What is nutritional healing, and how can I make it part of my daily lifestyle? Dr. Michael Snyder from WellMed at Pleasanton explains how you can turn your food into medicine.
July 24, 2024
Docs in a Pod focuses on health issues affecting adults. Providers and partners discuss stories, topics and tips to help you live healthier with hosts Ron Aaron, Dr. Audrey Baria and Dr. Tamika Perry.
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Podcast transcript
INTRO
?Welcome to Docs in a Pod, presented by WellMed. Over the next half-hour, Docs in a Pod will educate you about the health and wellness of adults everywhere. Co-hosts Dr. Audrey Baria and award winning veteran broadcaster Ron Aaron will share information to improve your health and well being. And now, here are Ron Aaron and Dr. Audrey Baria.
RON AARON
Well, welcome to the award winning Docs in a Pod. Presented by WellMed. I'm your host, Ron Aaron, along with Gina Galaviz Eisenberg, who happens to be my wife. We're so pleased to have you with us. Docs in a Pod is available on podcast wherever you get your podcast. We're also on the radio in several cities in Texas and Florida. Each week, we talk about a variety of health and wellness-related issues as they impact Medicare-eligible seniors, and others.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENGERG
This is a very exciting topic for me today. Healing through nutrition, and it's not a new concept. In fact, it's been around since the late 1800s. Nutritional healing, or Ron, drumroll, you get to say the word.
RON AARON
Naturopathic.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENGERG
Nutrition is based on the principles of?
RON AARON
Naturopathic.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENGERG
No, naturopathy. The term was first coined in 1895 by Dr. John Shield to define a medical practice that brings together natural healing systems. It's not a new concept that is necessarily top of mind for many health care providers. And that's why Ron and I are pleased to welcome Dr. Michael Snyder as our special guest today on the award winning Docs in a Pod. Welcome, Dr. Snyder.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Thank you for having me here. It's a pleasure.
RON AARON
And Dr. Snyder is a physician at WellMed at Pleasanton in Pleasanton, Texas. Earned his medical degree from the Loma Linda School of Medicine in Loma Linda, California. Completed his residency at the University of California. Dr. Snyder is board certified in family practice. And we always ask our guests, what would people be surprised to find out about you? One of the things about Dr. Snyder that indeed is a surprise, not that he's an adventurer, he is. Not that he travels a lot, he does, but he enjoys handling venomous creatures like rattlesnakes.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Yes, absolutely. Trained at Loma Linda University's emergency department by Dr. Sean Bush. I have friends, doctors of herpetology. I have a degree in natural sciences that worked extensively with creatures. So, it's kind of in my nature. I caught my first rattlesnake when I was five years old, and it just all went downhill from there.
RON AARON
You grab them by the back of the head, not the tail.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
It depends on the snake, actually. If it's a goodly sized Diamondback or something like that, I always use a snake hook, but using the tail is permissible. Smaller stakes, probably not a good idea.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
Living in Pleasanton, that's what I think of when I think of Pleasanton, you know, rural and snakes. I mean, do you look both ways before you step out your back door?
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Well, unfortunately, because we're so into the habit, my friend and I, we've searched all over our property. All of our neighbors have Western Diamondbacks, but we can't find a single one. They hide from us. We don't seem to have any on our property. I'm sure they're there somewhere.
RON AARON
The word goes out, here comes Dr. Snyder. We better hide.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
That's it.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
I guess rattlesnakes do have ears.
RON AARON
Talk to us, Dr. Snyder, about how we can eat ourselves to healthier life without relying necessarily on prescription drugs.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Well, I think it's not a new concept. Hippocrates said, let your medicine be your food. Healing by food has been around for a very, very long time. I did my medical degree in a blue zone. I don't know if you're familiar with those, but those are the areas in the world where they produce people that live to be a hundred years old or older more often than the rest of the world. Loma Linda is one of those blue zones. It's heavily Seventh-day Adventist population, which is largely a vegetarian population. I was very fortunate when I went through my residency at UC Davis. They sent me to a little institute called Weimar Institute in the Sierra Mountains and they practiced the same things, healing lifestyle diseases with nutrition.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
So, does that really mean plant-based foods?
