#145: Desiree Nielsen - Good for Your Gut
Desiree Nielsen knows what’s good for your gut
Raise your hand if you suffer from irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, acid reflux, or other GI issues. Sadly, it seems like it’s just become part of our daily eating routine. Eat crappy (no pun intended) food, feel terrible, take a pill, get some relief, and do it all over again.
You can start to break that painful cycle when you begin consuming more nourishing plant foods with, you guessed it – FIBER.
In her latest book, Good for Your Gut, registered dietitian, Desiree Nielsen, shares how to fuel gut health with anti-inflammatory plant-based foods and lifestyle strategies— from movement to managing stress—for a truly PLANTSTRONG approach to health and wellness.
From a nutrition perspective, Desiree explains the gut health and mind/body connection and shares some of her favorite (and creative) recipes to help protect, soothe, and heal your gut health.
Desiree even shares her “Big Three” vital foods to include every day for a healthy gut.
It’s becoming obvious just how important overall gut health is for everyone, even if you don’t suffer from GI issues. A well-functioning gut means a healthy body, a healthy mind, and an iron-clad immune system.
About Desiree Nielsen
Desiree is a registered dietitian with a focus on plant-based nutrition and gut health, host of The Allsorts Podcast, and author of Good For Your Gut, a cookbook on digestive health. Her practice focus is complex, chronic digestive and inflammatory disease and plant-based approaches to optimal health.
Episode Resources
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Full Audio Transcript
Rip Esselstyn:
Today's conversation is brought to you by PLANTSTRONG Foods. You can check out our growing assortment of insanely delicious 100% whole food, plant-based goodness @plantstrongfoods.com, and be sure to save 10% off your first order with the code RIP10. That's my name, Rip, followed by the number 10.
Desiree Nielsen:
Desserts were really important, even though I'm a savory person, desserts were really important to me because one of the most important messages that I can convey is that it is "pattern over plate."
Rip Esselstyn:
Mm-hmm.
Desiree Nielsen:
When it comes to your health, it is the pattern of what you eat, day in and day out over time that makes your health as opposed to any single plate. And so we need to have room in any dietary approach, no matter what is going on for us, to have some of the foods that we love. And so of course, these foods are a little bit more wholesome, the shortbread base is almond meal, the caramel is nut butter and date, and then a little dark chocolate on top.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn and welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. The mission at PLANTSTRONG is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your PLANTSTRONG journey, and I hope that you enjoy the show.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hello, my PLANTSTRONG pairs, Rip Esselstyn here and I want to welcome you to another episode of the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. Hope you're all having a great, start to your summer and I can't believe that we're already into the summer months, but look at here we are, June.
Rip Esselstyn:
Last week, I had the incredible Dr. Will Bulsiewicz on the show and of course, we talked all about the gut fiber and of course, poop. Today, I got to double whammy for you because we have a woman, she's a Canadian-based registered dietician, her name is Desiree Nielsen.
Rip Esselstyn:
She just launched a new book called, Good for Your Gut: A Plant-Based Digestive Health Guide for Nourishing Recipes for Living Well. And the number one gastrointestinal issue facing Americans, is constipation and then shortly thereafter, we have irritable bowel syndrome, we have acid reflux, we have got colitis, the list goes on and on and on and unfortunately it seems like all these gut issues, have just become a part of our daily eating routine.
Rip Esselstyn:
You eat crappy food, you feel terrible, you take the purple pill or something else, you get a little bit of relief and then you do it all over again. Rinse and repeat. And I want you all to be able to break this painful cycle, and it all starts with consuming more nourishing plant foods with... You guessed it, we talked about it last week, and we're going to talk about it again this week. Fiber.
Rip Esselstyn:
Fiber, fiber, fiber, that 95% of this country is deficient in. So from a nutrition perspective, Desiree is going to explain the gut health and mind-body connection along with sharing some of her favorite and super creative recipes, to help us all protect, soothe and heal our guts.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now, speaking of recipes, if I got a gift for you. We have just released our 2022 Summer Grilling Guide, and it is packed, jam-packed with all of our favorite PLANTSTRONG summer recipes, and believe me, they are worth firing up the grill for. Plus it has a $10 gift voucher for PLANTSTRONG Foods and a 14 day free trial of our meal planner inside.
Rip Esselstyn:
To get your free copy of the Summer Grilling Guide, head to plantstrong.com/summer and enter your email for instant access. Once again, that's plantstrong.com/summer.
Rip Esselstyn:
Even if you don't suffer from gut issues like so many of us, I know you appreciate this conversation, because as you've been hearing gut health literally impacts every aspect of our overall wellbeing. All right, let's welcome this up-and-coming rock star, Desiree Nielsen. Desiree Nielsen, welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast.
Desiree Nielsen:
Oh my God, it is such a dream to be sitting here talking with you, so.
Rip Esselstyn:
Really? Why is it such a dream?
Desiree Nielsen:
Why? Well, because when I was transitioning from what I thought was my ethical vegetarianism into a fully plant-based diet I mean, yours was one of the voices that impacted me. So it feels like, here I am fully in this plant-based space, trying to help others, engage and adopt a more plant-based lifestyle and I'm here talking with you so it's pretty incredible.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, it's really, it's amazing to me to see the number of people that are just coming into the plant-based movement arena and just contributing, to getting more people on board with the good news about plants. And you are doing just that Desiree you've actually, you've just come out with a... Is this your first book?
Desiree Nielsen:
So this is my third book actually.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Wow.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. My first one was a little book on an indie that I'm pretty sure only my family and maybe my parents' friends read. And then my last book was called Eat More Plants so it was exactly that a fully plant-based cookbook, trying to help people engage in plants and Good for Your Gut is number three.
Rip Esselstyn:
So Good for Your Gut. Actually, I'm holding it right here, got my personal copy, it's absolutely gorgeous, it's packed with so much great gut information. So tell me this, you are a registered dietician, what made you decide to become a registered dietician? Did you actually have some health issues yourself and that's what caused you to explore or what was it?
