Part 1: The Importance of Proper Nutrition and Product Certifications with Amber Lynn Vitale, BA, CN
The world of dietary supplements, organic and non-GMO foods, and nutrition can be complex and confusing. People are often left with more questions than they began with when beginning to research “how to get healthy.” Are we able to trust every claim on the label? Is it really that important to find whole food sourced supplements and organic food? Where should I look to find TRUSTWORTHY information?
Meet Amber:
On this week’s episode we talk with Garden of Life Regional Educator, Amber Lynn Vitale. Amber is a certified nutritionist, Ayurveda specialist, and many of her years of practice have been in conjunction with functional medicine specialists. Amber and Ed speak about the importance of critical thinking concerning supplements, the benefits of whole food supplements, and how a consumer can cut through the marketing and find effective products that will be beneficial for their health. Part 2 of this conversation will be available next week!
Some Points We Discuss:
What questions should we be asking ourselves as we consider what is going on with our health and how to optimize it? (5:00)
Where do we start looking for quality nutritional products? (13:40)
Some Key Takeaways From This Episode:
We really have to get back to this concept of critical thinking to figure out what is going on with our health and how to vet products to help us along the way. (7:05)
The difference between shopping online and shopping in a store where you actually have people to talk to about making your choices and that's extremely important. (14:22)
Healing is as much an art as a science. (19:33)
Products + Resources:
Get Social with Amber:
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Brian Strickland 00:43 Hello, friends and welcome back to another episode of the Holistic Navigator Podcast, where we believe in the body's ability to heal itself. I'm Brian Strickland, the producer of the show. And today we're talking with Amber Vitale. Amber is a certified nutritionist, and is currently serving as a full time regional educator for Garden of Life. We're really excited to have her on the show today. And this is going to be part one of a two part episode. So stick with us. And without further delay, we're going to go ahead and jump right into the conversation. So here's your host, Ed Jones.
Ed Jones 01:21 Thank you so much, Brian. And I want to say something about today's episode, I am really excited about the guest that we have on. I've actually spent time with her in one on one while she was teaching many of my staff members. And before I introduce her, I want to say basically what the topic will be about. You know, anyone who's listened to me or has certainly been around me for anything more than a few months, years or decades, realizes that I have a lifelong passion for the respect of the human body for self healing. And also know that we don't just get that self healing from just hoping we'll be better. We have to learn, we have to take actions, we have to do the proper ethical, wise steps in order to create health and sometimes to regain health when we have lost it. Well, there's one segment, of course that everyone knows that I'm passionate about also for my personal life, and that is, you know, after I've done the exercise, and when I've been eating the healthy foods, when I've made the wise choices, I'm a supplement guy. I truly believe significantly in the power of the right supplements. The catch is that you know the old saying let the buyer beware what I have just thought of five minutes ago is let the Googler beware because it's so easy to be taken in by the slick marketing of companies today because of technology. And because of the tremendous amounts of ease of packaging the way a product looks and reads and talks and speaks. I mean, they can all look like they are a miracle substance and they're not. And we have a you know really great safety track record of nutritional supplements. But that doesn't mean that you're always getting the most effective, the purest, the one that has the least contaminants. So for the to let the buyer beware you have to know how to really think and process the and come to the conclusions that this is the stuff that I want. And I need. And maybe these other ones aren't because of some red flags, yellow flags. Well, today I've got Amber Vitale, and welcome Amber.
Amber Vitale 03:51 Thank you so much Ed. I'm really happy to be here.
Ed Jones 03:54 I met Amber a couple months ago and she is very, very highly skilled. I was so impressed with her knowledge base, her experience. She is a certified nutritionist, and ayurvedic specialist, a very advanced body worker and yoga therapist since 1996. And much of our nutrition practice was in collaboration with functional medicine physicians. And if you hear me on almost every podcast I talk about, I truly believe that the future of medicine is under the heading of functional, which means you actually look for the reasons that someone is ill instead of patching them with symptomatic treatments. And since 2008, she's also produced and written video educational content for many publications, as well as her own clients. And by 2012 she had realized that raw material sourcing, labeling transparency, legitimate certifications and educational support were the criteria that would set quality products companies apart from others. You know, just let's just start this conversation. Why or how does a person even start to think about this project of putting together the right trust in the right products? How would they go about doing and thinking about this?
