If Beans & Lentils Make You Gassy - WATCH THIS! Hormone Issues & Gut Health transcript

when you mess with the liver and it doesn't work you can die in 24 hours flat it is the most powerful detoxication system we have in the human body when you eat beans do you get bloated fart a lot or have stomach pain turns out avoiding beans and lentils might be a very bad idea for your health why this is the question we answer today with Karen herd known as The Bean lentil and gut health expert she's a nutritionist with a background in Biochemistry and ended up here after having to save her daughter's life after she had been poisoned something that she was only able to do because she had military training specifically in chemical warfare there's so much to unpack here including conversations about how to use your diet to lower your stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline how to detoxify your excess hormones that can build up and get stuck in your gut and also menopause but where to start well if beans make you gassy and you want to prevent gut rated disease detox your system or simply be able to enjoy a curry without pain then this is the episode for you so let's dive in what's up my healthy friends welcome back to the how to not get sick and die podcast this year it's my mission to coach 500 people to get control of their sugar cravings and sugar binges so they can stop y your dieting stop obsessing about food and finally create a body that they feel confident being in links to inquire about my programs are in the show notes and or the caption down below so scroll down click the link and let's chat now getting into the juicy stuff here with the biochemist the nutritionist the myth and the legend Karen herd Karen welcome to the show thank you Maddie I appreciate it I've been listening to your content for years at this point so it feels very much like the myth and the legend is an appropriate comment to make in the world of of Health with your name okay yes that's I think an appropriate comment yes well something that I find particularly unique about you and I'm sure everybody does around your knowledge is that your expertise was initially in chemical warfare as part of your time in the military so I'm curious to know how you went from that to becoming the bean and lentil and nutrition expert that you are now well it has to do with a long sad story but it all turned out good in the end I mean we have a happy ending so I had already ETS it means you have your estimated time of service finished so IID gotten out as a service as a captain in the United States Army and I had was the nuclear biological chemical defense Warfare officer for my Battalion when I was there at the 24th Infantry Division mechanized and so I had was out of the service and then became a full-time State home mom and my husband had taken a position as a pastoral assistant intern at a church in Granite City Illinois which is is just cross the River from St Louis if anybody ever wants to know it's considered basically a suburb of St Louis even though you're in a different state anyway they had prepared for our arrival to get the parsonage ready for us to live in the parsonage was not where the current Pastor was living he was living across the river in St Louis and so we moved into the prepare the parentage for our arrival they had put down new to the house carpet it wasn't new carpet it was just new to the house it was carpet that had had been in some man's garage for several years and so he said that it was still in good shape and so they laid it in that house and little known to us that and little known to them that the carpet had been infested with carpet beetle eggs and then when it got into the nice warm house this was all happening in December and so we're in the northern hemisphere so that's the winter for us and so cold season and so when the all that those eggs and hatched out with all the warmth and then they turned into little larvey and they all came out as little carpet beetles and there weren't 10 or 20 or 30 or a few hundred or a few thousand there were tens of thousands of them it was a really bad problem and you couldn't step on them vacuum them up you know you smash them whatever you couldn't keep up with them I mean it was we were overrun and so we had the local exterminator and a pest control come out and look at the problem they said oh yeah you got a really bad problem here so we're going to go ahead and we'll spray everybody leave the house this is typical what you would do you would leave the house for the day windows open doesn't matter that it's cold and at that time and you come back and you know all the bugs are dead and so that's what we did and came back and we were there for just a few days and all of us felt sick and then my little girl who was 18 months old at that time we thought well you know it it's you know it's winter we all have colds or you know something and and then my little girl went into Grandma seizures and then I knew that something was wrong of course we rushed her immediately to the hospital we went to the ER and she stopped seizing it was less than 10 minutes and she stopped seizing and they did a an x-ray of her lungs and said oh she has double pneumonia that's why she went into seizures and she had a just a slight temperature and it was only 100 degrees Fahrenheit which is not a high temperature at all it's called mild and they said she'll just have to you know be on antibiotics and anyway they on antibiotics and send us back home again and she went into seizures again when we were back into the house and and this time of course we rushed her to the ER and this time they said oh well first of all she didn't stop seizing she seized for over an hour and that that's a these are not just little mild seizures these are Grandma seizures so this is where your head rolls back your eyes roll back in your head your head's jerking your arms are jerking