Be Organic Podcast – Season 1, Episode 1. Dr. Will Cole: How Inflammation Causes Weight Gain, Anxiety, and Gut Issues
In this episode of Be Organic, Dr. Will Cole chats with us on what’s causing our inflammation and also provides us with a step-by-step process on how to heal, including what foods to avoid, supplements to use, lifestyle practices to adopt, and ways of eating to explore.
Dr. Will Cole is a leading functional-medicine expert and a Doctor of Chiropractic. Dr. Cole specializes in clinically investigating underlying factors of chronic disease and customizing a functional- medicine approach for thyroid issues, autoimmune conditions, hormonal imbalances, digestive disorders, and brain problems. Dr. Cole was named one of the top 50 functional-medicine and integrative doctors in the nation and is a health expert and course instructor for the world’s largest wellness brands such as mindbodygreen and goop. Plus, he is the author of two outstanding books: “The Inflammation Spectrum” and “Ketotarian.”
Find more from Dr. Will Cole:
Website: drwillcole.com
Instagram: @drwillcole
Books: Ketotarian, The Inflammation Spectrum
TIME STAMPS
2:30 How inflammation is deteriorating your health (jump to section)
12:13 The most common symptoms of inflammation (jump to section)
14:48 How gut inflammation is stopping you from losing weight (jump to section)
18:44 The four main foods that trigger inflammation (jump to section)
23:58 Other common health foods that can lead to gut inflammation (jump to section)
26:28 How to calm your inflammation and help your gut heal (jump to section)
35:02 Dr. Will Cole’s plant-based approach to the Keto diet (jump to section)
37:35 How intermittent fasting can help calm your gut inflammation (jump to section)
Transcription Below
Kat Eckles: Welcome to Be Organic. I’m Kat.
Landon Eckles: And I’m Landon. And we are the founders of Clean Juice.
Kat: Don’t worry. We’re not here to introduce just another health and wellness podcast.
Landon: Because we like our podcast just how we like our food: without the fluff and full of real stuff.
Kat: So get ready for practical tips, actionable advice, and all sorts of knowledge for living your life organically.
Landon: Hey guys, welcome into another episode of our Be Organic podcast powered by Clean Juice. My name is Landon Eckles, and I’m the CEO of Clean Juice. I’m joined here with my wife, who’s our chief branding officer and is in charge of making sure our brand is on point, that we’re giving you guys the best information out there when it comes to health and wellness. I’m going to let Kat intro our guest today, because we are super pumped to have him on board.
Kat: Absolutely. So today we are joined by Dr. Will Cole. I’m super excited for this one. He’s someone that I’ve followed on Instagram for a long time. I love his information. I love his books. I think he’s so spot on in boiling it down to inflammation and what’s really going on in our bodies and what we need to take control of. Dr. Will Cole is a leading functional medicine expert and he’s also a doctor of chiropractic. He specializes in clinically investigating underlying factors of chronic disease and customizing a functional medicine approach for things like thyroid issues, autoimmune conditions, hormonal imbalances, digestive disorders, and brain problems.
Dr. Cole was named one of the top 50 functional medicine and integrative doctors in the nation, which is so cool. He’s a health expert and course instructor for the world’s largest wellness brands like mindbodygreen and goop. Yes, that’s Gwyneth Paltrow’s goop!
Plus, he’s an author of two outstanding books. One is called The Inflammation Spectrum and the other is Ketotarian. So welcome, Dr. Cole! Thank you so much for joining us today. We’re so excited to have you.
Dr. Will Cole: Thanks guys. I’m excited to talk with you about all this fun stuff.
Landon: Dr. Cole, I pride myself on being in rooms where everyone else in the room is smarter than me, and I can absolutely say on this episode that I’m the least smart person on it. So thanks for joining us so much.
Dr. Cole: That’s very nice of you, but I know functional medicine very well, but I don’t know everything. We’re all learning, right.
Kat: Absolutely.
Landon: That’s right.
How Inflammation Deteriorates Your Health
Kat: Like I said, you boil a lot down to inflammation, and I think you’ve mentioned before that we’re living in this age of inflammation. What do you think’s contributing to that? Why do you think that’s going on right now, today, in our country and in our world?
Dr. Cole: Wow. Yeah, so it’s a problem, really. If you look at the statistics of chronic disease and the amount of people that’s impacting. It’s estimated that one in two Americans are insulin resistant. Look at the statistics of cancer and heart disease and diabetes and autoimmune conditions. It’s estimated that 50 million Americans have on have an autoimmune condition. All of these issues and then the mental health: the rates of depression and anxiety and ADD and ADHD and autism. There’s so many different issues.
