Nourish With Intent

Good morning, Cadre. Happy Saturday. Drinking my coffee with you all as usual. It is Valentine's Day weekend. I don't know if we all make it a whole weekend. It's always helpful when it's a Friday, so you can get dinner reservations if that's something you're wanting to do. I hope you all are well. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. I am seeing some names in here that I don't know that I've seen before. Although sometimes that glitches. So if you've been here and I just haven't seen it, I apologize.

But hello, if you haven't spent time with me previously. My name is Kristen. I'm a registered dietitian based out of Denver. My specialty is really, I mean, historically, eating disorders and disordered eating. And so with that background, I've really morphed into using this space to address or help you guys learn more about nourishing your body without diets, necessarily without rules, but instead nourishing from a very intentional, positive place. Hence the name nourish with intent. Because I love food and nutrition, and I love talking to you guys about it, and I want everyone to be able to experience that as well.

So I'm happy to have you all here. I really like to get to know you guys a little bit, so I tend to try to ask a question in the beginning. So my question for you today is, do you celebrate Valentine's Day or not? And if you do, what'd you do this year? Or what are you doing this year? My answer to that question is, we don't tend to go out, but we will make a nice dinner in. In the last two years, my husband has made me chocolate lava cakes at home. So I think that's our new tradition. The reason I bring you Valentine's Day is in honor of all things Valentine's Day.

I thought I would spend today talking about nutrients of interest for heart health. When I did my clinical rotation of my dietetic internship, I actually was at a specialized heart hospital. So I spent a lot of time in that realm working with heart patients, and it felt fitting. So that's what we're here to talk about today. If you have any questions, pop them in. Hopefully I'll see them. Sometimes this chat gets a little weird, and I apologize if you can hear my dog drinking water in the background.

He is more hydrated than I am. Okay, so nutrient number one. And if you've been here before or I think really spent much time online in the last year is there's been a Huge push for this one, and that is fiber. So, general recommendations. On average, I'm recommending people get about 30 grams of fiber a day, which is more than you would think. But fiber can help to support heart health through the mechanism of reducing or keeping a healthy level of cholesterol, specifically LDL cholesterol, and that is the one that can cause plaque buildup and lead to, you know, calcification of the arteries.

Things like that that we want to avoid. Not all cholesterol is bad. We do need cholesterol. I'm not saying that. But fiber, specifically soluble fiber, kind of forms this gel in the intestines that can help to prevent some of the absorption of cholesterol because it binds to that cholesterol and we excrete it rather than absorbing it. So getting enough fiber can really help with that. Fiber has also been linked to lower blood pressure, which is another risk factor that we look at when we're thinking about heart health.

So overall, in terms of the heart realm, fiber is great. Also great for a myriad of other things, which I'm sure I'll talk about again. Number two. Good morning, Jules. Happy to have you. Number two is something called anthocyanins. And if you haven't heard of these before, anthocyanins are pigments that give foods their red, blue, and purple colors. So think things like berries, red onion, red cabbage or purple cabbage, things like that. Those really deep, bright colors are pigmented through anthocyanins.

And anthocyanins act as antioxidants, which I've also talked about before. If you feel like I repeat myself a lot, it's because the basics of nutrition and kind of the core realms apply to a lot of things about the body. So antioxidants can help to reduce oxidative stress, which is essentially kind of this increase in inflammation and imbalance between antioxidants and free radicals, which are molecules that get real chemistry for just a second. Stay with me. They have an unpaired electron on the outside, and they can kind of scavenge electrons from other molecules that will then render those other molecules, potentially vitamins, minerals, whatever, useless, and our body can't use them.

So it helps to. Antioxidants bind to that free radical so that they don't destroy other nutrients that our body is needing or other cells in our body. So anti Antha. Anthocyanins are great for that. The research shows that it can help to, as I said, reduce inflammation that can contribute to heart disease as well as improve your Vascular function, which is the cells that line our blood vessels. Very cool. I also think that's cool. Sometimes I get a little too excited about the science, so I apologize.

But if you are, you know, you're a science person as well, I think those things are cool. So I'm happy to have you here. Number three is Omega 3s. I have my notes over here, so don't forget. And Omega 3s have been shown to help reduce heart disease risk factors. Things like cholesterol, specifically triglycerides, which is the fat circulating in your blood, as well as help to lower blood pressure. More recently, so this is something that the American Heart association talks about. There are definitely benefits to omega 3s.

More recently there has been kind of a deeper look at specifically Omega 3 supplements and fish oil supplements being potentially more harmful than good. Really dependent on making sure that you're getting a high quality supplement. Supplements aren't regulated. So looking for one that's third party tested is really important specifically with this because another thing they're going to look at is mercury. The bigger the fish, the more mercury it's going to have and vice versa. So it's not that Omega 3s are not useful, but the specific use of fish oil supplements or Omega 3 supplements is continuing to be looked at.

