What’s Wrong With My Diet?

I hear your frustration when you share with us that your diet consists of wonderful, fresh, locally grown foods, straight from the farms within 100 miles of your home, yet you still feel the symptoms associated with magnesium deficiency like heart palpitations, muscle cramps and headaches. Your frustration is further magnified by the fact that you share some of the same symptoms as your friend who indulges daily in processed, refined, sugary foods, without a leafy green in sight.

So, you ask us, “what’s wrong with my diet?”. My response may surprise you… shock you!

What Dr. Google or an MD might say about your diet:

While researching the latest internet results on the topic of magnesium deficiency, I was shocked that several “medical” sites made the statement that “magnesium deficiency is rare”. Magnesium, according to Dr. Google is found naturally in the following foods:

• Spinach
• Black beans
• Almonds, cashews, peanuts
• Quinoa
• Whole wheat
• Soy and tofu
• Avocado
• Dark chocolate

Even tap water or a glass of milk will give you a magnesium boost according to these ridiculous online medical resources. Anybody who’s searching such sites for health information about magnesium deficiency will come away believing that a diet that’s supposed to be rich in these foods will alleviate any symptoms you might have that can be attributed to magnesium deficiency. And no wonder it irks you so much when this proves to be untrue.

What I say about your diet:

There are the three food Macros – as opposed to micronutrient vitamins and minerals:

*Proteins
*Fats
*Carbohydrates

These foods are supposed to contain all the nutrition your body needs in order to survive. Carbs give you sugar, which is a source of energy, fats also give you an energy source, and proteins provide the amino acids that are the building blocks of the structure of the body. Not a lot is said about the micronutrients.

Ideally, the food you eat will contain many of the substances you need for life and growth. I will keep it super simple and share that as a nutritionist, MD and ND, my daily plate typically contains:

• Protein like chicken, beef, fish, eggs, protein powder
• Fats like avocado, olives, nuts, butter
• Carbs like salad greens, root vegetables, fruits

I know these foods to be the foundational substances needed for life and growth. Such foods, in their ideal form, gives us energy, grows our tissues and supplies nutrients that support our immune system. But if the food you eat doesn’t have enough magnesium, you don’t have a chance for 80% of known metabolic functions in your body to work well.

Food’s not what it used to be

I also know that the food of today has a fraction of the nutrition of the food of yesterday. A hundred years ago we could easily get 500mg of magnesium in an average diet. Today we are lucky to get 200mg. And from what I know about magnesium, we probably need about 600mg of magnesium a day. But the caveat is that the 600mg of magnesium has to get into the cells – it’s not just magnesium riding around in the blood stream or stored in bones.

I appreciate all the websites and influencers that are telling people to eat better – it’s a worthy endeavour. However, it’s probably too late to make grocery store findings your only form of nutrition. That ship has sailed. We do need to take dietary supplements to make up for what’s lacking in our foods; for the massive stress that we undergo every day; and to help counter the 60,000 + chemicals in our food, water and air.

What I eat… and supplement

If you look at my daily food list, it’s very simple. And I know exactly where all my vegetables, fruits and herbs come from because I’m the banker for an organic, biodynamic farm. But even with my ideal diet, I know I’m not getting the vitamins and minerals I need because the soil has been depleted, and the food grown to feed the animals is grown in depleted soil. The point I’m making is that we do need supplemental nutrients to complete our diet. Which is why I’ve spent the last decade developing supplements – to make sure that I’m getting the daily nutrition that I need.

Your farmers’ market

Even if you are using appropriate nutritional supplements, you still need to eat the best diet you possibly can. Otherwise, you’re fighting against GMO foods, vegetable seed oils, and toxic food dyes, preservatives, and a vast range of chemicals. That’s why I say, starting at a farmer’s market would be a great idea. I acknowledge that most of the population does not have affordable access to ideal food, grown locally and organically. I know you are probably doing your best to put together healthy meals for yourself and your families with supermarket offerings.

However, as safe, nutritious food becomes less easily accessible, manufacturers are making processed food and junk food more and more affordable and addictive.

Digestion and transit times

Something Dr. Google doesn’t tell you is that you digest each type of food at very different rates. Proteins stay in your stomach for about three hours, and fats can hang out for about six hours. But the simple sugars in carbohydrates (from bread, pasta cereal) are supposed to float right through your stomach; they are supposed to get broken down by enzymes in the small intestine.

If you eat simple carbs (especially refined sugar) with protein or fat, the sugar from the carbs gets trapped in your stomach. When sugars hang around in your stomach, they can begin to ferment and create gas. Younger people usually have enough stomach acid to digest the fermentation, but as you get older, the burps and belches begin to develop into a chorus of indigestion. So, what do you do? If you’re like many people, you take antacids, which actually blocks the small amount of stomach acid you do have and ultimately makes things worse.

I recommend a moratorium on sugars, period. But if you can’t completely eliminate sugar from your diet, I urge you to eat it separately from protein and fat. In other words, don’t eat meat, fish, poultry, eggs, cheese, milk, or butter at the same time you eat concentrated sugars like fruit, fruit juice, or refined sugars in pastries, cakes, soda, or candy. Actually, as I write the list past fruit, I’d recommend you remove those thing from your diet if you want to lead a healthy life. And just be aware that if you’re having pizza with cheese, meat and a sweetened, yeasty pizza crust, the digestion process is going to be complex as your system struggles to break down these combatting components.

What happened to food

I have written extensively on the topic of our endangered food supply in my book, Death by Modern Medicine and in my blogs, so if you wish to delve into this complex topic more deeply, please do so. For now, I’ll simplify the discussion and state that crops and animals are being raised on farmland that is devoid of the minerals and nutrients necessary for our healthy growth and development.

And to repeat, the business of food production and manufacturing makes junk food and processed food easier and cheaper for people to purchase thus impeding the public’s access to healthy nutritional food.

Find a local organic farmer, or search for a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) where you can become a member and get weekly produce from an organic farm. Incorporating organic food while we support the expansion of organic farming is something we all can do. And it’s much more helpful that just removing red dye from fruit loops, which we’d never eat anyway!

Carolyn Dean MD ND
The Doctor of the Future