knock it down.
Ali Shapiro [00:30:17]:
Okay. So it’s like crowding it out instead of it being like the dominant. It’s kinda like candida. People are like, I gotta kill candida. It’s like, well, you can’t really do that and you need it. You just don’t need it to be like the main bacteria in your gut. Yes, exactly.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:30:32]:
You know, and I I can’t lie that, like, in the beginning when I was first starting as a doc, I thought, oh, yeah, we kill everything down. But, like, as you look more, you’re like, no, wait. We’re just regulating. And like mastic gum can be a really easy way to work to knock down h pylori. But really the truth is on it is like, I’m not gonna have people going after unless, you know, for sure, like, test, don’t guess because now we’re wasting supplements and time.
Ali Shapiro [00:30:55]:
Oh, I love that. I love that test, not guess. Okay. So so then you focus on gut health, which I love because estrogen again for for women. I think sometimes we think, you know, oh, just I my period ended and there’s no, like, other health effects. But it it you have estrogen receptors, like, everywhere. Right? Your brain, your heart, everywhere. So your gut microbiome is gonna shift.
Ali Shapiro [00:31:23]:
So you mentioned protein. Can you talk a lit? What are some or maybe I should step back. What are some of the first couple steps for people to kinda get their gut? Because because I did this thing on one of these athletes. I forget his name, but he’s like it was a really inspirational post. He was like, I have asthma, allergies, ADHD, trauma, depression, anxiety. Oh, he didn’t say trauma. And, you know, and I still he still won gold. And I was like and and he’s like, you you can do anything.
Ali Shapiro [00:31:55]:
Right? It was really and I and I did the post, and I’m like, this is amazing. And it makes me wonder if he has all this. He prob I hope someone’s working on his gut. He may be even faster, you know, because, like, there were, like, 7 diagnosis. And again, when I had asthma, allergies, IBS, and depression and I’m not saying your gut health everything’s multifactorial, people. There’s no magic bullet. But gut health is super important. And so I’m just wondering and someone was like, what are I’m really interested in gut health.
Ali Shapiro [00:32:25]:
And so what are some of the first couple steps as we age that we have to address with gut health that maybe we didn’t have to think about, you know, as we as we when we were younger. And, you know, for me, healing my gut from chemo was like, okay. Get off processed foods, remove gluten, and then I had to take, like, a couple digestive enzymes and endofin. And I was fine. And now it’s like, oh my god. People are hawking all these supplements, all this stuff. So what are the foundational first couple steps people could do as we age to support their gut health?
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:32:58]:
This is going to sound really funny coming out of my mouth, maybe because you would think a naturopath can be like, okay, you need all the supplement protocol. But honestly, we need to sit down and eat. Step 1. I mean, I’m sure you tell people to do that, but it’s it’s cheesy, right? We actually have to sit down and eat. Eating at the kitchen counter or over the kitchen sink is not an acceptable way to eat anymore because your nervous system is not like it’s thinking you’re running away from a bear and you’re shoving food in real quick. So you’re not going to optimize how you make your enzymes because we still can make enzymes. We just make a little less as we get older. So the key here is, is like treating food and meals like you’re going out for a French restaurant, like to a fancy French restaurant every single time.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:33:41]:
Like, you literally want to sit down and take your time. Pretend. Yeah, I mean, food costs a lot more now anyway. So anyway, you know, it’s it’s expensive. Might as well enjoy it versus shoveling it in. So I have to sit down count to 60 before they start eating. And like no joke, we’re chewing our food because you have teeth. That’s what they’re there for.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:33:59]:
And when you’re younger, you can chew 7 times and swallow and, you know, you’re good. But what’ll happen, and this is one of the big things that that happened to me, it’s a it’s a genetic thing with my family, is drier foods cause us to choke. They get stuck, and it is part of getting older too because you’re not making as much saliva. Lower estrogen will also have, like, dried chicken, raw carrots. They can definitely make you choke. So now you gotta chew and chew this stuff. And, you know, a lot of people find that they’re using more sauces. They’re finding putting more sour cream or stuff on things to get it down.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:34:30]:
