Transcript of Episode 131: Gettin' Funky in the Kitchen
With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra and Special Guest, Sarica Cernohous
Meredith:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I'm your host, Meredith Dykstra, and this is episode 131. Today, of course, we have our resident cellular healing specialist, Dr. Pompa, on the line. We are welcoming special guest, Sarica Cernohouse. Did I pronounce your last name correctly?
Sarica:
You got it! Thanks, Meredith.
Meredith:
Wonderful. I know you and Dr. Pompa go back a long way. We're so excited to finally have you on Cellular Healing TV for the first time. Sarica is the fermentation queen. She knows a lot about fermentation, so we're going to really be delving into that today and have a lot to talk about. We're going to talk all about healing with that and different ways to approach that with food in fermentation.
Before we jump in, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about Sarica. Sarica Cernohous, L.A.c, MSTOM, and BSBA is a nationally certified practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine and Chinese herbal medicine, practicing Japanese-style acupuncture. She's a CEU provider for the NANP through her program, Fresh, Fun, and Flavorful in the Funky Kitchen. She's the author of The Funky Kitchen: One Soccer Mom's Favorite Traditional Food Techniques and Recipes.
Sarica teaches on the importance and the practice of traditional food methods to both the public at large and other healthcare practitioners through her six-week online course, Fresh, Fun, and Flavorful in the Funky Kitchen. She's also the co-founder of the teaching and wellness platform, The Belly Garden, a coach for the Metabolic Balance of Germany, and is a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation. She resides in Northern Arizona with her husband and two children. You can learn more about her at her website, NaturallyLivingToday.com. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV, Sarica.
Sarica:
Oh, my gosh. It is so good to be here. It's wonderful. I can't wait for our talk.
Dr. Pompa:
I love her energy. I just get goose bumps every time. I'll be at a seminar, Sarica, and I hear the voice. It's always bubbling with joy and laughter.
Sarica:
Oh, thanks.
Dr. Pompa:
You are the queen of fermentation, which we are such believers in on Cellular Healing TV. We have doctors around the country just fermenting and getting bacteria and doing this for leaky gut and food allergies, all these things, which is so needed today. I noticed you took off your crown because you are the queen. Your crown is not there. You took it off before the show.
Sarica:
It's a little hot, a little too warm for the crown today.
Dr. Pompa:
Arizona, what's the temperature there?
Sarica:
I'm in Flagstaff, so it's probably pretty similar to Park City. I would say it's about 80 degrees today. It's very nice.
Dr. Pompa:
What's the elevation in Flagstaff?
Sarica:
7,000.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, so I'm about the same. I'm right around 7,000. We always get the break.
Sarica:
Yes, we do.
Dr. Pompa:
It's 10 to 15 degrees cooler, probably more so from where Arizona is. What's it like in Scottsdale or Phoenix? What's the temperature today?
Sarica:
I flew in the other day, and it was 113. That's awful. I used to live in that.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no doubt.
Sarica:
It's horrible.
Dr. Pompa:
My curiosity takes the show in different directions. People didn't come here to listen to us talk. They want to know about how do I fix my gut? What is all this stuff about fermentation? We have people do broth fasting and all types of different things, but fermentation is huge. We talk about these unique bacteria we can really get through fermentation, and it offers even so much more than that; more absorbable nutrition and digestibility for compromised digestion.
Honestly, I always start everything like this. How in the world did you become the queen of fermentation? How did you start in all this? We've got this story. You didn't just wake up one day and say, you know what? I think I'm the queen of fermentation. I'm going to write a book called The Funky Kitchen because we have all these bacteria growing everywhere and it's just funky. We don't have the story of how you got here. What's your story?
Sarica:
I think all of us who are in the natural health field, we probably had a little bit of an interest in how we could better take care of ourselves. I think that's a little bit of the inroads anyway. I think there was already an interest that I had intrinsically. I went on and studied traditional Chinese medicine, and that also got into a different view on nutrition, something that looked more at energetic and the way that different organ systems are impacted. That already started to shift how I thought about nutrition.
It was after schooling and I was beginning to practice, and I was starting to run into some different health concerns. That makes you sort of stop and take pause, but the biggest thing that got my attention was when my son started really presenting with his own health issues. That's what really moved the dial for me on this. I read Jordan Rubin's book, The Maker's Diet. That kind of went hand in hand with this evolution.
Dr. Pompa:
He's a friend of ours. Jordan's been a friend of ours for many, many years. I love Jordan.
Sarica:
His book, The Maker's Diet, was transformative for me at that point in my life. That's why I mentioned that. I know you have a great connection with him. That was it. I decided to try my hand at making yogurt. I thought, if people do this in Europe still today, then why can't I do it here in Arizona? At that time there wasn't a ton of information online, so I kind of pieced together information.