your legs are jerking it's a massively major event and so she finally did stop seizing in the ER I never forget those days those are burned into my memory permanently but as we was in the ER she was there and she was seizing and we had to hold her you know from seizing off the table because she's jerking so badly you know she's not conscious I mean she's and my husband and I were holding on to her on the exam table and the physician had his back turned and I mean she'd been ceasing for over an hour and he said there's nothing we can do she's going to die you know of seizures because the lactic acid builds up and you know you you just can't go on that way forever and I begged them to give her volume and they said or give her I asked them to give them atropine and they said no we don't have atropine at the hospital and I knew that atropine by that time I knew that it was probably going to be a nerve agent poisoning because I had already looked up what this spray had been and so and it was a nerve agent and that's my training in the United States Army was if we were ever exposed to a nerve agent that that would be the antidote is atropine and I I assisted to the emergency a physician give her atropine and he said we don't even have atropine in the hospital I mean we don't that's not in the United States Army troops carry that with them so that if you're exposed to a chemical agent then you can inject yourself with that and so he gave her valume and said I can't give her any more valuee I've given her the maximum dosage and so I so my husband and I stood over our little girl that was still in Grand Mall seizures and he prayed over and said dear God you gave her to us you can take her home and she immediately stopped seizing and then the Emergency Physician whose back was tools wheeled around and said we need to do uh an x-ray we need to do a spinal tap we need to you know to take the the spinal fluid out and to see you know what what's creating the seizure because they couldn't do any of this testing before you cannot do any testing on the child is in a Grandma's seizure you know they're not still and so they did all the testing and they said oh look she has double pneumonia again this is what's caused I said don't you see that double pneumonia is what a person would have if they have nerve agent and poisoning and so they said Mrs her we don't know anything about this so anyway we were transferred to a larger hospital to St Louis Children's Hospital which is one of the finest hospitals in the United States of America as far as taking care of children so we went by ambulance to to that hospital and she went came under the care of nine different neurologists at this very good hospital and I asked them I I was not a wild and crazy crying having melt down fits mother I said listen as United States Army as a chemical warfare officer these are all the signs and symptoms of nurov Agent poisoning we just had our house braided with a nerve agent here's the name on stur Band 2 e Organo phosphate please it's chlorop py phosph is the active ingredient please do a colon asrate level because it will show on a liver test it's a simple blood draw just do a colon asrate level and they said no sir no no no no this is impossible you do not know what you're talking about we're the neurolog olist here we're nine of us we know what we're doing this little girl had grandal seizures because she had a feveral temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit like I already mentioned is nothing and the double pneumonia caused her to go into this and so she needs to be on ph barbital the rest of her life got her on loading doses now f barbital is an anti-seizure drug and so that's the real problem and I beg them just do this simple blood draw they would not and so she stayed in the hospital for several days um till the double pneumonia had cleared up and amazingly it cleared up super fast of course she's on antibiotics because that's if they think you know somehow or another you got pneumonia and it cleared up super fast faster than ever would we're sent home we get back to our house same house same spray and they had sprayed every square inch of carpet and we had been there for a very short time and then my little girl she started to have all the symp symptoms again her eyes went to pinpoint these were things that I trained my troops on for years we even did jod calls in the Army when you run together as a group you you know you have a leader that sings jod calls I made up all the jod calls to train my troops on what to expect if you had nerve agent poisoning and every single symptom she had the pinpoint pupils the slight cough the diarrhea the being out of it and then I thought you know this time she's not going to seize because she's on loading doses of f barbol it was on massive doses of PHA barbol she won't seize this time I will put her in her crib because it will seem like she's falling asleep and I will put her in her crib and I will come in here in 30 minutes and she will be dead because her lungs have filled with fluid because this is what kills you when you're exposed to a nerve agent and I said I am not doing this I don't care if every neurologist in the world thinks I'm the most idiotic person in the world I am not going to watch my daughter die so I left that house I had two other children who were not well I was not well I was carrying a baby at that time Miss carried that baby everything was all downhill my husband was sick and I left that pars I said I will never go back until I get to the bottom of this and so I started call all nerve agent I started call all poison control centers that we have in the United States here so in Chicago in Dallas everywhere and all of them to tell the story to the reception is who answers the phone and then you know they talk about well do this and that anyway no answers I finally got a hold of a poison control center in Dallas Texas and