Especially those mashed potatoes are kind of dry. You know, this is all me. I’m telling you my story too, but I find it for from patients too, but you gotta sit down and chew. You absolutely have to chew. You know, there are so many, like, numbers. I usually tell people 20, 25 times, you’re gonna get it pretty mushed down. If you need more, you need more. And the less teeth you have, the more you gotta chew.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:34:51]:
And and this is a real deal thing. A lot of us are having our teeth, you know, different teeth pulled. We’re not replacing them. We do need to think about if we’ve dropped our our teeth mat down. My dad is 9 functional teeth, and he’s 88 years old. So we’ll give him some grace there. But man’s gotta chew, like, 50 times per bite. So you gotta slow down and you gotta literally take your time with it.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:35:13]:
Now that’s kind of the biggest thing that I recommend for diet at this point. Now in terms of order of food, I do find eating your protein first, moving to your veggies, and eating the carbs last does actually feel pretty good in my gut. Other people, it may depend. But here’s the thing. If you eat your protein first, it’s the hardest thing to digest. Your enzymes are gonna hit it 1st versus waiting to the last. So it is a little nugget that I have found over time to think about. Now from there, a lot of folks are gonna be like, but what about probiotics? What about enzymes? What about colostrum? Do I need all these things? You know, because all these brands out there are really pushing this hard.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:35:51]:
Maybe you might if you you can’t skip over sitting down and chewing. You can’t do that. You have to sit down and chew and eat your food. And I sound like your mother. I mean, too. But that’s the thing. Mom was right to sit down and chew your food and, you know, and not be distracted doing work. That’s another big thing.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:36:11]:
I was guilty of this for years, multitasking, eating, working. Also same thing you need to you really need to think about that now as you get older. Master those things. And if you’re still having trouble, that’s where you bring in the things like the colostrum for helping your immune system of your gut, bringing in the glutamines and the powders to help the lining. I do think those can be helpful, but I don’t think they’re the first line.
Ali Shapiro [00:36:34]:
This is why I love you because it we’re trying to out like supplements are supposed to be supplemental, but we’ve made them the thing. We’ve made them the foundations because the foundations are harder. I mean, I I know sometimes I can be pretty good at like chewing and slowing down at breakfast and dinner. But lunch sometimes, you know, it’s like got a client. I got to do that, you know. And the other day I had a little bit of reflux and I was like, oh, no. And and I was now as talking, I’m like, because I had to eat really fat. I haven’t had reflux since I had IBS.
Ali Shapiro [00:37:03]:
You know, the ibs in like 20 years ago. But it was it was the speed. It was like I was trying to eat in between clients and in groups. And it just was like, damn. So it’s like we have less margin as we age is what I like. The way that I can think of it is like there’s just less room for error. And that isn’t a bad thing because if we’re slowing down, that’s also going to support our stress and our cortisol. And just I don’t know.
Ali Shapiro [00:37:28]:
That’s been the thing that I kinda had to kick and scream. And I’m like, slowing down is amazing. Like, there’s a lot you miss when you’re going so fast. But I love those steps. That’s gonna be really helpful. I’ve always because I’m I have I’ve always had sensitive blood sugar, always eat my protein first. But now it’s gonna be even more intentional because you said, do that. Like, you’ll have the most digestive power.
Ali Shapiro [00:37:51]:
And now that makes sense of why you wanna rest and relax and turn on that part of your nervous system so that your enzymes are more online than than than not. So that’s huge. I love those beginning steps for the for the gut health. So thank you. So the other process I wanna talk about and and I think about how this aging contributes to food struggles in terms of we talked about carbs and sugar, but kind of this runaway train that can be insulin resistance. That’s part of satiety and it’s part of cravings. And it’s something that the good news is no matter what age you are, things can get better. And though it is something that isn’t like I’m trying to describe it.
Ali Shapiro [00:38:36]:
It isn’t. It’s cumulative. It’s like exponential. I like I found, you know, like, for example, with me, like, I didn’t realize how I was eating. I wasn’t strength training because I had a newborn and that contributed to insomnia, which then made me more tired to to wanna cook meals. Right? Then it was like, okay, I’m eating cashews for dinner. Right? Which was like, oh, no. Like so it’s this, like, vicious cycle that isn’t I’m trying to find the words for insulin sensitivity.