That was my first foray into it. It was a big, big leap of faith to say I'm going to take milk, I'm going to add this powder to it, and then I'm going to put it into a warm container, not a refrigerator. I'm going to put it into a warm container, and then I'm going to eat that and feed it to my kids. That really was such a big step into trusting the process.
Dr. Pompa:
You have it a little bit backwards. Let me tell you how I do it. I do all that, but I feed my kids first. They seem all right. Any stomach aches? Anything like that? Okay, great.
Meredith:
The poor Pompa children, right?
Dr. Pompa:
On this show for experimenting with my children. By the way, Meredith, on Cell TV Daniel's like, I've got to come on your show. They haven't heard from my kids in awhile.
Meredith:
I'll write that down.
Sarica:
That is good. I've given Daniel acupuncture. The last I saw that kiddo, he is getting so big. It's good. You're doing the right thing there, clearly. It was yogurt. After that it was just continuing to evolve into these other kitchen experiments. After awhile you do start looking like your kitchen is a laboratory. You start thinking of it in those terms. It is so much fun because it is such an endless creative spirit when you start using these types of methods.
With that, it's also so vitalizing. It makes you happier because your biome is happier. You're healthier. You just have so much more to pull from. It encourages this kind of creative spirit as well because you've got the bandwidth.
Dr. Pompa:
We'll talk about the yogurts right now, the kefir yogurts. Let's talk about why it's different than taking a probiotic from the store. Let's talk about why it is, in fact, so healing for the gut because it goes even beyond the bacteria. Also, you and Meredith might want to have a conversation on how to make it, but that's in your book, Funky Kitchen.
Sarica:
Yes, it is in my book. That's right.
Dr. Pompa:
People don't want to get lost in the details of how to make it. It is in the book. Buy the Funky Kitchen.
Meredith:
There you go. It's on Amazon.
Sarica:
Exactly. You're so right in that. Probiotics are a terrific help. Sometimes it's the only thing that can work for somebody for the short term for whatever the reason may be.
Dr. Pompa:
I like the word short term. I agree with you on the word short term.
Sarica:
On the short term or if you know that you're going to be traveling and don't have access to fermented foods. That's a great way to help keep you on track. It's going to probably introduce some species that you may not be eating, and that's good too. I'm all about variety here. We do not want to create a monoculture in our belly garden. We want to have variety. It is that variety that when we eat a small amount of fermented foods and drink fermented beverages that allows us to pull upon what it is that our body needs and let pass through the things that we don't.
Dr. Pompa:
We're missing this. This is something that our ancestors just had to do because that's how they kept the food good. They didn't have refrigeration. We're missing this fermented food.
Sarica:
That's exactly it. It's something that when you look at cultures all over the world, no matter what their climate or environment, fermentation was exactly that. It was a preservation technique. Whether it was putting it down deep into the snow or figuring out how to do it down into earth cooled pods that would go in banana leaf wrapped, that sort of thing. Whatever the medium might be, it could be meat, it could be dairy, it could certainly be vegetable matter, plants, nuts, seeds. All of these based off of what the common foods were for people, these could be fermented.
That's important because that allows people to get through long periods maybe in the winter time where we don't have a lot of fresh produce to pull from back in the olden days. Now we have refrigeration. We have things shipped to us from the other side of the globe, all of that. It's been part of the evolution of humanity. It's something that our bodies are expecting. It is something that our DNA is looking for as part of this
confluence of information that keeps us vital. When we do pull upon a small amount of fermented food and other pre-digestion techniques that I often lean on fermentation for these methods, these create a message back to our body at a cellular level that is wholly different than taking a probiotic pill. That's going to be good for the short term. It's going to be good for the times when we don't have access to fermented foods. Bringing in a small amount of this throughout the day is such a good thing to do.
One thing I want to say about that too is in the west we have such a tendency to think that a little is good, a lot will be a whole lot better. In the flavor profile of fermented foods, they taste the way they do, and to me that is an absolute clear signal that we only are to take a small amount at a given time. We're supposed to use them almost like a condiment rather than what I see people do. They'll get a 16 ounce container of kombucha and down it. That should not be more than maybe a quarter cup serving that you might want to have at the beginning of a meal to kind of prime the pump for your hydrochloric acid in the stomach. It's very important that we just take it in little amounts throughout the day. Honor that. That's really important. Don't sit down to a salad bowl of sauerkraut.
Dr. Pompa:
That's good for me because I don't like fermented vegetables that much. The sour tastes gets me, so a little bit is actually better for me just from the taste standpoint. I've learned also that I have a lot of bacteria. I don't do well with a lot anyway. That works out both ways for me. I learned the hard way.
We started the conversation by talking about fermented dairy. We started also talking about fermented vegetables. What's the difference? What are some of the health benefits of the dairy versus the vegetables? You have recipes for both in your book, of course.