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
It really does.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
We read a lot about it now.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Yes. It really does mean plant-based. WMAR is strict plant-based. There's no animal products in any of their treatments. Their dietary cookbooks, et cetera, videos that they put out are all strict plant-based. But they have spectacular results that have been published in multiple peer-revealed journals showing reversal of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, weight loss for obesity, and even some cancer treatments.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
I'm going to ask you in just a moment how we introduce that into our diet. But first, if you just joined us, you're listening to the award winning Docs in a Pod with myself, Gina Galaviz Eisenberg, and Ron Aaron. Our podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts. Our expert today is Dr. Michael Snyder talking about nutritional healing. I like grass-fed beef, but how do I train my palate to go more plant-based.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
It's a different type of cooking. I like to say the science of cooking because it's really what it is. It requires some education. So, getting into some plant-based cooking classes can be very helpful. I see those around in different communities so there are things that you could get into having a good cookbook really is just key. There's some real nice ones out there. Weimar Institute actually puts out what they call the New Start Cookbook. It's all plant-based. There's another favorite of mine is the Seven Secrets Cookbook. They're great for beginners. They give you a lot of the tips of what you need to do to get started. I would say one of the essential tools in a kitchen for plant-based cooking is a Vitamix. You really need one. My wife and I blew through probably a dozen blenders when we first started this adventure 40 years ago and found the Vitamix and we have just last year replaced that one Vitamix lasted us for a long, long time.
RON AARON
Now Vitamix is like an upscale blender?
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
It is indeed. I put it this way to my patients. If you're thinking salad and broccoli all the time, you're going to fail. You're going to get real tired of that. So, you have to learn how to make sauces and gravies and things out of nuts and seeds. They're very hearty. They have a good deal of natural plant fats in them, so they're very tasty, and they're very fulfilling, so it satisfies the palate and helps you to be able to stick with a plant-based diet.
RON AARON
And would you consider yourself a vegan?
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
I would, yes, I would.
RON AARON
I was a vegan for a day.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
I never considered becoming any kind of plant based. When I married my wife, she was a vegetarian and I told her when we got married, well, you can eat whatever you want. You can feed our kids whatever you want. As long as I get my meat and potatoes every day, I'll be a happy camper. About six or eight months into the marriage, she came to me and said, you know, I saved about a hundred dollars on our grocery bill last month. At that time, a hundred dollars was a lot of money. And so how did you do that? She said, well, I haven't fed you any meat for the last 30 days.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
Oh, my goodness.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
She appealed to my greed, and the food was tasty. I didn't miss it at all so I've just kind of gone with it for the rest of my life.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
Huh? We're going to try that at home.
RON AARON
You don't sneak through McDonald's drive thru?
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Oh, no, no, no. The first year was a little bit of a problem driving by a Carl's Jr. or something like that. But you know, I really don't miss it at all. In fact, when you're away from it long enough, it actually has a bit of a foul smell to it so it's not the prettiest thing.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
One of our 11-year-olds, he can tell regular beef and when I have grass-fed beef. He can tell a big difference. He says, mom, is that the same kind of meat?
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Right. Im not surprised.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
We're trying to go that route. If you can't do plant-based at the beginning, is starting with grass-fed and reading the labels, is that a way to wean yourself off? Or do you say go cold turkey?
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
There are schools of thought on both of them. I think if you're not really into health and things like that, certainly the organic, grass-fed, those kinds of things start to awaken your senses and make you realize that there are healthier and better ways to eat than what is typically found in our food supply at our local grocery store. So, you start going to farmers markets and things like that. It really does awaken your understanding of nutrition. That's a good way to start. I've done seminars for 30 years and I have seen the people with the most success are the ones that go home, they throw everything out of the kitchen that doesn't belong there and replace it with a good plant base nutritional foods and they tend to have the best health results. They stick with it and do quite well.
RON AARON
You raised a question that I have in my mind, Dr. Snyder. When you say plant-based, the best of the choices, how do you know? Most of us who have not gone plant-based are concerned about getting enough protein and enough vitamins and minerals. So, how do we become knowledgeable?
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Yeah, that's again, a great question. I think of the largest land animal you can think of. Where does it get its protein? So, an elephant eats leaves and grass, it gets plenty of protein. So typically, in my world, we don't really think about counting protein. It's just in everything. It's just that we don't go for a concentrated source of protein that you would find in fish or chicken or meat, dairy products and things like that. We find that the body doesn't really need that. And so, it's a bit of a misnomer to think that I have to have so many grams of protein. No, what we really teach is to eat a rainbow. When you look at your plate, it should have as many different colors on it as you can and you should try to eat as many different colors every day that you can. That way it ensures you that you're getting all the essential amino acids and the proteins that you need to thrive.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
When you talk about the Vitamix, I'm thinking sauces. Is that also key in helping you make this transition? I'm thinking about it really, really seriously here.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Absolutely. When you get yourself a good cookbook, like Seven Secrets, it will teach you how to use your Vitamix. How to use cashew seeds to make the most savory and wonderful, satisfying gravies and sauces, alfredos and things like that. You can make that strictly plant-based. They're very tasty and very satisfying, and we need that. We need to have that kind of food or we're just not going to be happy with our diet.