Desiree Nielsen:
You know what? It was actually going vegetarian, so as a teenager I had never really thought about food. So I grew up in a Portuguese house and food was life, the only thing we thought about, food was like, "What are we eating next?" There was no concept of good or bad foods. We ate traditional Portuguese meals and then because my family came to Canada in 1959, then like, "Shake and bake." So it was caldo verde, which is a Portuguese kale stew and then the next night shake and bake. Food was just food.
Desiree Nielsen:
And so I never really thought about the role that food played in my life, until I went vegetarian as a teenager and it really sort of opened up all of these doors for me. I was like, "Oh, you can change how you eat." That can have an impact, on the world around you, that can have an impact on your body. And it's sort of kicked off this exploration of, "Well how does this impact your health? What active steps can we take to actually change our health?" And it was funny, at that point I had no idea what a dietician actually did.
Desiree Nielsen:
And I'm of the generation where Dr. Andrew Weil, I'm going to the bookstore and I discovered Dr. Andrew Weil and he's talking about, "Oh, buy yourself flowers once a week, because beauty really contributes to your wellbeing." And my mind was blown so I thought that I would do a nutrition undergrad and then go into integrative medicine.
Desiree Nielsen:
And once I got into nutrition, I was like, "Oh, what's this dietician program?" And so the deeper I got into it, I realized so many of the things that I thought that I would do as a physician, I actually could probably do as a dietician. And so I was like, "You know what? I'm going to become a dietician and if it doesn't work in five years, I'm going to write my MCAT and..." But I never look back.
Rip Esselstyn:
So where did you go to get your dietician degree, where they taught you, I'm assuming they did but maybe they didn't, about kind of the power of plants, because, well everything I've heard, a lot of dieticians are getting the old antiquated information and not the new stuff.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. And I would say I studied long enough ago at The University of British Columbia that I was still actually... I went into that degree, nervous. Nervous, because I was already interested in integrative approaches to health, nervous because I was vegetarian at the time and how that would be perceived? I think now it's changing so much.
Desiree Nielsen:
I was even taught just over a decade ago that you needed to eat, you needed to combine grains and beans at a single meal to make a "complete protein" we were still learning that, we were still learning that non-heme iron from plant foods was inadequate, in order to raise your iron store so that still existed.
Desiree Nielsen:
But I believed in how I was eating, I believed in what I was doing and in the decade that's come, the research has more than made up for all of those old ideas about the inadequacies of plant-based eating. It's so clear now, that eating a more plant-based diet is the best thing we can do for our health.
Rip Esselstyn:
Why did you decide to go vegetarian, in the first place?
Desiree Nielsen:
I wish I would say that it was an altruistic decision, but in reality, I did it to impress a boy that I liked. So he played sax, he was a vegetarian, I thought he was pretty cute so I was like, "Oh, maybe if I become a vegetarian." And then once I got, then once I sort of made the decision, did not impress the boy at all, but the vegetarianism stuck and so I really deepened this idea of like, "What is my impact on this world? Is it right to eat animals? Is this something that I'm comfortable with?"
Desiree Nielsen:
And I really, very much believe myself not to be a vegetarian for health reasons, or the environment, because back then we didn't really know how that impacted it, but I was an ethical vegetarian. And so in my thirties, as I was just being presented with so much new information. Voices like yourself, voices like Erin Ireland, who's a real Vancouver hero. All of these reasons that I'm vegetarian, are the reasons why I should be fully plant-based.
Rip Esselstyn:
And that boy that got you into vegetarianism, are you still going out with him? His name isn't Jim, is it?
Desiree Nielsen:
Oh my gosh. Yeah. No. No, his name was Adam.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, okay.
Desiree Nielsen:
And I'm pretty sure he barely knows that I exist still, even to this day I have no idea where he is in this world, but he hears this, Adam it was because of you so thank you for the trajectory of my life.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, and your dedication to your new book, Good for Your Gut, you basically say, "To Jim, I'm glad that I trusted my gut."
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. I met, I don't think my husband or I, neither one of us think of ourselves as sort of old fashioned, but we've been together on my entire adult life. So I started dating my husband a hair after I turned 20, and we've been together ever since.
Rip Esselstyn:
Beautiful. So speaking of guts, your specialty is really all about anti-inflammatory nutrition for gut health. What led you in this direction? That is absolutely exploding right now. I mean, everywhere I turn, it's gut health, microbiota, microbiome, the best way to give yourself immune protection I mean, it just the list goes on and on and on.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. I have, again I love to call him wellness Santa Claus, but Dr. Andrew Weil to thank for that initial path in learning about inflammation, chronic inflammation is really an underlying factor in so many chronic diseases. But back when I started thinking about anti-inflammatory nutrition, we weren't really aware of the gut connection, this was back in the late '90s, early 2000s.
Desiree Nielsen:
I wish I took just a single microbiology class in my undergrad. Oh my gosh, the amount that I deal with the microbiome and probiotics and all of this in my practice, all of this had to be learned on the job, but it was really in my very first role. I mean, my only really real job as a dietician, because I was the head of nutrition for a chain of local health food stores, right out of internship.
Desiree Nielsen:
And I could not believe, that every day that I went into work, I was being asked about gut health stuff. People were suffering and I was like, "I didn't learn about..." I really didn't learn much about this in my undergrad. I didn't touch a lot on the gastrointestinal stuff in my internship, even. So I was like, "Okay, these folks are suffering, they don't seem to be getting the help that they need. I'm going to roll up my sleeves, I'm going to dive into the research and I'm going to see what exists." And so it was really born of necessity because I had this client population who really needed help and weren't finding the answers that they needed.
Desiree Nielsen:
And then it became personal for me as well, because after I had my first child, I got IBS and now I had some skin in the game so now it wasn't just a professional interest. I was like, "It behooves me to figure out everything that I can." Particularly back then, even the low FODMAP diet, which is now close to gold standard for treatment of irritable bowel syndrome. It was considered controversial and faddish back then so we've really, really come a long way.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, we need to talk about low FODMAP and IBS and all that, but first let's go a little higher up here and take more of a 80,000 foot view. So you talk about in the opening of your book, how the gut health of really North America, almost a hundred million people, is literally in the toilet. Right? Pun very much intended.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
And I guess my question is, what in the world is going on with our diets, that's causing almost a hundred million people in North America to have gastrointestinal gut issues?
