6 Ways to Cut Through Nutrition Contradictions

Nutrition contradictions abound!  I was frustrated by all the contradictory nutrition advice when I first started exploring health.

Eat lots of meals per day or just two?  Are eggs healthy or do they cause heart attacks?  Should I skip breakfast or is it the most important meal of the day?

To be honest, it caused major information overload and stress.

Even after years of research and evaluation, there are still conflicting views to sort through, but I’ve learned a few things that make the process easier.

The truth is, no one has it all figured out and we all continue to learn as we go.  It’s all about direction, not perfection.  The great news is, you can get just a few basics right and make tremendous progress.

The most important thing is to get started.  Begin to take steps to the best of your current knowledge.  Then as you dial in what works best for you, consider these 6 ways to cut through nutrition contradictions.

Good nutrition is about direction, not perfection. Share on X

1. What is your body telling you?

Listen to your body by paying attention to how you feel in the hours after you eat.  Connect the feeling with the food.  Be sure to take note of allergies, cognitive ability and chronic conditions.

This is probably the most significant lesson I picked up from my own wellness repair.  I was terrible at listening to my body when I first started.  I simply had not learned how.

I failed to fully grasp the idea that ALL food initiates a cascade of responses.  My daily intake was the standard American diet of processed convenience food.  I should have taken note when the weight began to go up quickly and I developed high blood pressure, acid reflux, fatigue, anxiety, mood swings, allergies, acne and food cravings.

I thought those were all just natural parts of aging because most people around me were dealing with the same issues.  That was a mistake.  I wasn’t listening to my body.

The truth is, my body was precisely following the instructions I was giving it with food.

I learned through experience that it is NOT normal to feel agitated, stressed, sad, bloated, tired or low-energy. It is NOT a person’s genetic destiny to be fat.

It’s difficult to accept that at first because it puts the responsibility on us to change our health.  But it’s also liberating to know we CAN take control and make meaningful changes.

What is your body telling you? Connect the feeling with the food. Share on X

2. Is the person giving advice an expert on making people well?

Diagnosing and curing are not the same thing.

Every day, sick people go to a conventional doctor seeking to get well.  Patients expect a doctor will determine the cause of the problem and offer a treatment to cure them.  But the truth is, conventionally trained doctors are taught to diagnose a disease and prescribe a drug to manage symptoms.  Medical doctors receive no training in nutrition and almost none in endocrine (hormone) function.  No slight is intended whatsoever to conventionally trained MDs.  Nutrition simply isn’t their area of expertise.

On the other hand, functional medicine doctors are often classically trained MD’s that have gone on to get additional training in nutrition and the endocrine system.  Their focus is to find and treat the underlying cause of disease with the idea of curing the patient.  The goal is to NOT have the patient need to take a drug, especially when a dietary change will do the job.

Many functional medicine doctors have blogs and podcasts where they interview scientists and doctors who are spearheading scientific research.  A good example would be Dr. Amy Myers M.D. who specializes in treating autoimmune diseases and has a podcast interview with Dr. Tom O’Bryan who specializes in non-celiac gluten sensitivity and celiac disease.  Dr. Tom (what he prefers to be called) organized an international summit on gluten sensitivity that gathered the foremost authorities in the world on that subject.

Moving over to the fitness realm – Getting ripped and getting well (or healthy) are not the same thing.

Any fitness trainer can tell you how to get lean and build muscle.  But some fitness advice can wreak havoc on your endocrine, adrenal, nervous and immune systems, making you much more susceptible to stress or disease.

I try to find where the most effective fitness trainers and functional medicine doctors align.

Is the doctor recommending treatment getting people off medication and seeing patients get well? Share on X

3. Is the advice effective?

Functional medicine doctors have patients that recount their experience online.  I like to see lots of folks commenting that the advice worked for them.

I copied a random comment from Dr. Amy Myers blog.  Giora wrote, “After 12 years on Armour (last daily was dose 90mg) with several failed attempts to stop the medication, I can happily share here that my body, given what was needed, has cured my thyroid. I have now been 8 months medication free, without any symptoms whatsoever, (itching, hair loss, mucus, fatigue and a general feeling of fatigue and functioning at one hundred precent – similar to a car running on 2 pistones instead of 4!). I have done it gradually with Wholistic Medical Nutrition that provides the body the much needed “raw Material”, including supporting the Hypothalamus.”

Dr. William Davis is a cardiologist that advises patients to eliminate all grain from their diet.  He regularly posts patient testimonials that describe how just eliminating grains reversed a disease… and oh by the way, happened to also result in dramatic fat loss.

