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Host: Gianna, Welcome to the Lifelong Wellness Podcast, Living Your Best Life. Let me start by asking you, at what point in your life did you decide it was time to live a healthier lifestyle?
Gianna: Thank you for asking. Well, I once go to the gym. I’m a person of a certain age I remember when the gym kind of became popular in the ’80s and we had all those little leggings and workout outfits but that was really not addressing what we need to do now that we’re older. So, my moment came. As I was 41, I started to write a book about looking good over 40, and then I began to not look good over 40. I started putting on weight rapidly, and not only just putting on weight but just becoming tired and more tired and more tired until I was so tired that I could barely get out of bed. What I do is see doctors, “what’s wrong with me?” and they can’t really tell you anything’s wrong with you, specifically. They want to give you lots of medications and that was ‘89. My intuition was screaming. I should not be taking medications that are not for anything specific to diagnose them. I just had a weird sense about what these doctors were up to. I just keep searching and searching for answers which took 4 years and 18,000 dollars of going to endocrinologists to trainers and following fitness people. All of those were dead-end roads. Most fitness people are on steroids that they don’t tell you about. They make a lot of money by pretending that they are in such amazing shape all year round. Even the endocrinologists just want to put you on. My book is called “Why American women are so fat, sick tired, and angry?” I took that title from the literal language that went to myself and other women who are feeling. When you have those three symptoms, the doctor is just going to prescribe you Wellbutrin, Synthroid for your thyroid, phentermine, Adderall, and things that will suppress your appetite. They never look at the root cause.
Host: What effect that these medications have on you when you took these medications?
Gianna: You are getting to a point that you are desperate. I used to be friends with this woman that was on fax business and it’s in their contract that they stay a certain size in their hairs, certain weight, and everything. They have this big secret doctor that lives out in Long Island. She said that “You have to go to Dr. Kumar and I’m like, okay, why. This woman knew I was suffering for years. She had a baby at 42. It was a very tough age to lose baby fat and she did it in six weeks. So when she came to see me and, “My God what did you do? I went to Dr. Kumar, I told you about him. No you didn’t tell me about him”. It was a strange way she delivered it. So I drove all the way out to go see Dr. Kumar and all he does is give you phentermine, metformin and he promotes that Medifast boxed foods like protein shakes and cup a soup crab and we get to have like one salad a day or real food. I was desperate by this point. I took the phentermine and then they tell you to eat a thousand calories a day which you know, as we know now isn’t really safe. It’s not really helping you because it’s better to fast than to eat low calorie because what it’s going to do is lower your metabolism. I took the phentermine and it’s mind blowing how it really completely shuts off all hungers. So when you are eating your thousand calories a day, you’re forced feeding it and it’s weird. I only did it for about two weeks and it starts to wear off. It wore off in the middle of the night, one night. It was like it’s four in the morning and I was just ravenous when I got up. I’m in the dark but I go to my kitchen to reach up into my cabinet for one of the Medifast candy bar things, you know these so called protein bars. As I reach up, I believe that I fainted. I don’t know what that thing is but that is my guess and I crashed down to the floor and I bashed my skull off the wall and it was just terrifying. I never took a drug ever again ever since that I have ever taken a drug. I was like; this is just not worth it. I couldn’t imagine what it is doing to your system.
Host: So that was my next question. My next question was actually, what was the catalyst for you and that was your catalyst- falling down, knocked out, unconscious at midnight, or later than that, alone at four in the morning. That must have been very scary for you?
Gianna: It really was. What if I hit my skull hard? What if I got a concussion? What if I passed down? What if some weird angle you hit the counter or you kill yourself. I just kept searching and searching and then a wonderful woman crossed my path, who, in a very casual conversation started to talk to me about my liver health, my gut health and my hormone health. She was saying things I have never heard that really made sense. She was a gal like 46 and she is a lesbian, a lesbian couple. Her partner had just had a baby at 46, and they only bring it up because it’s very difficult to lose weight at that age. She was telling me how her partner lost like 60 pounds, I don’t remember the exact months, but somewhere reasonable but quick, maybe in the 68th month range. So I thought that was amazing, so that very day I threw out what she told me to stop eating and I purchased what she told me to eat and that week I lost seven pounds and I thought, “Oh my God, it’s totally amazing, pleased to lose all those weight”. It can happen all the time. I didn’t know then what I know now. It’s a lot of water weight but it’s sure nice to see that scale move.