All those problems that I mentioned have one thing in common and that’s inflammation, and it’s far reaching. Those are all very different health issues, but they have that commonality, that common link of chronic inflammation. Inflammation isn’t a bad thing inherently. God made inflammation as part of our immune system. It fights viruses and bacteria. it’s actually a really important thing for human health.
Like so much of the planet, and so much of our body, it’s subject to the Goldilocks principle, right? It’s not too high, not too low, but just right. That law is still applicable to inflammation. It’s when inflammation is thrown out of balance when problems arise. So it’s this chronic inflammation that’s sort of like this forest fire burning in perpetuity that’s the issue.
Why is that? Researchers are looking at the growing mismatch between genetics and epigenetics. It’s estimated that our, the human DNA on our genetics haven’t changed in 10,000 years, yet our world has changed very dramatically in a very short period of time. So you look at the food supply, you look at environmental toxins, you look at technology and the impact that that’s having on us, all of this stuff is really concentrated over a very short period of time, and it’s triggering these genetic predispositions that, again, have been around for thousands of years. Why are they being awakened like never before? Why are they being triggered like never before? Researchers are looking at this onslaught of epigenetic or environmental lifestyle: things that we do, whether that’s food or stress or toxins or technology, all this stuff is really awakening those genetic predispositions for things like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune conditions, et cetera.
So that’s what I’m really immersing myself in as a functional medicine practitioner. My day job is consulting patients online in different states and countries to give them answers as to why they are feeling the way that they do and giving them, most importantly, tools to start to deal with these things, to start feeling better and understanding how to feel like themselves again. For some people, they’ve been going through their health problems so long, they don’t even know what that is, but to start to regain health again.
Kat: Mm-hmm, that’s so good. I feel like too, it’s almost like people have come to expect to feel bad. Do you know what I mean? It’s like, “I’m just getting older. I’m just this, just that.” There’s all these excuses for, “I just don’t feel as good as I did.” I don’t think that people realize that they’re not supposed to feel that way.
Dr. Cole: Oh, certainly something that I say a lot is just because something’s common doesn’t necessarily mean it’s normal. That is definitely true that they equate ubiquity with normalcy. And that the reality is that you can look at the statistics and you can find someone feeling just as lousy as you are or worse, and then equate that with normalcy. These are things like all those things that I mentioned, all those health problems, whether that’s mental health issues or diabetes or heart disease or autoimmune conditions that they’re largely influenced by lifestyle choices. We have a lot of influence of how our body is functioning or not functioning. So while it’s sobering to look at the statistics, the other side of that coin is that we understand these health problems now more than ever to really give people tools to start feeling better.
Because if you look just at a generation ago, like our parents’ generation or our grandparents’ generation, these issues were growing. They aren’t as bad as they are now, but they still had a lot of these problems. Many people just didn’t know why people were sick, and they didn’t have any tools. They just knew, “OK, My doctor’s telling me to take this pill, and that’s basically what I’m gonna do.” You see this when there’s, say, a genetic predisposition for autoimmunity for a family, and the person that I’m consulting online, they say, “Oh yeah, I saw this in my grandma or my mom, but they aren’t here anymore or they’re really sick.”
They just didn’t know they had even any options. And now people are growing to understand, they have options in healthcare. They can actually do something about it. So it’s, in that way, a cool age to live in where yes, these problems are growing, but people actually can have agency over their wellness, which is kind of a new phenomenon.
Kat: Absolutely. I know that inflammation obviously can occur anywhere in our bodies, but I really wanted to hone in today on inflammation in the gut, just because I think it’s such a key piece of our overall health. We all know now, even mainstream science has accepted this kind of brain-gut connection. They’re really starting to realize that our second brain is in our gut and how important keeping that healthy is.
Can you speak to specifically what you think is causing this gut inflammation? I know you mentioned technology and food and lifestyle, and maybe even just breaking that down a little more and how that really starts to wake up that microbiome in a bad way.
Dr. Cole: Yeah. So the foods research is pointing to are associated with disturbing the gut and impacting our gastrointestinal system in a negative way, increasing intestinal permeability – or what they call leaky gut syndrome. It’s just increased permeability of the gut lining, and that’s allowing things to pass through the gut that shouldn’t be able to pass through the gut that can trigger inflammation throughout the body or systemic inflammation.
So gluten-containing grains would be number one. I have this conversation in the inflammation spectrum in my second book, because is it the gluten protein? We know that, thousands of years ago, in Biblical times, the wheat that they were would be eating there isn’t the wheat that we have today because of the hybridization of the wheat, the cross-breeding of wheat. So that structurally, the wheat is different from a protein standpoint, but also the spraying and the glyphosate spraying. We know that glyphosate can impact the microbiome as well. So, I don’t think it’s as simple as saying, “Well, gluten’s bad, and it is what it is.”
I think it’s what we’ve done to the wheat supply, the overconsumption of it, certainly, and the spraying of it. I’m not saying gluten’s bad for everybody. You probably can get better sources of it too.
