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Hey, everyone, Dr. Axe here and welcome to Week 1 of our nutrition leadership training. In this session we’ll be talking about diet and common nutritional deficiencies that the population experiences.

This week is really all about setting a foundation. I know we have a wide range of people who are going through this program, from people just looking to break into the health and wellness industry to health bloggers who have internet websites online to some medical doctors, a lot of chiropractors, nurses, personal trainers. So, I know we have a wide range of people.

But in this section I’m going to be going through some of the key dietary things we should be addressing in our writing or speaking, whether you have a practice or you’re building an online health website.

These are some things, really, all of us should look for. These are some key tips that I use both in my practice when I was in clinical practice as well as building my health website in DrAxe.com and BurstFIT.com and some of the other branding things I’ve done over the years.

But again, we’re going to go through several different diets. We’re going to cover Paleo and vegan and gluten-free and other diets like GAPS and the ketogenic diet. We’ll also go over the most common deficiencies that we should really be addressing with patients and with our online communities on a really regular basis. So, we’ll go ahead and jump right in here.

This is what these weeks look like. So, obviously, the other days we’re doing calls we’re training on more of the business end of things. Earlier in the week, we discussed specifically building our brand and modeling and not inventing.

So, really kind of starting that off with answering those common questions as you look towards finding your niche and building your brand and moving forward in that area. And this next lesson for business, actually, that we have coming up we’ll be talking about how to build your website and online funnel to key topics here coming up.

But in the nutrition section this first week, we’re talking about Diet Trends and Common Deficiencies. Next week, we’ll be going through Digestive Health and how your digestive health can really affect every other area of health in your body.

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So, we’ll talk about healing leaky gut and IBS and how even digestive health is linked to food allergy issues and thyroid conditions.

Then next week, we’ll talk about hormone imbalance and lowering cortisol and adrenal insufficiency and thyroid conditions and autoimmune issues like Hashimoto’s. So, that will be in the Hormone Balance week.

Week 4, we’ll talk about Essential Oil Therapy. This is plant-based medicine that’s been used over 5,000 years. A lot of people really aren’t aware of the tremendous benefits of essential oils and how those could be used in practice and in building a business.

Week 5, we’ll talk about Fitness and Weight Loss. We’ll go through different forms of fitness like burst training but also things like yoga and barre classes and Crossfit and weight training, what you should be recommending and what you shouldn’t or in terms of-I know everybody has different opinions-so, what you may consider adding into maybe a program that you’re doing online or for your patients.

We’ll also talk specifically about weight loss. We know Americans, we are one of the most obese countries in the world. Weight gain is a major causative factor for a lot of diseases. So, we’ll talk also about weight loss, how to lose it in a healthy manner and how to lose it in an unhealthy manner. We’ll also go through creating a custom program, so, exactly what you’re laying out for patients.

Now, actually, this week I’m going to cover some of that at the end here as you lay out a program. So, that’s going to be more general programs. Week 6 will be more customized programs for clients you have coming in.

And then Week 7 will be Lifestyle Strategies for Healing. So, we’ll talk about everything from meditation to walking barefoot on the ground such as grounding and wearing barefoot shoes and all kinds of different stuff to do with lifestyle-reducing stress, techniques to beat depression and anxiety as well as some other things there with lifestyle.

Week 8: Detoxification and an Alternative Therapies, things like Gerson Therapy, alternative cancer treatments, Budwig protocol and other forms of detox, even kelation. So, we’ll cover those on Week 8.

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Some of these will have crossover. I’m sure the week of digestion I’m sure we’ll talk about hormones a bit and hormones can actually really affect weight loss. So, we are going to see some overlap.

By the way, if you are looking at some of these and you’re saying, “I really hope Dr. Axe talks about this or trains on this nutrition topic,” please go on Facebook and say, “Hey, I would love to hear about this,” and I’ll do my best to incorporate it as part of one of these weeks as we’re going through some of the content.

So, again, if there’s something else you really want to hear about specifically, please go to our private Facebook page. If you’re not on the private Facebook page, you’re really missing out. It’s a great place to be networking. It’s a great place to be feeding off of your colleagues and really building brands together.

I can tell you this-I have some dear friends now and really partners in this online space that I work with on a regular basis and they make me so much better. We feed off of each other. I’m good friends with people like JJ Virgin and a lot of people in this space that I really connect with on a consistent basis as we build our health brands.

So, again, the people that are on the Facebook group right now, so many of you, connect with one another, start working with one another because it’s really a great place to build. I know some of you going through this program right now are going to be the next Dr. Mercola’s out there and going out and teaching these health principles like I am right now.

So, what I want to start off with this week is there’s no perfect diet. So, we’re going to talk about diets, but there is no perfect diet. In fact, there are hundreds of diets that have worked for millions of people.

So, by the way, there’s not just one diet that works. Every person has a unique physiology and different diets may work best at various points in someone’s life.

So, as you’ll see, it may make sense for someone to follow a traditional diet most of their life, but if they come into contact or have a health issue, they may start doing the GAPS

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diet for a while or somebody that wants to lose weight fast may follow a ketogenic diet for a period of time and then transition into more of a real food diet or something like that.

So, again, there is really no perfect diet out there today. One of the most important factors to remember is that there are people that have lived to be well over 100 years old that have followed a vegan diet. Now, even though I’m not a huge fan of vegan diet, I don’t think it’s the best long-term, there are people that have proved me wrong. There are people that have lived to be over 100 years old.

Now, is that perfect for everybody? Absolutely not. But for certain people and certain body types, they may do well with it. The same thing-there are some vegans going, “Yeah, go vegetarianism and being a vegan. That’s the way to go.” Well, just to let you know, there are Eskimos and people that have lived off whale blubber that have lived over 100 years old in vibrant health.

