NourishDoc: Anti-aging medicine. Well you know all of us want to look great right and never an age that’s what we wish to like even if we grow older, we still want to look like you know we were still in our teens and going to 20s, but that’s not how it happens you know all of us to start aging but how can we age gracefully and healthy so. We are talking about anti-aging medicine with a naturopathic doctor, she specializes in anti-aging medicine, so I have invited Dr. Terra Winston, a naturopathic doctor. The latter is skilled in injection therapies such as peptides, PRP, prolotherapy, ozone therapy, IV therapy, and other medical therapies such as craniosacral therapy. So hang on for one second, and Dr. Terra should join me in one second, and we will talk about anti-aging medicine. If you have any questions, you are welcome to put them in the chat window. I don’t want to say that this is an educational session; only don’t listen to me and start doing all kinds of things by yourself; you know, take peptides and all those things, so seek a health counselor if you want to do anything. Hence, I hang on for one second. As I told you, I will add Dr. Terra Winston; she is a naturopathic doctor. We are going to be talking about anti-aging medicine. There you are, hi, how are you?
Dr. Terra: I’m good. Can you guys hear me?
What is Anti-Aging Medicine?
NourishDoc: Yes, loud and clear. Yeah, I love the topic of anti-aging medicine. I think this is such; we all try to look our best even when we start aging. I read on your blog that you had some medical issues when you were younger. Then you were on antidepressants, so maybe we would love to hear a little about your story and how you became a naturopathic doctor.
Dr. Terra: Okay, yeah, that’s great, and you know the topic of anti-aging is so broad it’s like, I mean, we could talk for days about this. Hence, yeah, so my story is I was a pretty sick kid I started getting like I would say, significantly more ill in my late middle school to high school. Most of my issues were in my gut, and autoimmune disease ran in my family, but for some reason, the doctors that I went to seek help didn’t knowing anything about it. They didn’t have any answers for me; the only treatment I was ever offered was antidepressants. Even at the young age of 14 or 15, I knew that was not my problem. I was a very social kid; I was active, I played sports I wasn’t depressed. So I just basically said no, and I was going to go to medical school because of that experience; I decided that I didn’t want to have anything to do with the medical world, so I took a roundabout way but to make the story shorter I started looking into nutrition, and I was looking for alternative food. I found baster university that way and learned about naturopathic medicine. Hence, through them, I decided to go back into medicine and fulfill my dream.
A Naturopathic Doctor’s view of anti-aging
NourishDoc: That’s great so let’s talk about anti-aging medicine, right? There are so many things we read about peptides, PRP, all those things, so let’s educate ourselves a little bit, like how should we shift? What do we think?
Dr. Terra: Okay well so what’s important to know first is as a naturopathic doctor i look at things different than even like an integrative doctor or holistic doctor so when we talk about anti-aging my first thing is to prevent the process right so we cannot prevent ourselves from aging we’re going to get older every year but we can prevent the cells and the mind and the body from you know aging more progressively than it should so we can basically slow down the process so the way i look at things is always first to prevent so we’re going to stop the process first and then once we get everything under control and we’re kind of on this trajectory to slow aging down then we can start what what we would consider regenerative or reverse aging where we actually start to make you look and feel actually younger than you do currently and so that is where we get into like the PRP and the peptides and all of those fun cutting-edge kind of options that are out there but there’s so much to do before you even get to that point that people can really start doing now. So okay so basically what it all boils down to is mitochondrial health and overall inflammation so you really want to protect your mitochondria because those are your powerhouses those are what protect or i guess essentially give you energy they do all of the like work it’s kind of like your engine in your car right so if you never protect your engine if you never get your oil changed if you don’t feed it the right kind of oil and you don’t keep that tank full then your car is going to break down a lot earlier than it should so that is how your body works and so your mitochondrial needs a lot of nutrients to do their job so they need whole foods or at least that’s the best way to get the nutrients sure you can take multivitamins you can do IV therapy and all those things to optimize but really the biggest piece of our our nutrition is going to come through our food so we want to choose food that we can digest first of all so like in my case i was not digesting a lot of my food because i was eating foods that were causing a lot of inflammation in my gut and i basically couldn’t absorb anything so i was really depleted and so once i cut out those foods that were triggering for me I was then able to absorb more of my nutrients and all of the good healthy foods the veggies you know even grass-fed meat i was vegan for a long time i’m not vegan anymore i’m not going to get into why but i don’t think it really works for me and you know i’m a huge proponent of plant-based but i think that there’s a role for some of those like collagens and and certain types of animal proteins to basically keep your cells looking younger and more vital because we need protein like our our collagen so when we talk about like wrinkles that is everything those are made because the collagen under the skin is starting to break down and so the easiest way to get collagen is literally to eat it and you know there’s there’s other ways of of supporting that like vitamin C but really we need to feed those cells and so yes IV therapy is great multivitamins are great but really it boils down to food and i know you talk a lot about food so that’s great I think a lot of people that are joining us today probably already have the diet dialed in and that’s an excellent start so along with food comes hydration because our cells are 60% water our whole bodies are 60% water and if we start depleting that water then our are our cells start to shrivel up it’s like where we become a raisin and raisins are wrinkly so if you’re dehydrated and you might even notice this on a daily basis if you don’t drink enough water today tomorrow your skin is going to look older. So the best way to do that is to reverse that to hydrate, and I think that gets overlooked so often.
