Welcome to the fifth episode of Season Three of Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. On this episode I interview Dr Delia McCabe, PhD.

The foods we eat play such a vital role in how our brain functions. Dr Delia McCabe is an expert in Nutritional Neuroscience and uses her background in Psychology to support behaviour change and stress resilience. In this episode, Delia helps us understand why essential fats, prebiotics, and maintaining steady blood glucose levels optimises our breath health.

Want to keep in touch? Head to @drkaitlin on Instagram or @wisdomforwellbeingpod on Facebook to connect.

What is covered in this episode:

>>Our survival organs: brain, heart, adrenal, reproductive organs rely on fats. Fats are also important brain development, central nervous system development, hormonal function, adrenal function

>>Our bodies are able to make saturated fats and monunsaturated fats naturally by using excess carbohydrates but our bodies aren’t able to make polyunsaturated fats so we need more of it in our diet, omega-3’s more so than omega-6’s. Omega-3’s, can be found in flaxseeds, sunflower seeds, pepita seeds, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds and the secret is to crush or grind them to get the maximum amount of essential fats from them.

>>The gut takes the food we consume, turns it into tiny compounds that we absorb into our bloodstream across the gut lining. If we eat poorly, have high stress and anxiety levels, and poor sleep, our gut lining becomes compromised and the food particles aren’t properly digested and once they’re in the bloodstream, an inflammatory response occurs that can compromise the blood brain barrier.

>>Research shows that we can actually affect our gut bacteria within a matter of four days by shifting our diet. To help good bacteria proliferate, we should eat more prebiotics which can be found in foods like artichokes, onions, leaks, garlic.

>>Our brain relies on a stable blood glucose to supply the fuel to keep our neurons working, so when we do anything that impacts our blood glucose, they fluctuate, which increases the chances that excess carbs will be stored as fat.

Links Discussed

• www.lighterbrighteryou.life
• Delia’s Books – Feed Your Brain & Feed Your Brain: The Cookbook
• Dr Delia McCabe on LinkedIn
• @lighterbrighteryou on Instagram
• Lighter Brighter You Facebook Group

You’ll find a copy of the Episode Transcript below.

Transcript

Delia McCabe: All of our thinking occurs across a huge, very sophisticated and sensitive neural network. All of which depends on the nutrients that we consume and other lifestyle choices, like sleep and exercise.

Intro: You’re listening to the Wisdom for Wellbeing podcast, the show that blends science and heart to bring you evidence-based tips and tricks for cultivating a healthy, wealthy, and meaningful life. Now. Here’s your host, therapist, Yogi, and fellow full-life balancer, Dr. Kaitlin Harkess.

Kaitlin Harkess: Hi there, welcome back to Wisdom for Wellbeing. Today I am joined by Dr Delia McCab. So, Dr McCab shifted her research focused from Clinical Psychology to Nutritional Neuroscience upon discovering nutrition’s critical role in mental well-being. Her research into female stress has been published in a number of peer-reviewed journals, and she’s regularly a featured expert in the media and her two books are already translated into four languages. Using a background in Psychology combined with evidence-based nutritional neuroscience and neurological strategies, Delia supports behaviour change and stress resilience within corporations and for individuals who want to optimize their brain health through online courses, workshops, and tailored events internationally. Having a stressed female brain herself, she now speaks to cultivating calm and enjoying chocolate and yoga to maintain it. Oh, what a wonderful combination. Today we’re actually talking about how you can feed your brain. What do you need to know to be able to start to optimize the way that your brain is functioning and to maintain stress resilience in the undoubtedly busy life that you are leading. Her wonderful books, you know, focus on this concept of creating a lighter, brighter you and I just love how she takes such high-level science and turns it into really practical ways that we can make changes in regards to what we’re putting on our plate for optimum results. So without further Ado, let me introduce you to Dr Delia McCab now.

Kaitlin Harkess: Hi Delia, welcome to Wisdom for Wellbeing. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with me here today and with all of our listeners, we are so excited to soak up your wisdom specifically around, you know feel-good food.

Delia McCabe: It’s wonderful to be here. Thank you, Kaitlin, for the invitation.

Kaitlin Harkess: And I guess just to get things started, you know, you’ve had a really interesting journey towards this passion of you know, looking at how food fuels our brain and our sense of well-being. Would you mind sharing with listeners who you are and a little bit about your journey?