Sarica:
I do. The thing is what you're going to be starting with are going to be foods that have very different nutrition profiles. We can look at a cup of milk and it's totally different than a stalk of celery. That's one really big difference right there is just what your foundational nutritional component's going to be. One of the things that's so awesome and interesting about using fermentation methods is it actually changes the vitamin and sometimes the mineral structure of different foods, sometimes creating it out of thin air, which is amazing. It's a byproduct of the fermentation process, generally at the lactobacilli.
We can take a food like milk that can be pretty much nonexistent in naturally occurring folate. When we go through a fermentation process on it, that releases folate. Same thing can happen when we are working with different types of root vegetables that way. That's really a wonderful thing where it enhances this. One really cool story is Captain Cook, the pirate, or the sea master. He wasn't a pirate. Maybe he was a pirate. I don't know.
Dr. Pompa:
I thought you were talking about Captain Crunch. I have no idea.
Sarica:
I don't know that much history. I'm more concerned about the food. What Captain Cook did, he was finding that his seamen were falling to scurvy. They were losing a lot of the population of the seaworthy men after months and even years away at sea. What they started doing is they started tinkering with different nutritional components. One of the things that they found some of the biggest inroads in was the sauerkraut. It was cabbage that had been fermented.
What happens when we ferment cabbage is it takes something that has a moderate amount of vitamin C naturally, and it actually turns it into a food that is very rich in vitamin C. It was something that allowed them to go on these long expeditions without damage in that regard. Pretty amazing stuff, this kind of alchemy that happens through the fermentation process.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That's cool. You get a lot higher, not just higher in certain nutrients, but really even more absorbable. How this process works with different enzymes that are there that weren't before. Like you said, eating it before meals is one way to get even more out of your existing meal. I just heard you say that in passing.
Sarica:
Yeah, which is so wonderful. I'll suggest that to folks if it's clear that they're in a state of sympathetic override and they're just not letting down a proper amount of hydrochloric acid. When we don't have enough HCl in there, that keeps us from being able to break down our minerals and it keeps us from being able to cleave out the protein components, the amino acids and all of those pieces of peptides.
To help enhance that, one of the things we can do is to use a little sip of kombucha or even a little bit of apple cider vinegar or even a little bit of water kefir that's gone through a pretty good fermentation process so it's not too sugary still. Any of those or as you say, taking a couple bites of sauerkraut or eating a naturally fermented dill pickle. Something like that can really help with releasing what is needed for us to break down the minerals and proteins and act as a first line of defense against pathogens that enter our system through the stomach. It has that affect as well, which is so fantastic.
Dr. Pompa:
I think for years people used apple cider vinegar for many things. You just said that, to stimulate the parietal cells and get that HCl moving and dropping. We have so many gut issues today, from leaky gut to leaky autoimmune, dysbiosis, allergic to this food, all these different gut issues. How does this fermentation play into helping these people?
Sarica:
We have to be careful. I want to say that. What we see people do is they think that one thing is good.
Dr. Pompa:
My daughter just came back. I haven't seen her in forever.
Sarica:
Oh, say hi!
Meredith:
Welcome home!
Miss Pompa:
Hi! How are you?
Dr. Pompa:
You can hear the dogs. They haven't seen her in forever.
Sarica:
Oh, they are so happy.
Dr. Pompa:
You'll have to take the celebration elsewhere. Before the show got started I said, “Oh, my daughter's coming home.” She's been going to school in Spain and Italy, so I haven't seen her in forever.
Sarica:
Oh, my gosh. That's amazing! That is so cool. She looks awesome. Yeah! She's home.
Dr. Pompa:
This is a special episode.
Sarica:
Totally a special episode.
Meredith:
It is.
Dr. Pompa:
Even my dogs. How about that? They haven't seen her in forever, and when they haven't seen her in forever they go nuts.
Sarica:
That is so wonderful.
Dr. Pompa:
I apologize. Where were we?
Sarica:
We were talking about gut issues and using ferments. I was saying we need to be cautious when we do this because folks didn't get to having such disrupted guts overnight. It might feel like it sometimes, but really what is it that we say in the natural health field? You're about 70% of your way into something before you notice the symptom. Folks have been leading up to their ickiness for a good long while by the time that they finally get there. We want to start low and slow with something like this. The issue also is a lot of people when they have this type of dysbiosis, they also can have a hard time clearing histamine.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, more and more of that today.
Sarica:
I'm seeing a lot of it. Honestly, don't you just think people are so clogged up at the level of the liver and the cell membrane that it's like they cannot handle the most basic things. For us to come in and give a deluge of long ferments, a kombucha would be an example of that, long fermented sauerkraut, the aged cheeses and meats, that sort of thing; all of those are high histamine. That isn't going to work for someone like that.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, on this note, people are trying to get well by just complete avoidance. We can avoid things while we're very sensitive for a short period of time, but if you're not upstream to what you just said, it is malfunctioning cells. It is a toxic liver. That is what's driving this whole thing.