Ali Shapiro [00:39:06]:
Like, it’s a snowball going down the hill rather than like, oh, I can just fix it. When you talk about insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance and how that that, especially as we age, becomes something else we really need to pay attention to and how you approach it in your practice.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:39:25]:
Yeah, it is a snowball going down a very steep hill and it does snowball. And I think a lot of people overlook a couple of the vices that can lead to it. You know, as women, we’re known to skip meals. You know, we’ll eat breakfast, we’ll skip lunch. And then at dinner time, we wonder why we come, we turn into mama bear, and we’re like hunting through the kitchen and eating like 3 year old chocolate we found in the back of the cabinet that tastes like cardboard. You know, we wonder why this happens to us. Well, we have patterns and and you really do need to look at your patterns because you’re going to be like, oh, okay, there it is. Because insulin resistance just doesn’t come out of magically nowhere.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:40:03]:
Like, yes, you can be stressed and and it can potentiate the situation. But there are a lot of women right now who are eating one meal a day. And they’re like, why do I have insulin resistance? I have multiple patients in this in my practice where they’re like, yeah, I eat like and and what they tell me is like food for birds, right? I’m like, wow, I think, you know, my crow outside probably eat more than you today. You know? And and it’s it’s little amounts of food, but what’s happening, like, going back to what I was saying before is we’ve got this glycogen released from the muscles going back and down into your bloodstream. So your liver’s freaking confused. It doesn’t know what it’s supposed to signal. It doesn’t know what it’s supposed to do. So the default is to basically signal the pancreas to keep kicking out insulin to counter the sugar that keeps coming out of the liver and the muscles.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:40:49]:
And then what ends up happening with that, right, we we end up having a struggle. So with insulin resistance, fasting to a point can help. Now I said earlier, the Lumen can help quite a bit if you’re really struggling in this case and you need, like, a little tidbit just to know what’s going on. But you can do this on your own too. You don’t have to get fancy with technology. And what you’re looking at is, like, between dinner and breakfast, how long does it take you? You know, what’s what’s your usual average time? I try to have folks do at least 12 hours just on a habit because it gives the cells at least time to rest. And for most women, we’ve we’ve found, kind of, through research that between 12 14, 16 on the high end of fasting is tolerable. But when we start doing a lot more than that, it gets to be a problem because now we’re confusing our muscles, our liver, and our pancreas communication.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:41:40]:
So I do think that everyone should have a test for insulin resistance. You can test fasting insulin, or you can test with something called a lipo fractionation study. It’s it’s Labcorp has it and so does Quest. They have a different they call it cardiometabolic with the the Quest, and you get an insulin resistance score. So you know, like, how severe is this situation. And the other side of the situation is going back to the gut microbiome because your gut microbiome has a lot to do with insulin resistance in terms of the microbes that are in your gut. If you have more yeast in your gut, you’re gonna tend to be more possibly insulin resistant. So you do wanna know what’s going on with the microbes.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:42:19]:
Like, there’s Viome, there’s GI MAP. You know, I’m I’m a fan of at least testing just to get an idea. There’s a lot of, like, you could argue the daylights out of validity and things of that nature, but you can get a sense of what’s going on in your gut there. And I do like to know kind of what what someone’s microbiome profile looks like. Now the other side of weird weird connection with insulin resistance is parasites too. There can be some funky stuff in that department, and it all literally leads back to leaky gut, food getting across the the lining that shouldn’t be there, microbes not breaking down food like they should, backs up into the liver, liver gets backed up, now we got fatty liver. It’s like I mentioned earlier. Like, it’s it’s one of the most common things I see in women that are at the more often mid to late forties and beyond where the insulin resistance has gone that far.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:43:10]:
So what do what do I typically do about it? I am making sure that there’s a 12 to 14 hour fast no matter what and that we have protein heavily in the diet to the point where a lot of people will look at me and be like, you’re you’re baddie. And it’s like, equal your weight, grams of protein. Now if we’re looking at someone who’s over, you know, a £150, yes, that gets very difficult and expensive. And so we grade grade it at certain points, but we gotta have the consistent protein. We gotta start the day off with protein. And back to the enzymes and that kind of situation, we wanna literally, that is the first thing you put in your mouth to optimize the amount of enzymes coming out of your body. So that’s how I do it. And and definitely timing between food, making sure you’re not going over, like, 4 or 5 hours.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:43:56]:
And I’m kinda like a 3 meal a day person, sometimes 4, depending on the person. I’m not at this every 2 hour. That’s gonna create massive insulin resistance. They’re snacking, grazing. That’s another biggie too is grazing can be a huge issue for insulin resistance.