Delia McCabe: With pleasure. It’s always interesting to tell people the story because I think many people start out with a certain idea about what they’re going to do with their lives and then you know life intervenes and you change and you shift and that’s exactly what happened to me but in a weird way, so I was busy completing my Masters and I was working with a group of really smart school kids and I was looking at the psychological variables that underpin their underachievement, you know, these were kids with parents who were saying look these kids are smart, but they are underachieving, the teachers were frustrated with them. The children were tired of being nagged. And so it was an interesting dynamic to chat to these parents and their teachers and the kids and so what I did I had my experimental group which was the kids who were really battling but we’re really smart and I had the control group which was the smart kids who were doing well at school and I spent a lot of time with them discussing psychological variables giving them questionnaires to ask them all sorts of questions because I already knew what the aptitude was, I already knew what their IQ was, I already knew what their interests were, I knew what their school marks were. So we were discussing things like family dynamics and so on and at the end of the the sessions that I think there were six or eight sessions that I had with these kids over a period of six to eight weeks. It’s 25 years ago now so forgive me if I don’t know exactly and the one question that I had a bit of space for on the questionnaire was what is your favourite food? And every one of the children in my experimental group loved junk food and every one of the children in the control group who were doing well didn’t love junk food. They loved you know, Sunday roast and veggies and baked potatoes and so on and I was like what because seldom in research that you find such a clear distinction between two groups. Very seldom do you see wow, you know, this is like a huge distinction and I thought that’s really interesting. And as fate would have it, I was going to have my daughter, I was pregnant, heavily pregnant, and I thought I’m gonna take some time out just to go and check this out because this is something that’s really interesting and not something that I expected and I couldn’t write it up in my Master’s because it wasn’t part of my protocol. So I just had this new information that I didn’t know what to do with so I thought it will take me a couple of months and I’ll figure it out, you know, so I got my Masters and all of that done and I then started diving into the subject and there wasn’t a lot about it out and about 25 years ago, you know Google didn’t exist. So there I was trolling off to libraries, big piles of books, heavily pregnant, coming back one sentence in one book. Nothing in other books that should have mentioned that at least some Journal articles and I thought look this is something that needs to be investigated because the more I examined it the more I thought there’s actually something here but people don’t know about this. So I really decided to not become a talking therapist firstly because I thought to myself what’s the point of trying to trying to help a car work better when it’s not fueled, you know?Here we have to talk to a person and try to get them to find new strategies, you know to change and be different in their in their world and how to approach these situations differently and have new behaviour and their brains are malnourished. It doesn’t seem to make sense. To me it seemed like a very illogical thing to do so I didn’t want to be a talking therapist from a from an integrity perspective because I thought there’s a huge missing piece of the puzzle here that isn’t being addressed. And so that’s the beginning of my journey.

Kaitlin Harkess: That’s incredible, like how powerful to see such clear results and that that prompted you to go, no, this is this is something we really need to explore.

Delia McCabe: Absolutely. It was it was a bit distressing in the beginning because I really had to dig for information and so I started writing it up and then I was bringing my children up because I had a son three years later and then I was feeding them according to what I was figuring out and I was saying well look, you know, this is science that we now know, you know what cell membranes need. We now know how cell membranes function optimally. We now know what stops them from functioning optimally and because the brain is such a sophisticated and sensitive organ and we have all these windows of opportunity with children’s development that we can’t get back again. I thought I need to make sure I’m doing this right from the beginning. And so that’s what I did and then I just was putting it into practice. You know, we spoke before you started recording about, you know, feeding children well and so on and I just did this in my home and so we would have neighborhood kids arrive at our house and they would be like, oh, this is great. And then the next day there’d be more kids who I didn’t know were there to eat the same food and I’d get mom’s phoning me and saying why do children eat broccoli in your house but they don’t eat it in my house? And it just became a process where I just was I was basically putting into practice the theory that I was finding out and that’s how it evolved and here we’re having a chat.

Kaitlin Harkess: And listeners. Don’t worry. We have talked about doing an episode specifically for parents on how we how we might be able to support our children specifically in this development because it’s obviously an area that Delia has heaps of knowledge as well. But you know when you talk about the concept of feeding your brain and you talk about knowing what our cells need. Would you mind just giving us, you know an overview of what that means for those of us who maybe to haven’t thought of this concept before that the food we’re putting in our body is feeding, you know, our brains it’s feeding all the cells in our system.

Delia McCabe: With pleasure, Kaitlin. To make it really really simple I use this this statement and the statement is as follows, that all of our thinking occurs across a huge very sophisticated and sensitive neural network, all of which depends on the nutrients that we consume and other lifestyle choices, like sleep and exercise. So when we consider this vast and very sophisticated network, you know, because it’s between our ears and because it’s small, I think people don’t know we are the only species that can think about thinking so we call this metacognition and I think that’s kind of like where we get caught because the organ that we’re using to think is the organ that we need to think about nurturing and I don’t think it comes naturally for people to consider this because we just use our brain and we get on with life and we have thoughts and we have emotions. We have feelings. You know, we do what we’re doing we get upset. You know, we get happy. We have all of these emotions but we never really think about the fact that they’re all grounded in neurons and the way neurons communicate with each other via electrochemical impulses. If you really think about it, it’s kind of weird. The brain is dark, you know it never sees any light, it gets electrical impulses which stimulate it to experience the world the way we experience it but it all relies on nutrients. And for me, the funny thing was the first thing that I kind of like discovered about the human brain was that 60 percent of the dry weight of the human brain is made up of fat. Now. That means you take all the water out and what’s left is 60% fat and I thought to myself. Well, you know, I just need to learn a little bit about fats and oils and I’ll understand this and 25 years later, I’m still learning. So it was really a huge eye-opener it’s one of the most complicated areas of nutrition is fats and oils and it’s the one that most people are very very confused about because the specific fat that the brain requires to work optimally is a fat that is very sophisticated because it’s got a lot of double bonds. Now without going into biochemistry those double bonds mean that that fat molecule is very very magnetic to oxygen, if I can put it that way to make it really simple. So that means that those cell membranes that have got that fat in them are very flexible, they’re very malleable, they can respond very quickly to any input that comes their way and that’s what we want in the brain. We want a brain that’s flexible and malleable and that can respond to the environment. When the cell membranes are not made of the right kind of fat then we have those senior moments, you know, you walk into a room and what am I doing here? Kind of or otherwise you can’t remember person’s name or what was the movie you watched yesterday? All of those are symptoms of cells that are not working optimally because they’re not responding quickly. They’re not holding on to memories, they’re not holding onto skills and knowledge the way they should and it all boils down to what’s going on in that cell membrane because that cell membrane is the interface between the next neuron that it has to communicate with across the synapse. So discovering the truth about fats and oils was like a huge Epiphany for me because I realized then that I need to make sure that my children and myself and my husband and everyone that I could possibly convince to consume the right kinds of fats and oils because it’s not just your brain that needs them, although it gets first dibs. All our survival organs need these fats so brain survival organ, heart survival organ, adrenal glands survival organ, reproductive organs survival organs. So they’re the organs that actually grab onto these essential fats first because we need to do to make sure we have them to survive and obviously to thrive.

