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This is the first of a four-part series written by Dr. Shane Speights, Dean of the NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University. Dr. Speights believes diet, activity, sleep and mental wellness are four areas of your life that you need to pay attention to every single day. He writes about diet in this first contribution.

Dr. Shane Speights, Dean of the NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University

Remember, we’re all human; it’s unlikely that you will adopt all of these recommendations, but you need to start somewhere. Pick some easy “wins” at first. Also, you need to set goals on adding more of these approaches to your diet over time. Like, literally put reminders in your calendar over the next year or so.

Trying to lose weight? Rule #1 – you didn’t gain your weight over a period of weeks or months; it is inappropriate to think you should lose it in that time period. Actual, sustained weight loss is something that happens over years through lifestyle change. Your goal should be to adopt changes that will help you live longer and healthier; in doing so you will likely achieve whatever your healthy weight will be.

Diet:

The Mediterranean Diet is hands down the diet that has the most medical evidence and research in terms of living longer and living better. Unfortunately, it’s not the easiest diet in terms of cooking at home, but there are some general parts of the diet that everyone can implement almost immediately.

Basically, you need to eat more fresh/raw fruits and vegetables, beans, grains, oats, nuts, and fish.

“But Dr. Speights, I don’t like any fruits, and I don’t eat vegetables……”. What are you, four? Want to feel better, live better and longer? Figure it out.

I understand you may not like it all (I still hate mushrooms, sorry mom), But I guarantee you that there are fruits and vegetables out there that you would be fine eating. Seriously. People that live the longest and healthiest typically eat primarily plant-based diets (potato chips don’t count – nice try).

Stay away from processed meats (lunch meats, packaged/cooked meats, etc.). Limit red meat to about two servings a week and make sure it’s lean red meat when you do eat it. By the way, red meat includes pork and lamb.

Higher amounts of red and processed meats have a link to increased risk of colon and gastric cancers due to the nitrate/nitrite content, especially in people under the age of 40. There has also been links to increased heart disease and Type II Diabetes.

Fish is good for you, especially those with higher amounts omega 3 fatty acids, just make sure the fish doesn’t have high amounts of lead or mercury (be careful with canned tuna).

Can I take Omega 3 fatty acid supplements instead (fish oil capsules)?

I don’t recommend it. Recent students have shown that fish oil supplements have a link to an increased risk of atrial fibrillation (a common irregular heartbeat in the elderly that can increase the risk of stroke). Strangely, the risk was only associated with the fish oil capsules, not eating fish oil naturally through your diet.

A quick word on supplements – your body is not expecting to get its nutrients through a pill (i.e. vitamin or supplement). You need to work to get all your vitamins and nutrients through your diet in a natural form. We are finding out that there’s more to it than just packing a vitamin into a pill form.

There was also a really big study on vitamin supplements looking at: did they live longer, have less heart disease, less dementia, fewer cancers, and several other diseases, the answer was “no”. It didn’t protect you from anything. If you get your vitamins and nutrients in your diet, taking supplements doesn’t help you.

Is there ever a reason to take vitamins?

Yes, if you are unable to get your nutrients and vitamins through your diet, then the pill form is better than nothing. Just understand that you are likely not getting the full effect. There are also some diseases that require a higher amount of a certain vitamin than you can get in your diet.

The USPSTF looked at 84 studies involving over 700,000 patients. No benefit in preventing cancer, cardiovascular disease, or death.

Chicken is OK, but there is new evidence that you may not want too much of it either (more than two chicken breasts a week may increase the risk of gastric cancer). But it’s still early in the research to know for sure. Grilled better than fried (sorry Colonel).

When you look at your plate, meat should only take up a quarter of it. The rest should be plant based. Potatoes are good for you. Not sure why they got such a bad rap, but they are filling and have plenty of vitamins/nutrients (especially eating the skin).

Breakfast should be the largest meal of the day, and it should be early (before 8 a.m.)

You are literally killing yourself by skipping breakfast. I’m amazed at the number of young patients I see that don’t eat their first meal until the afternoon.