they said well we don't know but you should be talking to this child toxicologist who works at the University in Calis and he might know and I said well call him I'm calling everybody in the United States of America that I could and so I called him and go through with his reception is again who I am they said well you know Dr Sheldon Wagner he's here right now you could just speak to him like really I get to speak to somebody that might know something you know and so he got on the phone line with me and I told him the story he said absolutely she could be poisoned did you have the carpet tested for levels of Organo phosphate and I said the lab in St Louis is requiring a large amount of money down payment because they have to recalibrate their instruments my husband is a pastoral intern and we have no money I mean we didn't have any money we were poorest Church M it's a true expression and so he said I have the lab here in my University he said said cut out pieces this size send them to me on dry ice by next day a because already you know so many days have pass this that it breaks down the chlorop py fal breaks down over time send it to me on dry eyes and are you nursing your baby I said yes that's the only thing she'll do she won't eat anything else she's not she's still not feeling well he said send me a sample of your breast milk and we anyway we did everything he s us to do we sent it all to him the next day he calls goes next day he calls us the next day after he tests it which is and we're talking about a turnaround in you know less than 48 hours all of it and he calls he said your levels of chlorop pyos in that carpet are over 100 times the safe level your little girl has been poisoned why hasn't your doctor done a colon estate level and I said I tried to get them to do that he said give me your Physician's name immediately I'm calling them he called them they called me less than half an hour after this that he I give him the number my Physician's calling me or my daughter's physician and he says Mrs herd could you bring your little girl in for colon estate level yes the one that I tried to get before yes we'll come in we took her in they did the colon estate level guess what she's poisoned there we go so now starts the whole what are we going to do about it because she was very sick I mean she was not eating she was wasting away her liver enzymes were off the charge because then they checked all her liver enzymes what they hadn't done before and they you know now they're all this she's been poison coming through and so what are we going to do about it and they didn't have any answers they said we don't know what to do about it we you know her liver is failing and if your liver fails you you're that's it you know there's nothing to be done anymore you will die and her immune system is completely compromised and I said well there's something somewhere some I can do we saw Specialists we took her to Chicago to see Specialists we saw specialist in St Louis and we conferred on by phone to specialist in Dallas and they all have the same prognosis there's nothing that can be done her liver is completely Ely failing her liver is deteriorating and there's nothing we can be we can do nothing I will never forget the day that I sat in a specialist office in St Louis and the specialist said Mrs herd we have never seen anyone die of Organo phosphate poisoning before and watch the liver deteriorate so we would like to do regular liver biopsies every few days and just take a chunk of RSE liver they're very painful test it's not a test it's a biopsy so that we can just examine the liver tissue as she dies and I said no I'm done an awful request it's an awful request and I said I'm done I'm out of here I don't want to have anything to do with you I don't no one can help me anywhere I've gone to everybody know so I went to the university there in St Louis it's Washington University it's a medical school and I went to the library and I presented myself to the library and I said I know nothing about medicine all I know is I have a degree in Spanish an undergrad degree in Spanish I said I have no nutritional training or medical training I know nothing and so but I have to learn everything I can about the liver and about Organo phosphates and is there a way to cover the liver and she's just a librarian she says okay well this is how you use the microfish because at we're talking 1989 and early 1990 okay so everything was still there was no no you know you can Google things and get on your browser and type in you can bring up all no there's none of that we're on microfish okay so she shows me how to use the microfish machine and says when points me over here you should start over here this is you know where we have these type of Articles and that's what I did I started to read and read and read and read and read article after article I read everything from every snake oil remedy to the latest research that the National Institutes of Health was doing and I came up with I learned a lot about what's called the inter hepatic recirculation about how the the we recycle things so that the liver clears and I came up with my very own plan nothing was in the literature except just how things work and So based on how things work how soluble fiber has an impact on interal hepatic recirculation then I came up with my own plan and then I instituted it by this time Bruce was really bad I mean she was I don't didn't know if she was even going to make it and so I started to feed her soluble fiber was the main thing that I fed her and that was beans and she wouldn't eat it so I had to grind all everything up and put it in an oral syringe and force her to swallow it because she didn't want to eat anything she was so sick at that time anyway she started to recover and she got better and she got better until she was well and then the doctors oh then then they said we can't believe this her liver enzymes