Kat: Well, you hear people all the time. They’re like, “I went to Italy and I could eat all the pizza and I felt fine.”
Dr. Cole: Yeah, I hear that a lot too. I see that with patients where the food supply is different. I also think part of that could be the stress that people are under. I could be the same meal, but you’re eating one under more stress and one more relaxed. The outcome will be different because of the stress of how your body metabolizes foods and processes. I think it is a mixture of both: I think it’s the stress and I think it’s the food supply.
The next one would be added sugar, which most people know that. It’s processed refined sugar.
High omega-6 oils, like vegetable oil, canola oil, these type of things that are rancid oftentimes at room temperature, very sensitive to light and heat. Oxidizing can be proinflammatory and can impact your gut health, certainly.
And then conventional dairy. I would say that those are the four foods that are gonna be what I call in the book “core four,” these four foods or food additives: things in food that will drive up inflammation, that will impact your gut in a negative way, and can contribute to, leaky gut syndrome or can increase intestinal permeability.
Then we have to look at non-food stuff as well. I think looking at the glyphosate, looking at stress, the impact that has on gut health. Looking at other toxins that can impact gut health as well. And medications. Even over the counter medications, NSAIDs – nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs – are linked to increased intestinal permeability too.
I know some people have to be on medications. Some people to people have to take NSAIDs from time to time, but they still have potential side effects that we should be aware of. You should talk to your doctor especially if you’re taking these things chronically. Those are some things that people can think about as far as gut health.
Kat: That’s good.
The Most Common Symptoms of Inflammation
Landon: So some people, like myself – I’m a novice when it comes to this stuff, so I’ll speak for all of us out there who are really trying to learn this stuff, but really don’t quite understand it. If we’re having some of this gut inflammation, maybe we don’t even know it’s gut inflammation.
What could be some of the symptoms that we could be looking for to tell us that, “Hey, this might be what’s going on”?
Dr. Cole: So some common things that I see people on the lower end on the inflammation spectrum are things like low energy levels, fatigue, background anxiety – they have this sort of sense of anxiousness, maybe they have panic attacks too, but some anxiety – and digestive problems, whether they have bloating or they’re not going to the bathroom every day, or they have looser stools all the time. Then looking at hair health: are you losing hair? Looking at nail and skin health; those are other signs that there’s things going on in the body. And trouble losing weight’s a very common one, too. Maybe muscle joint soreness, tightness. Those are some other things to think about. Brain fog, that’s a common one as well: trouble with word recall, name recall issues. Depression would be another one. All those things I just mentioned are various manifestations of chronic inflammation.
In the west, it’s easy to separate mental health from physical health; people don’t connect the two, but the reality is mental health is physical health and our brain is part of our body. We have to look at mental health, because I actually see that probably more oftentimes than anything of how people are feeling mood wise, and it really is just the same as all those other symptoms, the digestive symptoms and the musculoskeletal symptoms and the hair and the – it’s all the same. They’re all the body.
These are all check engine lights, in a way. Something’s going on underneath the hood, proverbially speaking, that’s causing you to notice you feeling the way that you do. So, my job is to almost do what the mechanic does when the check engine light’s on and find through diagnostics, why the check engine light’s on in the first place.
You could have a hundred people with fatigue, and what’s driving fatigue with, for one person isn’t necessarily driving the fatigue for the other person. So is it a gut problem? Is it a nutrient deficiency? Is it chronic infection? Is it a hormonal imbalance? These are all things to take into consideration. Those things that I just mentioned, they’re very, very, very common, but they’re certainly not normal.
How Gut Inflammation Stops You from Losing Weight
Landon: So you mentioned one thing that I think a lot of listeners are particularly thinking about, especially this time of the year. “New year, new me;” they’re on a weight loss kick, they’re trying to lose weight, they’re trying to feel better. One thing you mentioned was an inability to lose weight or even weight gain. How would you say that inflammation in the gut – how does that make one, not lose weight or continue to gain weight? How are those two things connected?
Dr. Cole: Good question. So basically, our gut and brain are formed from the same fetal tissue – when babies are growing in their mom’s womb, the gut and brain are formed from the same fetal tissue, and they’re inextricably linked for the rest of our life through what’s called the gut-brain axis.
If you think about it, the intestines even resemble the brain for that reason. 95% of serotonin, our happy neurotransmitter is made in the gut, stored in the gut, and it’s referred to in the medical literature as your second brain – our gastrointestinal system. It’s a major master control system of our body; just like our brain is, our gut is as well, and this bidirectional relationship between the gut and the intestines is very important for human health. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine –you know, every doctor takes the Hippocratic oath: “First do no harm.”