Here’s the deal – you use (and need) most of your energy during the day, not giving your body what it needs until noon is a bad idea. Some data has linked eating breakfast to weight loss, but it appears to be more about eating your largest meal of the day before 3 p.m.

  • Examples: Fruit, yogurt, eggs, oatmeal, granola, cereal (minimally processed).
  • Limit: Ham, bacon and sausage (processed meats – specifically the nitrates/nitrites)

Yeah, it’s true that highly processed foods are not good for you, but most all foods are “processed” to some level. Basically, if it tastes really good – packaged cookies, candy, cakes, donuts, chips, etc. then it’s probably bad for you (although the industry is changing, for the better).

A minimally processed cereal is like plain corn flakes, plain cheerios, plain rice crispies, etc.  Start reading labels if you don’t already. Try to stay away from ingredients you can’t pronounce or need a chemistry degree to understand.

Eat a medium sized lunch. If you prefer to have a larger lunch than breakfast, that’s OK. You just need to make one of them larger than dinner, and you don’t need to skip breakfast.

Dinner should be your smallest meal of the day, and it should be earlier (the earlier the better, no later than 7 p.m. – or at least three hours before you go to bed). If you skip any meal, dinner is the one to skip – but I don’t recommend that from the mental wellness aspect.

Dinner is typically when everyone is home and can sit down together. Those connections and conversations are really important, remember mental wellness is just as important as your diet.

In the South, we typically eat our largest meal at dinner. The issue is that we usually hang out on the couch or go to sleep after that and those calories just “sit” there.

It’s really tough on your gut, increases the likelihood of reflux, constipation, and has links to higher “all-cause mortality” – that means a higher risk of death from any cause.

Rule of thumb: Generally speaking, the earlier the better on when you eat breakfast and dinner. When you eat, and how much, really matters in your overall health.

Intermittent Fasting:

If you are trying to lose weight (based on recent numbers 40% of the U.S. population needs to), the single best way to do it is by changing the timing of your meals – intermittent fasting. It actually works. I was suspicious at first (I’m a skeptical optimist at heart), but now there is really good data to support it (27+ research studies). To be clear, I’m not an advocate for skipping meals, but I think the timing is important.

How does it work?

Everyone is a little different but generally speaking your body stores glucose (sugar) in your liver and keeps about 10-12 hours’ worth that is used for all your bodily functions. After the glucose stores are all used up, your body switches to a less efficient way to produce energy – ketosis, and burns fat until glucose arrives (AKA you eat again).

Please understand that ketosis is not a good state to be in. It’s not how your body would prefer to burn energy; it’s a backup process to keep you alive. But if you need to lose weight, this is probably the easiest way to do it while you are changing your diet and increasing activity.

There are different approaches – eat for eight hours, fast for 16 hours; eat for 10, fast for 14; eat for 12, fast for 12; etc. The longer the fast, the more fat burned.

Basically, if you can take in your last calories of the day by 6 or 7 p.m., then not take in calories until breakfast the next day, you’ll lose weight.

You should try to stay away from sodas, energy drinks, diet drinks (the latest research on artificial sweeteners is not good). Or at least limit them, and work on getting them out of your diet.

What about the diet sodas?

The issue is the artificial sweeteners they use. Data now says they mess up your gut bacteria (big deal), can increase cognitive decline, and increase the risk of diabetes.

It’s actually a tough substance to study in the population, and to be transparent, some studies have shown no link at all. But based on everything I’ve seen on these the past several years, where there’s smoke……

What about cane sugar?

It’s still sugar (aka sucrose = 50% glucose + 50% fructose), but it’s probably the lesser of two evils.

Is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) bad for you?

It depends. HFCS is made from corn, and the chemical makeup is variable, but typically 55% fructose and 45% glucose. Your body uses glucose as its main energy source, and it is used by your cells all over the body.