So, the biggest factor, really, between a lot of people is eating less processed foods and getting some good quality nutrients in your diet, eating a more nutrient-dense diet which can be done with an all-meat diet almost and with an all-vegetable diet. They can both be nutrient-dense. Now, obviously a balance is better. We’ll get into that here as well. But again, consider this fact that you can follow different diets at different points and they can be beneficial, but it’s very easy to get in a ditch with some of these diets today which we’ll touch on.

The first diet I want to talk about-and this has been one of the fastest growing diets over the past few years-that’s the Paleo diet. There are some major positives for the Paleo diet. There are a few negatives of the Paleo diet. Now, Paleo stands for Paleolithic. So, this is also known as the Caveman Diet.

I’ll be really open about my belief systems with this. I do not believe that we came from monkeys and this concept. Now, I believe in certain aspects of evolution in terms of us changing and adapting over time.

But in terms of evolution in that manner, I really don’t adhere to it. But again, that’s what the Paleo diet believes in. So, if you believe in the roots of the Paleo diet, the roots really come from Paleolithic, the world being millions of years old.

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The man who started the Paleo diet, his name is Loren Cordain. He is actually a professor at Colorado University. So, he wrote a book called “The Paleo Diet,” as well as another book called “The Paleo Diet for Athletes.” His diet really is around a system of evolution, but also at the same time, the Paleo diet has kind of followed a previous diet of what’s called the Hunter-Gatherer diet.

So, eating like a hunter or gatherer would if you were out in the wild the way certain civilizations have lived. Certain civilizations throughout the past thousands of years have lived as hunter/gatherers. Hunting, that’s killing meat, catching wild caught fish, eating those as well as gathering things that you would just find in nature without the agricultural process.

So, that’s the Paleo diet. Loren Cordain started it. It’s been developed over the years by a man named Robb Wolf. There are also people that have come along and started offshoots of the Paleo diet like the Primal diet with Mark Sisson.

Now, again, the positives of the Paleo diet-it really focuses on eating actual food, real food, not protein bars and not these Slim Fast shakes and all of this other junk, processed grains, but eating real food. It also eliminates grains.

We know grains can be an issue in someone’s diet because grains are high in phytic acid if they’re unsprouted. Phytic acid is a mineral blocker enzyme inhibitor which doesn’t allow you to absorb iron and phosphorous and pretty much anything in rains.

So, it’s funny. If you go and buy a thing whole bread, it says, “May contain 100 percent daily value of vitamin B-6.” The truth of the matter is how much of them are you absorbing? Almost nothing because it’s locked up in phytic acid or at least, in the case of iron and most minerals at least, it’s locked up.

Also, it’s gluten free. We know that gluten today is a major source of allergies, probably the number one cause of food allergies today and gut issues. So, again, the paleo diet-major positives in that regard.

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Some of the negatives are it’s really not focused on organic food. The second thing is people on the people on the Paleo diet tend to eat a lot of pork as well as shellfish. It’s easy to get in a ditch and become imbalanced with a Paleo diet. I’m not saying that if you’re following a Paleo diet that there’s anything wrong.

You can do it in a healthy manner. I’m just saying a lot of people aren’t. I’ve got people I know like Diane Sanfilippo and Mark Sisson who probably eat healthier than most do that are on the Paleo diet.

I’ll just give you an example of how this works. By the way, there are a couple of different types of Paleo diets. There’s Paleo diet and that basically says you’re only consuming what a hunter-gatherer would eat. So, that doesn’t include dairy products. So, it’s actually dairy-free, the traditional Paleo diet as Loren Cordain taught.

The Neo-Paleo diet, which stands for Neolithic Period, which is about 6,000-10,000 B.C. that was right about when agriculture started. They actually say you can do dairy, especially things like raw kefir from goats milk and that’s totally fine.

That would be more of a Primal diet as someone like Mark Sisson teaches as well as Chris Kresser and even Diane Sanfilippo are more in that category of teaching the Paleo diet.

So, looking at the Paleo diet again, one of the things that happens is I’ve known people on the Paleo diet who literally only ate pretty much bacon and eggs and butter. So, you can have too much of a good thing.

This reminds me-I had a patient years ago. We were selling raw honey out of the office and one of my patients, I couldn’t figure out why she was losing weight. I come to find out she was literally doing almost like a cup of raw honey a day. Listen, raw honey is good but it should be used sparingly in small amounts, a tablespoon or so a day and that’s how it should be used.

So, again, as you are working with clients and patients and writing about things if you are working with or recommending any type of Paleo or grain-free diet, it’s just important that people still recognize there’s a balance there as well.

The other issue we know with pork and shellfish is pork are carriers of a large amount of parasites and there are plenty of medical studies showing their parasite count, as well as shellfish like shrimp.

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In fact, there was a study I wrote an article on how tilapia can be really, really bad for your health. So, tilapia, actually it’s been shown to have ten times the amount of dioxins as other fish that are wild caught.

It’s a similar thing with salmon. You can buy Atlantic salmon. Almost all salmon today that’s Atlantic is farmed and almost all Pacific is wild caught. But shrimp has been shown to be ten times more toxic than any farm-raised fish as well.

So, it’s just an important thing to remember when you’re looking at the Paleo diet is if you’re doing shrimp and you’re doing pork even though-let me say this, grass fed pork, is it better? Yes. Is it still a clean, healthy food? It’s really not. I’d like to see if there’s a study showing that pork actually helps reverse heart disease or helps a health issue. I’d love someone to share that with me.

But again, the Paleo diet here again-there are some great things about it. I would say this, following part of the principle of the Paleo of being a hunter-gatherer is a good principle to follow.