Sarica:
It is. As practitioners, we've got to help folks in a cautious way. As the patient, this person needs to know that they've got to go at this slowly, with caution, and don't just throw themselves to a boat load of ferments. As I mentioned earlier, I wouldn't even suggest that for somebody who's really healthy. We're not designed to eat a ton of it. It's just a little bit all the time.
Dr. Pompa:
I love that.
Sarica:
Yeah. For these folks, I would suggest working with shorter ferments. That would be a 24-hour yogurt. Actually, yogurt only takes about 8 hours to culture. That's not going to be very high in histamine. Milk kefir is another one. The things that's cool about milk kefir is they've done some research around it. They found that when people begin consuming a small amount of milk kefir when they have had issue with being able to digest milk, the lactose or the casein or whatever, when they start using milk kefir, they actually can begin to attune themselves to being able to work with milk again. That's pretty cool.
Dr. Pompa:
That has something to do with the DNA changing in the gut. We know that gut bacteria communicates with [21:49]. When you said the fermented foods are what our DNA actually needs and wants and desires, I guarantee that has something to do with that communication.
Sarica:
It's an epigenetic switch that happens. It's exactly that. It's an interesting thing because I think folks think this is fermented, so that's going to be kind of like that fermented thing, and so on and so forth. When we look at the research, there's different strains that are going to be in different fermented foods. Milk kefir, even though a lot of people might equate it with yogurt, they're very different.
Milk kefir has a couple of strains naturally occurring in it that have a deeper impregnation into the gut wall. They're not a transient species like a lot of the lactobacilli, the acidophilus, and bifidus can be. That's a pretty cool thing. I really like helping people work with that so that exactly as you were saying, we can begin bringing more inclusion into the diet rather than you get to eat four things for the rest of your life. You and I both know, and Meredith too, if someone's only eating four things, they're not going to have a very long life, and it's sure not going to be too vital.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. Where do some of the fermented vegetables come in? One thing we know about these foods, they have trillions of unique bacteria, different than the probiotic. We have more, and we have variety. Do the vegetables give certain things better than the kefirs?
Sarica:
The thing that I like about the veggies is that you're going to be getting the nutrition profile with the veggies. It's going to allow you to use different types of herbs and spices that have their own epigenetic switches to them. For instance, I was just up at my sister's house in Eugene, and I want to mention to every person who ever wants to be on my mailing list, my sister's now going to be doing recipes for everyone on my newsletters. Amy works from a traditional food preparation method background, but she's been a chef for 25 years. Everything that I do, she does 800 times better. It tastes so good when Amy does it.
Dr. Pompa:
Everything I do Meredith just does better.
Meredith:
We all have to work together, right?
Sarica:
That's right. It takes a village. One of the things I do love about the veggies is, for instance, at Amy's house she had made a really tasty kimchi. She had made it with some fresh turmeric and ginger. The flavor profile on that was so off the charts. It was so good, so sublime. It was one that I wanted to sit down and eat a solid bowl full of because it was that good. What I see is the type of variety we're able to get when we work with vegetable ferments and, of course, the fiber that they have. That's another really big component as well. They're just a different critter. They're not going to have the protein that you're going to have with dairy-based ferments or that sort of thing.
Dr. Pompa:
For my leaky gut folks out there, by adding a little bit of the milk kefir, a little bit of the yogurt, and a little bit of the vegetables. A little bit because you're saying they're all different. I think that's great advice too, by the way. I think it's fantastic. What about our leaky gut? How does it help our leaky gut people?
Sarica:
For me with leaky gut, it's not just about ferments. It's also about pre-digestion methods. We can't have folks just eating the same four things. As we look to bring back other foods, bringing in legumes. I know a lot of people really can get some mileage out of eating basically just animal flesh foods and veggies. That is not a long-term plan for people.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree.
Sarica:
There's not a lot of joy in that. What you start seeing people do is they start tinkering with foods that they want to morph into the kind of food that they see everybody else eating and that they grew up with. I say, no. Don't do that. I'm of Northern European descent. You are too, mid European descent. I'm sure Meredith is as well. For me to sit and plow through a lot of coconut flour from a genetic perspective just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. A little bit here and there is fine. If I'm eating breads and pancakes and muffins that are made out of coconut flour all the time, which I see a lot of people doing, that is very challenging to the system. We're just not designed to eat that much of it.
My answer is use pre-digestion methods that allow you to eat a full bounty of foods that are the actual kind of original foods of what it is we're trying to fake and bake here. When I talk about pre-digestion, what I mean by that is just going to simple methods that break down different anti-nutrients that are naturally occurring in these foods and break down the carbohydrate structures that are there and even cleave out the proteins into simpler-to-digest peptides and amino acids. One of the simplest ways to do that is by soaking.
Dr. Pompa:
If you're going to eat grain, soak it. I believe that soaking ancient grain is actually good for people. Some people, until they get to a certain point of health have to hold off on that, but once you're healthy you can do what you're saying.
