Speaker 1- During these stressful times, practicing self-love is more important than ever. But what exactly does that mean? Dr. Erica Steele from holistic family practice medicine in Virginia Beach is here to explain. Good to see you. Dr. Steele. Yeah. Good
Speaker 2- to see you too, Cheryl.
Speaker 1- So happy you’re here. So let’s get started here. And I know we will talk today about self-love and general health.
Speaker 2- Yes, definitely. Yeah, it’s a month of love. We have February. And it’s also Heart Health Month. So it’s appropriate to have this discussion.
Speaker 1- All right, perfect. So we’re going to talk about the heart first and the impact of metabolic health and how that correlates with your heart.
Speaker 2- Yes, people don’t realize the metabolism is not just about weight gain or loss; it’s all of the chemical processes within the body. So if your metabolism isn’t working correctly, your body will not detoxify. And a lot of times, those toxins will, then the liver will dump it into your bloodstream, creating anemia, but also issues with your heart and your bloodstream. So it’s essential to work on your diet because that’s really the top of it, that your nutrition, what you’re putting into your body, will fuel your metabolism.
Speaker 1- Yeah, and I love how you look at the total body approach; there’s no tunnel vision here. And so, speaking of nutrition, I want to dive into that a little bit. Because how do we know what’s healthy? What’s not healthy? I mean, you hear you shouldn’t have too much fat, but for example, avocados have a lot of healthy fats.
Speaker 2- Exactly. Yeah, there are many nuances, especially when it comes to fat. And people, really, people need to understand fat is fat, right? Healthy fat, unhealthy fat, if you’re eating more than 20 to 25% ratio of your total calories, which is your metabolic rate. You know, unless you’re a long-distance runner, or unless you’re a triathlete, or you’re hiking, you know, something like that, you know, you don’t need excess fat. And in fact, the more excess fat, the more it creates issues with your lipid panel, cholesterol, triglycerides, and things like that because it’s clogging the liver; the liver can’t handle that much fat, plus the gallbladder has to work harder. So many people with different gallbladder issues result from that high-fat diet, and then even removing the gallbladder if they don’t take an enzyme. After that, they’re going to have a tough time digesting fats. So I think we think when we think heart health, immediately we go to fat. But we also have to be mindful that there is a balance between what’s healthy and what’s not healthy. And it’s all data-driven. We really focus on holistic family practice on data. So it’s data from the individual. So we’re not just taking it from generalizations. It’s all specific to the individual patient meme.
Speaker 1- Oh my gosh, okay, so how do we know what to eat and what not to eat?
Speaker 2- The first thing we do in my practice is put patients on a metabolic scale that comes over all their body composition. So it goes over their metabolic rate, which is how many calories they need, their fat, their visceral fat if they need to lose weight, if they need to gain muscle, and then that gives us a number for us to work with, then I’ll look at their lab work and see okay, are they processing glucose? Well, are they not processing glucose? Well, their triglycerides are elevated, and looking at their lab work determines what kind of diet I want to put them on. And I really focus mainly on macros. So I focus on the metabolic rate and how many calories the person needs to take in. And then I break down the ratios of macros, meaning your proteins, your fats, and your carbohydrates, based off of the lab work that I have from the patient,
Speaker 1- You put everything together. And I know you have a course and teach classes about all this.
Speaker 2- We do. We do have a course coming up. It’s a four-week course because I get a lot of demand from people asking, like, I don’t know anything about nutrition. Teach me about food. And so I decided to put together a course for anybody. You don’t have to be a member of our practice. You just text holistic nutrition to our office telephone number, and it’s four weeks. So we’ll talk about the role of nutrition. We’ll talk about heart health, we’ll talk about the impact of metabolic health, what’s healthy, and what’s not healthy, will dispel a lot of myths, a lot of fad diets out there. We’ll go through that so that people have a deeper understanding and can make that powerful choice, even if they don’t use a practitioner like me.
Speaker 1- Dr. Steele, you’re so good at your work. Thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 2- Awesome. Thank you for having me. All right.
What do you think?