He said a lot of smart things, and that’s why he’s the father of modern medicine. He said, “Let food be my medicine and medicine, my food.” He also said, “All disease begins in the gut.” Now, research is catching up with that ancient knowledge of Hippocrates, that the majority of health problems today, at least to some degree, begin in the gut, if not a major component to health issues.
Specifically to weight loss resistance or weight gain – trouble losing weight – there’s a lot of exciting studies showing the landscape of someone’s gut health. The microbiome, the trillions of bacteria and yeast living in the gut, influence the body in major ways. Some of the main pathways is that… it’s your second brain. So imbalances in the gut will speak to the brain, almost like crosstalk through the brain through the vagus nerve, through the entire nervous system, and kind of say, “OK, these are imbalanced,” and that the brain is becoming imbalanced because of that.
What’s downstream from that is the brain-hormonal axis. So you have this sort of gut-brain influence on the brain-hormonal axis that I see oftentimes, because if the body’s in this sort of low-grade state of inflammation and then in a sympathetic fight-or-flight state, that’s not the parasympathetic rest-digest, hormonal health state. So your whole hormonal endocrine, system’s gonna be off because of this low-grade inflammatory that’s gut centric in that way.
There’s different research studies to show that there’s different bacterial imbalances or different colonies of bacteria, which are basically neighborhoods of these bacteria, and depending on the studies that you look at, we have about a hundred trillion bacteria in our gut. To put that into perspective, we have about 10 trillion human cells. So we are all about 10 times more bacterial than human cells.
These are gut master governors and control colonies, neighborhoods that tell our body how to be functioning. So if people are missing certain colonies of bacteria or they have overgrowths of certain bacteria, studies are showing that people that have trouble losing weight have higher rates of these imbalances of the gut bugs that kind of tell their body how to regulate.
That’s just through the gut-brain axis, but then we know 20% of your thyroid hormone is converted into your gut. So people that have sluggish thyroid – maybe because the gut’s not healthy to activate the thyroid hormone. There’s so many mechanisms at play there. That’s just two, but there’s actually more than that. It’s just largely influential on our metabolism.
The Four Main Foods that Trigger Inflammation
Kat: That’s great. I want to spend the second half of this podcast talking about what to do to calm the inflammation, but before we get there, I think it’s interesting that you, in some of the blogs I’ve read and some of your books, you talk about some seemingly healthy foods or health products that actually might be contributing to this inflammation.
One of them that I thought was really interesting is nuts and beans. I think that’s something that we’ve all accepted as like, “Oh, that’s a healthy meal. I give my kids black beans all the time,” or “I eat certain nuts. I practice seed cycling.” Could those things be playing into the inflammation that’s going on in certain people’s bodies?
Dr. Cole: So what I’m talking about that there – and I talk about it in both Ketotarian and The Inflammation Spectrum, it’s really the heart of what I do in functional medicine. It’s, bioindividuality. We’re all created differently, so it’s not a one size fits all and saying, “Well, just because this is healthy, this is great food for everybody,” because it may not be good for them based on what’s going on in their gut, based on what’s going on genetically, based on what’s going on at that point in their health journey. Where someone’s at now on their health journey may not be like later on in their health journey. Maybe they can have those foods that they weren’t able to have now.
So it’s just not a static, over-generalized, broad, sweeping statement for anybody, but it’s definitely dynamic in that way. Foods like nuts and seeds and legumes, which are part of what I call the eliminate foods. So the core four are the four foods that I just mentioned: grains, added sugar, high omega-6 oils, and conventional dairy.
The eliminate is core four plus four more. So that adds in nightshades, which are a plant group that includes peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, goji berries, white potatoes. We add in nuts and seeds, legumes, and eggs. All healthy foods, all whole foods, nothing inherently wrong with any of those four additional foods, by the way.
I do good with most of those foods, but I’ve seen over the years there’s some people that don’t. So what I wanted people to really explore in The Inflammation Spectrum, my second book, is to find out what their body loves, because they may find that maybe they do fine with six of those foods, but not with two. Or they do fine with four, but not the other four. We’re all different.
So because of what’s going on in people’s guts or genetic predispositions or autoimmune flares, there may be certain foods that are “healthy,” quote unquote, but may not be optimal, and that’s sort of the larger question. Just because something’s better than the standard American diet doesn’t necessarily mean it’s optimal for you at this point in your life.
So the reason why is because there’s lectins and phytic acids in the legumes and nuts and seeds. There’s alkaloids in the nightshades. These are proteins that are basically plant defense mechanisms that can be irritable for some people that have over-reactive systems. They could be stressing out an already stressed-out system. Once we start healing your gut and calming things down and increasing intestinal integrity, then you can bring some of these foods back in and not have a problem.