Vegan or vegetarian diets-great positives here in the fact that they’re very high in enzymes. Most people are enzyme-deficient, especially men. High in antioxidants, more raw food, organic-focused typically.

So, vegan/vegetarian diets definitely have some benefits. The things you need to be aware of with the vegan/vegetarian diet is typically the people that adhere to these sort of diets have carbohydrate overload. They have no amount or minimal amounts of vitamin B-12. Often times there are amino acid deficiencies. Also, they are typically low in healthy fat.

Now, is it possible to be a vegan or vegetarian and overcome these obstacles? Yes, it is. Is it natural? No, it’s definitely not natural because the only way for you to make up for these negatives is to typically to use supplementation. For the most part, that’s how a lot of people try to get around it. So, is it natural? Really, probably it’s not the best.

I’ll tell you this subgroup of people-the reason why I’m going through some of these things, this isn’t to convince you of one specific diet. Some of you, if I go through vegan or vegetarian or Paleo, you may disagree with me and that’s absolutely fine. But it’s important to recognize some of the things that your clients may be going through.

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With a vegan, vegetarian diet, the subgroup that has the most issues especially are young women in their 20s who go through and become vegans and then they also start to want to become pregnant and then they become pregnant and then really, the child typically needs more fatty acids, amino acids, vitamin B-12 is essential. So, just some things to be aware of there.

Carbohydrate overload is something that is very common in vegans and vegetarians which really increases the risk of cancer. A vegan diet, actually, is doing no animal products whatsoever. So, no meat, no dairy, even true vegans restrict and do no raw honey because they’re made by bees.

Vegetarians, on the other hand, can actually mean about ten different things. You have pescetarians, you have ova-lacto vegetarians. There’s a range of things. But vegetarians will often times do fermented-quality dairy products like yogurt. Sometimes they’ll do eggs and they’ll do honey. So, you can see they do not consume animal parts but they will consume animal-based products, byproducts like eggs and dairy and honey.

So, vegetarians, actually, can typically be much more healthy than a vegan can because you can actually get vitamin B-12 from dairy and from eggs. Amino acids-you can get a full range of amino acids from dairy and eggs and also some great healthy fats from egg yolks as well as from grass-fed dairy products. So, again, being a vegetarian, you can do it.

Another subgroup of vegetarianism is a pescetarian where you don’t consume chicken or red meat but you do consume fish as well on occasion. So, that you can definitely be healthy with as well.

Again, it’s just important to recognize that if you have a patient or somebody that’s on a vegan/vegetarian diet, studies have shown they tend to be more deficient-vitamin B-12 is so important for energy levels. It’s so important for cellular function. We obviously know amino acids are important for muscles and cell regeneration for anti-aging. And then healthy fats are vitally important for hormones.

And let me say this-I think being on a vegan/vegetarian diet for a few weeks or months can be absolutely fine. In fact, I do a diet called the Daniel diet every January where I fast for ten days consuming only pretty much fruits and vegetables for ten days.

I think it’s great for cleansing. If somebody has a certain type of cancer, doing a form

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of a lot of vegetable juices and raw vegetables for a period of time can be greatly beneficial. But for sticking to this diet for somebody’s lifetime, their entire life, it really is typically 99 percent of the time going to cause some sort of nutritional deficiency.

The next diet-this is one of my absolute favorite diets. In fact, it’s the diet that I follow most frequently in combination with a diet called the Traditional diet. But this is the simple carbohydrate diet and the GAPS diet, which is a diet developed by Natasha Campbell. GAPS stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome diet. So, really it’s how your gut affects the brain.

We know that actually gluten has been proven in cases in certain proteins once they leak through the gut, they can recirculate and cause brain inflammation. Natasha Campbell designed this specifically for children with autism and for children with epilepsy and adults with depression and anxiety symptoms, hence the name Gut and Psychology. So, gut and brain connection and syndrome and that diet there.

The simple carbohydrate diet, which is what GAPS was adapted from, was by, I believe, Dr. Lane. The book was written back in the 1950s which says when you’re consuming carbohydrates they should all be simple carbohydrates, things that are simple to digest-so, not doing grains, not doing starchy carbs, only fruits and honey as sweeteners because your gut has to really do no work to break those down.

It’s a similar thing with bone broth. Amino acids are kind of pre-digested and broken down. It’s very easy for the body to digest. So, really both of these diets are allowing your digestive system to heal. It’s important to remember this, though. There is no food that heals your gut. L-Glutamine and bone broth and these things-they don’t heal your gut.

Essentially what they do, they let your gut rest because your gut doesn’t have to do work. They protect your gut. So, really, your gut regenerates itself. It’s the same thing with your liver.

Your body heals itself. But your body just really needs no interference. That’s one of the things that the GAPS diet allows to happen. Other positives with the GAPS diet is it’s a very nutrient-dense diet. Also, it really heals the gut.

Negatives-it’s hard compliance and restrictive. Most people on the GAPS diet have to

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learn how to cook. The truth of the matter is you work with clients over the years and most people have lost the art of learning how to make food. That is a negative when it comes to both of these diets. There can be hard compliance. It’s a little bit more restrictive.

But if somebody follows this diet very closely, especially patients with irritable bowel syndrome or leaky gut or food allergies or autoimmune conditions, this is the ideal diet for any of those health issues. If they can follow it and if they’re willing to make their own bone broth at home and follow those sort of steps on how to make their food, it really is probably the most healing diet in my perspective that’s out there today.