RON AARON
Alright, now stay with us just a minute. I'm going to find out if out of your kitchen, you cater and deliver because you make this sound so tasty. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the award winning Docs in a Pod. Our podcasts are available wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ron Aaron, along with Gina Galaviz Eisenberg, and we're talking to our very special guest today who is really giving us the ins and out on moving into a plant-based diet, healing through nutrition, Dr. Michael Snyder. You're listening to Docs in a Pod.
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GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
Thanks so much for staying with us on the award winning Docs in a Pod. I'm Gina Galaviz Eisenberg, along with Ron Aaron. We're continuing our discussion on nutritional healing. Dr. Snyder, type 2 diabetes. How can a plant-based diet manage that? Is it something that, if you go this route, you won't have any issues any longer.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Well, I think it's important to realize that even in a plant base, we're still going to do some modifications with simple carbohydrates. Along with plant-based for diabetes, I'm going to tell you to avoid simple carbohydrates. So, it's going to be anything made with sugar and anything made with flour. That's the obvious. I mean, we're trying to keep our blood sugars down and under control. My goal with my diabetics is not to just control their diabetes, but to reverse it. That's where the plant base comes in. What the plant base really does is that while our bodies are so efficient at absorbing calories, when you eat the standard American you know, steak platter or whatever, you're going to absorb about 95 percent of those calories. But when you eat a plant-based meal. There's so much fiber in it and the nutrients are bound so tightly to the fiber that you're only going to actually absorb about 70 to 75 percent of the calories that you consume. Lets say you do a 2000-calorie meal, nobody does that very often, but that means you're going to absorb 1900 calories of the standard American diet versus 1500 to 1700 calories with a vegetarian diet plant-based. So, that's a huge advantage. What that does is cause you to lose weight. As you lose weight, your hemoglobin A1C goes down and you become more insulin sensitive. That's really what we want. One of the pillars to understanding this is that diabetes isn't necessarily caused just by the sugar. It is plugging up the body's machinery with fats and protein, so that insulin cannot be properly uptake in the cells, meaning that our glucose is going to go up in our blood. The high glucose we see with diabetes is the result of diabetes, not the cause. So, plant-based gets right at the root of what the cause was, and we're starting to reverse that.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
How many years are you adding to someone's life by going the plant-based route?
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Oh, that's a fabulous question. If you look at the blue zones, Loma Linda University did a study on the it's the Seventh-day Adventist health study. The initial study was released back in the 80s and it was based on, I think it was about 10 years of data through the 70s. And what it looked at was the exact question he asked, how does plant-based help us live healthier, longer? Those kinds of questions. What they found in the initial study was that the average Seventh-day Adventist lives six years longer, healthier, than the average American. That's quite an improvement. This is now an ongoing study and actually, I'm a participant in that study. It's been going on ongoing for years and years and years and what they're finding. This is probably more like 12 years longer and much healthier. They're not suffering in those extra years with lifestyle diseases that the average American is. They're living healthier, clear-minded, active, mature adult lives.
RON AARON
And again, for those who may have missed the opening, blue zones are areas of the country where people live to be 100 or so.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Yeah. As a matter of fact, I actually had a professor when I was in medical school who was in his late nineties, still out mowing his yard. By the time I left Loma Linda, he was 104 and still active, keeping up the landscaping. Just a wonderful man and very healthy and he attributes it all to his lifestyle.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
Ron and I are older parents and our oldest is 12. So, I need to add some years. I want to keep my mind active and alert and I want to be around maybe 112. That's my goal. I haven't told Ron yet.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
There you go. The thing about it is, I take care of a lot of older folks and commonly when we start seeing them in their late seventies and eighties, they're just getting tired of living. They're not happy with their health. When you have your health, you have everything. So, if we're going to extend our life 10 or 12 or 15 years or longer, what's the point if we're going to be suffering that whole time? If we're going to be able to live active lifestyles with clear minds, good meditation, good strength, being able to get out of doors and do things, that's a life worth living.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
Is 70 or 82 too late to start?
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
No, it's never too late to start. I've seen people make drastic changes and wonderful improvements in their lifestyle, even in their seventies and eighties.
RON AARON
A lot of us, I happen to be Jewish, grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. If you didn't have meat on the table, it wasn't dinner, it was a snack. For many, Italian, Hispanic, you name it, meat was such an important part of growing up. You're really swimming against the tide if you're saying, look, you need to go plant-based.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Well, I grew up in the same kind of household. It was meat and potatoes every night and so I know what you mean. It was a gigantic change for me, but it was done so easily because my wife had tricked me into becoming plant-based. I didn't miss it. I just went with the flow, and it worked. It worked out great.