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. Well the first and easiest answer, is it's the fiber. We still have a woefully inadequate intake of fiber. The average American consumes 16 grams of fiber a day whereas someone in a smaller, less active body needs 25 grams a day and someone in a larger or more active body needs almost 40 grams of fiber a day.
Rip Esselstyn:
But that doesn't even, that to me doesn't even seem a lot.
Desiree Nielsen:
And it depends, it's definitely we can eat more. When you are eating a whole food plant-based diet, we can eat more. But the data shows that if we simply hit our targets, our digestive wellbeing is just going to be so much better than it is now and I think people don't often understand what the impact of fiber is. I mean, it seems like so fussy and so dietician and be like, "Wah, wah. Eat your fiber." But fiber does, especially when you think about the lens of the microbiome, fiber becomes a lot sexier than you have to be.
Desiree Nielsen:
Because the indigestible carbohydrates and it's important to eat a wide variety of plant foods, because plants have so many different kinds of fibers and carbohydrates that we don't digest and absorb, which is really critical because they stay in contact with the gut tissue, they sweep the gut surface, they help ensure proper turnover of the gut cells, so that gut barrier stays intact.
Desiree Nielsen:
And then, they make it to our colon where those trillions of bacteria are living. They ferment and they do all sorts of beneficial things for our body, including making something called short-chain fatty acids, which are just like they sound, they're tiny little fats, but namely one called butyrate, critically important, not just-
Rip Esselstyn:
I love the butyrate. Love it.
Desiree Nielsen:
I mean, butyrate fan club right here.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right here.
Desiree Nielsen:
I think I need a t-shirt... Butyrate, that would actually make an awesome t-shirt.
Rip Esselstyn:
Mm-hmm.
Desiree Nielsen:
So butyrate is absorbed right directly into the gut cell, 90% of it goes to fuel our gut cells so we feed our gut bacteria, they ferment, they make butyrate and they feed us back. It's incredible.
Rip Esselstyn:
To back up a little bit, you said that a lot of this takes place in the colon. What is your definition of the colon? Is this the small intestines? The large intestines, is this, what is that?
Desiree Nielsen:
So to me, the colon is the large intestine. So we have our small intestine and then our large intestine. And if we want to get even more specific about where most of these bacteria are, they're in the ascending colon, which is the first part of the colon, which if you give yourself a little pat on the lower right side of your abdomen, you're giving your bacteria high five.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, good. Yeah, I'll do that right now.
Desiree Nielsen:
Thanks.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hey, whew. Yeah. Go ahead.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. So that whole butyrate feeding your gut cells thing is really, really important, but butyrate does more than that, even though it's only the third, most abundant short-chain fatty acid that your bacteria make, butyrate is critical because it interacts with your immune system.
Desiree Nielsen:
70% of our immune system is associated with our gut space and it helps ensure appropriate inflammation, because you need inflammation, in all this anti-inflammatory talk, we can get the wrong idea that inflammation is always bad, but inflammation is actually a critical branch of your immune function, but you want it to be not too much, only when needed and turn off when it isn't, and butyrate helps us with that.
Desiree Nielsen:
Butyrate also supports nervous system function because our gut has a ton of nerves. We actually have more nerves in the nervous system of our gut than we do in our spinal cord.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
So couple of things you said there that I want to visit, first is you said 70% of our immune function is located in our guts. That's just phenomenal. So if you have a healthy gut, you're going to be, you're going to have a strong immune system. Right?
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. And we have data to show, for example, that probiotics help protect against upper respiratory infection, aka cold and flu. And you're like, "How is that even possible?" It is because so much of our immune system function is gut associated.
Rip Esselstyn:
And then the next thing is you mentioned all those nerves that we have. More nerves in our... Did you say stomach or gut?
Desiree Nielsen:
In general, the whole gut. The whole gut.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. More nerves in our guts than we have in our spinal column, which is mind-boggling to me. But you open up the whole book saying that, "Say hello to our second brain." So why do you, why are you calling our gut, our second brain? Is it because of all the nerves?
Desiree Nielsen:
It is because of all the nerves, that's exactly why we call it our second brain. And it was actually a physician Dr. Michael Gershon who coined that term a couple of decades ago in his book, by the same name that really just started my fascination with this whole thing.
Desiree Nielsen:
And our gut is heavily innervated. And so we have, in high school we learn about two main branches of the nervous system. So the sympathetic, which is the fight or flight and the parasympathetic, which is the rest and digest. Some people actually consider the enteric, or gut associated nervous system to be a third main branch of nervous system function. And our nervous system is so important to our gut because it determines how the gut moves.
Desiree Nielsen:
As soon as we swallow, we give up conscious control of the movement of the gut, but food has to move. You have to get it from point A to point B, you got to get it out of there, and it's your nervous system that determines that. It also determines digestive secretions, but the vast majority of communication between the brain and the gut, comes from the gut on up to the brain.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. We're going to take a quick break. I want to read you an email that I received from a woman named Misty and she starts out, "Rip, it's February 2021, and my mother-in-law who was pushing 80, was having mini strokes. She collapsed, shattered her leg and laid there in the floor for an hour, assuming someone would just drop on by."
Rip Esselstyn:
"Her neck veins were 80 and 90% clogged and they found evidence of strokes. She got through it and is fine, but it left me at 62, remembering my own mom strokes and how they completely debilitated her and left her incapacitated for years. I can take that I'm going to die, but I'll be damned if I'm going out that way. I whine about it to my daughter, Jackie, and she gave me your name. I immediately found your website, looked at some of the recipes and thought that I could live with that."
Rip Esselstyn:
"I ordered your books and read The Engine 2 Seven Day Rescue Diet in one sitting. Next time during a long road trip, I asked my husband a former cattle rancher, if we could stop by at Subway so I could get a veggie delight. He said he wasn't going on my stupid diet and I told him, I didn't care, if we pulled into the Arby's, but I wasn't going to eat that and he could eat whatever way he wanted."