Kaitlin Harkess: So tell me about these fats because we get really mixed messages in our society. We live in a society where often you know, we see on the labels, you know fat-free and you know, it’s loaded with sugar and all of these perhaps confusing messages. So what are the types of fats that we actually need to be able to thrive and to develop that flexible brain, which I think is a wonderful metaphor for how we might want to exist in our lives in a flexible responsive manner.

Delia McCabe: Absolutely. It is a good analogy. My fat and oil lecture takes three and a half hours. So I’m not going to bore anyone with that now.

Kaitlin Harkess: Listeners if you really want the specifics, please make sure you head to lighterbrighteryou.life to be able to get all of these details, but I guess just a summary is it all fats are created equal or?

Delia McCabe: Absolutely not and the funny thing is when I got involved and I saw how complex it was actually made myself a little chart and I divided the chart up into columns and that chart actually became part of the chapter in my book because it’s a very good you know like one glance, I know what’s going on now. Because in the chart, there’s a column for saturated fat and then there’s a column for monounsaturated fat and then there’s two columns for polyunsaturated fats, that’s omega-3 and omega-6. So in an instant, you can look at the chart and you can see okay, these are different and saturated fats are different to monounsaturated fats are different to polyunsaturated fats at the molecular level. So it’s really when you look at the what the molecule looks like, that you get a feel for oh my goodness. Yes, it’s different and because it looks different it behaves different in the human body. And that’s the key which people don’t really get. It’s actually right down to the molecular level. So when I used to have the pleasure of doing in-person workshops, I used to have my attendees have a little jar of coconut oil which is a saturated fat and then I’d give that have another little jar which had shea nut butter in it, which is also saturated fat and then I get them to touch both of these oils and they would see the difference in consistency in the saturated fats. So they fall in the same column, but the consistency is different and then go oh my goodness, and then this was a way for me to show people physically, you know the difference in the the fat molecules even within the same category the complexity is deep, but we’ll make it simple because mostly saturated fats are solid at room temperature and that’s regardless of whether they are from animals or from plants because tropical plants also produce saturated fats, things like coconut, things like shea nut, things like cacao, they’re all saturated fats and of course animal products, you know, cheese, butter, and the lard of animals. So those are all saturated fats, but the interesting thing is that plant saturated fats behave differently in the human body to the way animal saturated fats behave and that’s another conversation but it’s also basically down to the molecular level and this is interesting because you may recall I mean you’re younger than me, but you may recall there was a time where coconut oil was terrible. It was toxic. It was bad. You couldn’t eat it, it raised your cholesterol. That was what the media and what doctors told us and then suddenly like other night, it shifted, eat coconut oil. It’s fabulous. It’s good for you and everyone was like what confused and they were confused because it takes up to 17 years for information that researchers uncover to reach the man and woman in the street. And they had discovered that all the people that were living on coconut oil on these islands where coconuts fall on your head. These people were not dying from heart disease. They weren’t obese. They didn’t have high cholesterol levels and they said hm that’s pretty interesting what’s going on here, and then that information slowly started to drip down to Coconut oil manufacturers. And you know the man in the street and the woman in the street. So that’s part of the complexity of the saturated fats. Monounsaturated fats are pretty simple to remember because mostly they’re Mediterranean in origin and most people remember olive oil is a monounsaturated fat. And so, you know things like cashew nuts, pecan nuts, even peanuts which are technically a legume because they grow under the ground. They are also monounsaturated fats contained in those products, but the thing about saturated fats and monounsaturated fats, which most people don’t know is that the body can make them with ease.

Kaitlin Harkess: Okay, what does that mean? So your body is able to produce it themselves itself essentially.

Delia McCabe: Because fats are so important for our survival. So we had to have a mechanism where by the body could make the most basic saturated fats and most basic monounsaturated fats and how does it do that? It does that using excess carbohydrates and that’s why the low-fat industry was such a fail because you know, don’t eat any fat it’s bad for you. It’s going to make you fat. Hey, but load up on your sugar. Oops. Everyone’s still putting on weight, what’s going on? We didn’t understand the biochemistry. So that was part of the problem. So now we know that excess carbs actually the way excess carbs the way they’re little molecules work together. They’re all tied together and they become saturated or monounsaturated fats and then we store them because that’s what the body does with excess. So that’s part of the story of saturated and monounsaturated fats, but the story about polyunsaturated fats is even more weird because these fats your body cannot make. You have to get them in your diet and over the last 100 years, we have been getting less and less and less of these essential fats because firstly the Omega-3s more so than the omega-6s because of food supply and Farmers realizing that they can grow omega-6 polyunsaturated fats a lot faster because they’re warm weather crops versus Omega-3 crops which are harder to grow and the oil from them goes rancid more quickly and we’re back again now to a discussion about the molecular structure of omega-3 and omega-6, but the bottom line is we didn’t know that they were essential until basically the end of the 1960s. And we only discovered this because of an interesting story about a man and his girlfriend who basically ran away from the lab he was working in and they stole the rats that were in the lab. So basically what happened, he was working in the lab that discovered vitamin E and it was a fantastic discovery and the scientists were all excited about that. But he said there’s something else going on with these rats which hasn’t anything to do with vitamin E and his supervisor didn’t like that idea, but what he had stumbled upon, he had stumbled upon essential fatty acids. But his supervisor didn’t want to follow it, follow along and the woman who had been looking after the rats in the lab, they fell in love. Him and her.

