The Doctor's Kitchen Podcast

Welcome to this quarterly review episode with Sakina, science writer & researcher at Doctor’s Kitchen. Every quarter, we pull together insights from recent expert-packed podcasts into one episode - to make it easier to take action.

Dr Mindy Pelz is back on the show talking about what foods to break your fast with, the fat burning potential of specific ingredients and how she thinks about cooking food for health and vitality.

I love talking to various thought leaders across the health and wellbeing space, which is why I’ll speak to a professor of immunology, a psychologist and a chiropractitioner all on the same podcast. You don’t get many people in the nutrition space willing to engage people from other disciplines that they don’t get along with.

I’ll be honest, some of the terminology I hear online like detox, fat burning and immune boosting does get my back up. But it’s also the simple way people think about complex subjects. In a similar vein you still get medical doctors referring to cholesterol as good and bad, which is completely incorrect. So we can’t be too judgmental.

I love chatting with and hanging out with Mindy Pelz, she’s full of energy, motivational and has helped countless women around the world take control of their health. Her new book, “eat like a girl” is a fantastic recipe book that dives into what and how we should be eating whether or not you choose to fast. We also cooked one of her recipes in the kitchen which was awesome.

Today we’re diving into how nutrition intersects with the complicated world of pain. Today I have former guest and colleague Prof. Dr Deepak Ravindran to talk to us about how our immune system can impact our perception of pain, the different types of pain patients and how we can do better as medical professionals in the management of chronic pain.

This topic covers IBS, pelvic pain, chronic cystitis, fibromyalgia, migraine, functional gut disorders, long covid and more. Pain cannot be explained by a singular pathway, and I think there is so much we could all learn from Deepak's insights on this topic.

We discuss the different types of pain patients, how the immune system trains our responses to pain, how trauma in childhood can impact our responses to pain and why food plays a pivotal role.

Deepak is Honorary Professor at Teesside University and has worked as an NHS Consultant in Pain management, he’s author of the “Pain Free Mindset” a fantastic book that I recommend to both patients and medical colleagues. His new role is Director of Lifestyle Medicine for a primary care network (PCN) of GP practices in Reading, UK, working upstream to bring these insights early in the chain of pain management.

We talk about the use of fasting, anti-inflammatory diets, the importance of gut supportive diets and key ingredients that could be useful for chronic pain sufferers.

I’m often asked by colleagues and patients for a full breakdown of what I say in clinic with patients with type 2 diabetes or who are at higher risk of this condition to help them better manage it before medications. But it takes time. And no GP in the NHS or elsewhere has over an hour to explain this in enough detail such that people can understand how to take action themselves.

The recommendations for medical professionals is for them to explore diet and lifestyle options before turning to pharmaceuticals for the management of type 2 diabetes. But with less than 10 minutes per appointment, this is an impossible task.

This is the basis of today's podcast. If I had an hour with you, or your loved one, this is how I would explain what type 2 diabetes is, why sugar control is so important and what things you can do to prevent or better manage the condition and even potentially put it into remission.

I would love to know your comments and feedback on today's episode, so if you have any suggestions, please leave a comment on YouTube and do share this with anyone who you feel could benefit from the information.

Six conditions cause the majority of deaths in the world, these include dementia and cardiovascular disease. Traditionally, we’ve looked at these conditions through the lens of what goes wrong individually, such as blocked arteries around the heart or tangles of proteins that impair electrical signalling in the brain. But the common denominator is actually ageing.

As grandiose and esoteric as that sounds, ageing and the processes that govern ageing are what we need to be tackling if we want to better manage or even prevent these conditions of older age.

And with me to discuss why and how we age is Richard Faragher. He’s Professor of Biological Gerontology at the University of Brighton, and has dedicated his career to understanding the ageing process and what we can do to improve this inevitable phase of life.

As you can tell from today's episode, Richard is a passionate advocate for older people and can wax lyrical about the history of the gerontology field.

A few definitions before we dive into the episode I think will be helpful for people who are new to the research.

There are agreed “hallmarks” of ageing that are a description of processes, such as metabolism and DNA repair functions, that go awry as we grow older. Ageing is caused by these changes at the molecular level that lead to downstream effects like disease and degeneration.

Cell senescence is what happens at the end of a cell's lifespan, where they become dysfunctional and need to be removed by immune cells. However in older age, it can become more troublesome for your immune system to clear away these senescent cells and increasing inflammation ensues.

Senolytics are compounds or drugs that have been designed to selectively eliminate these senescent cells. And the hope is that they can mitigate a range of age-associated conditions like arthritis, cataracts, dementia and more.

Trigger warning. We discuss a graphic analogy for senescent cells using suicide, so I just wanted to give a heads up for anyone who might find that analogy uncomfortable.