Ali Shapiro [00:44:12]:
I’m glad you brought that in because I know that the, food companies have targeted certain anti diet influencers to now say snacking’s okay and and eat my sugary stuff. You know? So it’s it’s getting weird out there. I know. NPR did a whole article, and I was like, damn, I didn’t see that one coming. So a couple of things that I wanna back up though, because we talked about, like, kind of the sequence over strategy earlier. And you’re saying fasting because I’m glad you brought that up. I wrote down, like, oh, for circle back to fasting because people hear all different things. So just to clarify, you’re saying 12 hours, which for most people is overnight.
Ali Shapiro [00:44:51]:
Right? It’s like you don’t Yeah. That it So you’re saying what you see in your practice, 12 to 16 hours at 16 hours at most. Now some people now we are talking but that sounds like and again, I’m I’m maybe I’m biased because I also am like parasympathetic dominant. I can’t I can’t I need 3 meals a day. I can’t, you know, but overnight. But if people are feeling insulin resistant, is fasting gonna be a stress on their system? Do they have to get some other ducks in a row before they can perhaps go overnight. Because, again, I don’t I don’t wanna make this interview all about me, but just to use a concrete example is so I was clearly I don’t know if it matter, but I was clearly in the late stages of menopause when I was pregnant. And I I didn’t wanna take the drink that they make you drink, you know, to get so so I pricked my fingers and my numbers after my meals were beautiful.
Ali Shapiro [00:45:45]:
But overnight, I would wake up with high fasting glucose. And the dietitian at the hospital was like, eat a snack before bed. I normalized it, you know, and it was like, okay, you’re fine now. So I was bottoming out overnight. I couldn’t hold it. And then when I worked with so then when I worked with my sleep coach, I had to do a snack for a while before bed because I couldn’t carry myself overnight. So I’m just wondering if someone is, like, in the process of, you know, obviously, I had a lot of work to do and I’m healing. And now I can pretty much get away with not eating a snack.
Ali Shapiro [00:46:15]:
I don’t eat a snack before bed now that I think about it anymore. But, like, that’s an example of, like, my insulin sensitivity needed some improvement. Or maybe there’s a parasite that’s waking me up hungry. You know, I don’t know. But what would you say to someone who’s like, oh, my God, I’m not even fasting and I’m not even eating enough protein yet? Like, how would you like? And I know it’s it depends on the person, which is why I love how you how you operate. But any guidelines for people thinking of like, should I start fasting now? You know? Yeah.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:46:47]:
I want people to not think about the traditional fasting, like what’s in the books, what’s in all that stuff. What I’m talking about more than anything is to do this right. You’ve got to get your blood sugar balanced first in the morning, right? You got to start in the beginning of the day. Your breakfast or your first meal is your most important blood sugar balancing meal. People will say your most important meal. I’m going to say it’s your most important blood sugar balancing meal because it sets the tone for the rest of the day. I was taught in school and I’ve never been able to find data to back this up, but I find it to be true. And I’ve been challenged on it by by folks.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:47:23]:
And I’m like, I just can’t find the data. But I know it’s true in terms of empirical, in terms of seeing patients. And what it is, is making sure that that first meal start your day off with protein. And for a lot of people, if you’re having to have a snack at night or you’re waking up in the middle of the night to have to eat that coffee you have, if you’re drinking coffee or some form of caffeine in the morning could be jacking with you. You might wanna think about the protein first, then the coffee as you start to eat through that. Yeah.