Rip Esselstyn:
"He started the diet the next day and we both have not looked back. As you noted in your book, the results were immediate. Cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, all in the green for the first time in years. We were always somewhat careful about our diet before, but eliminating meat, oil, dairy and salt has been fabulous. My mother-in-law, born and bred in 1950s, Iowa who baked and ate everything white butter, sugar, flour has even adopted your diet. She's not all the way there, but this Iowa farm girl has successfully eliminated dairy, most meats and oil based dressings."
Rip Esselstyn:
"She made us your oatmeal pancakes and they were an enormous improvement, over her usual egg based casseroles. She rebounded from her fall, hits the treadmill three times a week, lost weight and looks better than I've seen her in years, not bad for 79. My son Andy, normally a healthy act of 25 year old, was found to have high blood pressure and now even he, has started examining the salt content on nutritional labels. As you pointed out, food tastes better when you don't disguise it with salt."
Rip Esselstyn:
"So you're a hit with our family. I reread your book for recipe ideas and to reinform myself about why nutritional yeast is better than cheese. Cheese is the hardest thing we're still trying to eliminate, the phony cheeses are oil based as you say, so if I'm going to sin, it will be with a nice Pepper Jack. You've helped us make enormous changes. We don't feel like we're missing out on anything, and our monumentally better off than before, Jackie gave us your name. Thanks, Rip. Misty."
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, thank you Misty. I love it. When the whole family works together to improve their health and start to break that cyclical family, destiny of disease. And if you didn't know it, we have got the ability for you to start the seven day challenge at any time.
Rip Esselstyn:
Just join our free online community, @community.plantstrong.com and learn more and connect with thousands of people, just like you, who are emboldened to take control of their health destiny, through the power of plants.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now, speaking of wonderful leafy green plants, let's get back to Desiree. Will you... So for our listeners, will you let us know from the mouth to the rectum? What is going on with food? How many feet of whatever do we have? Because I, you talk about it in the book and I found it to be really educational.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. So what's going on in the gut, I mean, and I won't memorize, I never memorize this number off the top of my head, so if you have the exact, I think it's 33 feet.
Rip Esselstyn:
30. 30 feet is what you have in the book.
Desiree Nielsen:
Okay. There we go.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Desiree Nielsen:
Okay. Perfect. So my memory's not that bad.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah.
Desiree Nielsen:
So yeah. So it's about 30 feet, all crammed into your... What is a very small space, because remember your lungs are in there as well, your digestive tract is literally folded and twisted into the most incredible origami of, all of mankind.
Desiree Nielsen:
And it's really important because your gut, not only does it digest and absorb, absolutely everything you eat and drink, but while we think of our gut as being inside of us, because we can't see it, just like you said from mouth rectum, it's actually continuous with the outside world.
Desiree Nielsen:
And so that gut space becomes a really important barrier between you, and the outside world, so your gut has this really difficult job to do. It's got to let in all the stuff you need, block out all the stuff that can make you sick, and that's part of the reason why your body sort of in its wisdom, puts so much immune activity there to make sure that you're protected against any bacteria, that could have hitched right on your fork, for example.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Now, what do you see? Because how long have you been seeing clients and working with people?
Desiree Nielsen:
Gosh, I think it's been, maybe 13 years.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay.
Desiree Nielsen:
I think it's been 13 years. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
So you've probably seen a lot. What are the most common gut issues that you're seeing? Whether it's constipation, IBS, celiac, I don't know.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. Oh my gosh. All of the above, but IBS is definitely a huge piece of it, because it's just so much more common than so many of the other conditions. So IBS is roughly 10 to 12% of the population. In Canada that number might be even higher, it might be as high as 18%, our guts are not doing well in Canada, whatsoever.
Desiree Nielsen:
So we do a lot of work with IBS. We also do a lot of work with the inflammatory, bowel diseases. And so these are very, very significant, very damaging, inflammatory diseases, Crohn's and ulcerative colitis that affect, over a quarter of a million folks in Canada and it's coming up because it's on the increase to be 1% of the population, and we know celiac disease is 1% of the population, but these inflammatory bowel diseases are getting like that.
Desiree Nielsen:
And they're so significant, that folks need really expensive IV medications often, and the inflammation can get so bad that the only way to make it better is to cut out the part of the diseased bowel. And particularly in our practice, these are the folks who so often come to us, drinking Red Bull and eating white bread baloney sandwiches because their gut is so irritated, that plants in the moment can feel really challenging to digest and one of the things we excel at doing, is getting those clients up to a very plant-based diet.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right.
Desiree Nielsen:
Most people don't think that actually can be done, and we do it every single day.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well what's... So we started out, talking about how there's a hundred million people in North America that have some sort of dysbiosis in their guts. But to me I'm actually surprised it's not a lot more than that because when I look, and this is not North America, this is just America.
Rip Esselstyn:
But when I look at the data and how your average American eats, the average American, 94% of their diet is coming from processed refined foods, animal products, dairy products, and only 6% is coming from whole plant-based foods.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
So I mean I'm amazed it's not 250 million.
Desiree Nielsen:
Well, and I think a big part of this and one of the reasons why it's never TMI for me and I will talk about anything, is that there's a huge stigma. There's two things that I think that are contributing to it.
Desiree Nielsen:
One, there's a huge stigma around gut health, some kind of thing we talk about around the water cooler. Right? And some people, because as soon as I say, "I have IBS." That means there are things going wrong with my bowel movements, and the stigma and the fear and the insecurity around having those conversations, some people may not even go talk to their doc about this.
Desiree Nielsen:
There's a lot even with celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disease, it's thought that the vast majority of people with celiac disease remain undiagnosed, because we're just not talking about it. The other thing that I think plays a big role, is that we normalize what's happening to us and this is a huge thing that I talk about in the book, is this idea of normal versus common. Right?
Desiree Nielsen:
It's exceedingly common to be constipated, 25% of us are constipated and have symptoms of 25% of us. That's intense, but because that's normal for us, we're like, "Well, this is just how my bowels are." "My bowels are sluggish." Whatever, but that's actually not physiologically normal for the body and there are things that you can do to make it better.