Kaitlin Harkess: This sounds like a romance.

Delia McCabe: A romance in a laboratory and it’s amazing story because what they did, he got accepted to work in another lab across the country in America. And so what he did, him and his new girlfriend the rat carer who was also a very smart scientist. They took the rats, hid them in their car and traveled across the country to the new lab, but it wasn’t really okay to bring rats into the hotel. So they had to kind of smuggle the rats in because they didn’t want to let go of the rats because the rats were holding the information about these essential fats you see so when they got to the new lab, he started working on these essential fats and then he discovered that what was actually happening with these rats that they they were consuming essential fatty acids as well as the vitamin E and that was a confounding variable in the experiment and then they discovered that essential fats are actually critically important for mammals and not just just mammals, but specifically for our development brain development, central nervous system development, hormonal function, adrenal function. Basically every cell in the body uses essential fats and needs them but what has happened over the last hundred years as I said because of a whole lot of influences, we don’t get enough of those essential fats and as our consumption of those essential fats have gone down so our mental illness has been rising and there are researchers that have actually studied that in a lot of detail. You know how this the graph is actually working as our consumption decreases, our mental ill health is increasing now, obviously, there are a lot of variables related to that. But if at the cellular level that that cell is not functioning optimally, it cannot respond to the environment optimally and this is where the challenge comes in. So most people are getting a lot of omega-6 because food manufacturers prefer omega-6 because of what I’ve mentioned and they’re not getting enough omega-3 so this is a very important discussion.

Kaitlin Harkess: What we contain Omega-3s for listeners who are going, okay, how can I how can I rectify this or balance this? What where would we look to to consume more Omega-3s?

Delia McCabe: We get Omega threes from things like flaxseed. We find them in sunflower seeds. We find them in pepita seeds, pumpkin seeds. We find them in sesame seeds and we find them in chia seeds, but the secret, Kaitlin, is to crush them.

Kaitlin Harkess: So grinding those flaxeeds before they go on your breakfast or chia seeds. (Absolutely) and it does that hold for pumpkin seeds as well? I guess you chew those a little bit more.

Delia McCabe: You do chew them more but it’s very hard to chew them to get the maximum amount of essential fats from them. So I just suggest people grind them all up and then you get a good ratio between omega-6 and omega-3. And obviously, I think it goes without saying to avoid shelf-stable oils. So when people walk down those golden aisles at Woolies or Coles or wherever just ignore all those oils. Only buy the organic olive oil and ignore the rest because all of them are shelf-stable oils that have gone through a whole lot of processing which is another another podcast episode.

Kaitlin Harkess: So much wisdom here and oh I guess with all of this so we’re kind of hearing a bit about fats and the fact that that’s really really important for our brain and for functioning optimally and that there is this relationship particularly between these essential fatty oils and mental health. Something else that I know you’ve spoken a bit about is water. How does water relate to our brain function? Because that’s something you know, I’ve got some sitting here on my desk. But you know as a society, I think that we maybe don’t drink you’ve got you’ve got your as well, but but so many people have water goals, water consumption goals. So why is that? What’s going on there? And why do we need it?

Delia McCabe: Look as far as the brain goes, 78% of the brains volume is made up of water. So when you consider that, it’s actually more of a percentage than fat and what is critical for the brain, there’s a lot of evidence to support a lack of water with poor concentration, poor focus, poor grades for children in school. And of course that dehydration headache that people get when they haven’t drunk enough water and of course it affects digestive health, which is directly related to brain health and so on and so forth. However, it is also possible to over hydrate and you know, when people consume vast quantities of water and also have a really good diet. So it’s not full of processed foods which are denuded of any moisture. They can actually end up having too much water. And that’s a bit of a challenge as well. So it’s important to get the balance right. So I think you need to consider, the first thing you need to consider is your activity level. If you live in a climate where there’s a lot of heat and you’re sweating a lot, you’re losing a lot of water and so, you know replenishing that water’s important. If you’re getting older, and this is something interesting, the part of the brain that registers first actually starts atrophying and so that’s why elderly people become, you know, begin it becomes a dangerous situation for them in really hot weather because they don’t realize they’re thirsty and so they don’t drink so you should actually be having a bit of water before you feel thirsty because by the time you feel thirsty your brain’s already going, well, we’ve got a problem here. But it’s difficult to say how much for each person and I know everybody wants that magical number, you know, for me I know if I had three or four glasses of water a day that’s perfectly fine for me because I also eat food that isn’t hardly processed and consume a lot of the right fats, which also helps my water balance and I don’t smoke profusely because my climate isn’t extremely hot, except when it is then I drink more. So every person has to decide for themselves, but they need to watch as they get older and they don’t feel thirsty which is why having a water goal, you know even pouring out your four glasses of water a day and putting it in a jug then you know, I need to get through that. But you don’t want to drink so much that you probably will not because then you’re not sleeping. So we just need to balance it.

Kaitlin Harkess: It’s a really interesting point, isn’t it? That that it’s a matter of getting to know ourselves and checking in with our diet, our activity level, our climate, which you know, we’d all love these quick fixes, but the quick fixes are not necessarily real fixes, are they? You know, it’s not necessarily bringing us to a place of holistic health or something that’s sustainable.