So getting your omega 3s through food, specifically things like your fatty fish, things like nuts, walnuts specifically, there's a lot of research on as it pertains to heart health, things even like chia seeds, flax seeds, those types of things. Really great to incorporate, help promote heart health. Number four should say we have six of them on here is magnesium. And magnesium has really gotten a lot of attention in the last, I would say probably like two to three years for good reason. It, it is utilized in a lot of processes in our body and not everyone is deficient.

So I'll preface with that. But newer research over the last 5 to 7 ish years, I believe 2018 was, there was a big study that came out showed that low magnesium is associated with higher risk of cardiovascular disease and magnesium supplementation was associated with lower blood pressure. So as I said, well, many people are not deficient. There are also specific conditions that can cause a deficiency. Things like IBS or IBD if you have a lot of nutrient loss. In those cases, diabetes, pancreatitis, even something just like some sort of like gastrointestinal vomiting virus can cause temporary magnesium depletion.

It's worth differentiating temporary and chronic here even things like chronic elevated cortisol, high stress, that can lead to some magnesium depletion. So magnesium has shown to be useful and I always recommend aiming to get those things through food before we add a supplement. Supplements are always meant to supplement. Good sources of magnesium include whole grains. Leafy greens are very high, which will come up again in a second. And nuts are really another really good source. Even chocolate.

Chocolate has a solid dose of magnesium in it. So to stick with the Valentine's Day theme, I'll throw that one in there as well. Number five is vitamin K. And we are getting more research specifically showing that the risk of cardiovascular disease is lower in diets high in vitamin K. Specifically through food, not vitamin K supplementation. Again, supplements are always meant to add on to and fill in gaps. I would never rely on them. Jules. I. I also love dark chocolate. If you have a favorite dark chocolate brand, drop it below.

I really like the who HU brand. They have like a crispy quinoa one. It's very good. Vitamin K. There are two types of vitamin K. There's vitamin K1, which is primarily found in your plant sources. And then vitamin K2, which is produced by bacteria and predominantly found in fermented foods. So your thing, things like sauerkraut, kimchi, anything fermented, and K2 I think is the supplement. Usually what you're seeing is in a supplement, it's often like vitamin D plus K2. Some vitamin K1 is converted to K2 in our body.

That process is. Is relatively inefficient, but it does happen. Overall, though, this research was shown to be supportive of lowering heart disease risk with a diet high in either K1 or K2. So just some things to consider. Like I said, that research is newer. Vitamin K2 is another one of those supplements that's really gotten a lot of hype recently. Vitamin K is also really important in blood clotting. So if you've ever been on any sort of anticoagulant like warfarin, Coumadin, those types of things, they're usually, you'll hear, you know, I have to moderate my vitamin K intake so that your dose is appropriate so your blood keeps clotting foods high in vitamin K.

As I mentioned earlier, the leafy greens come back. Things that are high vitamin K in plant foods are going to be your dark leafy greens. And then As I said, K2 is often predominantly found in fermented foods. It's in lower quantities and other animal products, nothing substantial. And number six, and this is another newer piece of heart health that we're looking at. But that is selenium. Selenium is another nutrient that acts as an antioxidant. So as I was mentioning earlier with those anthocyanins, antioxidants bind to the free radicals, help protect our cells from damage from those.

And there is some intriguing evidence. It's observational at the moment. Not a lot of like randomized controlled trials on it, but observationally, there was one study that showed a 50% increase in blood selenium was associated with, I think it was a 24% reduction in cardiovascular disease risk. So again, very preliminary, very new, but also very intriguing and that's what advanced the science. So I thought it was interesting. Selenium is also a nutrient of interest for thyroid health and is found in most animal products.

So meat, poultry, fish eggs and Brazil nuts. Another food that had a viral moment over the last couple of years because they're very high in selenium. So that is my Heart Health themed Nourish With Intent episode for you today. I really just wanted to share maybe some things you've heard before, maybe some new things, maybe some intriguing things. If you like science, like I do a little bit more of those specifics, but any questions about any of those things that I mentioned? No. Okay. I appreciate you all being here this morning.

I am trying to muster up the energy to take my dog on a walk. It's gloomy and foggy here, so that's probably what I'm up to. We have one more live stream later today. Tune in for that. I. I might have this wrong. I think it's at 11:30. Don't quote me on that. Happy to have you here. I'll be back again next week, same time, same place. Helpful information. Thank you. Great overview. You guys are very welcome. I love nerding out and talking about some of the more complex science and breaking that down.

So if you guys ever have any requests, let me know. I occasionally will put kind of a question or post in the community tab. I think next week I might do a little bit of like nutrition in the news recap. Again, if you were here a couple weeks ago, it kind of gave you the rundown on like bird flu and how that's affecting food and food safety and some of those things. In lieu of the communications pause, which I think is still happening, I should check on that. But I want to be able to bring you guys information on that.

If that's something that's helpful or just any other questions, any other topics you want me to go over, let me know. It was great to have you all here. Happy Saturday and I will see you all next week. Bye.