are normal what are you doing we cannot believe this little girl that was supposed to die Liv and so hooray happy ending of the story we think that's the end of it and so but little bowns to me I didn't know that it was not the end of it it was the end of it for Ruth because she recovered but I started to get phone calls and said is this Karen herd I said yes this Karen herd well you know I understand that you healed your little girl and I have my son is this my father is thiss my brother my sister my Aunt my uncle they have this problem and the doctors haven't been able to help them can you help them I said no I can't help him I don't know anything I said I don't you know I'm not a nurse I'm not a doctor I'm not any medical profession at all yeah but the doctors say they can't help them and you found a solution for your daughter can you find a solution for me and so I you know you hear these terrible stories that'll break your heart and I said well I could go down to Washington University and now I'm very familiar with microfish and how to read things on a microfish reader and I could look it up and so I would look it up and I'd say if it were me and of course I have no drugs I have no you know no I can't prescribe anything all the only thing I have at my use is food if it's me I wouldn't be eating this but I would be eating this and people began to get well and then more people called me and by the way how did they get my number I didn't even know how did you get my number how did these people find out who I am I mean we're not putting it out on some newsletter or podcast there wasn't any of that stuff back then there was an article published in the St Louis Globe Democrat a little tiny article because somebody said oh we read it in the newspaper what newspaper nobody called and interviewed me you know anyway little newspaper I mean I finally got a copy it was just this little paragraph little girl who was destined to die lives and then they just had a little brief you know summary of what happened and just like okay So eventually then I started to get phone calls from people saying like the Drury ends we do brown bag luncheons we would like you to come speak at our Brown Bag this is where their employees sit around you know and their lunch hour and then they have you financial counselors come in or advisors or whatever and then one Bell Telephone call me they are had the largest building in St Louis it's in the tallest the one Bell Tower largest skycraper in St Louis with thousands and thousands and thousands of employees and they said we want you to come and start lecturing us so I started doing lectures to the employees there on a regular basis and then everything was just exploding and then eventually University of Missouri called me and said we have heard so much about you and we have so many demands that you come and begin to teach and I said I don't have a degree they said we know we'd like you to get one and so then I started working on getting my credentials and nutrition and then I set up my own private practice and then here I am almost basically I'm spent 30 years now 30 years later that I have a very wide International Pro practice I've since also gotten a master's degree in Biochemistry and just finished a master's degree in public health so that's how it all be in and Rose is now in her 30s and she's healthy and well and she's married and she has two little children wow what a journey yeah thank you so much for walking us through each one of those steps in that Journey it sounds like obviously a roller coaster and in many ways the path to nutrition chose you rather than you choosing it per se but I'm very happy that it's a good outcome I've of course got the question which everybody listening will be curious about what were the beans doing it's the soluble fiber that's found in beans soluble fibers in many foods but the richest source of soluble fiber is found in beans we have a a system our liver is in charge of clearing out all fat soluble waste in the human body it's a really important detox job that the liver is doing because if it does not work you can die in 24 hours if any of these fat soluble waste and a lot of it's our own production or our own hormones if those things are not clear out then you can die in 24 hours like our other detox systems like our kidneys they are filtering out water soluble things if your kidneys completely fail you you can live for two weeks your lymphatic system is another detox organ or not not an organ it's a system actually that works of different lymph nodes and the spleen is also a part of the lymphatic system if that fails you parts of it you a lot of women during breast removals like for myectomy during cancer you know surgeries they'll have many lymph nodes taken out often times people have lymph nodes and your spleen could be removed especially football players often times will you know get injuries and their spleen is removed you can live the rest of your life without part of your lymphatic system but when you mess with the liver and it doesn't work you can die in 24 hours flat it is the most powerful detoxication system we have in the human body and so what the way it gets rid of all the waste that is clearing is that it clears it from the bloodstream and it puts it into a digestive fluid called bile and the bile leaves the liver and goes down via the gallbladder and there is a duct that leaves directly from the liver into the dadum but most of it goes through the G gallbladder and then from the gallbladder goes into the dadum the dadum is the first smart first part of the small colon and so it's just right underneath it's just it right here at the upper part of your rib cage in in the center so it's just below the sternum and above your belly button is where the dadum is located and so all this bile gets dumped in into the dadum and then it eventually travels down into the Jenum that's the middle part