Delia McCabe: Absolutely and I think we’ve been trained by the media, by medicine. We’ve been trained to just you know, swallow a tablet. Everything is fixed, do one thing and it’s all good. It doesn’t work that way. We are highly highly complex organs. You know, this this, a human being is the most complex organism in the universe. And so wanting a one-stop-shop magic bullet, this is how everybody should do it, but I do there is a in my book, I do actually have a formula, which I say to people if they follow that really broadly then they then it could be okay, and I don’t have it on my desk here. So I can’t recall it just off of the bat but the formula I don’t actually follow the formula. I put it in there for the kind of people that say I want something to follow. So that’s why it’s there. I definitely prefer your approach, you know, not having something simple and quick having knowledge about how we’re behaving, how we’re feeling, our exercise level and all of that.

Kaitlin Harkess: So speaking of, listeners. Get the book and start to work through it to learn all of these things because there’s just so much more that we’re not going to be able to cover in our time together. But you know, when you talk there about about our gut, you know that the water affects our gut as well. What um, why do we need to be so aware of our gut? I mean lots of us are hearing now about the gut being so important but you know, not everyone’s sure why or what that sort of means for them and and and their diet and lifestyle.

Delia McCabe: I think the story about the gut and and how important gut and brain health is and gut and overall health has been around for a long time. But I think it’s become more accessible to people now because we’ve managed to find a way to actually explain it really simply and so to explain it really simply it is as follows: the gut takes the food that we consume, turns it into tiny little compounds that we then absorb into our bloodstream across the gut lining. The problem with our life today and the food that we consume and our stress levels, anxiety, and poor sleep is that that gut lining becomes compromised and then what happens? The food particles aren’t properly digested and then they cross into the bloodstream and they’re bigger than they should be, they contain compounds that they shouldn’t contain because the gut bacteria hasn’t had enough time to work on them the way they should be worked on and also many of the gut bacteria are not present to be able to break them down the way they should be broken down. So then they enter the bloodstream and suddenly the immune system says, oh, yeah, there’s a problem here. The things in the bloodstream that shouldn’t be here and an inflammatory response is initiated in the body. Now, this is a problem because that inflammatory response isn’t just located in the area where that compound is initially found, it then starts spreading throughout the body and the same challenges that the that the gut barrier has happens to the blood brain barrier and the blood brain barrier is what separates toxins in the blood stream from entering the brain. So when the blood brain barrier becomes compromised due to inflammation, things that shouldn’t enter the brain start entering the brain and then we have a wildfire because then we have neurons that become inflamed and you know, like a battleground, when there’s a war zone, it’s not just one area that gets damaged, the surrounding area gets damaged as well. And of course this sets up a cascade of damage across the brain. So we now know that a lot of the activity that happens in the gut directly impacts the brain because of that pathway and I’ve obviously explained it really simply. And I wrote a blog post about this, a recent blog post. So if anyone’s interested they can go and read it in more detail and I’ve got all the references there as well. But just as a simple example, even our sleep patterns affect our gut bacteria because when they investigated people who done long distance travelling in the days before covid. They had a look at their gut bacteria and they saw that even after one night of compromised sleep, the gut bacteria had shifted to a more inflammatory style gut bacteria and so it doesn’t mean that the bacteria are inflammatory, it just means that they are they are setting the scene for inflammation to happen and for the gut bacteria to become damaged. So even one night of compromised sleep impacts that gut lining and the gut bacteria so we know that it’s not just the food we eat, it’s our stress levels, which also impact the gut lining because of cortisol. It’s an ongoing cascade so we can’t really separate the gut from brain health in anyway shape or form. It’s just a little complex to get your head around how it works.

Kaitlin Harkess: I think this is hugely important, you know, like when I see clients in private practice, one of the most common challenges that the people are reporting is having difficulties with sleep, which is associated with what’s going on in their mind and you know probably many things I think diet and exercise included but then if that’s been having this effect on the gut which then sets off our levels of inflammation and you know causes perhaps an anxiety response, anyway, which makes us more prone to sleep difficulties. This is this is a huge cycle and what we put into our bodies is one area where we do have very direct control and it’s perhaps more of I don’t want to say quick fix but we might maybe see some of those changes sooner than we might see changes in different domains, but it just shows the power of food and feeding our brain and bodies.

Delia McCabe: Absolutely and there’s research that shows that we can actually affect our gut bacteria within the matter of four days by shifting our diet. The four days is a really short period of time if you really set your mind to it, so what I suggest people do and I’ve mentioned that in my blog article, they eat a lot more -prebiotic foods because you know people by probiotics and they spend vast fortunes on probiotics the to go one step deeper and not having to buy it probiotics is to rather by prebiotics and you buy them with your fresh produce. You don’t buy them in a capsule form. So you by the kinds of food that produce or that contain the kind of fiber that allows the good bacteria to proliferate so then they’ve got enough food and then they start growing and proliferating and then what they do is make sure that you don’t need a probiotic. You’ve got the prebiotics. They’re creating their own food for the good bacteria. The challenge is and this is an important thing to mention because when the gut bacteria get impacted there’s something interesting that happens. The gut bacteria that are exceptionally good at extracting every single last calorie from food proliferate and the gut bacteria that are good at ignoring some calories start dying down. Now. What does that mean? That means that you even if you eat really, well, the food that you’re eating is being used up so carefully and wonderfully by these very very obsessive bacteria that you end up putting on weight. So this is a challenge. So when we when we talk about changing gut bacteria, we’re talking about allowing the gut bacteria that kind of like ignore calories to proliferate so that we don’t have a gut bacteria that saying hold on to every last calorie and store it. So this is why people, you know, they can say I’m eating really well, but I’m not losing weight. One of the reasons that’s happening that’s happening is because their stress level is really high and that also impacts these gut bacteria so they behave differently and then they you know, they hold onto calories whereas we want to just ignore some calories, you know, we don’t want to be so good at collecting calories. So that’s also once again as a very simple explanation, but it’s the ratio of the bacteria that becomes imbalanced with poor sleep, lack of exercise, too much stress and processed foods and also chemicals from the environment, pesticides and so on. So all of that impacts these very very sensitive bacteria and and change the ratio.