Sarica:
That's right. I agree with you completely. When someone is really compromised, start them with a broth fast and then you back away from it and maybe start bringing in some fermented veggies so that we re-inoculate. It's a slow and steady process in those early phases of healing. For long-term vitality and somebody feeling comfortable, that's super important that in their mind they feel comfortable with their lifestyle. They don't feel like I don't get to do everything else that everyone else does. That's such a big deal.
When we are stressed and we're in this sympathetic override pattern, what happens is we're not allowing things to come in. We're in a closed off state at a cellular level. We are not allowing good nutrition to come in and toxicity to go out. Getting a person to relax in their skin with their food is really important. To me that's foundational.
When we have this kind of inclusion, by just using simple techniques of soaking and maybe fermenting the grains, so that would be like sourdough. For instance, right now what I have going in the kitchen is I soaked and fermented pumpkin seeds and walnuts, and then I did some rye flour. I'm also working with pinto beans right now. Those are all things that are in different phases of pre-digestion.
Dr. Pompa:
When can I just buy them from you?
Sarica:
Ah, you're so funny.
Dr. Pompa:
I'm just too busy of a guy. Can't you just have your sister start making them?
Sarica:
I know! I've asked her.
Dr. Pompa:
I would buy them. I'll sell them on my website.
Sarica:
Seriously. I'll let her know.
Meredith:
Sarica, I have a question. How about for those who have a true dairy allergy or gluten allergy? How do you handle that?
Sarica:
In those instances I think it is important to honor that. When we talk about this allergy thing that we're just mentioning with milk kefir, how many people when they come back and they see that I have a food sensitivity or some kind of IgG issue or whatever with dairy, how many people are told next I want you to start working with only a little bit of grass-fed milk kefir coming from raw milk? Who is told that? Nobody is told to do that. If we can start bringing a little bit of this broader education and attempt, then I think we can start to make some inroads to actually being able to use these types of foods.
Like I tell my metabolic balance patients or whomever, the thing is to just try a little bit. Just a tiny bit. I'm talking two tablespoons tiny bit. Let's see how you do with it. If that handles okay, then we can start to increase that a little bit. To me that's one response to that rather than I'm just going to be sucking on almond milk for the rest of my life.
The other thing about the gluten issue is there's research that shows that with a long fermentation cycle that those lactobacilli break down the gluten protein and cleave it out into peptides and amino acids that are not the problem that we see when people are eating gluten-bearing foods, especially what we have here in the United States. That is a small inroad. With that though, Meredith, the thing that I do want to say about that is a person, whether it's dairy or it's pork or it's gluten, there are all kinds of things that people stay away from. Then they might look to bring it back in. If they do that, they need to know that the body in its wisdom isn't just going to sit there and be waiting for years for more dairy to come down the chute. That's not going to happen.
We have to honor that there's going to be a small transition phase at the very least where there might be some disruption. It might feel really weird to us. That's just the body saying this is new information. I don't remember this. In those instances, it's a small amount. It's not part of a big complex meal. I see people making these huge complex meals, and they've got total gut issues. I'm like, yes, you do! There's way too much going on in that meal. I want deep nutrition, but it doesn't need to be a super complex meal, especially if you're bringing in something you haven't worked with for a long time. In those instances also it might not be a bad idea to even work with something like a supplemental betaine HCl, something like that, to help the body work with the digestion of that new food.
Dr. Pompa:
What about a little apple cider vinegar right before the meal?
Sarica:
Yes, beforehand. Exactly.
Dr. Pompa:
Go ahead, Meredith.
Meredith:
Do you think taking apple cider vinegar is better than taking the betaine HCl supplement?
Sarica:
Oh, they're different. The betaine HCl is a much more potent acid than the apple cider vinegar is. When you take the betaine HCl as a capsule, it's not that you're tasting anything and you're getting a cue to your body to say put this down, start letting down HCl intrinsically within me. Whereas when you taste something that is really tart that way, that does cause you to start letting down a little bit of hydrochloric acid. That's why with my patients if I'm having them take supplements that are in a caplet form and not in a capsule form, I will sometimes ask them to chew into it a little bit so that their body starts registering the energetic quality, the flavor profile of what those plants are in there so that the body can start engaging already at that sensory level and start putting things to use that way.
Dr. Pompa:
I've said this for a long time, right, Meredith? The key to fixing the gut today is ancient healing strategies. We move people in and out with what we call diet variation; the fasting. The intermittent fasting, and fermentation has always been a big thing for me. It was one of my [34:37] to fixing the gut. The fasting, the fermentation, these things are really the key. It's a practice that we've lost. It's a practice that someone like myself goes, oh. I don't want to soak and ferment things. Your book goes through all this, right? It really does.