of the small colon and into the ilium the ilum is the last part of the small colon and the ilium is connected through to a by a valve called the ilal SQL valve into the large colon but something very interesting happens at that terminal part of the ilium so you're still in a small colon is that fats are absorbed from that place in the terminal part of the ilium we don't absorb fats in our mouth we don't absorb fats in our stomach we don't absorb fats in the davum or the Jenum we only absorb them in the ilum and very specifically the vast majority in the terminal part of the ilium well what is bile made out of bile is made out of fat because that's the only thing you can put fat soluble toxins into you have to put them into a fat carrier a molecule of fat and so your bio recycles how much bio recycles when I was studying back on those microfish it was they thought it was about 90% of B is recycled now since then since I've you know continued my studies now we know it's 95% of all bile recycles so that means 95% of these fat soluble waste that are being pulled out of your bloodstream are dumped back into your bloodstream constantly and you're only getting rid of 5% of them well it's enough to keep your Al but then you're also keep clearing them it's just this constant process of clearing them and so what breaks that up is the consumption of soluble fire fber soluble fiber loves fat soluble waste there's a a bond that is made it's actually it's a net that it creates soluble fiber is a very mini Branch polysaccharide and so it it forms like a close mesh net and it captures these fat molecules and soluble fiber cannot be absorbed in the intestinal tract and anything bound to it will also not be absorbed and so just imagine this scenario Maddie you're eating beans which have your highest amount of soluble fiber you're releasing this fat soluble toxic loaden bile into your dadum and these two substances the soluble fiber and the beans see each other from across a crowded dadam and they rush into each other's arms and they get married and there is no such word as divorce and so this now complex molecule travels through the dadum the Jenum and reaches the terminal part of the ilium and the fat says hey I absorb right here at the terminal part of the ilam so I'm breaking up the relationship here and I am going back into the bloodstream via the portal vein and going to recycle like I've been doing for all my life and the soluble fiber says oh honey I forgot to tell you this up there in the dwad before we got married there is no such word as divorce and we're together forever and I'm going into the toilet in the form of a bowel movement and buddy you're coming with me and they fly through the ilal SQL valve into the large colon they make it through all the large colon and they're excreted in the form of a bowel movement and you threw the bile away and that's what I did for Ruth we started to throw away the bile because in the bile was the Organo phosphate that was just continuing to recycle and Destroy her and we were able to throw that poison into the toilet and so so how does that help people today because we all are exposed to fat soluble waste people are worried about the G glycophosphates that are in you know all the things that we spray on our farm Fields they're worried about the bisphenol a that are in the Plastics we're worried about past which is a the forever chemical which is a plastic we're worried about so many things eat soluble fiber it is EAS all these things are easily cleared out of the bloodstream by your liver you clear those things out then you eat the soluble fiber they go into the toilet we don't have to be worried about all these things if you would just eat soluble fiber and it do you have to eat it every 20 minutes no just have it at breakfast lunch and dinner eat a half a cup of beans not uncooked beans cook so a half a cup of cooked beans is not a chore to eat and then that will then pull out what you're recycling now then if you have a problem like with Ruth I mean that's all I was giving her I mean was just soluble fiber she was dying then yes you want to do it more often but just for good measure everybody should be eating beans three times a day the natural question that comes up for most people at this part of the conversation is that uh and it's very common you know working in the field of nutrition is that people that you know when they eat beans and or lentils that they get bloating they get pain they get gas and so for that reason that's an indicator to them that they shouldn't be eating beans and lentils and so my question to you is one why do a lot of people particularly in the white Western World react to beans in that way and what should they do in order to make it a more comfortable experience to be able to eat those kind of foods well first of all I want to make sure I tie that the passing of gas is gas and the bloating a lot of people don't understand that bloating is gas also it's just trapped and it's not being passed you're not burping it out or you're not passing it as flatulent and when it's trapped that's what creates the pain because you just blow up like a Bon and you know you're not getting rid of the gas so what's creating the gas for the people that have gas I need to ask them this question because if they answer honestly then I I already know their answer and it will be yes do you have gas anyway and you have gas when you eat other foods do you have gas and the answer is yes but it's worse when I eat beans yes because beans can be fermented what creates gas is the fermentation process we have two ways to digest Foods one is through a pathway of what are called digestive enzymes we all make digestive enzymes in our gastrointestinal tract those digestive enzymes break down our food into smaller portions so that they can be absorbed and cross the intestinal barrier there is a second way to digest foods and that is through the process of fermentation fermentation Works in a different chemical pathway and as a result of that particular chemical pathway you will always produce gas CH4 very specific Ally CH4 is called methane and so it's a gas and it has a stinky smell and it whether you burp it up or you pass it as flatulence and so the fermentation process creates gas the digestive enzyme process does not so what determines if you're going to process by digestive enzymes or fermentation that is the function of hormones the more hormones you are producing the more you will fmit your foods and the less the digestive enzyme process will come into play hormones are cleared from the bloodstream and placed into cleared from the bloodstream by the liver because hormones are made out of fats and placed into the digestive fluid bile bile is going down to your gut so if a person is eating beans and they have a lot of flatulence and gas and the pain and the from the the bloating that is because they are over producing or they have been over recycling hormones for a long time and they have a large content of hormones in their biofluid and hormones are different from other molecules everything that we eat we think about it breaking down we think about things in the bloodstream cholesterol being broken down from an LDL molecule that's a low density lipoprotein molecule into its constituent Parts which is the triglyceride everything gets broken down into smaller little pieces not so with hormones hormones are very very little tiny molecules already and they trigger reaction and they it goes from from a taunt to a relaxed state of molecule and it's really cool chemistry when you look into it but anyway they will trigger reaction to happen and then they go on to another molecule and Trigger reaction they're just triggering Pathways to start and they just go from molecule to molecule trigger trigger it's like turning a light switch and it just turns on the light switch and they go on a hormone does not get used up it doesn't say oh I I gave myself to this chemical reaction and then I'm used up in the process not so with the hormone it just triggers a receptor site on a cell wall of a molecule and then it just goes on to continue to trigger reaction it's never used up and so the liver can break down a hormone but very rarely does there's no point in it because there's such tiny molecules they just toss it into the bile and you throw it out of the body hopefully if through you know you eating soluble fiber if you have not been eating soluble fiber in your lifetime you have been recycling all kinds of fat soluble waste and number one on that list is the hormones and those hormones are triggering it fermentation pathway so what do you do you start with one bean you eat a bean you're not going to get a lot of gas from one bean and then you say I had no gas from one bean good next meal have two beans you're okay with two beans fine okay now you're at three beans maybe I have a little gas okay just stay at three beans until you don't have gas from that because that little bit of soluble fiber is going to begin to carry out some of those hormones that are creating the fermentation process and then you eventually catch up and we can also use pelium too celium is a soluble fiber that is this that has the same five there's several different types of f soluble fiber and mucilages and H cellulose and there anyway it doesn't really matter what they all are but psyllium is equivalent to beans not there's other different you know inulin and there's other fibers but they don't carry the impact that the beans do so you'd have to use celium celium can't be fermented because there's no carbohydrates there people say well I read on the label it has this many carbohydrates if United States I don't know where where it is where you are but United stes a a fiber is considered a carbohydrate which is just wrong I mean that's the FDA that needs to change that but I'm not at the federal level in politics so I'm not going to worry about changing all their rules but it has no calories calories means that it gives you some sort of energy there are no calories in soluble fiber it's like eating a piece of sawdust I mean there's no calories there that you're going to be able to metabolize and so beans though have other carbohydrates they have a soluble fiber but they have carbohydrates too and it's carbohydrates that are being fermented so if you eat psyllium there are no carbohydrates there and then it nothing can be fermented if you still have gases because you ate something else that was a carbohydrate you had a piece of bread you had some potatoes you had whatever you had you had broccoli you had cauliflower you had whatever you ate and so those are carbohydrates so you can either use ayum or you just work up to little by little I'm curious to ask in regards to hormones are we talking just sex hormones in regards to what comes through and gets recycled and needs detoxification using this fiber this insoluble fiber or are we talking all the hormones it is all the hormones sex hormones certainly are included in that but it's adrenaline and adrenaline is really important because if you have a washing of adrenaline which is actually two hormones called epinephrine and norepinephrine you are going to have anxiety when you have too much adrenaline you move into having panic attacks and anxiety and so if you or if you're nervous and you're feeling your heart pound by the way that's all adrenaline because you have to give a speech or whatever you're going to see your boss and you think he's going to chew you out or something like that then you just need to be eating a few spoonful of beans every 20 minutes and that we'll slam it down I have a I work with a lot of actors and people who are on stage and they'll say what can I do to calm all my you know stage Jitters I said just eat beans every few minutes before you go on stage you know and it works they all call me can't believe it I was so calm I went out there was able to perform no problem you know yeah it's because it took away all that adrenaline I'm curious in the conversation around beans well actually i' got I want to go two directions here actually really I want to go about 45 but the the question around most people's issue in their guts obviously with beans and the relationship with stress is that just a sign of the modern world and I ask that question in regards to one the food system producing maybe beans that aren't of amazing quality or or or or the other side of that equation which is that life is so incredibly stressful that nobody can keep up with their adrenaline and cortisol production it is my opinion that it is wholly the latter not the former that our lives are so incredibly stressful that we're not keeping up with it because the beans I mean we're the beans to be a bean you have to have soluble fiber I mean there isn't a being that is without soluble fiber well we everybody knows the stressful World in which we live I mean there's something around us and then added to that is that we're eating foods that create adrenaline when you eat sugar when you take in a caffeinated beverage when you're eating you know junk then you're going to increase your adrenaline production and you will and specifically caffeine too caffeine is well known to increase the sex hormone production especially estrogen so you are Crea eating those things because of the diet that you're eating and then you've left out legumes I mean beans used to be a normal part at least in the United States of everyone's diet and then in the early 1900s in United States we had the Advent of the flower Mill and it used to be people ate beans for breakfast I mean that was just you know you had beans that was just every meal you had beans but then we had the Advent of the flower meal and then you could grind wheat into flower really easily without you know between two rocks and pounding in open all that was gone we had flower meals then what would you rather have for breakfast a bowl of beans or would you like to have toast and jam oh we are all want to have bread we want to have toast that's better than beans right there's not the soluble fiber in bread and so our whole way of eating changed at least United States after the early 1900s and we lost all of that soluble fiber and how does this go in regards to the conversation around menopause does it help women that are going through per menopause or menopause a really challenging way with their hormones do do beans help them make that process much easier it can that's not the key critical piece in menopause however menopause is where the ovaries are no longer going to carry out the function of producing estrogen there's several different types of estrogen and there's the estrogen that the ovaries produce that is very potent that makes a woman be able to have children and so the ovaries have a certain life span and when a woman reaches is reaching that 50e Mark 51 is the average age of menopause in the United States I don't know about where you live but in the United States it's age 51 when you are reaching that the ovaries are literally shriveling up an ovary is about the size of a a pump almond it's I mean that's how tiny they are and as you grow older then the that overy shrivels up and it becomes this it looks like a dried up raisin you know I mean a dried up hard little raisin and it's not able to produce estrogen for you anymore the gland that begins to produce that estrogen for you is the adrenal glands they're the glands that produced estrogen for you prior for a woman prior to her minarch minarch was when she's in her teens and she begins to have menstrual cycles that prior to that time she was still a little girl and she wasn't a little boy and so little girls think differently than little boys by the way I know that you were a little boy I was a little girl and we think and I had brothers and I had sister and so we think differently we act differently okay and that is because human yeah the human and naty me for little girls they're producing actually a little more estrogen than the little boys do I mean that's just the way that we are genetically put together where was that estrogen produced before that little girl's ovaries had matured and ripened that they could produce this more powerful estrogen that was all produced in the adrenal glands and the same thing for little boys before they go through maturation and go through puberty their testosterone is produced in the adrenal glands and so when a woman goes through menopause and her ovaries are shutting down and they literally are not going to produce estrogen anymore then the brain tells the pituitary and the pituitary is part of an inderin system it's the master control gland of producing hormones it's telling the adrenals hey you need to make more estrogen for this woman and then the adrenal glands if they have been stressed throughout this woman's you know over these last you know number of you know decades that she's under more stress she's eating sugar she exposed to perfumes and fragrances which I haven't even touched on because that is a big adrenal stimulant and hormonal stimulant and when you continue to stress the gland over and over through the years then you're going to ask it to take on an additional job no this is what happens with women that have menopausal problems they're asking their adrenals to start picking up the function of making estrogen which they have not made for at least three or four decades depending on you know when the woman went through menar and when she's going through menopause and so you're saying now adrenal glance I know you haven't made any estrogen for a long time because you haven't needed to because the ovaries have been doing that job now I need you to make estrogen again and you know what the adrenals say back off Jack are you kidding I'm not going to make any estrogen for you I can barely keep up with the adrenaline demands this woman wants oh and she wants some cortical steroid and she's looking for aldosterone and she's looking for all these hormones that I make she puts me under stress every day because look at her diet she's an awful eater and then she's under this stressful situation with her family and her job and whatever else is going on are you kidding you think that I have time to make estrogen drop dead I'm not doing it and it doesn't and then you don't get enough estrogen and then you have the crying spells and you have all the the symptoms of the headaches and insomnia and blah blah blah women who go through menopause and know all these symptoms are it's miserable it's just because you can't make the estrogen the adrenal complex because you have so worn it out over the years so what do you do soluble fiber is important for everybody you would be eating beans three times a day just like every normal person should be eat them three times a day well what you have to do is you have to heal the adrenal you have to take away all the things that have stressed it through the years and then you'll find out that it's actually protein is the biggest healing factor for the adrenal glands to get good adequate protein I had this conversation yesterday with a friend of mine Veronica Smith who's been on the podcast before she's a chef from here in Australia and around the conversation with stress in regards to hormones and menopause and per menopause and no one seems to take it very seriously and I just think that that's a combination of factors that nobody wants to be left left behind and it seems too simple it's like oh just do less well you know Maddie have you tried living in the western world and just doing less no I live in a very stressful Western World too and so and involve an extremely stressful events i' mentioned you before that I'm in politics and you want to get into stress get into politics anyway so but if you're eating your beans then you can handle it people say k how can you be so calm how can you be you know you're passionate about what you're do but you're so calm and you know your speech is on the floor and all the rest of it it's because I eat beans and I don't eat any of the bad things that are going to create more stress on me so that you can handle stress yeah and so a question I have is um also about Southeast Asians in comparison to US white westerners so we're talking sort of Sri Lanka India Pakistan you know and probably Central America as well where they they have a lot of beans and in their diet naturally is it as simple for us as just re-exposing our guts and our bodies to these being having them regularly and then our tolerance and ability to process and benefit from them will be just the same as the people that eat Curry every day yes it is that simple it is that simple we just need to add the soluble fiber Tri diet and I and it's good to get rid of all these no items like you know I rattled off just moment ago all the sweets and the caffeine and the perfumes and fragrances too but you know in a lot of these countries they're not eating I and I don't know I'd have to actually study the current diet of that particular country but I mean they're probably getting more legumes than we are the soluble fiber and they may be eating a whole lot less sweets than Americans do because I don't know if you've been over here in American but I will tell you you want to come to a country that is were are after sweets I mean you have to have a site for breakfast you got to have a dessert after lunch and a dirt dessert after dinner and you're not a good American unless you have a bowl of ice cream before you go to to bed so we are sweet Fanatics over here it's exactly the same here in Australia we maybe not as overt about it as sort of the American culture might be but it's very similar here very high obesity very high you know handful of chronic diseases that are produced by just lifestyles of stress and poor nutrition so I think this information that we're talking about today hopefully will land with people in a way that means that they pick it up and start adding this soluble fiber or insoluble fiber to their diet and improving hormone profile but obviously you probably can't outbe a hyper stressful lifestyle so you probably need to also work on the stress yes it helps work on the stress too amazing so where can everybody find you online because obviously everyone listening is thinking I need more of Karen she's clearly amazing so where do we send them it's just Karen her.com it's just my name k a r n hd.com karen her.com and you can just put that into your internet browser my website will pop up fantastic I will put that link down in the show notes below and the caption below so people can get their hands on it and jump into your world and for us to finish what is one piece of health information you wish more people knew about well since we already talked about the beans and everybody knows they should be trying to get a half a cup three times a day half cup at breakfast lunch and dinner then I will tell you the number one item that you are consuming that is destroying you is sugar get rid of it get rid of your sweets get rid of it and it's very addictive it'll be very hard for you at the beginning but if you just say I will not eat it anymore cut it off totally abrupt withdrawal it'll take you two weeks to come through the withdrawal of eating sweets but then you stop craving it never go back to it it will destroy you yes you are preaching the same knowledge and wisdom right there that I am banging on the drum of every day on this podcast so thank you for echoing those sentiments and thank you for joining us here on the show I hope that we can catch up again soon you're welcome thank you for having me Maddie I really appreciate it yeah no worries bye bye-bye