Kaitlin Harkess: Where would you recommend people start in that regard? If they’re sitting here and going oh, well, what are the prebiotics, you know the whole foods that I that I should and I say that in air quotes because I know it might be different for everyone and we could even talk a little bit about intolerances, but the people could be ingesting to best fuel perhaps losing weight in the time of Covid and post New Year’s where where would people start if that’s something that’s that’s on their radar?

Delia McCabe: I think the most important thing is to look at the kinds of food that have got the kinds of fiber that produce prebiotics and those are very easy to find in fact, and one of my favorite ones is artichokes. So I make a hummus and I put artichoke hearts in the hummus and it’s delicious and you’re just getting those those beautiful prebiotics with that and then things like onions, leeks, garlic. Those are you know, the allium family they have got wonderful prebiotics in them. So consuming more of them is important and even just things like lettuce, things like cauliflower, even things like broccoli. They may not have prebiotics in them. But they’ve got a lot of fiber in them. So they then support the good bacteria that can then proliferate. So it’s about eating a lot more fresh produce, you know, so that you can up the bacteria because once you start doing that everything starts improving because the fiber is actually what feeds, what feeds the the the good bacteria but really I’d start with artichokes, they’re really delicious.

Kaitlin Harkess: Is that recipe in a cookbook? (It is) perfect.

Delia McCabe: I think it’s in my first book and it’s a really good one and I use it all the time. We’re never without hummus in our family because we eat it with everything.

Kaitlin Harkess: It’s such a fabulous snack food and what a way of like increasing what you’re gaining from eating, from eating a food that is really simple to make and it sounds like the artichokes just give it that extra boost so listeners if you’re curious of ideas you can you can get a lot of these recipes then it sounds like out of your cookbooks very literally, so we’re not left creating or figuring out how we pair things ourselves. Some of the work is done for us.

Delia McCabe: Absolutely.

Kaitlin Harkess: So with it with this idea that we you know want to be consuming food and you know that it is going to change how our gut is operating. It’s going to change how our body is metabolizing. Is there anywhere that you would I guess advise us as a starting ground in regards to food intolerances. Should people be getting tested?Because you know, you mentioned that if our gut is having a tough time that inflammation inflammation in our body goes up and that has a negative effect and intolerances is something and I know you talk about being related to inflammation where would we start on figuring that stuff out?

Delia McCabe: I think the first important thing to say to people and this may seem really odd. I’m putting together an online course, and the first thing that I’m asking them to do on one page is to deeply examine their problem foods and people know what their problem foods are. These are the kinds of foods that they love and they can’t do without. So they find excuses to eat this food and they find excuses to defend the food. And they may not notice after they initially eat the food but maybe two even three days later, they may notice a bloated belly. They may notice a skin reaction. They may notice a mood reaction, a mood challenge and I’ll use my son as an example because when he was about five or six, we started noticing that every now and again he would get into a really bad mood and he wasn’t a moody child at all. He was actually a really happy healthy little boy, but every now and again he would get so cranky and I started watching when this happened and I realized it was when he had bread and we didn’t eat a lot of bread as a family. We actually mostly a rye bread and kamut bread which are you know, a better form of bread, but then I saw this is definitely a pattern I watched it for a while and so I took him off to be tested and so he had a lot of gluten antibodies in his bloodstream and those gluten antibodies were setting off an inflammatory response. That was affecting his mood. And the more research I did into the subject the more I realize that this is actually one of the things that that does happen. It does impact people’s mood. So we immediately took him off all gluten and I promised him that he would never be deprived. So from then on I started baking and cooking gluten-free and I’ve done that ever since so he never has to go without and he’s 22 now and he reads every single food label and he avoids gluten like the plague because he explained to me one day. He said mom, I know that I’ve eaten gluten when I wasn’t aware of it because I’m suddenly cranky for no reason.

Kaitlin Harkess: Wow, what an insightful young man as well like he’s checked in with his body and noticed.

Delia McCabe: Absolutely. So for him it became it was like a you know, it was a no-brainer for him, he was going to avoid the food that made him feel bad. And so that’s what he did. The challenge is as we get older, I think what happens is that we eat so many different foods and we are so busy with our lives and so we don’t actually take the time to look at what we’re eating and what the effects could possibly be. And what I normally do with people is I’ll work out a chart and then we’ll leave out certain foods for four days and then we reintroduce them and see if the symptom comes back in the next four days and it’s very time-consuming and it isn’t pleasant to do that and if someone wants to go and have a blood test they can have that done instead of doing this but doing it this way really gives you a good insight into what you’re eating and you suddenly go. Oh my goodness. I’ve been eating X three days in a row, you know and the minute you start doing that then your body can build up an intolerance to that food. The problem is that when you have a food intolerance it also it also stimulates the release of adrenaline which is like a stress response in the body, which is what we want to avoid as well because then on its own stimulates another inflammatory response. So dealing with food intolerance is extremely important. And as I said earlier, one of the first things is, you know, you get a bloated belly, you know that it just doesn’t suit you and it can happen over time. For me what happened, I used to be able to eat eggs ready with no hassle and I didn’t eat a lot of them and I made sure that they were organic and free-range and all of that but there came a point probably about 6 years ago where I realized every time I ate eggs really got an uncomfortable belly. My belly was just bloated and I checked and I checked and I said oh, eggs don’t suit me anymore. And then I did some reading up about that and it apparently can happen to people and I’d gone through a very stressful period so I thought maybe that is what actually sparked my body of not to want egg anymore because egg is very very a very high concentration of protein and somehow my gut didn’t want it and so occasionally now I may have something with some egg in it and it’s not as bad but I still notice it because I’m on the, I’m on the alert. So it’s kind of like a process of checking in with your body and seeing what’s happening, but I can send you some resources for people to actually get bloods done.