Collagen peptides for anti-aging
NourishDoc: So you talk about the collagen. Eat the collagen, so what type of foods should people eat that has collagen rich?
Dr. Terra: The most accessible form is buying collagen peptides. You’ll hear some talk in like the beauty industry about like hyaluronic acid, that’s something that’s kind of it’s incorporated into collagen. So I’ll tell people to take an available collagen supplement. You don’t need to get so fancy as to take hyaluronic acid; you can do this very simply at home by making a bone broth, and that’s it’s super easy; it’s mineral-rich, so you’re feeding your mitochondria those minerals you’re getting lots of that collagen; naturally, it’s easy to drink you can add it into soups and foods. Hence, if you don’t like taking supplements, it’s a great way to boost your nutrition profile. So you can buy bone broth at the great store. Still, you can also just so if you go to the butcher or even sometimes in the frozen food section, you can buy the bones. You just put it in a stock pot with some veggies, usually a little vinegar; there are many recipes, but I don’t have one on my website. Still, I could throw one up there; it’s super easy. You just let it simmer. I use an insta pot, so I just put it in the insta pot and let it cook for a couple of hours. Still, you could use a slow cooker or just a simmer pot on your stove for about 24 hours, and then you get this rich, delicious bone broth at the end.
Bone broth for anti-aging
NourishDoc: The bone broth; yeah, there’s a lot of research, and everyone’s talking about bone broth, so does it have to be bones of beef, or can it be?
Dr. Terra: No yeah, it can be any animal, yeah it just it depends on what flavor you like you can even do fish so like you know Asian cuisine there’s a lot of like fish broth and fish sauces that are used, so that’s great if you love the flavor of fish I do you can do a fish broth and those so fish and chicken and other types of poultry they cook a lot faster because the bones are smaller so you can do those quickly in just a matter of a couple of hours. But if you’re going to use those more giant animals like the lamb or the beef or the bison, those are the ones that need to cook for a couple of hours, or I need a couple of, you know, days ideally.
NourishDoc: No, I think that’s great than chicken and fish, you know, for non-red meat eaters, a lot of people, that’s easier to digest also, right?
Dr. Terra: Yeah, and I know many people out there that don’t do meat but are okay with fish, so I think that’s a great option.
Role of hydration
NourishDoc: Okay, alright, so collagen is one big thing, and then you talked about the hydration. I couldn’t agree more. I mean, there are days when I don’t drink enough water. I look like, oh my god, what happened to you know, the skins automatically kind of like us wrinkly or strange things start happening, right?
Dr. Terra: Yeah, I know when I wake up in the morning if I didn’t drink enough water the night before and I’m like, oh no, so I run. I get my mason jar full of electrolyte water, so that’s one tip I have. Suppose I feel dehydrated; I use this analogy a lot if I feel like a plant where the water is just running out the bottom. It’s not absorbing into the soil; that’s usually because you don’t have enough minerals. Hence, your hydration status relies on osmolality, which is a substantially confusing word you don’t need to worry about. But it has to do with your mineral balance and whether there’s enough minerals in your cells or enough minerals in your blood or in your lymphatics and one really easy way to boost that water absorption by adding minerals is to add electrolytes to your water and that can be done as simply as something like you know like a bioplasma which is just a cell salt, one of them you can mix them in your water you can throw them under your tongue they’re great, but also like the flavored electrolyte water mostly because sometimes water doesn’t taste good to me or it’s boring, or I just want to you know I don’t I’m not really in the mood to drink, but I know that I need water, so I throw some electrolytes in there and I always buy the kind that’s not sugar-free, so I’m not spiking my blood sugar because that’s important too for you know aging purposes we don’t want our blood sugar going all over the place, so you know choosing sugar-free electrolytes are a really great way to make sure you’re getting enough hydration.