Ali Shapiro [00:47:51]:
So I can still keep my coffee because I always eat the I never eat coffee on an empty stomach.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:47:55]:
Yeah. It’s that’s that’s essentially it. Like, not the coffee on an empty stomach because coffee’s caffeine. Right? It’s going to put your blood sugar up, and your blood sugar’s already up in the morning because cortisol’s up to wake you up. And so if you wake up and, boom, you have your coffee and that’s what you’re doing, well, you’re making your blood sugar already go up. So you’re already setting yourself off on a roller coaster. So yeah, I’m always like protein, then start sipping on your coffee. You got to do it that way because otherwise, you’re not helping yourself at all.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:48:26]:
And fasting with drinking coffee this whole like dirty fast or I’m like, well, you didn’t take a shower? Like, I did all these terms. I’m like, oh my god, I don’t know what this means. But like the dirty fast and all that stuff like thrills, just throw it out. Just throw it out. Point is, you need the protein in the morning and you gotta sit down, you gotta chew it. Yes. And if you if you’re arguing with me right now, well, I really suck at digesting protein. Yeah.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:48:50]:
It’s because you gotta sit down and eat and chew and maybe you need some enzymes or, you know, some intervention like the apple cider vinegar if you really struggle. But your first meal of the day sets the tone. Your pancreas looks at that first meal of the day and it goes, oh, okay. This is what, you know, Allie’s gonna do. This is this is the thing. And so then the next meal, it’s preparing like the one you just had. So and this is the data that I was mentioning that I cannot seem to find the backup on this, but it follows suit in terms of watching what I’ve seen with the Lumen, watching what I’ve seen with with folks finger poking themselves while pregnant, you know, all of these different things and the folks that use the CGM, so the continuous glucose monitors. We we see this to be true.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:49:30]:
Your blood sugar will be based on the first meal of the day. So if you wanna stop having a snack at night to get you through and you wanna you know, you gotta work on the beginning of things. And, yes, like Ali said, it’s not gonna be like it’s just gonna switch. You’re gonna is it there’s a adjustment period to the point where you’ll find, like, you just don’t need the snack anymore once you’re getting things balanced there.
Ali Shapiro [00:49:51]:
So for everyone listening. Right? Like, fasting doesn’t it it have to be the first thing. Get your blood sugar in line, which will then I know in my work, I in truth with food and I always start with blood sugar because I feel like people can make the connections of, like, you know, one one client was like, oh my god. I can’t I don’t care about donuts once I start with protein. You know, it’s like exactly. Exactly. So it’s more immediate and more, like, relieving, whereas gut health feels like it takes a little bit longer. But just for people, like, you know, everything in your body, at least in my view, and you can tell me what your thoughts are, like, comes whether we’re talking hormones, sleep, all all of the the symptoms that we’re struggling with.
Ali Shapiro [00:50:31]:
Wait. Come down to your gut health and your blood sugar. And I think of them as like the double helix DNA. Like, they talk to each other via inflammation. Right? Like, that’s how they are joined. But you need to work on both of those. So get those foundations, which doctor Kraus has told us the foundational things to get started with blood sugar and gut health. So start there before you think you have to tweak and iterate and do all these biohacks.
Ali Shapiro [00:51:00]:
You know? It’s like optimization can only happen if these foundational things that that we’re talking about are first. I did wanna circle back because, like, you you were saying, like, if you’re over a £150, I think what you were saying is the guidelines right now are, like, 1 gram of protein and that can get expend per pound. But what you weigh can get expensive. What are your thoughts on I always love asking people their thoughts on protein recommendations because, again, nature’s kind of my spirituality framework, sustainability. It feels unsustainable for the planet, for all of us to be getting, you know, some of these recommendations. So what are your thoughts on which doesn’t mean that’s not true. Right? I mean, maybe there’s things I haven’t thought of. But what are your thoughts on 1 pound? You know, 1 gram equals 1 pound.
Ali Shapiro [00:51:55]:
That’s the recommendation. Do you agree with that? Do you think there’s wiggle room there if you’re trying to build muscle versus maintain thoughts on protein amounts for people?