Amber Vitale 05:13 Right? I mean, I think, you know, you mentioned all the other factors that are so important, you know, how is your sleep? You know, how was your childhood? Have you had a lot of antibiotics? You know what is your external environment, what toxins you're exposed to, like, every person who is having a health issue has to consider all of these factors. You know, I feel like, what, what really helped me with working with clients was being able to distill all that and find what is that person's single, or maybe a couple things that are the source of the problem? What is what do all these symptoms have in common? Okay? You're a diabetic, okay, you know, you have fainting spells, okay, you're tired, okay, your brains not working. You know, conventional medicine treats all these things as separate things, even when you get a diagnosis of type two diabetes, you're being told it is a thing, and it's not it's many things, and there are many sources, many origins. So first, I think as a, as a customer, patient, consumer client, you know, a really want people to critically think through what exactly has maybe contributed to their health or their disease, you know, and what, how are they unique? You know, we have this great thing called the internet. And as you said, you know, beware the Googler, because, you know, the first thing that people pop up on is they tend to believe, and you certainly should not do that. Look above, look below, look side to side, look all around, go on the other side of the fence, you know, if you're political, go to the other side of the fence, find out what they're doing on that side. What are they saying on that side? You know, it's the same with supplements and sourcing. If you want to know if your animal protein has GMOs in it, find out what country it's from, and go find out about agriculture in that country. You know, then you'll pretty much know what's going on. So we really have to get back to this concept of critical thinking. And that applies to our supplements, you know, there's a lot of bad press right now about a reasonable amount of bad press about isolated, synthesized, laboratory created supplements, and them not, you know, working as well as we had hoped or thought that they were. Well, it's not really a surprise, you know, we're made to eat food, and our nutrients come in food packaged differently. But what's great is there's so many innovations today. And I know you see this new carry these in your store where they're putting supplements back together like food or getting them directly from food, and the body responds better. And the research really has shown that over decades that it will respond better, it's just now we're finally getting there where we can see that. So I just encourage people to say, I always say, what would my ancestors do? You know, really think about how the human body functions and has for much longer than these last 100 200 years. Number one, you know, we just never got things in plastic packaging. So how can that possibly really be good for you, and if it is, and in a tub or a tin or something like that, you know, is what's inside really representing food as best as it can? I love supplements because they helped us optimize our health even you like you were just saying after I've exercised, after I've slept, after I've eaten right, I want to supplement that just makes the supplement work better. When people are busy. I just saw mom today in the co op where I shop and I do a working shift. And she's a new mom and she's just like I don't have time to eat as well as I used to. She had an arm full of you know, greens, powders, collagen, you know, multivitamin, magnesium, because she's trying to do exactly that supplement, where she cannot, she doesn't have the time or the wherewithal or the knowledge, you know, or the support to actually eat and exercise and sleep the way that she would want to. The supplement helps fill that gap.
Ed Jones 09:08 Wonderful explanation. And yes, filling the gap is a good word for that because I'm not one I've seen the mistake of people over the decades where I can take the right supplements and do everything else wrong and I'll stay healthy. Well, it just doesn't work that way. But if you're if you need some modest support, because your life is too busy, you don't have the ability to do some of the things right, it will give us some insurance and build up some real resiliency within the system. And I do believe heavily that father time is the most damaging effects that we will have with life if we live long enough and we don't get you know, accidents or some terrible disease that wasn't expected. Father time is what takes us down and that needs to be addressed on an what I really consider an anti aging protocol. Now I'm like you, you know there are a lot of people don't know this. And when I talk to people, sometimes every single day, they will say, you know, I need a good multivitamin, what do you recommend? And I always say the same thing. I'll always kind of explain so what you got two different ways or classes of nutritional supplements today, you've got the older version, which is isolated, and mainly more mostly synthetic. And I said, that doesn't mean they're bad. And we get a lot of medical research that backs up the effects, the positive reasons to use them, right. And we've all used them, I still use some of them. However, if you're willing to open their your your mind to a whole new concept, we have the ability today to make supplements, almost all of them from actual foods. And I said the body loves to see food, it doesn't see it as a foreign, it doesn't see synthetic, it gobbles it up because it thinks of it just like food. And I said the downside, they cost more money. Yes, they do. The upside is you usually don't burn them, you don't have the gastrointestinal distress. You don't see them in your urine, right? You don't see him in the urine, all of that. And so, you know, most people that rosette resonates with him when they understand that this makes sense. And really you I use the word