It’s also the preparation of these foods: soaking nuts and seeds. Soaking legumes, using pressure cookers to break down these – so it’s not just the food, it’s the preparation. Traditionally, a lot of these foods would’ve been sprouted and soaked and pressure [cooked]. Humans just somehow knew that would be the best way to do it, and it does make the nutrients more bioavailable.
So, it’s definitely a nuanced conversation. I’m not saying nuts and seeds are bad or legumes are bad. It’s just – OK, is it right for your body? And then when you do bring it back in, what’s the best way to make it more, most digestible and bioavailable?
Kat: Yeah. Yeah, to that point, two experiences I’ve had kind of on either side of that spectrum, I make – I call it a dump smoothie – every day. I just throw whatever I have into it, and for a while, I was cutting up squash that I had and freezing it and throwing it in my smoothie. I work with a naturopath, and I was like, “There’s something wrong.”
She did her testing on me and she’s like, “You’re reacting to that yellow squash.” So I had to take it out for a month or six weeks. There was something that was causing me to react, and I’ve slowly added it back in, and I’m fine. I just thought that was interesting; I would’ve never thought that. It’s squash! It’s good for you!
Then on the other hand, I can’t really eat gluten. That’s not to say that I don’t – I do occasionally, but it bothers me. But I can eat a sprouted Ezekiel bread and not really have any issues at all because of the way that gluten was prepared and sprouted.
So I think it really is true that we have to, first of all, listen to our bodies. And second of all, really think about the way we are preparing that we eat.
Dr. Cole: Certainly. Yeah. Many people don’t know, because – our culture, in many ways, we’re so divorced from even thinking about these things, so I think it’s great that people are having conversations like on your show to really illuminate this and you can start questioning, “Oh, I thought it was a whole wheat. It was good!” But well, maybe it’s not good. Let’s figure this out for you.
Other Common Health Foods that can Lead to Inflammation
Kat: Yeah. Last little thing before we move on to, like I said, healing, I do want to talk about oats and oat milk, only because I think that is such a trend right now. Every time I see it on Instagram, I want to write back, “Make sure it’s organic!” I really want people to understand that just because it’s getting so trendy, so if you could just quickly speak to oats and oat milk and your beliefs about that, that’d be awesome.
Dr. Cole: It’s funny; oats – it can cross-react with gluten, and a lot of it’s contaminated with gluten too in the factories that oat is made. So there’s a lot of cross-contamination that’s going on there with oats, but if you get steel cut oats, that’s certified gluten-free people that have a problem with the gluten, with the protein and wheat, rye, oats, spar, barley, spelt, that kind of stuff – if you get the steel cut oats, then you typically should be fine, if you’re not having a beyond-gluten problem.
There are definitely, without a doubt, gluten-free grains that can be problematic or more problematic for some people more than the gluten is. So we talk about that in The Inflammation Spectrum. It’s not just about gluten. We have to look at these other plant proteins in gluten free grains too.
But if it truly is just a gluten problem, then steel cut oats could be okay, but there is a mechanism called cross-reactivity. These are foods that mimic gluten, so they’re similar enough in structure on a protein-electrolytic level that the proteins in the oats or the quinoa or the rice can be similar enough in structure and can cause reaction to them too. That’s not everybody. So certainly there are some people that do fine with these things. Honestly, I do fine with steel cut oats. I don’t have it as an all-the-time thing, but I do fine with it. It’s not a big deal for me, but some people are going to have a problem.
So it’s this larger question that we just keep saying of checking with your body: Find out what your body loves. That’s really what I implore people to do in The Inflammation Spectrum. We’re all different, and people are disillusioned as to what’s right because there’s so much conflicting information online. That’s because there’s so many different people out there, and these are not all absolute rules.
People should just be mindful of organic, certified gluten-free, if they’re avoiding gluten, with oats and oat milk.
Kat: The organic’s important because oats are one of the most sprayed crops, right?
Dr. Cole: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes. Without a doubt. Yeah, absolutely.
How to Calm Your Inflammation and Help Your Gut Heal
Landon: So we’ve talked a lot about some things that cause inflammation in the gut. I wanna talk a little bit about what we can do to calm the gut or calm the inflammation. And first I want to jump into exercise. So again, you know, “New year, new me.” People are exercising. Are there things that people can do from an exercise perspective on helping their gut to calm down or helping the inflammation in their gut if it’s running too high?
Dr. Cole: Well, I think movement is generally a great thing for human health. It’s great for lowering inflammation. It’s great for increasing insulin sensitivity, basically allowing glucose to go in the cells to lower inflammation. That way it helps to lower insulin levels, which is great.
Sweating is good for supporting these healthy detox pathways. So, there’s a lot of benefits to movement. I just would say, going back to even the bioindividuality of that, some people are working out and they’re (quote, unquote) “paying for it” the next day, where they feel worse. They may just be doing too much too soon for where they’re at.