Desiree Nielsen:
So I think the other side of this, is we could have these things going on. We could be constipated, we could have loose stools, we could have painful gas and bloating, but we just don't seek help for it.
Rip Esselstyn:
And they're going into their doctors, and I would imagine that most doctors are not telling them to go on a plant-slanting diet. I had a woman that I was working with, and she said that her... Because she said she was going to the bathroom once a week, and her physician said, "You just have a lazy bowel syndrome." Didn't say anything about food or what she could do and of course within 28 days, she was going to the bathroom two to three times a day.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
No. Right? So she didn't have lazy bowel syndrome.
Desiree Nielsen:
And it's one of the biggest challenges, because still as health professionals, we are not communicating, we are not interconnected in the way that we should be, in the way that I really imagine healthcare should be.
Desiree Nielsen:
And we've had the good fortune of interacting with many great plant-based gastroenterologists, I mean like Dr. B. So many incredible, I wish all of our clients had someone like Dr. B or Dr. Mendez helping to show them the way.
Desiree Nielsen:
But in our practice, it took us a long time to show the gastroenterologists, whose patients we worked with, what we can do, to the point where all of a sudden the gastroenterologists were referring out to us, they're like, "Oh my gosh, you're still having trouble? Go see Desiree, she can help fix you up we can do this with nutrition." But it's often not top of mind. It's like, "These are the medications, if you're still not getting symptom relief, oof too bad."
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you agree with this quote, "You are what you eat"? Do you agree with that? Or do you agree it should be, "You are what you absorb."
Desiree Nielsen:
Oh. Oh, I love that you asked me this, because I'm a health food girl and we used to say, "You are not what you eat. You are what you digest and absorb."
Rip Esselstyn:
Mm-hmm.
Desiree Nielsen:
If you think about the microbiome, we go back to the original. You are what you eat because you are what you digest and absorb, but you are also what you do not digest and absorb, because that impacts your gut microbiome.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right? Meaning and when you say, "We are what we do not absorb." Are you talking about the fibers that are so vitally important for your bacteria?
Desiree Nielsen:
Exactly. By the time your gut contents get to your colon, to your gut microbiome, you've digested and absorbed between 80 to 95% of everything you've eaten and drank. And so the more we consume fiber, the more undigested material and a happier and healthier a microbiome is.
Desiree Nielsen:
Which is so important because in wellness we have this idea of "hard to digest foods" or like, "Oh this is hard to digest, therefore, it's bad for you." It's like, "No, plants are good for you because they are hard to digest." That is exactly what you want because you want them to be hard to digest and all that stuff you don't digest, goes to the microbiome.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So if... Let's say I come in to you to see you, I'm a patient or client of yours and I've got some severe IBS going on. What's your approach as far as, are you into elimination diets or do you think that we're shooting ourselves in the foot with these elimination diets and we're not seeing the forest of the trees. Talk to me about that.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. So generally speaking, elimination diets are a bad idea. In our practice, always the least restrictive path is the best path. And so it really depends on how you're eating, when you come to see me. So we do extensive, we get diet journals, we understand your medical history, your nutritional history. And so if I see in your diet record, it's like, "There's room to move here, there's a lot of hyper processed foods, there's not a lot of fiber." We go there first like, "How can we get the plant foods up in your diet?"
Desiree Nielsen:
But because you said IBS specifically, we do have the low FODMAP diet, which is technically an elimination, and it's one of the only places where we actually have strong evidence to support a dietary elimination. And what FODMAPs are, are exactly as we spoke about before, they are the hard to digest and very fermentable, carbohydrate components of foods.
Desiree Nielsen:
FODMAPs are really good for most of us. They are found in garlic, they're found in apples, they are found in lentils, these are the things we want to eat, so that we feed our gut microbiome. And the only challenge is, is once that switch has flipped on IBS, because we know the nervous system in the gut is a little bit faulty because we know there's tons of pain associated with fermentation.
Desiree Nielsen:
There's lots of gas, there's lots of loose stools associated with undigested carbohydrates, only in IBS, a really short term elimination, maybe six, eight, 12 weeks max, has been shown roughly 70 to 80% of people to improve symptoms, but it's temporary.
Desiree Nielsen:
And the one thing I want to reiterate because we're like, "Oh, well FODMAPs must be bad." No. They're not bad, nor did they cause your IBS. It's that once this process is ongoing, we just need to tweak your intake to help calm down your symptoms.
Rip Esselstyn:
So in the very beginning you said, you want to put somebody when they have to go on a kind of an elimination diet on the least restrictive, and is that because you like the diversity, of food?
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. I mean, I love the diversity of food, and our health is generally not built on what we don't eat, but what we do eat. And we have this, even with respect to vegetarian and vegan diets, it's the plants that help. And so it's really important that we're actually eating these whole plant foods because this is where... Nutrition doesn't come from Oreos. I mean, love an Oreo, love it, super fun, but the nutrition doesn't come from the Oreo, our health doesn't come from the Oreo.
Desiree Nielsen:
So we actually have to get these plant foods in. We know that diversity is important, particularly for our gut microbiome, we have data from the American Gut Project to show, that eating more than 30 different plant foods a week is associated with a more resilient and diverse gut microbiome, so that's super important.
Desiree Nielsen:
But the other thing that's super important is that, our body needs nutrients, we need vitamins, we need minerals, we need phytochemicals to help our immune system, to help our gut tissues grow and repair, do their optimal work. And so the more we restrict, the more we set ourselves up for potential deficiencies, and then as if that weren't enough, restrictive diets can really harm our relationship with food.
Rip Esselstyn:
Mm-hmm.
Desiree Nielsen:
Sometimes they feel like an empowering step because you've been sick for a long time. And so you're like, "Now I have something tangible I can do, I am empowered to change my health." For some people that's how it feels, for other people, it can really challenge their relationship with food.
Rip Esselstyn:
So you're a big fan of people adding what's beneficial into their diets and you have your daily three.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Can you tell me what those are, and what you would to see people getting more of?