ancient wisdom. And I've fact written a lot. And I use that over and over that if you go back to the feelings of what ancient wisdom would have told us about a question about health, you're generally going to be right. And the thing is, though, again, what I'm wanting to kind of get back to this, how does a consumer really navigate through this complex world, because first off, they don't have the most people have the time or even the desire to do a ton of homework. So somewhere in the next are the ability or the ability to do it. Because even homework, I mean, you're still looking at slick stuff as far as it's being written and, and put on the screen. And in and I have a spoke many times that I have a BS detector that's really good these days. But I've been getting along. But that's right. Well, you know, you and I both have been doing this a long time. And it's like any skill, the more you do, the better you become. So it's easy for me, I can pick up those little bit of red flags, yellow flags, and kind of know real quickly but the consumer can so what how and, and I know that you are worked with garden of life, and I'm really respect that company for the homework they have done and the ethics and the integrity that they present in their products. And you know, it's easy in this industry, many times, we tend to sometimes attack nutritional companies that have become really big. But in this case, I don't have anything negative to say, they have just risen to the top with almost every single aspect of what a good human being would want to do if they were actually owning this company, and offering because what we're doing is we're not offering a commodity like your air filter in your house, we are doing things that are going to change people's lives, potentially for the better if they do the right thing. And if they do the wrong thing, here's what happens, in my opinion, if you do the wrong thing, you're going to waste some money you're gonna have, you may have a belly upset, you're not going to hurt yourself significantly. But because you're not getting a positive effect, you are hurting yourself, because you're not getting what could have been happening. So tell me a little bit more about what a consumer would start, you know, how would they start coming to terms with this if they don't have a trusted individual to speak to about?
Amber Vitale 13:50 Right, I mean, first do no harm, right. And I think that is where you know, even when people are walking into a natural food store, and they're confused by everything, they're saying, well, sometimes you just have to try it and see if you feel better. And they may not want to hear that answer. But realize it's it's unlikely to harm you. And it's something that can make you better and when you have a trusted source, you know, like your store, you know, it's they have a place to come to and say, Well, I'm not sure and they can discuss with you I think it's really important to have people to come to this is the difference between shopping online and shopping in a store where you actually have people to talk to about making your choices and that's extremely important. I think when you know, when we are looking at, you know, what class of multivitamin mineral do I need? For example, don't you think that it has so much to do with the state of your gut microbiome? I think that this is really what it has come down to is that if you are really if you've had a lot of damage to your gut microbiome via antibiotics, stress, other medications, you know, alcohol, I don't know, you know, there's a lot of things that can really destroy it over the years, you may have also along with that a lot of food sensitivities and they may be ongoing. In other words, you may be sensitive to something at one moment and then not and then sensitive to something new because your gut lining is not in full integrity and foods that you eat a lot of, if you eat particular thing every single day, like most people consume wheat every single day. This is why so many people have wheat or gluten intolerances because it's sneaking into their bloodstream and causing an immune reaction. And so if you have this leakiness, the foods that you enjoy the most you may become sensitive to and if you get a supplement made from foods, you may be sensitive to it. And I've actually seen people with even with our my kind multis get what they thought was a niacin flush, which is more of a phenol sensitivity, which I saw a lot in autistic kids because of their gut microbiome and not having the proper enzymatic pathway support to process what we should be getting as nutrients from our plants. And so I always back people up well, if you really have a lot of gut damage and a lot of immune conditions and inflammation back to off of that and get you maybe into the vitamin code line where it's sort of pre digested and an external microbiome and vats of yeast and bacteria that you incorporate these vitamins and minerals into them first before you take it in. But if you're really, really super sensitive, because those products still have some vegetable and fruit powders in them, some people need those isolates. They need a white powder that doesn't have anything else in it. And they need to really have it sort of titrated and monitored to their needs. This is what a practitioner is really helpful for. And they need sort of one vitamin at a time to figure out what helps and maybe even one vitamin group at a time, you know, or one mineral at a time. Take it easy way for your body to give feedback. If that doesn't work, set it aside, try something else you may be able to get to it, you know, the whole food vitamins, they work really well on that. And when I mean that, I mean they're made from plants. They work really well optimizing people's health, who are already, you know, eating organic, who are already eating a lot of plant food in their diet whose bodies are adapted to that if you've been on the standard American diet for a really long time, and your gut is a mess, you know, that might not be the best first step for you.