The next diet is the ketogenic diet. This diet is actually typically known for treatment of three main conditions. Number one, it was used in the treatment of things like epilepsy and seizures. It’s been shown medically to reduce seizures in epilepsy. Number two-cancer. The reason the ketogenic diet works for cancer is that it starves cancer cells. So, we know that cancer cells can feed off of sugar and fermentation. So, ketogenic starves it of that.

The third thing is Alzheimer’s. It’s very, very effective. Actually, there’s a female medical doctor out of Florida who says she healed her husband from Alzheimer’s by putting him on a type of ketogenic diet known as the MGT ketogenic diet or the coconut ketogenic where you’re also incorporating a lot of coconut oil and having your body burn that for energy.

Actually, one more-there are four benefits to th ketogenic diet-fat loss. We’re talking about really, really fast fat loss. In fact, if somebody is saying, “I want to lose fat fast,” I really believe the ketogenic diet is the fastest way to tmake that happen.

Positives-fast weight loss, no sugar, healthy fats. When we say no sugar, the ketogenic diet typically recommends a diet of around 50 percent fat, maybe 40 percent protein and 10 percent carbohydrates. So, little to no carbohydrates.

I believe the ketogenic diet can be followed for a period of time, anywhere from three days to three months. It can be greatly beneficial. But staying on this diet your entire life really is not healthy and normal because your body does need carbohydrates. Yes your

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body can burn fat for energy, but being on this for a very long period of time can cause issues, especially in females if you’re really trying to go into ketosis.

So, again, I think it’s a fantastic short-term diet. I don’t think it’s a great long-term solution for health problems. But again, if someone wants to do a 30-day program, burn fat and lose weight and fast, ketogenic is excellent. But again, long-term, really needing to incorporate some form of good quality carbohydrates is important.

The gluten-free diet probably overall the most popular buzz word in diet today. It would be hard for you to go into a majority of restaurants today or specifically ask somebody, “Hey, have you heard of the gluten-free diet?” Pretty much everybody has heard of going gluten-free. The big positives-there’s no gluten. Another positive-it’s typically less allergenic.

The negative with gluten-free is this-gluten is not at the heart of the matter. It’s not addressing the root cause of the issue. The issue today with gluten is that the crops have been hybridized, which means most crops today have double to amount of gluten they’re supposed to.

Also, grains today are not traditionally prepared. They’re not sprouted like Ezekiel bread or they’re not done through an even better process or superior process, which is something like a sourdough fermentation process where you’re bringing out good bacteria and you’re predigesting everything in a way.

So, that’s the issue with gluten. It’s not predigested. We consume way too many grains to start. But again, gluten isn’t the issue. In fact, if you’re really healthy and you’re consuming a good quality sourdough bread, the fact that it has gluten in it is not an issue whatsoever. The other thing is a lot of times we’ll say, “I’m going to go gluten free.” I’ve taught shopping classes at Whole Foods for years.

One thing I do is I love going through the gluten free section. There’s a specific section in some stores that are gluten free sections. I’ll point out the gluten-free animal crackers. I’ll say, “Okay, it’s made with this bleach white flour. It’s got sugar. It’s got this. Yes, it’s gluten-free, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy for you.” So, some people start to think, “Hey, try these gluten-free cookies. Try this gluten-free ice cream.” Those still aren’t healthy.

So, again, I think laying off gluten for a lot of people is fantastic. I think going gluten-free

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is great. But if somebody wants to take care of a root cause of their issue, really probably following more of a GAPS diet or a traditional diet would actually address more of a root cause than going gluten-free would be. Again, going gluten-free can make a huge difference for some people, absolutely huge.

I’ll say this as well. I’ve found this to be really interesting. I read a study recently on celiac patients. Celiac patients, we know that they are, of all people, the most gluten-intolerant. But recently celiac patients who had been kind of recovered from the main stage of severe celiac symptoms, they gave them a completely, just a very high quality sourdough bread. They found that these celiac patients had no adverse reactions to a strong sourdough.

So, sourdough, again, it’s like taking milk and turning it into yogurt. You’ve taken the starches and the carbohydrates and turned them into good quality bacteria. When you have gluten that’s predigested like that, your body has to do no work so it’s not going to cause issues. So, again, gluten is not the main issue. The main issue is that gluten is not properly prepared or breads with gluten in them. But again, gluten-free can be healthier than most.

This is a diet I really wanted to touch on. I know that we’ve got many fitness trainers who are going through this program as well. I actually come out of the fitness industry. In fact, my first job in the health and wellness industry was as a personal trainer. I went to the University of Kentucky.

I went through and got an AFAA certification. I trained for four years. The people that mentored me throughout high school-actually, he was a collegiate football player and she was actually a figure competitor. So, both of them over time started doing these figure and fitness competitions.

I want to talk about the benefits of clean eating and some of the side effects. This is Tosca Reno. Her husband founded Oxygen Magazine. Today, she runs Oxygen Magazine as well as she’s written a book called “The Clean Eating Diet.”

The person on the right here, this is Dr. Chris Zaino, who at 27 years old won the Mr. America competition. So, Mr. America was known as the most buffed, ripped guy on the planet. I want to talk about what happened to him following this diet.

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So, big positives of clean eating-by the way, clean eating is a term that we used to throw around that meant, “Hey, I’m not eating a lot of fat or I’m not eating fast food or junk food. It’s a diet that is clean,” which typically means you’re getting a lot of protein and fiber in your diet and a lot of meat and fruits and vegetables.

So, clean eating-typically you’ll eat several meals a day, around five to six meals a day to increase your metabolism. It will help you burn fat. It can really help you build muscle. It’s a nutrient-dense diet, which is great.

The negatives are is it’s typically very low in healthy fats. It doesn’t focus on organic whatsoever and it can be very hard on the gut and digestive tract. You see here Tosca, obviously beautiful woman, but one of the things that happens is some of these females get down to contest time with the bikini in figure and fitness women, is they’ll actually miss their menstrual cycle.