The theory of exercise is obviously to break down muscle to build it up bigger. Some people can break it down all right, but they’re not building it up. Things like adrenal fatigue or HPA axis issue – it’s really a brain base issue. Their hormones are so stressed. They’re in such the sympathetic fight-or-flight state that they can’t even handle too much exercise.
I’m not saying they can’t exercise, but they might wanna do more chill stuff: move, sweat, but don’t overdo it. “Overdoing it” is so subjective. You have to find your own sweet spot where you’re seeing benefits, you’re seeing the needle move in a positive direction, but you’re not spinning your wheels and you’re just feeling worse after that. More isn’t always better when it comes to that. But I would say move, sweat, be active, but find your rhythm where you feel the best with, for sure.
Landon: It’s so funny you mentioned that. I took off December – and if I’m really being honest, I took off November and December – from working out, and then come January, I’m hitting it six days a week, and then the next week, I feel totally exhausted. Totally sore. Just felt like I completely overdid it, and I didn’t feel good at all. Here I am trying to feel better by working out, jumping back into it, but I clearly overdid it. I think what you’re saying is, “Let’s listen to our bodies. It’s not one size fits all.” If you haven’t worked out in two months, don’t work out six days a week and lift heavy. Ease yourself into it, which is what I’m doing now.
Kat: Yeah. And it’s like, go walking. I always tell that to people. Don’t make it any more complicated than go on a 45 minute fast walk. That’s exercise, that’s getting out there, that’s great for your body. I think people make it more complicated than it has to be.
Dr. Cole: Totally. Yeah, I mean, so much of us have sedentary lifestyles. So getting up and walking is so important. Getting out in nature, go on a hike. It doesn’t have to be this big, detailed, high-intensity thing all the time.
Kat: Totally. I want to talk next about supplements. I’m the supplement queen. You come into my house and-
Landon: You can find anything!
Kat: Yeah. I open my cabinet and there’s everything in there. So I’m probably – you know, we just actually had this conversation yesterday where he’s like, “I think you need to lay off some stuff and see what your body can do on its own.”
But, let’s talk about maybe three or four of your top supplements that you think generally fight inflammation. I know turmeric is one, everybody has heard about that. Probiotics are great for the gut, B vitamins… Maybe some of those that you’ve really seen success in your practice with.
Dr. Cole: You did mention some of the core things that I think are good general foundational stuff. So B vitamins, methylated B vitamins specifically – they’re more bioavailable like methylfolate, methylcobalamin, folate and B12 sources that are more bioavailable, and avoiding the synthetic things like folic acid.
So B vitamins, omega fats that are clean, from a reputable source. Omega fats from fish, getting those long-chain omega fats, and you can get vegan sources that are long chain as well from algaes and things like that. And not that I’m against nuts and seeds like chia seed or flaxseed omegas. They’re just not the long-chain. So they’re not gonna have the serve the same purpose and be as be as bioavailable as the long-chains. So algaes would be the vegan source for these long-chain omegas, or fish oil, krill oil, things like that. Turmeric is very well researched, as you pointed out. The curcuminoids – the compounds in turmeric, the spice – very good at calming inflammation levels down.
A couple more that I… probiotic is good, because a lot of there’s a lot of gut-centric inflammatory problems there for many people. Inflammation in the gut is causing a cascade of inflammation in other parts of the body. I’m a fan of adaptogens. So, adaptogens are a plant group that help with balancing inflammation levels. That’s really how they work. They lower inflammation and specifically they help to balance out that brain-hormonal axis and modulate cortisol levels. But anti-inflammatory most of them are so things like ashwagandha, rhodiola, lion’s mane, chaga, holy basil – a lot of things that are used everywhere that traditional societies lived on the planet. There are adaptogens found, and they have been used for thousands of years, but now the research is coming out of the mechanisms of how they benefit people and they are effective.
So those are some things to consider, and resveratrol, the compound that’s in a many good fruits and vegetables – resveratrol is also, in some exciting studies, showing to be anti-inflammatory as well.
Kat: That’s awesome.
Landon: So, correct me if I’m wrong, but you can’t out-supplement a bad diet, right? If you’re eating the gluten and the dairy and all the stuff that you probably shouldn’t, if you’re feeling some of this inflammation, taking all these different supplements while also not addressing some of this other stuff that we talked about… they’re basically going to be at a net zero.
Dr. Cole: Yeah, I that’s how I feel about it. Honestly, I say that a lot. I feel that way, but I will say this: there are patients that I’ve seen over the years where they are noncompliant from a food standpoint. They just do not listen to what I’m saying, and then they take the supplements, and we see the labs improve. We see them feeling better.