Kaitlin Harkess: That would be fabulous, we can put those in the show notes. So the listeners you’ll be able to then yeah follow up in and check in on these, you know opportunities to see what’s happening, you know in your blood at a cellular level.

Delia McCabe: Absolutely because it’s definitely important to know that it was as I said that that inflammatory response goes across the blood-brain barrier and then, you know, we end up with challenges in our most sophisticated and sensitive organ which we really don’t need.

Kaitlin Harkess: No no and you know kind of particularly, you know, we’re having this interview during the time of Covid and I think we’re going to be in this time of Covid for a while. Yet, you know and it’s a tough time for people. So if there’s something we can be doing to lessen some of that distres and it’s as I don’t want to say as simple as the food we put on our plate because food does have a lot of meaning for a lot of people but you said something quite insightful before we started the interview today that you know emotions get caught up in it. We want to use our food as a fueling process. How can we make the shift? What’s just I mean maybe a final kind of key point that you could give us before we go around how food most effectively operates for us and how we can disentangle this emotional element.

Delia McCabe: I think that’s a complicated question and I love this question, but it’s going to take a while to answer. I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that our blood glucose needs to remain stable and I’m going to explain this, you know, we’ve got no way to store fuel in our brain. There’s no place to store fuel, it’s a tiny space and it’s a huge place in a tiny place and you know, we know where we store extra fuel on our bodies, you know, we can see that as fact. But there’s no place in our brain. So our brain really relies on stable blood glucose to be supplying the fuel to keep our neurons working and they work 24/7. So when we do anything that impacts that blood glucose, we’re going to have blood glucose dips and highs and dips and highs and there are a couple of issues related to that. One of the issues is that the more often we have blood glucose ups and downs, the greater the chances are there any excess carbs will be stored as fat. That’s just a biochemical response because of this up and down up and down, the body goes oy there’s a problem here, which is going to store some some energy in case this problem doesn’t go away. So that’s the first thing. The second thing that happens is that we’ve unfortunately got four times more cortisol receptors in our deep abdominal fat than anywhere else in our body.

Kaitlin Harkess: And cortisol being related to stress just in case listeners are putting that piece together.

Delia McCabe: Absolutely. So this is the challenge. So when we are very stressed we end up putting on weight in our belly region because cortisol stimulates the release of enzymes which stimulate the deposition of fat and because there are four times more cortisol receptors in the gut area, that’s where the fat gravitates to, so that’s the second important point. The third important point, which is more complex is that when our blood glucose goes up down up down up down. We stimulate an adrenaline response which is separate to this the the fat deposition that this up down up down is causing so the body then goes into a feeling of being anxious just because the blood glucose is going up and down and that then leads to which is the fourth point, people gravitating towards fast release energy foods, which are mostly nutrient deficient and high in refined sugar. Because those kinds of foods actually release opioids in the bloodstream which calm us down. (Wow) So it’s a kind of like ongoing issue if we don’t keep our blood glucose stable because then we have the added problem which psychology tells us happens because of the way the brain works, we then build up a habit. So then we grab for that chocolate bar when we feel stressed because we know that immediately afterwards we’ll feel better because our stress response is dampened by the opioid release. So the bottom line I think that I want your listeners to just keep in mind is keeping blood glucose stable is gold. Because when blood glucose is kept stable, the brain can respond optimally to whatever is facing it. We won’t make knee-jerk decisions. We don’t grab that chocolate bar. We consider our options. We think long-term. It allows our prefrontal cortex, which is another discussion, to actually function optimally and so we don’t have make knee-jerk decisions and we don’t have that heightened sense of anxiety. So then you know instead of making the decision to watch the news that night, we’ll go, that’s not serving us. I’m going to rather read an uplifting book. Instead of going into social media again, we say that doesn’t suit me. I’m going to do something else maybe go for a walk or meditate and especially during this time in Covid, we need to grab hold of every single little bit of control we have because everything seems out of control. And so if we concern ourselves just simply which I know sounds like a very simple thing to do is keeping our blood glucose stable because that has the huge ramifications when we maintain that blood glucose stability.