So, this can be very hard on female organs and actually can cause even fertility issues for some in the future. So, again, it’s just important to remember if you work with clients that do this-again, this is a small subset of the population, but it is out there and it does happen. So, again, dieting down to that point if you’re doing the extreme form of what some people consider clean eating or the contest-ready is not healthy.

My friend here, Chris, he actually, at 27 years old, the year after he was crowned Mr. America, he started having bleeding in his stool, lost 40 pounds, went into his doctor and they said, “Chris, you have ulcerative colitis and we need to go ahead and put you on steroids.” They put him on steroids for a period of time. It continued to get worse.

Finally, he went in a year later and they said, “Chris, we’re going to probably have to remove your colon, your intestines, we’re going to put in a colostomy bag.” Chris was like, “No way.” Chris started doing research. He actually went to a seminar that a good friend of ours teaches, a guy named Jordan Rubin. Chris started following the Maker’s diet. He started doing the probiotic-rich foods and really eating real food. His body was completely healed.

Today Chris is now Dr. Chris Zaino and he has the largest wellness clinic or one of the top five wellness clinics in the entire United States. He practices in the Houston area of Texas and has really gone on from this experience to be a messenger of health and healing. So, that’s Dr. Zaino.

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But the reason why this happened to Dr. Chris-I asked him, “Chris, what do you think caused this?” He said, “Well, I was doing protein shakes every day. They’re isolated protein. It’s not real protein. It’s very hard to digest.”

It’s one thing to do a scoop of grass-fed whey concentrate a day in your shakes which is fine and can be healthy. But to do that much protein and to have the isolated synthetic protein with the chemicals, yes you can put on muscle with that protein, but it is so hard on your gut, it tears your gut apart and causes leaky gut and inflammatory bowel disease over time.

So, remember, this clean eating diet-a lot of positives. But you really need to look at the overall protein intake. You need to look at not being extreme on it as we see here. I know two of the people that have been popular in this arena like Tosca Reno, founder of Oxygen Magazine and Chris Zaino, former Mr. America.

Let’s talk about a traditional diet. I believe this to be one of the most realistic diets for people. If we want to look back thousands of years and want to know how did our ancestors typically eat? It was really a traditional diet. This is also known by some in more recent years as the diet promoted by the Weston A. Price Foundation. They’ve got a great website if you look at WestonAPrice.org or .com.

But the positives, of all diets, it really focuses on real food. That really is what it is. It’s a real food diet. It’s been historically proven. We look back at what Abraham probably at from the Bible. This is what Abraham ate. It’s easy to digest. It’s realistic for people. It’s probiotic-rich. There are so many positives here.

So, on a traditional diet you’re going to see things like bone broth. You’re going to see sourdough bread, then a lot of fruits and vegetables and organic meats and things that are grass-fed. They’re the ones that led the whole grass-fed movement and free range chickens and wild caught fish.

So, a traditional diet is really the way that I personally eat. And then when I’m doing something a little more intense, I’ll typically do more of the GAPS diet. But the traditional diet is fantastic.

Negatives are that it takes a lot of time in the kitchen. When I say a lot of time, you can do it faster. But you know, for people that really follow this diet closely will typically make their own bread and maybe make their own food in the crockpot and they’re in the

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kitchen. For a lot of people today this is not something they do.

When I first heard making my own bone broth, I thought that sounds really difficult or making my own bread. The truth of the matter is this stuff is so simple. If you want to make bone broth which is probably the most healing thing for your gut in the entire world, basically you take some bones like beef bones, you put them in a crock pot with water and a little bit of apple cider vinegar and you let it simmer for 48 hours and you drink it. It really is that easy. It’s making real soup.

So, we’ve heard things over the years like chicken soup is good for the soul. By the way, side note-my mom, when I was sick she used to give me chicken soup and ginger ale. She probably kept me sick another week because of all the ginger ale I drank.

But really she got that from chicken soup-which first off, it was like full of sodium and MSG and then the ginger ale was like pure sugar-but she did it probably because her great grandmother had her do chicken soup which was made from real bone broth which is healing and probably had her do actual ginger shots which are healing for a cold as well. But my mom, she did her best.

But anyway, just going back to this, that’s what a traditional diet is like. It’s bone broth. It’s the real foods with these tremendous healing benefits that have been used for thousands of years.

Intermittent fasting-a very, very popular diet-type of diet today. Intermittent fasting is where you will not eat for part of the day. So, you may pretty much skip breakfast and you’ll eat your first meal at noon, a second meal at 3:00 and your third meal at 6:00. So, maybe you’re eating in about a six-hour period of the day. Typically this is done in intermittent fasting between a four to eight hour period.

By the way, I’m a huge fan of fasting. In fact, throughout the Bible it talks about it, throughout history, the benefits of spiritual awareness. But the true health benefits of fasting partly come in because you’re letting your system rest. When your gut doesn’t have to do all this work and your liver doesn’t have to do all this work, they’re able to regenerate and heal.

So, the huge benefit of fasting is that it lets your system rest. Another huge benefit for men especially is that it can support hormone release. Also, it’s less calories. So, for those reasons, intermittent fasting can be great.

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The negatives are that you’re typically lower on fuel. Your body may, at some point, have to start burning some muscle for energy. It can cause long-term deficiencies. Now, I think intermittent fasting for days or weeks or doing it, let’s say, every Monday or, again, on occasion, using this is a type of diet, not permanently but on a basis, I think, is fine.

Also, people can tend to overeat during their meal. So, because you’re not eating until noon or the meal in the evening if you’re only eating two meals a day, you’re really eating a lot which is sometimes a lot for your body to be able to handle, especially your stomach. But intermittent fasting overall can be beneficial.