Ed Jones 17:31 I love that that is such a great perspective that I think very few people ever hear or would even think of because so many individuals, you know, really still don't know the impact of the gut microbiome and what we call leaky gut. In fact, one of my first podcast on The Holistic Navigator was myself and a nurse practitioner who works together we work together for clients and patients and it was on leaky gut and it's not a day goes by that I don't have a comment about that to at least one or more people because I tell them they'll come in and say, you know, all these different foods are bothering me and all every time I you know, eat this and this but then three months ago something else was bothering me and then my immune system and my joints and my this and that. When I explained the philosophy of what happens when the gut has been damaged, where the tight junctions have opened and you're allowing bigger molecules to float in and the immune system sees as enemies and attack certain things I said it makes good sense to even the individual who has not studied this. And I love the fact that you said you know even with supplements, they could be going through those big holes and then causing a reaction from the body and we may need to take a step back and firstly, take more of a look at the gut lining and help to to alleviate and help offer the body the repair mechanisms for that before we really get into you know more of the superfood supplements or we can start with the basics. We can maybe go back to some of the just the plain isolated nutrients while we're also helping the gut because we don't want to just keep dragging things on and on because I mean some nutrients are going to hopefully help people to convert food to energy quicker which means a little more energy and maybe calm their nervous system and and and. This is where of course we go back to that term functional medicine. You know, healing and you and I know you agree with this most likely healing is as much an art as a science. Now there's a blending of the two there's no doubt. But you know that just the things that you and I have spoke about tells you why that your conventional health care practitioner will never be able to entertain these kind of thoughts because you're only given seven to eight minutes with them. We've already talked for 20 to 25 and we're still not even done. And this is on one single topic.
Amber Vitale 20:04 Exactly. And they don't I mean, what what, what did they used to say, when you came in you said I read about this thing called leaky gut, they were like, I think you need an antidepressant, you know, which interestingly enough, you know, is anti inflammatory. And so kind of helps for a minute, but then has its own side effects. And, you know, that people were just not believed, and these these vague, shifting symptoms that are changing all the time, you know, oh, well, just a hypochondriac, you know. So if you're listening right now, and you have vague shifting symptoms, you know, you're not crazy, you're really not. And luckily, I think even in conventional medicine, they're starting to recognize that there's really something going on there. You know, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue were considered basically something akin to hysteria, you know, really in in our career, right, you and I, both during our career, they used to be considered something that was medical by anti anxiety and antidepressant medications. Well, and now they're recognized as being something you know, that's truly based in inflammation. And in talking about ancient wisdom, ayruveda, which precedes Chinese medicine, even but both of them talk about the gut as the origin of health and disease. It all starts in the digestive tract, from your mouth, all the way to your anus, everything in there plays a role in your overall health. And so what would make the difference more than anything else, what you eat. But even the person who's eating the most, and I call it you know, there's this new term orthorexia, right, the most Orthorexic diet, where you're saying I'm doing all the right things, I'm eating all the right clean foods that I should be eating, should be adding in quotes here, because different diet for different people. But if you're stressed out, you're not getting the benefit of all that food, you know, you're not getting the benefit of all that money that you put into buying organic, all that time that you put into preparing things at home. If you're still under stress, and you're not sleeping, that alone wrecks the gut lining, and affects the microbes that live in your gut and affects the signals that they give out to the periphery. And so it comes back around to how do we help people manage stress. And I don't know about you, but I'm fascinated, you said anti aging, I'm so fascinated with the whole Blue Zone concept, and not as sort of a marketing tool, but really looking at where do people live long and strong, and cognitively functioning into their 90s and hundreds only, you know, one day they fall asleep and they just die in their sleep. But that's it, there's no long decline of chronic degenerative disease. I don't want to get old if I'm chronically declining, you know, I want to be living every moment. And not be trapped in a body with a mind that is disabled or sharp mind in a disabled body simply because I didn't take care of it. This is what we really need to focus on. Because we have, you know, decades to look at just in this generation of what people have done to maintain their health. And it has so much to do with their social setting, their physical setting, their toxic load, their attitude, the sunshine exposure that they get, and the food and the quality of food. They're not taking supplements, we're doing that to try to emulate living in a Blue Zone and living a Blue Zone lifestyle. You know, so those supplements that help us to reduce stress. This is sometimes where we have to come in and really intercede and say well, okay, you know, you can't just force someone to not stress. Don't be stressed out, you know, go to sleep, you can't force them. It doesn't work. It's like forcing someone who's depressed to exercise. We know that exercise is as good if not better than any antidepressant. It's been proven, but you can't duct tape a person to a treadmill and make them exercise. You know, so how do you supplement to get people to a point where they feel better enough to implement strategies for health that come out of the blue zones in the world? You know, nicoya, Costa Rica, Okinawa, Japan, Greece, Sardinia, Italy, you know, Seventh Day Adventist communities Loma Linda, California, these are all places to look at plus lots of other pockets around the world. This is where true anti aging comes in.