Kaitlin Harkess: That’s so insightful. That’s incredible and what an empowering thing for us to reflect on, you know, we can control our blood glucose levels by what we’re putting into our system if we’re aware and if we recognize some of these cycles so maybe you know listeners, you might start to diarize, you know, when you’re reaching for things, what’s going on in your system, your diet, and definitely get in contact with with Dr McCab so you know people can go and get a copy of Feed Your Brain: Seven Steps to a Lighter Brighter You or Feed Your Brain: The Cookbook and head to your website lighterbrighteryou.life, all of these links will be in the show notes, but where else can people find out about what else you’re offering because you’ve mentioned a few courses that you’ve got upcoming and some of your blog posts, is it easiest just to head through your website or where else can we connect? I think people can find where they live on social media, I try to you, you know touch base on a few places. I’m on LinkedIn under Dr Delia McCabe. I’m also on Instagram and on Instagram, I put recipes and little quotes and little insights about how the brain functions and it’s I don’t have a huge following but I know that lots of people come to me (I follow you) that’s how we found each other. Absolutely. So I don’t have a huge following but I always put up value so that people can walk away with something that they can actually use in action because I think that that’s important so they’re not going to find out about eyelash extensions or the best lipstick there, but they’ll find out about (inner beauty) Yeah, the inner beauty and inner Health. I want people to glow with health, Kaitlin, because you know when you blow with health, you can really live your best life. So there’s Instagram. I also just started a Facebook group for women who want to deal with overwhelming stress and it’s a very very small group. We’re starting off small. I’m not advertising to get people into that group, but if people want to join, answer questions, I post two videos in the group, we talk about real things, you know, like sleep challenges, where to find the right fats and oils, what supplements actually work so they can go to that to that Facebook group and I’ll happily welcome them into that group.

Kaitlin Harkess: Would it be okay if we put a link to that in the show notes as well? Just so people can easily access it? Yeah, brilliant.

Delia McCabe: Absolutely, we can do that and then my courses, I’m going to be producing an online course, which doesn’t I’ve got videos in the course and everything, you know, so I’m going to be training people, but there’s not going to be handholding. I’m working on another coaching Group which is going to be a three-month group where I’ll be able to hold the hands of the woman network through the group with me. And if anyone’s interested in that, please let them reach out to me and I can chat to them about that. You know, we’re going to really get down to the nitty-gritty. We’re going to do hormone testing to find out you know, what the estrogen and progesterone and testosterone is doing. We’re going to have a look at genetic polymorphisms, which are more prevalent in people who are aware of we’re going to look at the personality we’re going to see what their stress level is currently we’re going to really be doing a deep dive so that they can discover a calmness within themselves that can help them withstand the madness that seems to be going on in the world because it’s the only place we ever going to find common pieces within and we need to be able to find that and I’m you know, I can do that from a nutritional perspective because of my knowledge and from a neurological and psychological perspective, I can do that too because of my background there so that will be a hand holding experience for three months so anyone’s interested they can they can put their hand out but also, you know people can just opt into my website if they want to. There’s a three-day brain diet there. They can get a taste of the kinds of food that I suggest and then I’ll talk to them via email and you know, we can start a conversation. I think that this is a conversation that more people need to be having with themselves to start with because the challenge with the brain, Kaitlin, and I just want to mention this because I think it’s very sobering but it’s important for people to understand this because of the sophistication and the sensitivity of the human brain, when it starts breaking down, it’s already been broken down to the point where it’s nearly impossible to replenish it unless you make you huge huge differences. So in all the years that it’s breaking down, it’s it’s practicing workarounds to get itself around those damaged areas so that you can function but eventually it gets to the point where it can’t do those workarounds anymore. And at that point that’s when you really start noticing that your brain isn’t functioning optimally and at that point, it’s nearly impossible because it’s been happening for 20 years already. So if ever there was a call to people to be preventative versus trying to cure something, it’s in relation to this beautiful beautiful brain that we’ve been given Network so wonderfully when we respect it.

Kaitlin Harkess: That’s so powerful and having watched, you know, a grandparent with Alzheimer’s and some of the illnesses that we are kind of considering might be food and diet-related now, I think that’s hugely powerful and motivating. And and this is our time, this is our opportunity. So thank you so much for your wisdom. And you know for guiding us on this journey and providing us so many ways that we can connect and can continue this conversation and hopefully for some of us getting a little bit of hand-holding along the way checking in with hormone levels and getting that sophisticated understanding of ourselves is a really empowering offering. So thank you for your time and for your wisdom, Delia. I really appreciate it.

Delia McCabe: Pleasure Kaitlin, it was lovely meeting you. Thank you.

Kaitlin Harkess: Well, I hope that you enjoyed that interview with Dr Delia McCab as much as I did. Her ability to take these incredible concepts that are no doubt at least for me quite high level and really integrate them into what we’re putting onto our plate and how that effects our wellbeing is vital information that I think we all need. You know, this idea of feeding our brain is huge. I have no doubt we’ll be grabbing artichokes each and every one of us, right? And grabbing some olive oil, getting our avocados, and coconut oil and taking care of ourselves so that we can maintain that stable blood sugar she talks to. So as Delia mentioned, she has a number of resources that are available. I would very much invite you to head through to the show notes where you’ll be able to click through and join in with her Lighter Brighter You Facebook group. And of course had to lighterbrighteryou.life to be able to access the extra resources that she has there. We are going to be talking to Delia in a few weeks around children’s health and nutrition. So what we thought we would do is actually open that conversation up to you. If you are a parent or someone who works with kids and you’re interested in how we can support kids in eating well, send your questions, you know, I am at drkaitlin on Instagram and Facebook and on Facebook, we’ve got @wisdomforwellbeingpod or you can go hello@drkaitlin.com, send your emails through, we would love to be able to make sure we are addressing questions and providing resources focused on the challenges and the questions that you have. So, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for connecting and any questions that we might be able to serve you by answering in the next episode. Alright. Bye for now.

Outro: Thanks for joining us this week on the Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. Please visit drkaitlin.com to connect, find show notes, other episodes, and to subscribe. While you’re at it, if you find value in the show, we’d appreciate a rating or perhaps simply tell a friend about the show. Wisdom for Wellbeing is not a substitute for professional, individualized, mental health treatment. If you are in crisis, please contact 000, your local emergency number if you are outside of Australia, or attend your local hospital, Edie.