RON AARON
You said for a month, she was making dinners that were all plant-based and you didn't know?
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
I didn't know and I didn't miss it.
RON AARON
I don't need your cooking, we need your wife cooking for us.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Yeah, she's a wonderful cook, but I've learned from her. I'm actually a pretty decent cook myself, and I love to cook, so it's a lot of fun. I've actually held cooking classes with people, teaching people how to cook this way, so it's a lot of fun.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
Where can we find this in Texas, in San Antonio, where we're based? We're not that far from you.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
That's a great question. I hope to be able to gather a little steam where we can find more interests locally. In our little town here in Pleasanton, there's really not much. It's hard to even find a restaurant with vegetarian options, although there's a wonderful Mexican restaurant down the road. That has a little vegetarian section on their menu. It wouldn't be the first time I lived in a town and that didn't have vegetarian options. By the time I retire, I hope to have many vegetarian restaurants here locally in the area. You're right. We live in ranching country and it's different. People aren't familiar with it so it can probably be a bit of an uphill. I think that as people realize the benefits in health and living longer, healthier lives, that people come around.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
I would imagine your inflammation and your joints and your fingers and things that ache, that's gone.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
I have a program, I set people on that course and when they come back for their follow up, that is one of the most common things that I hear people say. I'm sleeping better, I have more energy, but I cannot believe it how my aches and pains are so much better than what they used to be. And you're right. It's because the inflammatory factors that we consume in a standard American diet are gone in a plant-based diet.
RON AARON
Yet we read so much about, for example, fish and salmon, that you need those omega-threes that come from salmon. You can't get it from plants.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Well, that's not actually true. You can get some chia seeds in a coffee grinder. Grind up your chia seeds and put them over your granolas or cereals or pancakes or whatever you're having, or you can mix them in your pancake batter. They are very high in omega-threes. So, it's really easy to substitute omega-threes with plant-based.
RON AARON
So, what it really is, is education. We don't have that education. You're one of the few providers that I've had a chance to talk to. I'm sure you didn't get all this if you went to some of the other medical schools around the country, and so a lot of these doctors are swimming upstream when it comes to plant-based diets.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
I would agree with that. There's a competing interest to with the meat-based Atkins type diet. The nice thing about the plant-based diet is there are no adverse side effects. They're all good. You're going to lose weight, your diseases are going to improve, you're going to have lower blood pressure, your arteries are going to improve. Whereas with the Atkins and other types of high-protein, high-fat diets, youre suffering with increased risk of kidney failure, heart disease, and so forth. I know that'll stir up a few folks, but it's just really what the studies show.
RON AARON
In your diet, I'm assuming eggs are not in there either.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
They're not, but I will tell you, I am not really an ethical vegan. I'm doing it for my health. If I'm traveling somewhere, I'm at somebody's home and there's a little cheese or a little eggs, I'm not going to make a fuss. I'm going to eat it and enjoy it. But in my home, we're vegan.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
I wish we could have a radio cooking show. That would be terrific. Don't you think?
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
It would be kind of hard to describe.
RON AARON
Well, I dont know, you paint a pretty good picture with what you're talking about. I've got a good friend who went on a month-long vegetable only diet. What he discovered was that it's boring unless you reach out and expand the vegetables you eat.
DR. MICHAEL SNYDER
Yeah, it's true. And that's why I say if you think salad and broccoli is a plant-based diet, you're going to fail. You got to understand the science behind plant-based. You have to know how to make creamy sauces and cheeses, substitute cheeses, of course, out of these sauces that are tasty, palatable, and give a richness to the diet. It is really very easy to do once you learn, you have the tools to do it, which makes it so palatable and worthwhile.
GINA GALAVIZ EISENBERG
Well, the challenge is on and we're going to have to have you on again talking about this and we'll give you an update, but we're out of time. Thanks for joining us today on the award winning Docs in a Pod. Thank you so much, Dr. Michael Snyder from WellMed at Pleasanton. I'm Gina Galaviz Eisenberg along with Ron Aaron. And in the words of the late Charles Osgood, I will see you on the radio.
OUTRO
Executive producers for Docs in a Pod are Dan Calderon and Lia Medrano. Associate producer is Cherese Pendleton. Thank you for listening to Docs in a Pod, presented by WellMed. We welcome your emails with suggestions and comments on this program at radio@wellmed.net. Be sure to listen next week to Docs in a Pod, presented by WellMed.
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This transcript is generated using a podcast editing tool; there may be small differences between this transcript and the recorded audio content.
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