But most importantly, I had been taking a low dose of antibiotics. I had chronic acne through my 30’s which I thought came. Originally I had someone in my life died and it was very stressful and I thought that’s when my acne came. But then it never left. My own mother had chronic cystic acne in her entire adult life. I think until she was post menopausal, and again, I didn’t know then what I know now. When I look back at my own mother’s diet, no wonder she had acne and rosacea and she was obese. She is miserable and she smoke and all kinds of reasons for her poor health back then. I thought, “Oh my God this is hereditary to me that I was going to have the acne and be fat”. My acne cleared up in two weeks after nine years. That’s nine years of living your life feeling ugly and embarrassed and introvert in your personality because you just don’t feel good about yourself and it’s really just such a tragedy.
Host : So, it’s been close to a decade if I am not wrong that you have been beginning
Gianna: Since the beginning and I am 52 now. I didn’t know that this had to do with menopause until I stopped my cycle which was at 46. Then I started to put the pieces of the puzzle together with the weight gain and the symptoms then the doctors want to put you on the HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy). I went to a thing called Body Logic where they do the bioidentical hormone actually I listened to Susanne Summers on the Rosie O’Donnell show and I was like 39 or something or maybe even 37. I thought why I don’t have this problem but she sounds like she knows what she is talking about and I’ll just do whatever she’s doing. By the time I was like 43 or 44 I was like “Wow, maybe this is my hormone”, and to say that to myself was to acknowledge that I was getting older. That was very unpleasant. I don’t have children so just to be getting older is kind of a different concept than when you are heading to the grandma years but I said “Okay”. I got her book and I read it. I did not agree with anything in her book and by this time, I was a little more educated and I just don’t think you need external hormones for what is completely a natural life progression. So my research just became more and more intense. I finally found some doctors very deep into the internet that said things that made sense. When I was sitting across that Body Logic Endocrinologist who is a nice guy but I said what are this going to do for me I don’t understand what hormones were or what makes the hormones. They are not going to tell you that. They are not going to tell you where they come from. That they come from horse urine, pig things, and all these weirdness that even the bioidentical ones which people are saying “they are natural” even the fact that they are still bioidentical. They do the same thing and that is, once you start using fake hormones it shuts down your real hormone production and I don’t want that. The longer you are on any fake hormones, the greater your chances of cancer is. I tried to tell the ladies who are fighting a natural physiological function of shutting down your reproductive system and you are putting in these hormones that are trying to keep it from shutting down. I think cancer is a pretty logical outcome that we are going to get so it didn’t make sense to me. So when I ask this Body Logic Doctor what they are going to do for me, I think I was the only person who ever asked him because he was like a deer in the headlight with no answer. I bet that is true because when I hear it from women especially my own mother has hysterectomy and we had a conversation just recently she cannot remember many years ago. When I asked her about being in the hormones she was on the good old fashion hormone replacement therapy and she is 72 now it happened 30 years ago. I said well you know she did it for 15 years and I said why did you keep taking them and this was what so many women say “Well they just kept giving them to me. Well they didn’t make you go to the pharmacy and get them” Women are now intimidated to question doctors.
Host: We have a trust with them. They built a trust with us and we trust our doctors to guide and to tell us things that will give us a healthier life. You’ve answered so many questions I had for you already.
Gianna: Oh good. I told you I can talk.
Host: It’s awesome.
Gianna: It’s been a remarkable experience that women don’t question this. When I told you, I think, I was the only one to question that in a way he did not respond. What is even the more fascinating is in 2017. I’m always looking to be wrong like because of this doctor, trust for a long time but not anymore especially the last two years. I am always like I am not a doctor but I am huge researcher and I’m a complete nerd about looking at this and I follow many doctors, blogs and podcast and things. I want the right information to share with women but so far I haven’t been proven wrong yet. I love to be wrong. A doctor I spoke with who is a retiring 35-year old OBGYN had a conversation with me like two and a half hours when he found out what I do and he told me I was right. He said if he was not retiring I would never tell you this but he didn’t care anymore. He said “I don’t have the time nor the inclination to sit down with the women and go through all the different aspects of menopause. I would rather be getting back in surgery that’s where I make money”. In 2016, John Hopkins University studied 5 thousand OBGYN residents, questioned them about protocol with women with menopause and only 20% of them had any training. This is an OBGYN so that 80% or 4,000. Their answers were, “I am not comfortable working with women in menopause”. I asked the ladies to ask themselves, is this somebody you want to be treating you? Because they are not going to tell you they do not know. They are going to do what the drug representative came and told them to do. I don’t know how much you want me to tell you but intricately, when you take HRT (hormone replacement therapy), when you are taking it orally the progesterone changes when it gets metabolized by your liver. It renders it to be useless with changes to different metabolites. Then you are just taking estrogen and now you don’t have progesterone naturally or a Miss Magic pill to oppose the estrogen and you will still going to be estrogen dominant. First time ladies that also do what I do but they say that every woman in America is estrogen deficient. It’s a misnomer because just because your estrogen has lowered doesn’t mean that you don’t have enough. If you are overweight in the United States you are estrogen dominant and you have enough. The back-up plan is the adrenals. If you keep your Adrenals healthy then you have Mother Nature’s plan for producing enough and the right amount of estrogen to prevent heart attacks, to preserve your bone health, to prevent osteoporosis, you do not need something external. Make the focus on your Adrenal Health. Not just your immune system, your Gut health, and Liver health. And boom, your problem is solved. You do not have to go to the pharmacist once.
Host: Well, you have transitioned into technical speaking and technical terminology. Menopause is great and for our listeners it would be a good time to talk about. What to expect while going through your mid 40’s and menopause? How to maintain a healthier lifestyle without those medications if possible?
Gianna: If you are doing it right, it should be uneventful. There are many women that say they felt nothing and why isn’t anyone focusing on them because there is no money in it. You know why you wouldn’t ask somebody if they are successful in something you want to do. It mostly begins with the gradual or it could be rapid the weight gain. Your clothes are getting tighter, you get your first hot flash. Wow, did I just get a hot flash? It is such an awakening that you are becoming an older woman and if you don’t know what a hot flash feels like. You could remember a time when you may have thrown up those moments right before you do when your body gets hot and flashed, that is a hot flash.
Host: So that is how it feels like. Okay.
Gianna: It can be a few seconds and it can last for a couple of minutes. Some ladies report them to be longer. I have not combat hot flashes entirely but I do know they are exasperating when I eat excess fats, spicy food, or drink alcohol. A lot of that has to do with your hypothalamus that controls the temperature of your body that is just something to be aware of. How you could prevent this is by taking efforts to maintain a lean natural weight. You are not estrogen dominant. I am sorry but I just really fee strongly when you get older, you cannot drink the way you used to. They are really empty calories that are very toxic to your liver. Your liver health becomes very important so I take milk thistle for my liver health. The better you get your liver working and your gut health too. When you have your gut microbiome healthy, that’s the epicenter or the messaging center for your hormones, so it’s going to tell the right hormones to fire. I just did a fantastic video yesterday. As it’s getting cooler now since it’s post Labor Day when we were taking this. You have to go into your closet and that every woman fears. The first time you are going to put on jeans like we haven’t worn jeans all summer. Okay what jeans are going to fit, not only did every pair of my jeans fit, but there is a pair of jeans that I purchased in 2005. When I purchased them I couldn’t button them but I could almost button them. I never told a lie every woman told this to herself, “I am going to get into these”. They were really cool jeans and I just wanted them. Then I got to where they fit and I can button them but the design of them, they are slimmer in the thighs. I couldn’t bend my legs and I couldn’t wear them out. Yesterday, I was like let me try what’s going on with these jeans. Now I am 52 and I purchased these jeans when I was 38. Yesterday, I put them on, not only did they fit but they are too big that I had to wear them with a belt. They look amazing like what they called the boyfriend jeans where you have this skin tight jeans for women but you can get those boyfriend jeans that are a little bit slouchy and loose and comfortable. That’s what the fit was and I was just like that was to me such proof and research that what I am doing for menopause, which is just food, mineral supplementation and lifestyle in the plan because I am thinner now at 52 than I was at 38 and I was not even fat at 38.
Host: If our listeners feel that this might be a little unbelievable, why don’t you see Gianni’s pictures before and after pictures on her website at giannamiceli.com. You mentioned your videos you just did one recently where can we watch those?
Gianna: Yesterday, I was only able to upload my video. They will be everywhere, but I like to stylize them and put those you know about the topic above and below and I have to break it up into smaller segments. It is a podcast. I do have a podcast too which you can reach if you go through every favourite station and get to my website. You can subscribe on ITunes ditcher. I am everywhere. I am in my 10 different platforms. If you just Google me and put podcast you will find it. I haven’t uploaded it yet but that’s coming. I would like to do video everyday especially this is Menopause Awareness Month. I really want to take advantage of these hashtags and things like that and see what kind of radio shows and things I can get on as well as it’s getting on whether there’s attention to it.
Host: You are so extremely knowledgeable about living a healthy lifestyle during menopause. You have done a lot of research. You know so much and you shared it as well on your podcast.
Gianna: I really have. Right now I have my book too.
Host: Yes and that was I’m going to get through. You have also shared all that knowledge in “Fat, Sick Tired and Angry”
Gianna: Why American women are so fat, sick tired and angry which Amazon does not allow me to advertise because of the word “fat”, and I’m adamant that I am not going to remove that title because if you’re poetically correct like “I don’t need the ladies that don’t care that they are fat because they are not for me.. I’m looking to help the women that are sick and tired of being fat and they exist. I actually have two books. That is the physical book around Kindle. In my weight-loss program, I have another book that is a wonderful e-book like forty pages, and that is “The Ultimate Guide to Hormone Replacement Therapy, Bioidentical Hormones and Natural Remedies For Menopause” because if you go to a doctor, and you know it’s a decision every woman has to make. It would be my advice not to take these drugs but there are so many women that do. It’s a billion-dollar industry. If you are even on the fence, you need to read this book because there are so many factors that go into whether you should or should not take them, like your age and you are smoking, it’s very much like if you have a heart attack risk, like you should not take contraceptive pills. They are really just contraceptive pills amplified. They have different levels and they the patch to different things. You should really read this book to educate yourself before allowing one of those people in white jacket to talk you into this.
Host: I believe on the cover of the book is your before and after picture, right?
Gianna: Yes.
Host: So we can see you on your website, we can see you on your book, we can see your pictures and you look great. You’re 52, you look like you are in your early 30’s. You look fabulous. But here’s a thing. What I see is superficial. I am seeing it on the screen. How do you feel though, imagining a healthier life. Living a healthier life, how do you feel on the inside?
Gianna: You know, at 40’s, just before I lost this weight, I was still so tired and when I lost the weight, what happens, a lot of women this age don’t want to work out or they are looked down upon, but when you feel good, you have an energy like I have to work out so at 46 right after this weight, I was finally happy. I was so joyous like it was so long. I was living in Vegas and I was looking for, I don’t want to go to a gym and just lift weights and that kind of stupid stuff, that stupid bike. I don’t want to be by myself with the gym with my ear buds on wasting myself but I found this incredible interval training gym and some cool people I knew that I thought were cool. They go to this gym. So I joined this gym. It’s a gym with no mirrors, hard cement floors, you get gritty and sweaty and you’re doing crazy. It has cross fit components but it’s not cross fit. It’s interval training, weightlifting and cardio. The man that owned it under that becoming a Nike Master trainer. Well, I have gone there for two and a half years. This guy was incredible. And here’s a thing like when you schedule a class, you tend to show up more than if you’re just going on your own. It was nice that we all knew each other in the same class and it was fun. It was like gym class again. It was so fun like when you know, when you are a pre-teen and you were just kind of get interested in the opposite sex, you kind of get competitive. I work at home so it’s the only time I ever heard anyone even say my name, I like to go and instantly, from the energy of that gym. I had no workout background, but they were doing a 5k public collar run. I joined in the team. I want to be part of the crew so I joined the team which is a three and a half mile run and not a big deal. I was 46 and had never run ever before.
Host: You are not a runner, okay.
Gianna: I have probably run at eight grade. It was the last time I ran.
Host: Alright. Okay. Wow!
Gianna: I felt so good and because I’m with these new fun people. When you’re running with people, you tend to make more efforts to keep up. I ran the whole thing without ever stopping. The fact that I was fast, but hey, I did not stop.
Host: And you completed the 5K.
Gianna: You cannot buy that pride.
Host: You can’t.
Gianna: You cannot buy with physical health. So then, we’re doing the Spartan race that I don’t even know what the Spartan race was but I had a good time at the contest.
Host: What is this Spartan race?
Gianna: The Spartan race, oh my goodness. The Spartan race is one of those 35 obstacles. Have you seen those rims?
Host: Through tires and lifting stuff and going through
Gianna: Tons of crazy stuff. So here I was. It was a very serious athletic endeavour. In Vegas, it’s an hour north of the strip. It’s in the real desert, not some fluffy desert. It’s a real desert with sand dunes so I entered it without really knowing what it was. And once you start, it took me three and a half hours. It’s eight miles in the sand and I believe it was April so it was hot and you’re running and jumping. At one point you were on your hands and knees in mud. You had to go under a piece of wood in filthy, dirty water, and once you go through that mud, you still have to go and it’s baking into your skin. It’s quite a challenge and I did it. You jumped over fire. At the end then you get a medal. It’s something you can’t buy it, you can only earn it. Now that Nike Master trainer guy, he too, he’s running around the world. It was like the one of the greatest jobs ever. I have no idea when he gets paid. But since it was a Nike commercials and promotions, one of them, he was in England with like 200 guys in their 20’s and just like a 5-minute commercial, “we’re going to show you what it’s like to go through a professional athlete’s physical training”. This guy was the alpha male. Everywhere he goes, how much in this video and I see him in the video. These 200 guys in their 20’s are doing the same things we did in that gym. And I was like, I was doing professional athlete workouts? I didn’t know that so it makes you feel really good about yourself. And even just two weekends ago where I live, I went on a hike with my gym here. I go to a similar kind of gym. This hike was not a hike. It was a climb. I put my jug. It was 10 pounds in a backpack and it was a straight up climbing for like an hour and a half. You can’t turn back. Once you get started, you’d be embarrassed number one, and no one’s going to go backwards with you. This is a hike where every step you took, you could fall and be in danger, so you have to be really, really aware. I thought I was going to be dead the next day because it was so much like pushing with your arms and pushing with your quads. I didn’t feel a thing the next day.
Host: Really? You don’t feel sore, you didn’t sleep in?
Gianna: Nothing. That is good eating, good self care, just feeling good and I get a physical once a year. To be my age and had zero inflammation markers, that’s really neat. We have talked about it’s great to be fit. It’s great to feel good, but the labs don’t lie.
Host: It’s true. Gianna what advice would you give to us over 40’s who want to start living a healthier lifestyle but just we can’t find the time, you know our kids, our jobs. How do we start? How do we do it?
Gianna: We have to make the time. We have to prioritize because if you ignore the signals your body is telling you, which the fat I had. I posted a question on Facebook once. Would you want to get rid of your symptoms more or your fat? A lot of Ladies wrote, “If I get rid of the fat I get rid of the symptoms”. But it’s the opposite. Really sad, Fat means that there is trouble. When your liver and you are eating things that your liver cannot process, it has a two-phase processing system and so a lot of foods need co factors, vitamins and minerals. If you do not have those like processed foods, your liver cannot process it. It’s going to store that toxins in a fat cell because its job is to protect your organs. The fat is secondary to the malaise. I will tell you one thing I do. I don’t know anyone else who does this. First thing I do when if I work with you, I have video about this too. I think I talked about it in my book. I do a thing called, “Checking under your hood.” There’s a talk I give that I call “how to bullet proof your health and how to bullet proof your income by bullet proofing your health”. If you cannot get out of bed unless you have money that works for you what are you going to do. If you even have that kind of money who wants to get sick anyway. There are 5 things you can do:
You can go to the health food store and get PH test strips. Test your saliva and urine there’s a little chart on the bottle. You want your PH to be always between 6 and 7. If it’s too low or too high it’s interesting to eat a meal and check two hours later and see how that meal affected your insides. Depending on what your PH is too low in your saliva you are not creating the secretions and the digestive process that serves to that. If it’s too low in your urine, your body is not digesting protein properly and if that is happening, you’ve got foods fermenting in your gut because it’s not digesting properly and you are going to be on the road to an autoimmune disorder. These things take years to develop and for ladies especially. You know how ladies are always cold. If you take your morning temperature like 5 days in a row. As soon as you wake up you take that temperature and normal temperature is 98. 6F. Many women are 96.8 and they don’t remember that it is inverted. That is a very low temperature. It may not sound much.
Host: What does that mean?
Gianna: That means your thyroid is sluggish. Your thyroid operates every cell of your body; your muscles, your brain, your heart, your digestive and I am missing one right now. If you have a bum thyroid of course you will not feel well. If you are going to the doctor. All that they are going to do is to put you on Synthroid. Now I have a friend and she has a very serious Hashimoto’s and she doesn’t want to go in drugs. She did go for a very low dose of Anavar. I am like why is every woman on Synthroid and not the Anavar because she feels good. Not only she said Hashimoto’s good. She said, “Gianna, these women are on like 3 milligrams and she was on 0.25milligram of Synthroid which gets made from pig’s part you know. The Anavar gets made from pig’s part but Synthroid is synthetic. Once you take it you are going to suppress your real thyroid from working when my solution is a thyroid kit which is B12 (you have to get them a very high quality liquid B12), nascent iodine and selenium. Those three working as co-factors is going to get your liver working better not if you are still not changing your diet. There is no supplementation that can outweigh your diet. You have to look at the totality. Also you need to take your resting pulse rate. Many people think they have low pulse rate, “I’m healthy well “, not necessarily. If you are an athlete and you must take your resting pulse rate and it’s too high you have a heart problem. You really need to address that properly, just change your diet. But, if your heart rate is low and also your blood pressure is very important especially for the women. If you have low blood pressure and many things that’s okay. That means your adrenals are not working properly. If you have low blood pressure, low temperature, and low heart rate, you have a pituitary gland situation. That is at the top of the pyramid and this is why many women are in hormone hell. These are easily remedied and no doctors are going to tell you this.
Host: It’s amazing. Thank you very much for sharing all that wonderful advice. Now, you mentioned diet and people want to know and everyone wants to know what we eat and what should we do to live a healthier life. You use these buzz words all the time. I am confused by all these buzz words keto, paleo, adkins, supplements, shakes, protein, this and that. What do I do or what do I stay away from and what do I?
Gianna: Well, when you are over 35, your body is beginning to lose lean muscle tissue. You can’t help it is just part of the biology. So you need to have more protein. If you are not having protein at every meal you are not providing your cells with the means to communicate with each other. Especially women are eating the antithesis of the proper menopause menu as I like to call it. They are eating salad and chicken and salad and chicken, salad and broccoli.
Host: Is that good thing or a bad thing?