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. I love that. We practice what I call positive, additive, nutrition. I want to focus on what to eat more of, because eating more of is way more fun than eating less of, any day. But the daily three was born of just, when we sort of take out these restrictions that so many people live, they're like, "What do I do? I feel adrift. How do I know if I'm eating well?" And so I love these soft structures like the daily three to be like, "Oh, I got my daily three today. I'm doing okay." So the daily three is omega-3 rich seeds.
Rip Esselstyn:
What are some of those seeds that you like to see people eating?
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. So it's a daily dose of two to three tablespoons of either chia, ground flax, or hemp hearts.
Rip Esselstyn:
Is there one that you prefer, if somebody was just to do one or do you like the combination because of the variety and fiber and everything.
Desiree Nielsen:
I love them all, they all have their place. I feel I do play favorites. I love hemp hearts, particularly because they don't gel, they're not super high in soluble fibers, so you can literally throw them on anything. You can throw them on a salad, you can pop them in anything, they're really easy to use.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Desiree Nielsen:
Number two, are green leafy vegetables. So this is everything from broccoli to kale, to bok choy, gai lan. All the green things. Two cups of those every day.
Rip Esselstyn:
This audience, we love our green leafies.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
We're actually... Our goal is to get five to six, a day.
Desiree Nielsen:
I mean, that's like-
Rip Esselstyn:
I know.
Desiree Nielsen:
... valedictorians super bonus points, daily three is the baby step.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. And again, with those and now with your leafy greens, you're also getting lots of omega-3s.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah, totally. So, and then the last is the legumes. These are our lentils, mung beans, chickpeas, black beans and here, the dose is variable. The dose is anywhere between a quarter cup and three quarter cup a day. And the reason for this is, you have got to train your gut for that high fiber life, the same way you train your legs for a marathon.
Desiree Nielsen:
And if you're like, "Oh, I'm going to eat three quarters of cup. I don't normally eat beans, but I'm going to do that every single day, starting tomorrow." And you're going to have a lot of gas, you're going to have a lot of bloating, you are going to rue the day you ever met me.
Desiree Nielsen:
So I really want to help people train their guts. So we started a quarter cup, and we keep it consistent. We eat it every single day, and when our gut adjusts, we move up to half a cup, and then we move up to three quarters of a cup.
Rip Esselstyn:
Though, I love those daily three, the one thing, the thing with the legumes, the beans, is they have I think just about more fiber than any other plant-based food when I look at charts of plant-based foods and fiber, so I can see why that is if you haven't built up those gut muscles. Right? Or the bacteria it'll just, oh man, tear you up. So what is your advice when it comes to bloating and gas, and what are some fixes people can do?
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. So bloating seems like it's going to be such a cut-and-dried thing and a lot of people assume that food intolerances are causing their bloating. Great examples, I had chili last night and maybe gas meat, therefore I'm intolerant to beans, which couldn't be further from the truth, but bloating is actually super complex.
Desiree Nielsen:
It can come from stress, because when you're in that fight or flight, blood actually diverts from the digestive system, and your gut just doesn't work the way it's supposed to.
Desiree Nielsen:
It can come from too tight of a waistband and sitting and compressing your abdomen all day. It can come from IBS, you might need to actually go check it out with a doc. But if it's just the garden-variety like, "Oh, I'm really bloated today, what do I actually do?" There's a few things.
Desiree Nielsen:
One, move. Gentle movement is critical, a hyper vigorous, 10 mile run ain't going to do it, it'll actually make it worse like an after dinner walk, some folks call it a fart walk, but you can call it what you like.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yup.
Desiree Nielsen:
Gentle movement, lots of water, because two of those things are going to encourage movement, and then I love either ginger or fennel. So ginger is what we call a prokinetic, which means it helps the movement of the gut. So you can chew candy ginger, have some pickled ginger, make a ginger tea or fennel seeds.
Desiree Nielsen:
Fennel seeds are a traditional remedy for gas, which many people do find work. If you go to an Indian restaurant, you might get these tiny little candy coated fennel seeds at the end of the meal, to aid your digestion, you can chew fennel seeds out of the cupboard, or you can make some fennel tea, both of those are great options just to help get things moving.
Rip Esselstyn:
So do you, I mean, so speaking of farts, do you know on average, what, I mean, have you read any studies on what is the average? What's the average amount of gas somebody passes in a day?
Desiree Nielsen:
It's actually gallons, it is gallons of gas, multiple gallons, easily three, four gallons a day, if you're about that plant life you are definitely at the higher end of that spectrum and it's a fact.
Desiree Nielsen:
And I think this is the thing too, because in wellness we're like, "Oh, if you're really gassy, something's wrong with you. You have a food intolerance." No, if you are eating, if your gut works, if you have a good, healthy microbiome that is fermenting fibers, you're going to make gas. It's totally normal.
Desiree Nielsen:
The ideal is that it passes generally without you noticing, most of the time. Not too smelly, it's not painful, it's not too noisy and the vast majority of it, we actually pass when we sleep, so you can think about that with your partner.
Rip Esselstyn:
So in the book you talk about scent-free farts. I mean, is there such a thing as a scent-free fart and how do you get one?
Desiree Nielsen:
There are. There are scent-free farts and there's a little bit of science behind why? Why farts can be scent-free or not. Most of the gases our gut bacteria produced, are actually, totally odorless. There is only one that smells, that's the hydrogen sulfide gas.
Desiree Nielsen:
And so, I mean, if you love the cruciferous veggies like I do, the cauliflower, the broccoli, the kale, those contain sulfur, it's a very good thing, but they do contain sulfur so they can make your farts a little bit more odorous. The other thing to note, is that women tend to have more of hydrogen sulfide producing bacteria, than men.
Rip Esselstyn:
So does that mean that women fart more than men?
Desiree Nielsen:
Well, and it could stink more. I mean, we like to pretend our farts don't stink, but they do.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well. Oh, what about meat? Doesn't meet mess with people's farts? Isn't that a good reason to cut out the meat?
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. So, and here actually the story with sulfur becomes interesting, because sulfur is a component of amino acids, aka protein. And so when you consume a lot of meat, it can actually drive the production of these sulfate, reducing bacteria, which is not great for us and is actually associated with inflammation and risk of colorectal cancer, all of those kind of things.