Ed Jones 24:23 Well, you certainly hit the nail on the head. And in fact, I do a radio show, partnering with a physician that is sponsored by a hospital here locally and I did a thing just two weeks ago on Dr. Gupta, who traveled to do two different spots on the earth that were the people had a history of exactly what you're speaking about long lives. Very, very active until the very end, almost no heart disease, very little cancer, their teeth are still in their mouth. They never go to a doctor and they certainly don't have Walgreens and they're doing is you know, just the kind of life we would all want on a physical basis, as far as aging. And one of the things that, you know, came about from a lot of his questioning is, of course, they have a tight family community where they feel very secure and very happy in their community. But secondly is over a period of a year that eat a very large variety of foods. And I don't know the number, but I would say the average American probably eats no more than 10 different foods in a given month, different types. I mean, if you ate french fries one day and a baked potato, I call that one food. But, you know, they ate up to 200 different foods in a period of a year. And you know, it kind of stuck with me. So actually, today at lunch, there's a place that has called Tai Chi, and you can pick out all the things well, I ended up picking about four more than I normally do. But I am a person who still has a huge variety, because, you know, the colored vegetables and the phytochemicals in these foods is the magic, it is the elixir for helping support our body. The reason these foods have colors is because those kind of phytochemicals was put into that plant to keep them disease free. Well, if we eat them, we're getting some of that same benefit. And I you know, I've always loved Weston A. Price, because of course, he was the dentist who traveled, you know, I think in the 30s or 40s, and took 10,000 photographs of people who had no tooth decay had very little disease and had a very primitive diet of healthy fats and healthy raw and even cooked foods. And it was the way that the Earth was is built to supply us with what we need.
Amber Vitale 26:39 And that doesn't mean that hamburger every day, you know that just because they were eating animal products, doesn't mean they ate them every day. And I think that's really important to note, you know, you ate things as you had them. If you had a goat and you slaughtered it, you would eat parts of it today, parts of it tomorrow, you know, parts that you know, and you'd finish it up. But next week, you might not have a goat, you know, you know it would be it would be varied like that. And what was amazing about that was like the first book and my first nutrition class was what was it native nutrition? Is that was that the name of it? Yeah. And you know what, as soon as people trout, so say a young man in that tribe with perfect teeth, perfect health travels out to an industrialized city, in his own country and spend several years there eating processed food, and then comes back and takes a wife and has a child, that child all of a sudden their dental arch is is smaller, it's narrower, their teeth aren't coming in straight. This then changes how they can chew traditional foods, that changes the nutrition that they get, the density of their bones, their ability to be strong. It's created a certain level of inflammation. And this was all observed by Weston A. Price but now we have really scientific demonstration of these transgenic effects of what. I was blown away because I do everything, everything for my kids right. You know, I'm fully Orthorexic right about how I have you know what I give them and thank God because my son has asthma still, even with everything that I tried to do for him, and I think what would it be if he if I didn't do all that? Well, you know what I learned in, Oh, gosh, I'm gonna have to thank Kate Shanahan right, Kate Shanahan is that her name? Dr. Kate, she talked about the transgenic effects of smoking. So because my mother smoked, and my father smoked. Even though I didn't smoke, the next generation gets the brunt of that. So my son has asthma, it skips a generation. You know, what we do now affects our grandchildren. Like if you don't care about you, you know, care about your children, care about your grandchildren. They are not getting a good headstart, if you aren't taking care of your health. You're not creating a good family lineage if you're not taking care of your health.