So it’s not what I would advocate, because I would say, “Whoa, how much better would you be when you actually had that food foundation.” But some people just have that grace where they don’t need to do a lot and they just change a few supplements. Not everybody can get away with that. Certainly food is primary and the supplements are targeting based on the need and what’s appropriate, but the body’s amazing. Sometimes you’re like, “What the heck? You haven’t changed one thing about your food, and you take a couple-five supplements and you shifted so much!”
They’re like, “I’m so happy!” I’m like, “Well, good for you, but honestly, it’d be a lot better if you changed all the food, too.”
Kat: Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve seen this – we actually had a sick child that was struggling with brain inflammation that. It made him really sick and he wasn’t okay.
The first thing that we did was the supplement, and it kind of got him to this [point where] he stopped regressing and he basically was steady, but it wasn’t until I took the gluten out, then I took the dairy out that he caught up to with where he was supposed to be. So I think that there is a place where people may plateau and they need to start to take things away to take them to the next level.
Dr. Cole: Some nutrients that I didn’t mention, if I could, are fat soluble vitamins: vitamin A, D, K2. Those are deficient in a lot of people, and vitamin D specifically, it’s hard to get it through food. Things like iron and B vitamins, sometimes you don’t need to change much about your diet and you just fill those deficiencies up and it does change a lot of stuff for the person.
Kat: Vitamin D, I think, especially with energy, that’s something that if people come to me and they’re like, “I’m tired,” I’m like, “Start there.” That’s the first thing I usually tell people, especially in the winter, especially when they aren’t out in the sun, it’s like, “Just see if that helps,” and oftentimes it does.
Dr. Will Cole’s Plant-Based Approach to the Keto Diet
I like your philosophy on food. You call it ketotarian. I sometimes cringe when I hear about the keto diet, just because I see people eating keto and they’re eating non-organic ground beef with shredded cheddar cheese and sour cream and queso cheese and avocado, and that’s a keto meal and I’m like, “Oh, your insides.” So I love that your view is a little bit more of a plant-based keto diet. So I’d love to hear a little bit more about that.
Dr. Cole: Thank you. Yeah, so ketotarian is my made-up word for a mostly plant-based ketogenic diet, and it is largely vegan keto. So entirely plant-based, and those vegetarian keto options and a pescatarian keto options, or wild caught fish. I call it vegetarian in the book; it’s basically mostly plant-based, but still wild caught fish. So it’s a clean keto. It’s the way I think people should go keto for long term wellness. Of course there’s exceptions to that, going back to my earlier statement of just because something’s better doesn’t necessarily mean it’s optimal.
The people that go keto, they’re off of a lot of the refined junk food carb-age, and then they think, “Well, that’s amazing.” Well, yeah, it’s better than the standard American diet, because you’re off of all the sugar and junk, but what does that look like six months, a year, two years, three years down the line? Is that sustainable for most people?
I would argue no. There’s a lot of potential pitfalls of that way of eating. I don’t necessarily think that everybody needs to be in ketosis forever and ever. The goal of the ketogenic diet for most people, unless they have a seizure disorder or neurological problem where they’re using specific therapeutic levels of ketones to help with their seizure disorder, everybody else should be using the ketogenic diet for metabolic flexibility. They should be able to burn fat when they need to, and then go back to sugar burning mode when they want to, too. That’s a great tool, and that’s certainly needed in our country, because everybody’s only in sugar burning mode.
So I use the ketogenic diet in the form of ketotarian in a clean, mostly plant based way to gain metabolic flexibility. Then they can go in and out of ketosis when they want to, because they have the metabolic flexibility to do that. So that’s why I really go into a deep dive in Ketotarian so they can do this.
The amazing benefits of ketosis, the fat burning, the anti-inflammatory, the brain boosting, the mitochondrial biogenesis, all the cool science around ketosis, but let’s apply it in a way that’s sustainable, that’s practical, that’s clean, that’s appropriate for just everyday human health.
How Intermittent Fasting Can Help Calm Your Gut Inflammation
Kat: I love that. Something that I practice is intermittent fasting, and I’ve probably done it for, gosh, I mean, almost 10 years just naturally. It just seems to be the natural way that I have the most energy and that my body likes to eat. Is that something that you’ve seen beneficial for inflammation in particular?
Dr. Cole: Certainly, yeah. It is something that I talk about in Ketotarian and The Inflammation Spectrum because of the research surrounding it. Because digesting food requires a lot of energy, somebody that has a stressed out system – or really any human under the sun that’s going through something – taking a break from digesting food can be very therapeutic. Obviously, I’m saying all of this with a balance and a grace and a lightness to this. I’m not saying start yourself. I’m not advocating for eating disorders. I’m just saying a gentle, balanced break from eating and then refeeding – and eating in a healthy, balanced way when you refeed – that is what humans would’ve done for thousands and thousands of years. But now, for most of the West, we have food on demand. It’s like we never have to take a break, for most of us, and our genetics, our biochemistry is not used to it. Our gut needs to repair; autophagy, like cellular recycling pathways, need to repair. All this stuff needs to be regulated and supported, but we never give our body a break from it. So I love time restricted feeding, intermittent fasting when it’s done in a balanced way. What is a balanced way depends on the person and what their goals are and how far they have to go into it, but it’s something that I do every day, too.