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:52:06]:
There’s definitely wiggle room. And if you’re lifting weights and you’re trying to build muscle, you do have to have more protein. There’s no way around it. There really isn’t. And, and sustainability, well, you know, that’s a that’s a whole nother podcast in that department. You know, protein powders, a lot of people will will think about using them as an alternative. The issue with those is well, how do you think they extracted the protein from whatever it is that they’re they’re using whether it’s whey, pea, egg, white, etc. I mean, there’s a process, it’s chemical, it’s processed.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:52:40]:
And I’m not saying that it’s terrible in a pinch. But we do wanna be thinking about how can we get whole foods closer to nature protein sources. And, you know, a lot of people ask me too, like, can you be vegan and get enough protein? Yeah. If you wanna eat all day and and you have the time to work in the kitchen, yeah, like go for it. If you have a personal chef, you can do it. It’s not easy. And if you’re committed, like I’ve seen people do it, but it’s a lot of food, and you got to have a really solid gut to do it. So you know, where I’m going with this is, like, sustainability, you know, fish, fish sources, we have a lot of good data on what fish are not overfished.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:53:20]:
You can look at the Monterey Bay seafood watch, I believe, is what it’s called. In California, you can see kinda what’s sustainable, what doesn’t have a lot of mercury, those kind of things. Fish are easy, less carbon footprint, you know, than beef and things of that nature. So thinking about that as a whole. Now overall with protein and where do I stand on this? I think that we have to ease ourselves into eating protein in the first place, telling someone like, oh, hey. Let’s look at your protein. Oh, you’re eating 40 grams of protein a day, and now I want you to eat a 150. I mean, that’s such an overwhelming amount to jump up.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:53:55]:
Like, oh my god. That’s awful. But it I have seen over and over again in patients that I work with, the higher amounts of protein that we can get on them and tolerate, the gut can tolerate, they’re not getting constipated or they’re not having diarrhea on the other end, there’s no acid reflux, we find what’s comfortable. And a lot of times, it does come up to being very close to their body weight in grams. Now when someone and this is why I’m saying 150. When someone weighs £203100, there’s no freaking way your body needs that much. I mean, you’re gonna kill your kidneys trying to eat that much protein. So, you know, I gotta meet people where they’re at, but I also really have to see, like, when is weight coming down or when is someone feeling good in their belly.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:54:39]:
Right? Like, when do you feel good? You’re not gassy. You’re not bloated. You’re not having gut distress. That’s your sweet spot. Not, you know, the standard recommendation. In that case,
Ali Shapiro [00:54:50]:
you’re so bio individual, which is ultimately the truth. We put ourselves in the into these like bell curves, but no one has like a bell curve health experience. So I think that’s really important because a lot of my clients are perfectionists and they think like, I got to get up to there right away. So I love that you say ease into it. Get your system used to digesting that much. See if you can even digest that much. And then I also read because, again, you know, when I was trying to lose weight these past couple of years, and do it in a healthy, sustainable way, I was toggling of, like, what my pre pregnancy weight was. And so for people who do have some weight to lose, wouldn’t you say, like, targeting from I don’t even say your goal weight because there’s some weight that’s healthy to gain as we age.
Ali Shapiro [00:55:34]:
We can talk about that. But should people peg it to, like, what they weigh now? Or I hate to say what they wanna weigh because we’re also not realistic often with what’s actually healthy. It’s like some padding as you age is is okay and even healthy. It that puts off estradiol. Right? So it’s like it helps bring up some of that loss of estrogen that we’re we’re losing with menopause. But it’s so triggering and can be interpreted in many ways when I say, like, do you peg it to what you wanna weigh?
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:56:01]:
You know, I try not to when when I’m talking with those. I’m always gonna say that the 1 gram per body weight is what you’re gonna hear. Right? And for a lot of people, if you’re lifting weights, you’re trying to improve body composition, you do have to have a higher amount of protein. It just is the way it is if you wanna put on muscle and and maintain it. So what what I do is typically I’m gonna start with how much protein are you actually eating right now? Just to see. Because if, like I said, if someone’s eating 40 grams of protein and say they weigh £300 and they wanna lose weight. Great. Okay.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:56:35]:
Where how can we up that slowly each meal to the point where they feel good. And so most of the time, I’m not gonna even give a number. I’ll give a ballpark that I’m like, yeah, maybe we shoot for 100. You know, but because 40 to a100 is a huge jump, I’m probably gonna be more like 75, you know, but I but I will say, let’s shoot for this. I don’t tie it to the weight. I’m tying it more to, like, let’s try to just make sure you get in a certain amount of protein per meal. So your target, you know, a lot of times my blanket target might be about 25 grams per meal. That’s gonna be very often if you ask my patients, that’s gonna be very often where I start things at.
Dr. Jannine Krause [00:57:13]:
And then from there, we tweak up or down based on where things are going. So, yeah, we just wanna think about, like, a target per meal and that you feel full. You know, we’re also having to think about, like, are you full? Did it fill you up or are you still wanting donuts? You know? Yeah. Yeah. We have to think about that.