What I’ve found is men tend to do much better on it than females. I think part of it is females, their hormonal system works differently than male hormones do. So, I’ve done intermittent fasting in the past and maybe I’ll do it for a month at a time or one or two days a week. Again, there are definitely major benefits of fasting, but fasting every day for years can typically get you in trouble in terms of your health.

Let’s talk about some common nutritional deficiencies in men, women and children. This is an important thing to consider as you’re writing articles for your patients or clients or your meeting and doing a sit down meeting with a patient or client. For men, some of the most common deficiencies according to medical research-magnesium is a very common deficiency, vitamin D-3, omega-3 fatty acids, enzymes and antioxidants.

Now, why are men deficient in these things? Two big reasons-one, men tend to eat way more conventional meat, which would cause an omega-3 imbalance and men tend to eat less fruits and vegetables than women.

Enzymes and antioxidants and especially magnesium, especially if you’re buying organic foods that are going to be higher in magnesium-men tend to not worry about organic as much, they tend to eat less fruits and vegetables and more meat. For that reason, let’s start with the meat, because men eat more conventional meat, they’re much higher in omega-6 fatty acids. So, they need to supplement with omega-3 fats to balance out that omega-3/6 ratio.

Also, magnesium, enzymes and antioxidants are found in high amounts in organic fruits and vegetables and when they’re eaten raw especially. So, men tend to eat less raw fruits and vegetables than women. So, these are some of the main reasons why they’re deficient in America today.

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Now, I read a study out of Japan. They actually compared American men to the men in Okinawa and they found that the Okinawan males who live much longer than American men consumed eight times the amount of antioxidants on a regular basis. This is out of a book called “The Okinawan Diet.” But again, these are the most common deficiencies in men. You want to consider this when you’re working with a male population.

Women, most common female nutrition deficiencies-vitamin D-3 is huge for women. Women tend to also are covered more than men, not in the summer when you’re laying out obviously, but other times during the year. Vitamin D-3 is not just a vitamin, it’s a pro-hormone. For women and their hormonal health, vitamin D is so vitally important for hormones. That’s why it’s number one on the list.

Number two is magnesium. In women just in general across the board, about 80 percent of people in America today are magnesium deficient. Part of that reason is because we try to get some of our magnesium from grains, which because they’re not sprouted they contain phytic acid that’s bound to magnesium so you’re not absorbing much as well as just our soil depletion today is another issue.

Women also because of their menstrual cycles tend to be lower in iron, which is another problem. Women tend to also eat far less red meat than men. So, something else to consider is getting more iron.

Probiotics-actually, I read another study here that said around 78 percent of women that have ever taken a contraceptive drug are severely probiotic deficient because contraceptives or birth control pills really can cause systemic candida in the body. They lead to probiotic deficiencies and there are so many other side effects there. But that’s another reason why that’s a common deficiency in women.

Vitamin B-6 is another common deficiency in women. Vitamin B-6 is important for energy as well as red blood cell production. And then healthy fats-women tend to consume more carbohydrates than actually men do. A lot more breads and pastas and chocolate-really satisfying that sweet tooth. But they typically replace their healthy fats with carbohydrates. So, women focusing on getting more healthy fats like omega-3 fats and short chain fats found in raw butter or coconut oil.

But really, the female population-these are the top nutrients you want to look at addressing with them. Not to say that a woman couldn’t be deficient in vitamin B-12 or zinc or copper or any other mineral or vitamin, but these are probably the most common

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that you’ll see in females.

In children, reading a recent medical study, they were most deficient in fat-soluble vitamins. A couple reasons for this, but one of the big ones is especially if children aren’t breast-fed, if children aren’t breast-fed and they’re put on formula, they start off very early in life deficient in these fat-soluble vitamins which really support the brain and development which is so important. Also, today, even when we’re giving them milk, typically it’s skim milk.

So, again, those are some major reasons why kids are deficient in these fat-soluble vitamins today and also omega-3 fatty acids and then probiotics. If children get put on prescription antibiotics for ear infections even once in their life, it radically changes what’s called their microbiome in their digestive health.

So, when working with children-now, there are other things, B-vitamins would be another big one, I would say, like a B-complex vitamin-but really, probiotics will help address that as I’ll talk about in a minute. But really looking at these certain nutritional deficiencies-by the way, I’m not telling you to prescribe or recommend vitamin A for a child in supplement form, but having them focus on getting more fat-soluble vitamins in their food.

In fact, if you’re doing a grass-fed dairy product or breast milk for children when they’re born, breast milk or, let’s say, a goats milk yogurt or kefir has every one of these nutrients listed here in the highest, most absorbable amount you can find-probiotics, omega-3s, vitamin A, vitamin K, vitamin D-3.

The issue is 98 percent of dairy today is complete junk, but if you can go to your local farmer’s market or order from a quality company something like amasi or good kefir, you’re going to help address a lot of these nutritional deficiencies found in children today.

Great study done at Stanford, a probiotic study-here’s what they found. Consuming probiotics increased vitamin B-12 levels by 67 percent. Huge study here. This study was actually done to specifically find if probiotics supported weight loss. They did.

Actually, the average person lost about four to five pounds on the study just by adding a probiotic supplement into their diet. But the unique thing here in their findings is they also tested B-vitamin levels. Every B-vitamin increased including vitamin B-12.

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This is a little bit counterintuitive to some physician’s thinking. But we’ve heard the principle you are what you eat. In truth, you are what you digest. If you’re not digesting properly, you’re going to be deficient in most vitamins and minerals.