Fructose must be broken down in the liver first before it can be used as energy. This bypass of the main energy producing step (glycolysis) can contribute to higher amounts of fatty acids and triglycerides (higher risk of diabetes, obesity and fatty liver disease). The issue is more around the amount of sugar you take in (from any source).

No caffeine after 3 p.m.

The half-life (how long it takes your body to break down half of a drug) of caffeine is anywhere from two to 12 hours depending on how your body processes it. The average person breaks half of it down in five to six hours.

That means that if you have that coffee at 3 p.m., then half of the caffeine is still circulating in your body around 9 p.m.

Caffeine absolutely interferes with REM sleep. I’ve had patients tell me they can still sleep after drinking coffee, and that may be true, but they are screwing up their REM sleep and not hitting deep sleep – this can lead to chronic fatigue, anxiety, depression and worsening of chronic pain symptoms.

Coffee good. There’s been some really good data on the benefits of drinking coffee (two to four cups before noon), but not all coffee is the same. These studies are referencing plain black coffee, not the 2400 calorie coffee with caramel, three shots of espresso, and whipped cream (That’ll be $9 and your first-born child please).

Coffee can cause reflux, but they make a low/no acid coffee that works great. If you drink coffee, and have issues with reflux, making this switch can be really beneficial.

Drink more water:

The average person in the U.S. is 1.2 liters short on water intake each day. Based on limited data (see video below), you should drink 11-15 cups of water a day (men need the higher end).

If you wait until you’re thirsty, you’re already behind in your water intake. Most people underestimate how important water intake is in bodily functions. How much water should we really drink? This is a great YouTube on water intake.

Eat…your…food…slowly…

This is actually harder than you think, just try it. Take a bite of food and chew it up. Before you put another bite into your mouth, completely chew and swallow the first bite.

When we don’t completely chew our food, we miss out on vitamins and nutrients in the food that are not broken down by stomach acid and the normal digestive process. Don’t believe me? Corn, nuts, blueberries, I’ll stop there.

Alcohol (don’t shoot the messenger):

There is no safe, or healthy, amount of alcohol.

If you want to be as healthy as you can, you should drink none or limit your intake to just a few drinks a month (yes, per month, and preferably not all at the same time). Also, try to have that drink four to five hours before you go to bed (that’s the half-life of alcohol).

Based on the latest evidence (see links below), there is no benefit to drinking alcohol. This has changed completely just in the time that I’ve been a physician. I used to tell my patients that no more than one drink a day for women or two drinks a day for men was fine and had some evidence of health benefits.

That older data was re-examined and found to be flawed. Newer research tells us that alcohol is toxic to your cells, and damages pretty much every organ in the body.

Alcohol interferes with sleep, increases the risk of dementia, heart damage, cancer, auto-immune disorders, and it makes reflux and chronic pain worse. Unfortunately, a recent report showed that alcohol related cancer deaths have doubled over the past 30 years.

“What about those people in France and Europe that drink wine for every meal?”

Yeah, that’s not working out well for them. Their pancreatic cancer rates are increasing significantly. They also have a big study showing that across Europe their dementia rate is higher for those that consume alcohol.

“But it helps me wind down from the day, and I sleep better.”

There is something to be said about “taking the edge off” after a long day, and there have been articles that speak to that piece. However, it doesn’t help you sleep, that’s a misunderstanding. You may actually fall asleep sooner, but alcohol actually interferes with REM sleep and prevents the body from entering deep sleep (when body repairs occur). Regular alcohol intake is one of the big reasons people are chronically tired.

What about red wine?

This one is a mixed bag. We do have evidence that red wine specifically has chemical components (antioxidants) that are good for your heart, however the actual alcohol molecules in the wine are also toxic to your cells (including heart cells). On one hand it shows some protective effects, but on the other it has the same issues other alcohols have – dementia, cancer, etc.

My take home on red wine – if you want to drink an occasional (one to two times a month) glass with dinner, I don’t see it shaving years off your life. But don’t drink red wine thinking that you’re making yourself healthier. An extra walk around the neighborhood will do you better.

Here are all the references on alcohol: