Your Health is your #1 Asset
You see, when you find yourself wondering why you are not feeling good or why your child is sleepy and cranky it could be what you are eating.
The health of our mouth is directly related to the health of our bodies and what we put into our bodies is key to a healthy life. If we start when our kids are young they will not experience the same debilitating disease we have. We may even be able to stop or prevent some of these diseases in our families. I get it, you want to know more and why this meal plan and these recipes are so important to you?
The fact is that the majority of Diabetes, Heart Disease, Dementia, and Alzheimer patients could have avoided these diagnoses if they had a healthier diet and lifestyle. Wouldn’t you want the best chance at life without the debilitating symptoms you are currently experiencing? Imagine being free from brain fog, mood swings, and feeling motivated and energized every day that you wake up!
Interview with Dr. Kelly Shockley
Sheree :
I’m very passionate about reaching out and helping kiddos because if we can reach them early, life looks so much different. It’s much easier than getting into our bad habits and completely having to change up the lifestyle by the time you’re in your 30s 40s or what have you.
I did not realize first of all that I had sensory issues. And secondly, that I had a lot of food sensitivities not necessarily allergies to foods if I eat certain things, I feel tired or like I have arthritis. If I stay away from those foods. I am perfectly fine in the morning I can get out of bed without aches and pains, I have more energy. I know what we put in our mouth which we were talking about is so important and if we can get to the kids sooner as you said, and they don’t have those habits, then they’re not sick and it’s not costing us more money in the health care system, because they started out with good healthy habits that are right for our body to begin with.
Dr. Kelly:
I completely agree, and I live this every single day to I mean, part of how I became a chiropractor which I like to say was a doctor cause and get to the root cause of issues.
Ultimately where we can help restore health and give people back their lives. It was my own personal experience I was a pretty sick kid on and off throughout life but it really kind of came to a peak. When I was in high school, and I had chronic sinus problems, and I was in and out of all kinds of different specialty doctor offices and nobody knew what was wrong, they just kept medicating me. And ultimately, at one point, I was on six medications I was only being able to go to half a day at school because I had migraines that would amplify so much at that point. And the last physician I saw I was like well you know go on Christmas break, we’ll change up the medication if you’re not any better when you come back, then you should at least do IV antibiotics and if that doesn’t take care of it, then you should have sinus surgery, and I was 14 and my mom was like, there has got to be a different way. So thankfully we found a chiropractor who also does Clinical Nutrition like I do, you know specializing in foundational medicine is what we like to call it, who looked at my lifestyle, and there were so many pieces of the equation, I’ll spare you those details but ultimately, completely changed up what we were doing. And we thought like we still didn’t fit into the classic standard American diet and lifestyle at that point in time. We had a lot of room for improvement. And it changed my life like I have no idea what level of health I would be in right now, or what I would be doing as a profession or what quality of life I would have had I not found the alternative side of medicine back then. So that’s part of what fuels my fire too and I still have food sensitivities that were one of the aspects that were tested back then.
I have the eight-year-old boy who unfortunately also has food sensitivities and this is a very real conversation that he and I have on a regular basis because I also have a niece and a nephew who don’t have the same types of food sensitivities, as him and so there were things I don’t allow him to eat and he said, I’m so tired of having allergies which that’s just the easiest way for him to understand that, but I tried to explain to him to like, even if you didn’t have food sensitivities to these particular food items, because of what I know and what my thought process is, and what my belief system is, you wouldn’t be eating them anyway, because what we’ve seen through time is they’re not the foods that help us be healthier they’re actually the foods that help make us be fat sick and, you know, on the dwindling spiral that so many Americans are on so it’s a very real subject matter for me. We just had a conversation with him again this morning about all of this. So I’m excited to be able to share with you guys.
Sheree:
I so appreciate that because we have a sensitivity to nitrites in my family, so no processed meats bacon stuff like that. My daughter said the other day we were deciding what to eat for dinner and thinking about ordering out and she’s was like, I don’t know that I want to take a nap, so let’s just cook something at home, because when we eat out certain places within an hour we get a two or three-hour nap.
Dr. Kelly
You know what foods you have to stay away from and being able to figure that out, is really helpful because the challenge with food sensitivities, as I’m sure you know share is that you don’t get necessarily an immediate reaction, until you’ve taken them out of your diet for a while, right.
I’ve seen upwards of two weeks in a delay that symptoms can wait to present as a result of eating something that your body doesn’t agree with, you know, more commonly it’s 24 to 72 hours, but they’re harder to discern because there’s so much time that’s in between. People don’t have a clue what’s going on, and they think there’s something wrong with them and unless you’re in tune with what foods can do for the body, be it good or bad.
I have a few different thoughts, well maybe a couple of different thought process alone that I do think it’s much more common than what anybody even confesses. But I also think it’s partly just because of what has happened to our food supply. And that our food supply has changed or the word I use more commonly as it’s been adulterated so much in the types of other ingredients, or components that are in our food supply now are not things we should be putting into our system, to begin with.
So is it really a food sensitivity, or is it a reaction to the other junk, that’s within the food we’re consuming. I think it’s both. For example, with gluten again because it’s one of the tops, you know for common sensitivities is gluten, and I have patients are like, Kelly, I can go to Europe, I can go to Africa and I can eat gluten-containing products and I’m fine. And in the US, there’s a couple of different camps that say, well, there’s one camp that is we’ve completely altered what gluten-containing grains, specifically wheat looks like compared to ancient day grain So back in ancient days, there were 12 chromosomes now it’s like 48 chromosomes. So its structure is totally manipulated and different than what we have enzymes, able to recognize what it is. So there’s one thought process. Then there’s the other thought process of well, the majority of those crops have been genetically modified so that they can tolerate pesticides. And I know that there’s a phrase out there saying its Roundup Ready. So, the pesticide, that’s being used on our crops, because of the modification will not kill the crop so they’re able to use a lot more pesticides. Now, to kill all the pests, but not kill the crop. The challenges, the crop absorbs the pesticide. So there’s the thought process that this is not necessarily a wheat gluten reaction but it’s a reaction to the pesticide. And when you go outside of this country. They don’t use the same wheat that we do and they definitely don’t use the pesticide amounts that we do here. So, again looking at research has shown about 80% of Americans have guts, that is not working properly, that’s the reality.
The body is going to test sensitive to so many more foods because that infrastructure is not the way that it needs to be. So for example, in my office, I’d never start with food sensitivity testing on my patients, I look to see what’s happening within each organ system and widespread throughout the body and I will put them on more of like an anti-inflammatory diet or a very clean diet and call it what you want to, but I will restrict foods that I know are offensive to the body and create inflammation.
And then once we go through certain you know the timeframe of treatment and they’ve improved lifestyle. If they’re still having issues, then maybe at that point in time, I will recommend a food sensitivity test to just see what are we missing, because it’s not the easiest like we’re saying, but it’s not the place that I start because if the body’s mad and the guts mad. You’re going to test more sensitive to things than what you would otherwise and that list can become very dauntingly long and very frustrating. And as far as patient compliance goes as you give like for me when I had the testing done I had a page and a half single-space, a computer printout of foods I couldn’t eat. And my mom and I looked at each other like what is this kid supposed to eat. It’s very overwhelming.
Thankfully we have more resources becoming available where things can evolve, especially in our time and yet we are in now that things just deliver to our doorstep. So, it is helpful, you know, back when I went through this process, it was 1994, and nobody knew anything about gluten-free or a leaky gut, or what have you, so it was very overwhelming, but the probably the easiest recommendation I normally give my patients, still holds true today as it did back then, we just stay in the perimeter of the grocery store, minus the bakery, we’re going to be doing so much better for ourselves and our kiddos by shopping there it’s when we go in the aisles, minus the fats guys the good fats are really important, though, when we go into the aisles is where we start running into challenges, and where we’re going to start having compromised because those foods have been compromised, to have a shelf life and be already packaged and somewhat already you know prepped for us. So yes, staying within the perimeter is a huge key to eating healthy.
Since we’re talking about intercepting with kiddos and young like it can be so frustrating for parents when they have picky eaters. And, you know, my son and my kid my brother’s kids have been raised differently now my brother doesn’t eat completely differently than I do, but I made all of my kid’s food from scratch. I’m used to bulk cooking and batch cooking and just doing a lot of cooking we don’t go out. You know, one of the best recommendations that, well there’s a few things pertaining to kids, picking one meal that you’re going to try a healthier version of something that you guys love to eat. But, you know, maybe it’s maybe spaghetti is one of your favorite things so cooking more vegetables into the sauce is one way to sneak in more nutrients and start slowly changing some of the tastes without it being extremely different. Our family, like I said we actually don’t do grains my son reacts to pretty much all of them so do I. So we do spiralized vegetables. What I found out when I was researching even more in-depth about kiddos and what drives them. They don’t care about health, like if you’re telling them to eat this because it’s healthy like you’re gonna lose kids or about the experience you know and talking about sensory types of issues.
If you make the experience of food, one that incorporates more of their senses. It creates this other level of excitement that just eating food doesn’t do for you. So more specifically, like if you try something new. just put it down in front of them.
Don’t say a word and let them have their initial response to what it is that’s on their plate. But then start asking questions like, Well, what do you see what colors are, what does it smell like what does it. You know what does it feel like, does it taste like make their brain. Think about the other aspects, and it makes it more of an adventure than it does just eating. Another aspect is getting them involved with picking out a meal a week, you know, whether you have a few cookbooks on hand, or you, gosh, everybody has internet access, you can start searching for some sort of healthy recipe and let them see what it looks like, get them involved in that process and then have them help in the kitchen, which for me is I have to let go. I’m a very neat and orderly person. My mom’s phenomenal at this so thankfully My son has had a lot of influence with my mom as well. But there are simple tasks that kids can do like tearing the lens you know breaking broccoli and cauliflower down into its for its stirring the bowl full of ingredients to help with the mixing cleaning the vegetables, setting the table. My nephew is Josh he’ll be four. He loves to help any little thing he can do he thinks that he is just awesome. When you give them tasks. So I think, you know his parents are like, Oh, it’s just daunting and especially at the end of a workday thinking about cooking and getting your chin involved. It’s too much to do.
So with that, I’m a big fan of batch cooking, too, like we don’t when everything is normal and I’m up and running and working on patients all week long. We don’t have a lot of time to cook during the week, like, breakfast is easy. But lunch is planned overs and dinners are generally planned overs, the comp plan or as it sounds that are the leftovers. But we do prep work on the weekend. And so, we don’t cook a new meal every single day. Nobody has time for that. We will cook more of certain meals, so that we have them on hand, eat on and that can make managing this much easier to, especially when people aren’t used to cooking everything.
We’re talking more about mouth health, brain health gut health. You know just everything because this everything we’re going through it, attacked, an unhealthy immune system. So being healthy is more important now than ever before.
If you’re healthy enough, it doesn’t matter the name of the virus the disease that illness, because your body is in a place where it can handle that and it’s not an issue, and food is one of the biggest. Be good for you, or be it bad for you variables in dictating what does that outcome looks like. So I guess we should probably talk about what are some of the important foods for boosting the immune system so that we don’t forget about that yet. Very quick list and guys. Again, the easiest thing is hanging out in the perimeter of the grocery store, our vegetables, and our fruits, our powerhouse food supply of all the different phytonutrients, the good guys that we need to empower our body in our immune system so that it can fight the fight. So, a few different nutrients, which I created a program or a meal, a recipe book for kids that is friendly to kids that incorporates this but also is kind of a stepping stone of like if you’re used to just eating the way that our food industry has marketed to kids. If you look at what is marketed and advertised to kids and some of the unhealthiest foods that we have available to us it’s frightening. So this is kind of an in-between of shifting from, here’s your classic what you would consume.
Here’s a healthier version of it. But with that, I’ve also put in different foods that will incorporate some more of these nutrients to help give the immune system just that much more to be healthy. So, vitamin A, is one that you guys could be looking for more, you’re gonna find that in your bright orange and yellow foods like sweet potatoes mangoes carrots bell peppers, and of course, it’s in all the dark leafy greens, so you can’t go wrong with dark leafy greens, it’s just a matter of figuring out how to get your kids to eat dark leafy greens, which smoothies and hiding stuff in smoothies are a great way to do that, cooking, more into your sauces is another great way to do that. And one of the other details about kids like anything that you can eat that the finger food or you don’t have to use utensils is a big win for kids, they hate using utensils they love using their hands. So, incorporating healthy dips, so that they can dip, you know these various vegetables, and Belle peppers are technically a fruit so fruits into will make that experience more entertaining for them as well. Okay, so that’s one of the big guys, broccoli, you can’t go wrong with, really kind of another goal to set would be at least one meal per day, try to get two vegetables on the plate, one of them being from the green family, you know, that Skittles commercial that came out forever though like tasting the rainbow. Do not eat that rainbow. But trying to incorporate as many colors of the rainbow from produce and I err on the side of vegetables more than fruit because guess fruit is good it’s in its has naturally occurring sugars to it, but it still has too much.
My general rule of thumb for my patients is no more than one serving of fruit per day, which goes against what we’re being taught. But ultimately with what I’ve seen with gut health brain health. I’m sure you’ve seen with mouth health it’s just consuming more than that ends up being too much and it creates the same type of problems as consuming too many others like obvious sugars, or even grains that we run into. Okay, another nutrients kind of focus in on would be vitamin C. This one is more of the no brainer like we know all of our citrus fruits our oranges our lemons or limes are chock full of vitamin C, but also all flour is and bell peppers are so adding in some that don’t some product that doesn’t have as much of the natural sugars in it is helpful, but hey, strawberries are great to mango and grapefruit as well. Another nutrient there’s five of them that I try to have people add more into during this time right now would be Vitamin E, you’re going to get that more from nuts and seeds again your leafy greens and more of the plant-based oils, I’m not a big fan of canola oil but we are big on coconut oil actual legitimate olive oil, avocado oil. And then we use grass-fed butter or ghee, as well.
And then the next nutrient would be selenium, selenium, and also, zinc, you can get them from the same sources, this is going to come more from like your eggs and your, your meat proteins, but you can also get it in, selenium, you can eat get that in those Brazil nuts, Brazil nuts are loaded with Selenium which Selenium is an antioxidant it helps you fight off the bad free radicals. But if you’re a big fan of Brazil nuts, you can very much overdo them. So I think their recommendations like one a day was all you really needed to get your full allowance, selenium, so use Brazil not sparingly. But otherwise, you know, the bigger piece of this, not only incorporates these foods, but I tried to also focus on what are the foods that really wreak havoc and suppress our immune system. And that’s anything that’s going to create more inflammation in our body, which is sugars, there are processed foods or prepackaged foods, you know the stuff that other people are are cooking, preparing for us, instead of us doing it within our own home.
Again, this is the stuff that you find in the aisles, that’s where a lot of the kid food is found. So, yes, even baby food that’s out there is frightening. If you actually start looking at ingredients so that’s something else that I normally suggest to patients. We need to educate ourselves like it’s great to just sit and listen to, Sheree and I, but shopping in the perimeter you’ll do really like amazingly well. If you do that, but I still think you need to realize what’s being in our food supply. So if you start looking at more of the nutrition facts and the other ingredients that are listed in our foods. I try to go for things that don’t have more than five ingredients and you should be able to pronounce all of them. If you can’t, maybe put that one back down and find something else as an alternative.
I think those are the main things like just with kids, you know it doesn’t do us any favor to try to force them to eat our rule has been when it’s something new. It’s fine if they don’t like it, but our rule is you have to take at least two to three meaningful bites before you decide you don’t like it, and then instead of just writing it off.
Okay, another food that they don’t like try to open it up as a conversation like well Tell me more. What is it that you didn’t like is it the texture is it what it tasted like maybe it’s the after a conversation like afterward. Did you not like how it made me feel because that’s something that you can start tuning in on maybe food sensitivities or intolerances. And then I don’t necessarily give up on that food I might just prepare it differently. The next time and see if maybe it is a texture related type issue that like my niece again she prefers raw vegetables, she does not like when things get cooked and they’re kind of slimy, which we prefer to make everything authentic and do not cook out all the nutrients, but still, like, Okay, do you want cooked or raw carrots tonight? She wants raw carrots are fine. So that’s another thing that I think is helpful is giving them choices, because it empowers them, they’re making their own decisions, which is also awesome because they’re learning how to make decisions at a young age, and ultimately the choices that I give my kid. I don’t care which one he picks I’m good with either of them. So that’s another little trick I found that can be helpful doesn’t always work, but it can be very helpful. So, just stay the course and also be a role model. eventually, pallets will change everybody will be on the same page.
Together, we can reduce disease. Dental diseases are all preventable, but only by you at home. Together we can engage our kids and create good oral health habits because a healthy mouth is a healthy body and a healthy life.
To listen to the full podcast conversation go to:
https://healthy-mouth-movement-411-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-015-tips-to-keep-your-kids-healthy
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/C9Tjha9MD4c
Download Dr Kelly Shockley’s 18 Family Friendly Recipes:
https://corehealthlabs.com/18-family-friendly-recipes?fbclid=IwAR2xNBfV8f_mknlW_WmfzCaiVLd9QsluL18BGcaY5YbRNySkApEpPr72c-k