Specifically, actually, your gut and GI system-if you have a good healthy probiotic, they actually produce vitamin B-12 for you. They help in producing vitamin B-12 somewhat. So, again, consuming probiotics can help increase vitamin B-12.

I had a patient. Her name was Mariam. She came in and she was getting vitamin B-12 shots for years, two years. Her vitamin B-12 levels still weren’t normal. I put her on a diet very similar to the GAPS diet and I had her consume probiotic-rich foods and I had her taking a probiotic supplement. After four months on this plan, her vitamin B-12 levels were totally normal. She didn’t take shots anymore and everything had regulated in her body. She got off several medications-just a massive turnaround in her health.

So, just to point this out-if you have someone that’s deficient in vitamin B-12, it doesn’t mean we need to shove vitamin B-12 down their throat. It probably means we need to improve their absorption. They can take a B-12 supplement. I do recommend that sometimes for people.

But at the same time, really, getting the digestive system healthy will take care of a whole load of nutritional deficiencies. You don’t have to take a supplement and most of the time a dietary change can address most nutrient deficiencies.

Here are the most common causes most of us are going to have to deal with on a regular basis. I know that I specifically have people question about on my health website-number one is chronic pain. By the way, I’m going over this for two reasons.

One, if you are, let’s say, a health blogger and you’re wanting to write articles about specific things or address things in your health articles, really focus on some of these conditions here. If you’re in medical practice or a nutritionist or a nurse, you may also develop a specific custom nutrition plan in the future for these conditions. That’s really what I’ve done. I’ve made customized plans which we’ll talk about more in week six, but specific plans for health issues.

So, one of the most common growing conditions, the number one growing condition is chronic pain. So, headaches, neck pain, low back pain, fibromyalgia, arthritis-chronic pain the body is the number one overall condition people complain about. I can tell

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you from patients coming in over the years, it’s definitely the number one complaint on patient intake forms.

Number two: diabetes. Diabetes has tripled in the past ten years. It’s growing rapidly.

Number three: digestive diseases-leaky gut, irritable bowel syndrome, digestive diseases, gall bladder issues. I can tell you, gall bladder issues are growing really quickly as well.

Number four: hormonal problems like PCOS. In fact, I read another study saying 25 percent of women have some form of ovarian cysts. Endometriosis is very common. PMS, obviously, menopause is obviously common in women over the age of 50.

So, again, some of these hormonal issues, looking to address those. Hormonal issues can also be thyroid. That’s a major one that can also spill over into autoimmune disease. Heart disease today, obesity-we know we have an obesity epidemic-depression and anxiety. I want to point this out.

Those are four of the top ten prescribed medications in the United States today are in the antidepressant category. Number one medications prescribed-they say over 25 percent of the population is clinically depressed.

Alzheimer’s disease is on the rise. Autoimmune disease, from lupus to Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis to even rheumatoid arthritis-autoimmune disease is growing very, very rapidly. And then of course we know cancer. Obviously, there’s an epidemic there.

So, when I’m writing articles, a lot of times I will link over to articles about these because so many people have questions about these specific health conditions. By the way, when I say cancer, I want to mention this. We never treat any of these things as health coaches. We only help people reach health goals, which I’ll talk about more in a minute.

If you are recommending something via your website or if you’re a clinician or a health coach that’s going to do a sit down meeting or a Skype meeting with a patient or a client that you’re meeting with or a personal trainer sitting down, here are the six things that

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you probably want to recommend to your client base.

Number one is give them a meal plan. I’ll say this too-clients do not want to just be told, “Hey, go eat healthy or start exercising more.” I’ve had so many patients come into my clinic and they’ll say, “Hey, my doctor told me that I need to eat healthy.” I’ll say, “Okay, well, what did they recommend?” They’ll say, “They didn’t. They just told me I need to eat healthier.”

I say, “Okay, well he didn’t really do anything for you.” Or they’ll come in and say, “Hey, my doctor said I need to reduce stress to get my blood pressure down.” I’ll say, “What sort of stress-reducing activities did they give you?” “Well, nothing. He wrote me a prescription for my blood pressure medication but he didn’t help me with that.”

So, really, as people that are trying to help other people get healthy, you help somebody get healthy by teaching them these principles and showing them how to do it. So, again, don’t just tell a client, “Hey, try and eat more fruits and vegetables.” Imagine this-people want their hand to be held. They want you to walk them up and down the grocery aisle. They want you to tell them exactly what to do.

We have families and parents and the clients that are working with that are so busy. I think about my mom. My mom was a teacher. In fact, she taught special ed. for almost 30 years and she brought me to soccer practice and my sister to basketball practice and me to my other sporting events like track and basketball and my brother to who knows what. So, she was really busy. But my mom also struggled with depression. She had chronic fatigue. She had leaky gut syndrome.

If someone would have sat down with her and gone over this with her-I was the first person even though she had been under a medical doctor’s care for most of her life-she would have probably been able to avoid cancer and a number of other health issues in her life. Just to say this-these are the things you should be prepared to give your clients if you want to serve them in the best possible manner.

Number one, they need to be given a meal plan. Number two, a shopping list. Number three, replacement food list. Number four, give them lifestyle recommendations. Number five, supplement suggestions-now, you don’t have to do that but that’s a good thing to do. Number six, educational resources.

For educational resources, if you have a patient with high blood pressure-let’s use

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high cholesterol for an example. Go to my website DrAxe.com. Look up an article on cholesterol and refer it to them or go to Mercola.com or one of these websites, to get them resources.

Here’s the thing-as a health coach, if anybody’s a health coach now-it’s different if you’re a chiropractor or a medical doctor listening and you may be able to give more of a prescription than this, but for most people, pretty much everybody, you cannot tell a patient to get off their medications, right? That’s not something we do. That’s not our responsibility. We do not prescribe meal plans for conditions. What we do is we help people reach their health goals. Remember that.