Ali Shapiro [00:57:31]:
And I I was thinking and I’m I’m glad you brought up animal protein. Yeah. That’s a whole other conversation because local like, small farms are totally part of the sustainability. I’m I’m not one of these, like, meat is automatically unsustainable people. It’s like, no. There’s there’s a there’s a lot going on right now. But I just I I don’t know that one of my clients, we were talking about breakfast and and and she was like, you know, I was thinking, like, protein was only animal meat and she eats animal meat. But, like, for her cottage cheese in the morning, you know, was like that kind of protein was like where she started and has been really helpful for her.
Ali Shapiro [00:58:03]:
So for people listening, you know, lunch and dinner often I mean, I’m always eating animal protein. I have to eat it at every meal to feel satisfied. But some people can do cottage cheese or yogurt in the morning. So don’t forget about those as well. Just wanted to plug that for protein. Alright. So one last question I wanna ask you because I think this is another huge thing related to food as we age in our bodies. And I wanna talk about recovery.
Ali Shapiro [00:58:28]:
In terms of stress, I love how you’re on your Instagram, you promote, like, strength training and all this stuff. But, again, in the same way that we’re all brainwashed from the eighties nineties, exercise has been viewed as punishment. Or even if you wanna lose weight, you know, it’s like, okay. Cut calories modestly for 3 months and then go back to your your resting metabolic rate. Like, you need recovery from calorie deficit so that your body doesn’t adapt to the calorie deficit. Or I even think about stress. And in my Why am I in this now program, it’s like we’re constantly working on the triggers that make people tend to be so stressed and realize make them realize like, oh, my God. I actually need recovery when I’m tired rather than just go, go, go.
Ali Shapiro [00:59:12]:
I have to slow down. So can you just speak to this concept of recovery? Because with those examples, recovery was never something that we were taught to value in eighties nineties diet culture or capitalism. So can you speak to how important recovery is as we age so that we aren’t so burnout that we’re then turning to carbs to power us through? Or we aren’t feeling so much of that cortisol tired but wired that we’re like, I deserve to eat this rather than just giving ourselves recovery to snowboard or ski. Or I sometimes tell my clients, like, after I drop my son off of daycare, I come home, put my legs up the wall and just stare at the ceiling. Like, that’s part of my recovery, especially after the weekend. So can you just speak to recovery and what that concept means to you and how you implement that with your clients?
Dr. Jannine Krause [01:00:07]:
Sure. Sure. Recovery really I’m gonna talk on more of an energetic level and I’ll make it make sense here. It’s not gonna sound so woo because I’ve had to really convince myself of this as well. Recovery to me is really recharging the nervous system. And in the Chinese medicine principles, we have the kidneys as being our batteries. And if they’re charged up, we’ve got a good energy base we can keep going while the adrenal glands sit on top of the kidneys. So I think of it as, you know, we’re keeping ourselves charged.
Dr. Jannine Krause [01:00:38]:
And part of the charge really goes back to sodium potassium chloride, like the electrolytes. We blow through those when we’re stressed, and the adrenal glands are what regulate those. So if we look at recharge recovery, I’m always talking about it in terms of the ions that we have in the body because we use these positive negative charges that are in our electrolytes to signal. So sodium potassium gates, there’s voltage gated channels for your nervous system. These gates help move things across cell walls and and and not cell walls, but cell cell linings and things of that nature. We have this happening all day long in our body. So to recharge means to help get those ions back up. And you laying down putting your legs up the wall, I I have a similar thing I’ll do after I’m done working out to stop the cortisol pump.
Dr. Jannine Krause [01:01:30]:
And and what it is is it’s called positional parasympathetic breathing. One of my fitness coaches, doctor John Rawson, taught me this, and he’s, like, literally 5 minutes at the end of every workout. You tell your body that this stress is over. And so what you’re telling yourself is this stress of the morning and getting my son out the door is over. And this tells your body, let’s stop the cortisol pump because we all know that workouts are good cortisol pumps. But if we go from the workout and then we just go straight into life, like, we go take our shower, we go run, run, run the rest of our hurried day, we’re gonna keep that cortisol up more than we want to. So to recharge really means to me to stop the cortisol pump and help the body bring the electrolytes back into balance. And so by breathing and just relaxing, like, you you could do fancier breathing.