Desiree Nielsen:
So when we eat green leafy vegetables, some people are like, "Well there's sulfur in them too." But in fact, while they might make your farts a little bit more stinky, they are not associated with all of those negative outcomes of the microbiome inflammation, connection with eating meat, whatsoever.
Rip Esselstyn:
Mm-hmm. So with your clients, how detailed and in depth do you get when you're talking about their poops because your, I would imagine your poop can tell a lot about your gut health.
Desiree Nielsen:
It can actually, and sometimes it's hard like I said, it's not, never TMI. We talk about it all and it can be really difficult, and these things can feel embarrassing for people and there are plenty of tears shed in our offices sometimes, when we really sort of get into how impactful digestive disease is. I've had clients who are scared to go to work in the morning, back when we commuted. Right? If someone has a 90 minute commute-
Rip Esselstyn:
Sure.
Desiree Nielsen:
... IBS is typically worse in the morning, and they would be worried and have had experiences where they didn't make it along their commute, because of their urge to go to the bathroom. And so it's true, we talk a lot about like, "Tell me, how often are you going?" "What form is it? Is it liquid?" "What does it look like?" We can see if people are malabsorbing fat. If their stools look greasy or if they have a grayish whitish cast to them, there's a lot that our poop tells us, about us.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, just for those that are listening that have IBS and have to make a commute, so during COVID we took a trip, we rented a van, a minivan and we went all over kind of Northeastern United States and we actually bought a little toilet. Right? And you put a bag in there and then if somebody had to go number two, we just kind of everybody stood around and they went... But you do what you got to do, and so there's ways to address that. Right?
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. And there is, and one of our, one of the biggest challenges too, is that there is a very deep connection between mental wellbeing and incidents of anxiety and depression in the digestive diseases and conditions like IBS.
Desiree Nielsen:
And part of it is what happens in the gut and how the nervous system in the gut changes and how that, affects our mental wellbeing but a big part of that also is, if you wake up and that's your worry today that creates a huge amount of anxiety about how these disease processes are affecting your life.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, and you talk about how daily stress can totally affect our gut. And it seems like a lot of people are stressed out these days.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. And we don't realize we are and I think, the hallmark of modern living is that we are so used to stress that consciously, we think we're not stressed. But if you are a lawyer working 70 hours a week and it's COVID, and you had a big deadline or even just a kitchen rental, all of those things are so enormously stressful. We can fool our conscious brain, but we cannot fool our nervous system, and therefore we cannot fool our gut.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Let me ask you a question, Desiree. When was the last time you felt you had diarrhea, or constipated, or had a gut issue?
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. So I've been really lucky that I've only had two major flares of IBS. So the first, was when I actually got IBS and it took me a year to figure out what was going on and get it under control.
Desiree Nielsen:
And the last one was in 2016, but a great example is this week, there's so much... My book just came out, there's so much excitement. All of these incredible opportunities that I'm genuinely excited about it, but actually my bowels are a mess this week. They're an absolute mess this week.
Rip Esselstyn:
So what does that look like for you when you say they're a mess? Does that mean you go to the restroom a lot?
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah, I am going to the bathroom a little bit more than normal, but it's not as formed as normal.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Desiree Nielsen:
So it's not as formed as normal, and my stomach is so gurgly. So gurgly, I'm really lucky that I haven't experienced a lot of pain in my gut in years, but it's literally when you watch a bubbly fizzy drink, all those bubbles, just 24/7, that's what my gut feels like as we speak.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I... No, before a big competition or a big event, I'll definitely get that way for sure. Okay. Let's move on. So you've got this amazing recipe section, in the book, with 90 recipes and you break everyone down as either being protective healing or I think it's, what is it, restorative?
Desiree Nielsen:
Soothe.
Rip Esselstyn:
Soothe. Yes. Yes. Soothe. And so I went through and there's, I just earmarked a bunch of the ones that I really was fascinated with.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm going to start on page 119. It's the Savory Miso Porridge with Crispy Kale. That, look at that, look at that.
Desiree Nielsen:
It is so delicious. It's so.
Rip Esselstyn:
And is that a... That's more of a breakfast. Right?
Desiree Nielsen:
That is a breakfast. Absolutely. A lot of... I'm a savory breakfast person, more than a sweet breakfast person, I will just out myself right there. But I love savory oatmeal, because really we think of it as inherently a sweet food, but it is a neutral grain base. You can do whatever you want with it.
Desiree Nielsen:
And so I really wanted to play up these beautiful flavors of miso and tahini and the crispy kale just makes it, for me because otherwise it's an oatmeal texture that doesn't have as much texture on its own, but then that little crispy kale, little bit of an extra plant and then lots of texture.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well you had me at crispy kale. So this next recipe is on page 138. It's the Chickpea Shakshuka. Some of these names, what in the world is a shakshuka? I've never heard of that.
Desiree Nielsen:
So shakshuka is a dish that is eaten throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. It's really common Israeli dish, for example and traditionally it is tomatoes cooked in eggs. Sorry, eggs cooked in tomatoes, the opposite, so really beautiful. So I just took chickpeas.
Desiree Nielsen:
A chickpeas are often my substitute for eggs and all shapes and forms, so I just did a chickpea version. It's really beautifully spiced, it's really fresh, great with some pita bread or just some nice sourdough, a beautiful brunch.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, and one of the things that you recommend that people doing when they're transitioning to a plant-based diet, and they're getting off the meat is to swap, not remove. Right?
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. And this is so important because in our practice, we see folks who they've just been plant-based for three months, six months or a year, and they'll come and they'll say, "Why am I hungry all the time?" or "Why am I feeling tired?" And it's because they just took all the food they typically eat, and pulled out the animal products, forgetting that they were getting fats and proteins and minerals and so it's like....