If you are acting as a health coach, you have no credentials, or even if you do as a nutritionist, you cannot treat medical conditions. If somebody fills out in their intake form, “I have high cholesterol. I have low energy and I need to lose weight.” Well, we don’t treat high blood pressure. You give them supplements and foods that support heart health. You give them foods that support energy. You give them foods that support weight loss.

So, we don’t treat things. In fact, I don’t ask people for their conditions. Typically, what I do is ask people, “What are your health goals?” And then I help them meet their health goals through natural diet and lifestyle changes. That’s something legally we can do.

Again, we are not responsible for giving any type of medical advice to people, again, unless I know we have a few medical doctors going through the program that you are. But for that, we should be referring out and doing that sort of thing. But again, are we able to educate people?

So, I’ve had patients come into my clinic over the years. I don’t give them advice on cholesterol meds. But I do print out articles saying, “Hey, you need to be aware of some of the dangers of cholesterol medications and I want you to also start eating these foods which support healthy cholesterol levels, like omega-3 fatty acids and flax seeds and eating wild caught salmon.” So, again, we’re really educating them and they’re making their own decisions.

So, I hope that helps answer some questions I think some people had. So, here is one of the things that I’ve given my patients over the years. I created a shopping list. Now, it doesn’t need to look all clean and nice like the ones I give my patient, but you can take a shopping list-there are so many online. But this is a great thing to give to patients. They

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can walk up and down the grocery aisle with it and really use this as their shopping list.

A meal plan-if you’re telling them to eat healthy, give them sample meals. I give many of my patients a 7-day, some of them a 30-day, eating plan. I don’t necessarily want them for the rest of their life to only eat this, but starting off the first month, I really do. So, following a very specific eating plan for breakfast, lunch and dinner and then along with the meal plan, giving them recipes for these as well.

Creating a replacement food list-in fact, over the years I’ve had so many patients say this is the most helpful resource I gave them, giving them an eat this/not that. In fact, “Eat This, Not That,” a book by Rodale is one of the most popular books of all time. There’s hardly any writing on it. There are just pictures of, “Eat this instead of this.”

Now, most of the time it was like eat a burger from Wendy’s rather than a Whopper from Burger King. So, it really wasn’t that healthy. But you can do the similar thing, eat this, not that.

This is very simple. Rather than vegetable or canola oil, switch to extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil. By the way, this was from five years ago. I actually have a few updates I would like to make to this.

But as you can see here, there are certain changes you want to make to some of these things of eat this, not that. So, rather than cow’s milk, almond milk, coconut milk, raw goats milk. Rather than salt, sea salt. Rather than sugar, stevia, raw honey, but making those changes.

Supplement recommendations: This is what it looks like when I would sit down and do a nutritional consult with my patients. Now, if I had a patient come in with high cholesterol this is what it would look like. Now, I may not recommend five supplements. It might only be two or three for some. For some it might be four, some it might be five.

But laying out a specific, “Okay, I’m going to recommend fish oil to you as the number one,” I told patients because some patients came in on a budget, I would say, “Okay, if you could only buy two supplements with high cholesterol.”

I saw, “Hey, you’re on a statin drug, here are the top two supplements you should be taking. You’re going to take fish oil.” Why, because EPA and DHA are omega-3 fats that

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help reduce overall cholesterol levels.

And I would just kind of explain it in a sense. I would give it to the patient. Most of the time they would buy everything and sometimes if they’re on a budget, maybe they would buy the top one or two.

This is how I would lay out supplements for patients. So, again, a supplement guide. Again, for some of you, you may just recommend a multi and protein powder for everybody or green’s powder or probiotics for some.

But again, supplement recommendations is something else I laid out for custom plans for my patients. And so, that really is an overview of some of the different diets out there today as well as the common nutritional deficiencies and how to start addressing those.

Your homework here for Week 1:

Number 1: Read up on different types of diets. So, if you had heard of the GAPS diet but you want to learn more, go up and read some articles on that.

Number 2: Start preparing health handouts. Some of the things you just saw like shopping lists and eating plans, start preparing those right now for patients.

Number 3: Start working on future presentations. I really encourage you as I encouraged there in the first business lesson, find your niche. What is your message? What is your compelling story you’re going to be telling people to get people to change? So, start working on what your niche is.

Once you know your niche, start working on presentations where you can go out in the community and teach classes and do health talks and really be a leader in your community with all of these things. I think these are three things you can do this week to really start increasing your educational knowledge and prepare yourself to go out and be a health leader in your community.

Upcoming weeks what we have, again, today we covered Diet Trends and Common Deficiencies. Next week, actually, might be-I also love Week 4-but Week 2, Digestive Health, going through how to heal leaky gut and how digestion affects your entire body is a very important week.

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The third week we’re covering Hormone Balance. Week 4, Essential Oil Therapy. Week 5, Fitness and Weight Loss. Week 6, Creating a Custom Program. I’ll get in more depth on some of the stuff we just covered in the end. Week 7, Lifestyle Strategies for Healing. Week 8, Detoxification and Alternative Healing Therapies.

This next lesson coming up we have for business. I’ll be going over how to build your online health website, how to create an opt-in and also how to create your marketing funnel. This is probably one of the most foundational weeks if not the most foundational week of business, of creating your online business and just an absolutely amazing online presence as you move forward in the future.

So, I hope you guys have enjoyed this lesson this week. Again, if you’re not plugged into the Facebook community, I encourage you to go get on there, start networking, start connecting with the group and I want to just say, hey guys, have a great week and I look forward to our next lesson.