Dr. Jannine Krause [01:02:17]:
You could breathe in and out your nose. You could help with a little nitric oxide production if you want to by breathing in and out of the nose and help with circulation. But, really, it’s slowing down for 5 minutes. Lay down, put your legs up. That helps. If you can’t lay down and put your legs up, you’re sitting down and you put your palms up like so. This is called the receiving mode. You put your palms up and you just let them sit on your your thighs, and you’re just relaxing with the breath and and hanging out there for a couple minutes.
Dr. Jannine Krause [01:02:43]:
That goes so far for your nervous system because your nervous system, if you just keep going, going, going, and you don’t stop at all during the day, your body thinks the bear is chasing you. And at the end of the day, you feel like you ran a marathon because, well, to your nervous system you did away from whatever imaginary bear there is. So you can recharge yourself throughout the day by taking a moment to slow down, get away from the screens, get away from your phone, get outside. I’m very big on get outside.
Ali Shapiro [01:03:14]:
Make sure I’ll work for you.
Dr. Jannine Krause [01:03:16]:
Yeah. Yeah. Kick your shoes off. Go walk in your grass if if it suits you for that day. You know, obviously, if there’s 4 feet of snow on the ground, it’s probably not a smart idea. But you could get outside, put your boots on and gloves. You know, just getting outside for a couple minutes a day without any of your technology can be a game changer. And so my recovery recommendations, like, yeah, I could get fancy with all kinds of supplements and things.
Dr. Jannine Krause [01:03:38]:
But honest to goodness, the truth is taking breaks and think of it as recharging the battery because your adrenals will recharge themselves and more breaks you can take during the day and stop the cortisol constant pump. If you get stressed out, do a reset. One of the other things that I love that I’ve been learning a lot is about is like different resets like this is havening and ice like arm skating like this, doing these like 5 second resets and and I’m saying by a second, maybe like a minute 30 seconds, like those kind of things. And just getting yourself back in your body, you can trace your lips with your your finger for, like, 6 times. You can do this is called teeth cleaning with the tongue. You can do that 6 times. And these are just little nervous system resets. Like, if someone says something, it takes you off and you’re like, god, here.
Dr. Jannine Krause [01:04:26]:
Let this go. Do that. If you’re just feeling agitated, amped, you have no idea, a little anxious, do that, you know, if you can’t lay down. So I I’ve literally trained myself and a lot of my clients to spend their day taking little breaks like that. And those little resets there that I just talked about, this is all from Kate Northrop. She has a lot of this in some of her her classes. And really what it is is just connecting back to your body, feeling your hands in your your hand in your hand, and you’re just doing this for, like, 60 seconds, and you’re just chilling. It’s a reset.
Dr. Jannine Krause [01:04:56]:
Yeah. And then you just, like, shake it out, and you’re done. Move on to the next thing. If you have to feel an emotion, do it. That kind of thing with with that process. So, yeah, that’s recharging. That’s recovery for me. Yeah.
Ali Shapiro [01:05:09]:
I think that’s so important because for people listening, often we think resilience is just pounding away at doing the hard thing. But we know from research that recovery is essential to resilience and midlife and aging is not for the faint of heart. So you got to pace yourself with breaks. Thank you so much, Janine. Doctor Kraus, is there anything that I didn’t ask you or that you wanna share that I that I didn’t think to ask you?
Dr. Jannine Krause [01:05:37]:
The biggest thing for folks to really think about is that you are in control of your health, you know, and and you have the choices. You can make all these choices to help yourself. And there are so many folks like Allie out there, myself, other functional medicine docs and practitioners that are here to help you regain your control.
Ali Shapiro [01:05:54]:
Yeah. Thank you so much. And we’ll have all your links and everything. And you had mentioned that PDF. Could we could we include that in the show notes for the stomach acid test? Yeah.
Dr. Jannine Krause [01:06:05]:
Yeah. I will create I’ll create a link for that for you guys so that you can see how to test your stomach acid in a very fun way with betaine hydrochloric.
Ali Shapiro [01:06:14]:
Thank you so much, Janine.
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