Rip Esselstyn:
Well and calories.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. And calories, an actual... We like to pooh-pooh this stuff, but we need energy, our bodies need energy. So because they took it out and they didn't put back, tofu, lentils, chickpeas, hemp hearts, they didn't provide those nutrients and so as soon as we do that, as soon as we figure out the swap, that works for their meals, we feel so much better.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Next page 145. We got the Tofu Okonomiyayaki. I know, I didn't pronounce that right. How do you pronounce it, do you know?
Desiree Nielsen:
Okonomiyaki.
Rip Esselstyn:
There you go.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. So I spent a bunch of time in Japan, in my late teens and early twenties. And okonomiyaki is a dish that is local to the Osaka region and you go to okonomiyaki restaurants and it's typically an egg base, there it is. And so you go and you choose your fillings, always a cabbage, but then some other proteins, that kind of stuff and you make it yourself, which is really cool.
Desiree Nielsen:
So clearly, this is not a traditional version, but I love Japan and I love Japanese food so much, I wanted to create a plant-based alternative, again, chippy flour. Right? It just works so well for eggs and then there's smoked tofu and a little ginger mayo, because mayo is life to me.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, one of the things that we, on at PLANTSTRONG, we're not huge fans of oil and I know that you have oil. So for people that want to make these recipes, can you just leave out the oil? Will they work okay?
Desiree Nielsen:
Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, when we're cooking, it's so easy to swap it out. And even for things, I mean mayo. So my beloved mayo, it's really easy to do a tahini.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Desiree Nielsen:
You can do a ginger tahini, beautiful.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. And you also use some, you use some nuts too in some of your kind of cheesy stuff, you like cashews and some nuts.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. I mean, I love a cashew cream, I love a... Hemp actually makes a delicious cream and I know a lot of people don't make creams from hemp, but it works beautifully.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. Let's go to page 190 where you've got a Baked Eggplant Rolls with Kale and Cauliflower Ricotta. The reason why I specifically chose this one, is because I can't stand eggplant and so if I liked this, I will be stunned and amaze, so I want to try that.
Desiree Nielsen:
You and my husband. Oh my gosh. So I mean, I love eggplant and so my love for eggplant goes into my books.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Desiree Nielsen:
It's true, it's not a texture that everyone loves, but I do think this one is very delicious.
Rip Esselstyn:
Mm-hmm. What about Gado Gado, on page 211. See, again, I love some of your names are just so exotic.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
What-
Desiree Nielsen:
Gado Gado is a traditional Indonesian salad. So when I was in Bali as a teenager, it was one of the only vegetarian things on offer. And so this is typically served as a peanut sauce, over beautiful cooked veggies with tempeh. It's just so filling and it's, when you want salad-esque, but more than a salad, you're craving something hardier. It's just really flavorful, lots of ginger, a beautiful peanut sauce.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. You have on page 263, an Amazing Seeded Grain-Free Bread. I look at that and I'm like, "I have to make that." And I'm going to see if I can find it here.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
263. Here it is. Oh my gosh. I mean, that is so just hearty and dense looking.
Desiree Nielsen:
It was one of those things that I did a happy dance when I got this recipe right. Because, so it is inspired by Sarah Britton at My New Roots because she came up with the life changing loaf of bread, which was heavily seeded, but not fully grain-free.
Desiree Nielsen:
So I wanted to try a fully seeded loaf, because so many of us don't eat seeds. I feel seeds are the underappreciated cousins of nuts. And so it's a hundred percent seeds and if you know those traditional European rice, those vollkornbrot style rye breads, it has that kind of texture. It's hearty and rich and delicious, very filling, very filling.
Rip Esselstyn:
So on page 278, you have a Chocolate and Peanut Butter Caramel Shortbread Bar. You mean to tell me, that I can eat these and heal my gut. Talk to me.
Desiree Nielsen:
You sure can. So desserts were really important, even though I'm a savory person, desserts were really important to me because one of the most important messages that I can convey is that it is pattern over plate.
Rip Esselstyn:
Mm-hmm.
Desiree Nielsen:
When it comes to your health, it is the pattern of what you eat, day in and day out over time that makes your health as opposed to any single plate. And so we need to have room in any dietary approach, no matter what is going on for us, to have some of the foods that we love. And so of course, these foods are a little bit more wholesome, the shortbread base is almond meal, the caramel is nut butter and date, and then a little dark chocolate on top.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I got to say it's a spectacular lineup of recipes that you've created here and I don't know who you got as your photographer and your food stylist, but it is, these are phenomenally well photographed, put together photos. Crazy.
Desiree Nielsen:
I have the best team. It's Janis Nicolay and Sophia MacKenzie, they are dream workers.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. And so our time is coming to a close here, but in reading your acknowledgements, I saw that you have lots of different poop jokes. Can you hit us with a poop joke? Am I putting you on the spot?
Desiree Nielsen:
Oh my gosh. They're more like quips than jokes? I love to say things like from mouth to poop, shoot, for example, instead of to the and to that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes, yes.
Desiree Nielsen:
Yeah. It's just that I love to talk about poop. I did a whole seven minute presentation on the science of arts.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh my gosh.
Desiree Nielsen:
Don't invite me to a dinner party, unless you're expecting some inappropriate conversation.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, I want to have you back. I want to have you back because this, we both have a hard stop here, but let's have you back. Okay? And we can do round two of this.
Rip Esselstyn:
But Desiree Nielsen, I am so excited for your new book that just is launching. Right? Good for Your Gut. This is something that everybody, needs in their life, is a healthier gut and boy, thanks for bringing this out into the universe.
Desiree Nielsen:
Thank you so much for helping me share it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. My pleasure. Hey, hit me with the PLANTSTRONG fist. Ready?
Desiree Nielsen:
Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
Boom! PLANTSTRONG!
Rip Esselstyn:
I can't wait to have Desiree back on the podcast, so we can dive deeper into the new and exciting world of gut health. It's literally one more area of our health that we can optimize with a whole food plant-based diet and it is wonderful news, and we are just starting on this gut health revolution.
Rip Esselstyn:
We'll be sure to link resources for this episode in the show notes at the episode page, @plantstrongpodcast.com. In the meantime, eat your fiber and of course, keep it PLANTSTRONG.
Rip Esselstyn:
The PLANTSTRONG Podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous true seekers, who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