Sarica:
It does. That's an important thing. That's why I do the class with people too because folks feel like it's going to be this big overwhelming thing. If I'm in a locale for more than two weeks, I am doing all these methods. If it's less than two weeks, there's a whole lot there that I'll just go try and get at the store. It works out fine. I was just in Wisconsin this week and while I was back there, I just kind of pulled stuff from the natural foods store. Some of it was stuff that I wouldn't necessarily even buy at home because it was what was available there, and it was the closest facsimile.
The issue about that is it wasn't an issue. I felt great during the trip because my body can handle that kind of bandwidth change. It's pushing me a little bit. Now I'm back home, and I'm getting back on track with the things that I do here. You need to know what I focused on in terms of doing the nuts and seeds and making the bread and making the beans and doing those things, with all of that it took me about 40 minutes to get it all set up. Then it's just kind of keeping tabs on it. I smelled the nuts this morning and the seeds, and I can smell that they've fermented enough. I got them in the dehydrator before I started seeing patients. It's a small little thing that you have to do in the next phase, but then it's just hours in between where the fermentation and the soaking is doing its work. It's not a lot of active part from me.
Dr. Pompa:
That's awesome. You better send me something.
Sarica:
I know!
Dr. Pompa:
Gosh darn it. I get all hungry.
Sarica:
I'm getting hungry too.
Dr. Pompa:
As soon as we end this show, she'll be right at work. Watch her. No doubt. There are doctors around the country putting this stuff all together; the fasting and doing these different things with the fermentation, how to re-inoculate after fasting with our cellular detox. That's what we call a multi-therapeutic approach. We're training people in these approaches because this is a major epidemic of why people are getting sick. The gut is a part of that. Meredith, I know you have a ton of questions. I might as well back up right here. Meredith is the cook in the kitchen as well. She's got her own funky kitchen going down.
Meredith:
Not like Sarica's. I'm wondering clinically when someone comes in and they just have a lot of gut dysbiosis, a lot of issues, leaky gut, where do you start with them? What does it look like with diet, maybe some other therapies you incorporate? What does it look like?
Sarica:
The first and most important thing I do is I talk to them. I say I want you to tell me what your day looks like as soon as your feet hit the ground in the morning. To me that is so important. I want to know how their structuring their day around food. A lot of people will say I'm eating pretty well. That means different things to different people. Until I really have a very clear read on how their day is spaced around food, I'm finding that is almost as important as the food itself. Maybe not almost, but it's a big component. It's really a big player.
For instance, they're getting up and they're having coffee an hour or two before they have their breakfast. That's going to be doing very strange things to their blood sugar and their adrenal function for the rest of the day and also their hunger signals. What I like to do is really back it up, see if we can get those people to have periods of exactly what Dr. Pompa talks about, these periods of fasting throughout the day and overnight so that the person goes from being a sugar burner to a carb burner.
Dr. Pompa:
Just when you mentioned the coffee, we always have our clients test their glucose after their coffee. People are adding the fats and doing these things, but it still may not be good for you. You better fast so you know if it's what your body likes. It's different for different people. You better fast. A very good point.
Sarica:
That's such an important point. It really is and, of course, it has to do with the person's clearance of delivery, if they're slow at metabolizing or fast at metabolizing. You learn that. If I have a person who really notices a difference by taking that cup of coffee into their mealtime as opposed to what they did in the morning where it's just on its own, they notice they don't have that afternoon crash anymore. Then we know that that person was actually very deeply affected by what they were doing there. It was really important for us to bring nutrition into having the caffeine and slowing down the uptake of that into the system.
For me, that's really important. I want to know what is going on in that person's day. Then I want to know what constitutes healthy or unhealthy because even last week I had a new patient and she said, “I'm just doing my best to eat healthy. I really don't eat much butter.” Any person who knows me knows that I make fermented bread just so it can be a vehicle for butter coming into my mouth.
The thing is I also like to really look at that person's constitution. I'm vata type and Dr. Pompa is a vata-pitta type. Meredith, you're more of a pitta type. For all of us, we can burn a little bit faster than someone who's more of a kapha type. A kapha type is a heavier, earthier person. For that person I'm not saying they shouldn't eat butter, but they probably don't need as much as I do.
We also have to look at that person's constitution. That's important as well. I want to know what means unhealthy to them and healthy. That's very important. We might want to start doing some testing for folks. I think that doing food sensitivity panels can be a good start. I'm not going say that they're always the end all every answer, but I do think it can be a good template to work from. For all my patients, I really work hard to help them make their meals nutritious and simple but enough, so that they have no problem going five hours between meals with only water in between. Our body needs that time for rest and recovery of digestion. We all know any time we eat, that's a big oxidative stress on our body.
Dr. Pompa:
A lot of energy, especially if you don't have any.
Sarica:
A lot of energy. It really is. To give that break and what it also does is it allows our body to recognize the signals that say now I'm not dealing with a lot of blood sugar in the blood stream, so I'm going to have to start pulling on my own glucose stores. I'm going to have to start pulling on my own fat stores. That's where we begin to use what we have inherently within us. That's where we go from being the sugar burner to the fat burner.
It's small little things this way. I find that bringing in the ferments and if I see that a person's face blows up and they get red and they feel yucky when they eat a sauerkraut or something, then we have a pretty good idea that histamine clearance might be an issue for that person. We have to look at the fine points of what each person needs. Also, honoring what works for them in their life and making it something that's doable for them so that they feel successful at the stage where they are so that they begin to build their vitality and they feel encouraged and they want to then continue to step into more change as they're ready to do so. Sometimes they need a little extra push. To me it is so multi-factorial, and that's part of the joy of working with people this way is helping to fine tune it with them.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree. That's great.
Meredith:
You mentioned the histamine. It sounds like you're seeing a lot more histamine intolerance. I know I've heard a lot about it lately too. How are you handling that?
Sarica:
At the beginning I am working with making sure people aren't bumping into foods that have a lot of histamine to begin with that generate that. Again, it's those long-aged ferments. It's the aged cheeses, the aged meats, those sorts of things. Those really lend themselves toward that histamine let down in the body because they've got so much in them.
Dr. Pompa:
Fermented milk is much less. You were saying that fermented milk is much less.
Sarica:
Yeah, for a short ferment. Exactly. An 8 to 12-hour ferment, that's going to be nominal. I remember one time I opened up a can of anchovies, which I like anchovies very much, and I couldn't believe the histamine response that I got from it. I don't think I really have a major histamine issue, clearance issue, but there's some foods that even for those of us that don't really have that, they can really provoke. To me, Meredith, steering clear of those types of foods is very important. Then there are foods that we eat, and I have a long list of it in the Funky Kitchen of different foods that can be brought into the diet to help encourage and enhance our natural ability to break down histamine. Olive oil is one of them, mangosteen, butterbur.
Dr. Pompa:
As we do cellular detox with people, we do a lot of these other ancient healing things, multiple different fasts. Eventually they start eating it, but I love the idea of starting with a smaller amount. You start with that fermented kefir that can change that epigenome, which is part of the problem.
Sarica:
Isn't that just so wonderful. It is. It's like the body just gets to a point where it says I can't accept more right now. It's like dealing with a crazy person. You've got to give them some space. You've got to put them in a safe environment so they don't hurt themselves anymore, but you've got to give them some space. If we come on with a ton of heavy therapies for someone who's so inflamed, it can be a little bit of a problem. Sometimes the slow and steady is the way we have to honor it.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree.
Meredith:
You just mentioned about transitioning from the sugar to fat burner. We talk about that a lot. I don't know if you can both speak to this as far as the ketogenic diet and the impact that that can have on the gut and whether that is positive or neutral or what you guys have seen clinically.
Dr. Pompa:
You know me, I like moving in and out of it. I like just using it as a tool in and out, what I call diet variation, changing and forcing the weak cells not to adapt. Bad cells don't adapt. That's what you get with a lot of those dietary changes. Go ahead, Sarica, speak to it.
Sarica:
Absolutely. I think that that's the safest way as well. You get these people who go all ketogenic, and they stay there. They begin to lose ground as they do so in terms of the things that were working before are not working now. Our body likes stability, but it also needs the pressure of stress.
Dr. Pompa:
I believe certain people do better staying there. It depends on where their genetics are from, but most people don't. Most of do good in moving in and out of these phases.
Sarica:
That's exactly right. To me it feels right. If we look at how a woman functions compared to a man, we have a lot of fluctuation hormonally because of what we can do with our bodies. Because of that I think that women have a shorter window of where their body feels safe to do the things it needs to do in a right way. A little bit of carbohydrate taken through the day at these feeding times, or at least one or two of them, I think is a very beneficial thing for the signaling to a woman's hormonal system. Her body says there's active and able nutrients.
In Chinese medicine we would call it nutrients that are good for spleen chi. It's the earth element. It's a sense of feeling grounded, and the ability then to transform and transport and create new structures and energetic function within the body by way of knowing that I've got a little bit of carbohydrate I can work with. I don't need to be holding on tight and going into reserve the way that I see some women do when they're trying to stay in a ketogenic pattern for too long. Again, that's a generalization. I would say on balance I think that women do best with a little bit more carbohydrate in their diet than men do on balance, and I think that it has a lot to do with our different hormonal system.
I think that ketogenics is a super cool thing. I think it is something that we should be shifting back and forth, in and out of. Today, Dr. Pompa had his thing. I had my family thing right beforehand. I inadvertently will be skipping lunch today. You know what? It is so not a problem. My body is fine. I can go out and take a long walk, and it would not be a problem. I probably will. I'll just get to dinner when I get to it.
I used to be a hypoglycemic mess. Had I thought about doing something like that maybe ten years ago, oh my. It would not have been pretty. To now be a woman who is able to skip a meal if I need to because I ate so nutrient dense at my first meal and because my body knows how to pull on its reserves when needed, that's such a bonus. It's so good. It frees you up.
Dr. Pompa:
When you skip the lunch, if you looked at ketones, you actually start producing all these amazing, wonderful ketones that are healing for your body. I found this little niche. In the summer time I do a lot more endurance. I'm always experimenting with different things. I recover so much faster when I have more ketones. However, if I get more carbohydrates in the morning, I will not be in what we call ketosis.
By the afternoon I start producing all these ketones because I don't eat. I intermittent fast. I let my body burn fat. It's like I'm getting the benefit of both worlds. I really discovered at least in the summer time how good my body does with this phase stuff. It's hard for me. I say I always try to take in healthier carbohydrates. I probably take in between 75 and 100, and to hit 100 is a little more effort for me just because of the foods I gravitate to. When I do hit 100, I won't be in ketosis in the morning, but by the afternoon I'm full blown ketosis.
Sarica:
Isn't that wonderful?
Dr. Pompa:
It's a neat place to be when you see that, and I do that with a lot of my clients. I will benefit from more carbohydrates and then the intermittent fasting, which gives you the benefits of the ketones. It's kind of cool. There's so many things. Again, I call it diet variation. It's really amazing.
Sarica:
It is. It's such a good thing to do. Again, that's what our people did before us. It just wasn't always so clear when the next meal was coming.
Dr. Pompa:
You know what, Sarica? I go through times where I'm just taking in very few carbohydrates. Again, I'm still 50 or so. I do that on purpose just to cause myself to have to adapt. Strong ones adapt, weak ones do not adapt. Then I go through these times when I'm purposely trying to get more healthy carbohydrates; watching the amazing thing that happens in your body, even just that dietary switch. You gave us some really cool stuff. I think when we add in these fermented carbohydrates, I think it's spectacular. I think our genetics, like you said, crave these types of carbohydrates. I think it's huge. I think people that just go on Paleo are missing this. I really do.
Sarica:
I know. It's a start. It's a doable start for a lot of people, which is great. It does not have legs for the long term.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree. Meredith, any final questions?
Meredith:
Thank you so much, Sarica, so many gems. I know as an acupuncturist you probably suggest some other therapies in addition to what you've already suggested with the food for gut healing. I don't know if you had any other suggestions you wanted to add in for those who are really looking to improve their gut health.
Sarica:
Funny you should say that. Acupuncture is phenomenal for helping people.
Dr. Pompa:
Bring her back on to do a show on that. I get questions on it all the time.
Sarica:
Oh, gosh! They just came up with a Sarica technique with Japanese acupuncture.
Meredith:
Wow. Fermentation queen. Wow.
Sarica:
I know! The Sarica technique. It's a needle loading technique that I made up because I couldn't do it the way everybody else did. I wasn't looking to show anyone, but I was at an event, and they said what is that? I said this is what I do. We can talk acupuncture.
Dr. Pompa:
We're going to do a show on that, and we're going to hold you to it now.
Sarica:
That'll be great. I love acupuncture. I have a lot of clients that I will tend to work with from a distance. They're not here in Flagstaff with me. Inevitably I get to a point where I say, let me help you find an acupuncturist in your area. We've gotten to this point, and I think that what's happening here is the body is still in some degree of stress. A good acupuncture treatment can help dial that down like nobody's business.
Dr. Pompa:
A few of our docs who do this, Kristin Rotblatt and others. You know Kristin and some others too. That's fantastic.
Sarica:
Acupuncture is wonderful. It's becoming way more widely available, which is great. Just today the patients I saw this morning, I recommend people do emotional freedom technique for their different stress points, and that's easy. Do an EFT. Good old EFT. I tend to send people to Gary Craig's site, but the thing I love about EFT is that it's free. It's something that folks can step into no matter what the price point that they are, and then it's a little technique that they can use to really help them get through some very challenging experiences. I love that.
When people are in sympathetic override, of course I'm also really suggesting that they start stepping into restorative yoga and meditation. I like to give direction on that as well, so doyogawithme. com is a free website for yoga. They have a lot of restorative classes, and I love that. [55:06] meditation book I love, and I direct people toward a lot of that. These are all things that if we can get that person into a more receptive and safe place where their earth element feels nice and grounded and comfortable, then they are going to be able to take in the information of nutrition and all the other information that comes their way, and they're going to be able to process that better. That's huge. If we can get people to calm down, that's a big one.
Dr. Pompa:
Thank you. That's awesome.
Meredith:
Thank you, Sarica. You're such a wealth of knowledge and clearly practice what you preach. Thank you so much for sharing today. Thank you, Dr. Pompa, as always. Awesome show. We'll have you back. We'll delve into the world of acupuncture. I have not delved into it, so there's a lot there. In Chinese medicine there's a lot that we can benefit from.
Sarica:
I'd love to.
Dr. Pompa:
You've got it. See you guys.
Sarica:
You guys take care.
Meredith:
Thanks everyone. Have a great weekend, and we'll see you next week.