Ed Jones 28:58 Well, that's certainly one of the wisest things, and I hope people who are listening and I think we do have an audience that would be joining us in that belief, or they wouldn't be hearing what we're saying. You know, we do live in a society that is not really helping to educate people on this concept, especially younger people. We do have a medical system that tends to try to make us believe that they have to fix it and the magic pills. And we can just continue on as long as we go make our visit and we get our piece of paper and we run to the drugstore and we mask a symptom. I mean, look at of course we know the difference in many people are starting to know, but it's still a very frustrating situation. In fact, last night, I had dinner with a president of a nutritional company who flew in here from Texas. And he was very interesting because sometimes I think that I am kind of alone out here, but I'm actually not when I start talking to other people who really get around. Well, his company's has explosive growth over in, in other parts of the world. And the reason is he said the the Middle East and India expecially have a like a three tier system, you have a pharmacist, you have an in between person is more like a nutritionist, and then you have a physician. And they he says that the reason their supplements are selling so much these days, because the prescription is the very last thing they give anyone in all of Middle East and or India because the public understands that that's not going to fix them. And we're talking about, you know, I don't know enough about history in that culture to really, you know, I tend to like all people just assume certain things. I had no idea that they were so into, you know, functional medicine, that's what it really is, even if they may not have that word. And they're not just people who have read a few books. I mean, we're talking, these are people who really know their stuff like you and I do. And it was very exciting for me to hear because that because it is there is hope that the pharmaceutical companies are not going to own us and because of people like us and others, many others who are speaking the truth. Because once the truth is spoken anyone has a history of experiences in the medical community, there's they then they can realize the broken system. In fact, again this morning, I talked to a lady who came in and said her husband had colon cancer four years ago, he passed away two years ago, and she said these exact words to me. She said, I had no idea how bad that system was of medical care until I went through it with my husband. And I said, You know, I hear that so constantly, because they package themselves so well that from the outside, it looks very efficient, it looks like it's gonna work. And it does work in car wrecks, it does work in bed infections, but in trauma and trauma, but in the chronic disease category, it is dismal is absolutely dismal. Because the third leading cause of death in this country is prescription drugs that are improperly prescribed and improperly taken based on the books, and yet is still the third leading cause of death. And you know, I had a cardiologist named Decker Weiss, he came here and spoke to a packed house of 100 people in our that's all the room would hold. And he said something that was so hit me really in a great place because he was thinking the same language that you and I do. In fact, he's the only cardiologist in the country that also has a naturopath. And he said that Wellness Centers who offer you know, the kind of options that you know I'm involved with, and you are and things will become the Primary Care Center for people who are knowledgeable, instead of the mindset to the Walgreens instead, when they have an allergy attack, or they have diarrhea or they had this or that. They're going to learn, they're going to learn that these are safer remedies across the board. It does take a little bit of knowledge because they're not so super regulated. Like they'll have a label that says quite as informative as a drug, because that's just the way the system works. But we have enough based on things like the internet and good sources that you can learn pretty quickly. If you got really bad diarrhea, what would be the best thing to take? Well, you know, I take charcoal, but there's, you know, it's easy to find those things. So I guess you feel the same way. And I you know, I love your analogy of your son because we can do all the right things. And the thing to me is when we do all the right things and you still have an issue or two, it always goes back to what if I didn't do what I've been doing? How bad off would it be when the chances are it would be far worse off because you're not hurting and with toxic drugs. You're trying to support him as best you can with all the therapies and therapeutic nutrients. And again, going back to you know, how does the consumer make the wise choices? Well, you know, this is part of it. They listen to people who have history like you and I do.
Brian Strickland 34:05 Alright folks, that's gonna wrap up this week's episode, but be sure to tune in next week for the second half of this interview with Amber Vitale. And as always, if you enjoyed the show, if you learned something new, please consider going and subscribing and leaving us some feedback that really helps us out helps us spread the word about the podcast, and hopefully impact some lives in the process. Thank you so much as always for listening in. Have a great week everyone and we'll see you next time.