Consider also that there is no system in place to funnel patients to functional medicine doctors.  There’s not a lot of money to be made prescribing diet changes vs. permanent drugs.  Arguably, the success of a functional medicine doctor depends entirely on the efficacy of their advice.

Typically, good advice will improve how you feel.  If it doesn’t, either move on or investigate further to find out if the advice needs to be implemented within a context.  For example, eliminating processed food will make anyone feel better because chemicals in processed food harm beneficial gut bacteria.  But the effect is only marginal unless the individual also eliminates other sources of harm to gut bacteria like antibiotics (whether via meat or prescription) mercury, BPAs, NSAIDs (like ibuprofen), GMOs, alcohol, smoking and gluten.

Evaluate health advice by the number of healed people sharing their results. Share on X

4. Have they had their own successful health journey?

Read the person’s story.  Did they successfully lose weight and get off medications?  Did they reverse a major disease?  Have they maintained their health?

I think it’s fair to consider an advisors physical appearance and health when they are making health and fitness recommendations.

This may sound harsh but it’s a realistic line of thinking.  Does it make more sense to listen to:

• an obese MD that tells patients type 2 diabetes can’t be cured and puts them on a drug for life ~ or ~
• a ripped MD with functional medicine training that reversed his own type 2 diabetes and now helps patients do the same every day with diet?

Go with the doc that reversed his own type 2 diabetes and helps patients do the same daily. Share on X

5. Are diverse fields of expertise finding the same thing?

When advice is truly healthy, it tends to produce benefits across all scientific, medical and athletic disciplines.

A pharmeceudical drug may change a blood marker in a beneficial way, but no nutritionist will tell you that you are suffering from a pharmaceutical  deficiency.

No one is suffering from a pharmaceutical  deficiency.

I like to see consensus forming among physicists, biologists, chemists, doctors of all specialties, nutritionists, farmers, olympic trainers, researchers – and most of all – patients.

Good health advice tends to find consensus among all sciences AND in patients. Share on X

6. Questions to ask about research studies and papers

Interpreting research is tricky business that would take volumes and greater expertise than mine to communicate.  But I can point out some of the considerations.

There are different kinds of research and each has it’s place.

• Review papers – draw on prior research to form their own broader conclusions
• Original research – anything based on a researchers original finings
• Experimental studies – the only type that can establish potential causation.  Randomized control studies are a type of experimental study.
• Observational studies – often criticized for inferring causation from correlation when they should not.  These include cohort, case-control and cross-sectional studies

Who funded the research?  If the sponsor has a financial interest in the result, it is probably best to seek a less biased conclusion.

Does the study actually say what is being asserted?  Sadly, commercial entities routinely fund research studies that yield negative results.  Typically, they either don’t publish the negative result or else they cherrypick one aspect that isn’t so bad.

Were there enough participants in the study to overcome the margin of error?

Was the study short or long term?  Sometimes a study is not long enough to produce a reliable result.

Was the study done in vitro (in humans) or in vivo (in animals)? Results in animals do not necessarily apply to humans.

What was the methodology?  If not double-blind or placebo controlled, the result may not be dependable.  If meat was involved, what was the diet of the animals (determines whether the fat is inflammatory or not)?  If vegetables are involved, are they GMO, bathed in pesticides or organic?

Is the test measuring blood markers or disease outcomes?  Be wary of results based on blood and urine tests alone.  If measuring lab work for a segment of population, did the people measured have healthy gut microbiomes from eating clean or were they eating a standard American diet?

Is the risk being reported as absolute or relative?  If a treatment reduces the risk of disease from 2% to 1%, that would be a relative risk reduction of 50%.  It’s sounds impressive but doesn’t mean much.

And finally, how do the conclusions compare with other reviews?

Studies are vital, but you don’t need to chase every piece of advice just because it is based on a study. Treat studies as one factor in your overall evaluation.

Studies are vital, but the clinical observations of doctors are also powerful evidence. Share on X

If you don’t know where to start

Here’s a checklist that holds up in light of the latest research and the recommendations of functional medicine doctors, olympic level trainers and nutritionists.  I put this PDF together to help with wellness, fat loss and fitness.  All of the items can be tried within 24 hours, so you won’t spend years experimenting.

By the way, it answers the questions about number of meals per day, eggs and breakfast.

Download: Day 1 Checklist for Wellness Repair

Also, I publish articles every week on health topics I have been researching.  If you would care to see what I come up with, just subscribe to my email list.

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