Gianna: No it’s not. It’s not enough protein. Here’s another thing too. It’s on the periphery of what people are going to believe. Everyone was told to eat fiber. But what the fiber is really doing and because of the lifestyle doctors that I follow. I am at the point now that it is not just about how you look and you know looking at it like the Lifestyle doctors the totality of his physical body there is really skinny, scrawny goat looking doctors that promotes certain kinds of diet but they have no strength. I’ve watched them changed over the years. I like these other doctors that are keeping you know. We don’t want to be a feeble old lady. So my muscles are very important that’s why I’m heavy on the protein. I tell you it has changed my entire body that I didn’t have to work out that hard. The fiber is really just the filler. They say the fiber makes you go to the bathroom more. But the fiber is also making your colon lazy. It is doing the job of the colon. So when you are having less fiber and eating more of a protein diet you are not going to the bathroom that much. You will see that you are not bloated because vegetables make you bloated. If you are not working properly like if you check those PH stuff and all those things that I told you, the fruits and vegetables can be fermenting and many people have candida. When this fermentation is happening you know how alcohol gets made by fermentation. When you have gas and bloating there’s a fermentation going on very similar to alcohol and it travels up back to the vagus nerve to your brain and it short circuits the processes that give you good brain health. One of four women are in anti-depressants in the United States. I think that’s just criminal. All they really need to do is change their menu and nobody is telling them. No doctors are telling then because there is just too much money in the medications. Today’s podcast is going be about your serotonin.
Host: Would you recommend changing gradually going cold turkey? How would you do it? How did you do it?
Gianna: Some people could feel worse before they feel better. So it’s my opinion that cold turkey is the best because you might just get it over with and it would probably not last more than a week. Have you heard about Oxalates?
Host: No I haven’t.
Gianna: Yeah, I just learned about Oxalates a couple of months ago. There are fruits, vegetables, and plant foods, that contain I am not upon in enough to say the correct thing. It is something along the lines that they have built-in defense mechanisms to preserve them as they grow and their existence you know from pesticides and animals like bees and birds and things like that. Then just look at Oxalates as happy green like for many years I was having spinach and kale and fruit smoothies every morning. I was puffy and constantly feeling bloated. My face was like always feeling puffy really feeling that it did not make sense to me until I discovered about this oxalates stuff. If you quit your fruits and vegetables too quickly for some people it could be deeply in your bones. As you change your gut health, you are changing your whole microbiome. It is going to decide your hunger and your pains. You may feel oxalate dumping. You might get headaches and nausea and just not feel well for a while. Anything especially if you are really going from a really bad standard American diet, and you say. “ I want to do what Gianna does and you listen to me and you do what I tell you what to eat.” You could feel bad a couple of days before you start to feel better. Sometimes not you know.
Host: High Oxalate foods are spinach, rhubarb, baked potatoes with skin and beets, kale, beets etc. Wow! What an amazing treasure trove of knowledge. You are awesome.
Gianna: You know I am a nerd about it besides there is this lady. The oxalate expert is Sally K. Norton. If you want to go on her website. She is an oxalate queen. She has many years of studies about it.
Host: Gianna, Thank you so much for being with us for the last 40 minutes or so. Talking about living healthy on the Lifelong Wellness Podcast living your best life for people over forty and especially women undergoing the process of menopause and post menopause as well. You can find Gianna on her website at giannamiceli.com, on YouTube, podcast, videos, a wonderful source of knowledge, Instagram, Facebook, and you have a wonderful book out I love the title “Fat, Tired, Sick, and..”
Gianna: Why American women are so fat. It’s American women especially that’s the point of the book. Give me one more minute they do not have menopause like we do in Asia, and why not are they not different. It’s the food. Kenya, Nigeria, and India they don’t have the same menu. They are not selling bioidentical hormones and HRT like in Asia. Their women are having it that are closer to the cities and that are eating the fast food franchise we have them popped up over those Asian Cities. They don’t even have a word for hot flashes there. It doesn’t exist.
Host: Oh my I did not know that. That is very interesting.
Gianna: In the UK, Canada, Australia, in the West and my brother married a Serbian woman and that’s a very meat-heavy culture of course that’s why they are not having the same problems that we do. I am 10 or 11 years older than my brother’s wife so maybe she was like 37. I forget how long ago but she was like, “You mean I’m going to turn 40, and I’m going to get fat and have these problems?” Maybe? They don’t, it’s not even in their culture.
Host: Gianna, thank you so much for being with us on air on our podcast today.
Gianna: Thank you.
Host: We wish you the best of luck with your book and everything you do and hopefully, we can talk to you again and talk more once we have more questions and we can address other things as well.
Gianna: Anytime. Thank you, Sir.