Landon: So if I’m one of our listeners and I’ve listened to this podcast and I’ve had an awakening: “So, hey, I’m suffering from some of the symptoms that you guys are talking about. I want to go home, make myself a dinner tonight that’s gonna maybe help with some of the inflammation.” What should I be cooking tonight for dinner?
Dr. Cole: So I would say a good anti-inflammatory dinner that is also ketotarian in the sense of we’re focusing on these healthy fats and clean protein and lots of greens, I would say, you could do sort of a pescatarian keto option.
You could do a wild cut salmon filet. You could drizzle extra Virgin olive oil or avocado on that. You could have – in the book I have – they’re really good, actually, they’re avocado fries. They’re crusted with almond flour and they’re baked and we have this chipotle aioli dressing. We have the healthy fats from the fish and the avocado. You can have it on a bed of sauteed vegetables, any one that you wanted. Cooking the vegetables down, having them soft, makes them more gentle on the gut too, makes them more bioavailable to the gut, so that’s a good anti-inflammatory meal.
You could have sort of a ketotarian shake with almond milk or coconut milk with some greens in there and maybe spirulina powder from an anti-inflammatory standpoint. You could put some turmeric in those, the spices that are anti-inflammatory as well. So you could have that as a dessert.
Landon: Does your book, Ketotarian, go through some of these different recipes that I could follow? If I really wanted to commit to this and really try this for 30 days?
Dr, Cole: Oh, certainly, yeah. In both the books, there’s lots of recipes, but in Ketotarian specifically, there’s 81 recipes. There’s pictures and a meal plan and all that stuff, so yeah, people can do it really easily.
Landon: So… I’m gonna go buy your book – seriously, I’m gonna go buy your book so then she cooks all the meals for me. Where am I going to find it?
Dr. Cole: You can get everything at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, any independent bookstore, too. We have the links at drwillcole.com if people want to get the links there too.
Kat: Awesome. I’m sure we’ll put them in the show notes here. I just want to say, we went through one type of inflammation on this podcast, but there’s eight different types. So I would definitely encourage everyone, if they’re interested in learning, go check out these books, where Dr. Cole really breaks down each type. He helps us with a comprehensive guide for healing and feeling our best self. So, this was so awesome. I loved this. I loved getting to talk to you and getting to learn more.
Landon: I feel like I’m the emoji right now where the eyes are open and the mind is just blown. For the last 45 minutes, I’ve basically felt like that. I’m sure a lot of people agree.
Kat: I’d love to sign off maybe with just one more tip from you. What would be your best – and this is probably too concise – but your best tip for living life organically?
Dr. Cole: Oh, wow. I would say – I say this a lot because it’s actually really true and I don’t just say it flippantly. I think that the genesis of sustainable wellness is why you’re even doing what you’re doing. All the stuff that I just talked about for the last 45 minutes: macronutrients and micronutrients and vitamins and all this stuff – all this stuff should be secondary to why you’re doing it. What’s your intention of doing what you’re doing? So I think the seed of sustainable organic living is really born out of self-respect. The analogy that I use in The Inflammation Spectrum is: if you saw yourself as a Tesla versus an old beat-up car, how would you treat yourself?
People that own the nice cars are treating it with respect. If many people see themselves as the old beat-up car, they’re not even respecting what they’re given. I think that we need to be good stewards and respect what we’re given and use self-care as a form of self-respect.
So to me, something that’s an adage or a mantra that we say in the clinic is “You can’t heal a body you hate.” Many people wouldn’t say they necessarily hate themselves, even though a lot of people actually do, but they just don’t respect themselves. You can’t heal a body you don’t respect. So that’s what I would say.
Landon: Amen. That’s so good.
Kat: It’s so good. All right, y’all, so Amazon: there’s The Inflammation Spectrum and Ketotarian. Hop on there and order those. And you said your website is drwillcole.com?
Dr. Cole: Yeah. drwillcole.com.
Kat: Awesome. Well, you’re brilliant. This was a blessing for us and we thank you so much for coming on today, and I’m sure we’ll be talking again soon.
Dr. Cole: Yes, likewise guys. Thanks so much.
Landon: Thank you.
Kat: Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier and body and stronger in spirit.
Landon: So if you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcast to never miss an episode.
Kat: And we’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juice’s Instagram. Give us a follow! Slide into our DMs with any suggestions for guests or topics that you might wanna hear more about.
Landon: All right, y’all, thanks for listening. Have a great week, and remember to be organic.