Exercise for anti-aging
NourishDoc: Okay, so hydration collagen and then what else for anti-aging? I mean, just making, there’s an exercise; there’s yoga pranayama?
Dr. Terra: Yeah, of course, exercise is vast, so this sort of plays into that overall inflammation-modulating if your body is inflamed. Whether that’s because of illness, infection, blood sugar imbalance, hormone imbalance, or toxin exposure, your body will age faster, so we sort of call it inflammation. Hence, we want to reduce inflammation; one of the best ways to reduce inflammation is through movement, which is essential. Your training, just like your diet, must be tailored specifically to you, so for some people, they do better with a more intense, you know high intensity interval training, a short duration type workout, and other people are going to do a lot better with just like you know a 20-minute walk around the neighborhood. So exercise does not need to be whatever the trend is in the news; it needs to be whatever works for your body, and that’s something you must experiment with. You know, work with someone who’s trained in the exercise. You know, whether that’s your doctor or your physical therapist or whatever, many people can help you decide your exercise routine.
NourishDoc: Okay, and then what else any of the food groups that we should focus on besides, of course, the things we talked about earlier?
Dr. Terra: Yeah. So I mean, I think the way I approach to diet is a little bit unique because there are general food guidelines that are important for everybody, so we eat plant-based whole foods. Still, you know, a little bit of room for protein. Preferably you’re cooking at home seasonally, eating organic if you’re going to eat grass-fed meat or sustainably raised low mercury fish, etc. Still, certain foods do not work for certain people, which I think doesn’t necessarily get addressed all that often, so I guess it’s essential to figure out what foods work for you. Then within that, you create a healthy diet. Hence, I think I’m saying it doesn’t mean you can’t ever have treats. I believe there is a healthy level of, like every family member, whenever someone in my family has a birthday, I make them a cake. It’s not like it’s not a super healthy cake; it’s a cake, but it’s gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, and like I can eat it. So I make sure I get to eat the cake, and they get to eat it. We all enjoy the treat, but it’s not going to hurt any of us, like it’s not going to cause massive inflammation because we all eat a relatively healthy diet otherwise. We’re not putting ingredients in that cake that hurt us. So I guess I can’t get into anything more specific than that because it’s individual to each person I have seen people that are sensitive to coffee or coconut or eggs. The only way you’re going to know that is if you do some elimination diet or a food sensitivity test or, yeah, like I mean there’s blood tests, there’s carol sensitivity testing, there are all types of a different way to figure out what foods work for you.
NourishDoc: Sure and functional medicine, to your point, is personalized, not so is naturopathic medicine and even Ayurveda, you know, all these medicines are talking about personalization based on your constitution, whether it’s diagnosis testing or what have you and that that’s why you should eat right?
Dr. Terra: Yes.
NourishDoc: Okay, what else do I know? We don’t want to talk about peptides and all these kinds of PRP, you know, those are external therapies; this is not food as medicine; what else would you like to add to the anti-aging?
Skin moisturizers
Dr. Terra: Well, so I mean there’s I mean it just there’s so many things to talk about I guess the only other thing that I would really, you know, that i kind of had on my list that’s important is, you know, i think for most people when they talk about anti-aging they’re mostly talking about their face right that’s the biggest complaint because that’s what’s forward-facing that’s what everyone sees that’s what you look at in the mirror every day and so this is something that actually I will admit to overlooking until about the last like three or four years and that is that yes the majority of our youthfulness comes from the inside out and so we’ve covered all of that with the food and the hydration and all of those but the movement all of those points, but there is actually an aspect that is care from the outside in when we talk about our face, and so i highly recommend that everyone get a very skilled esthetician on their team that can build a routine that’s tailored to your skin. So I did a post about this a while back. I don’t remember how long ago, but basically, I was talking about I never used to do anything to my face like I would wash my face with coconut oil which was my moisturizer; that’s all I did, and my skin was delicate it wasn’t like you know the average person would not outwardly recognize it. But i’m telling you since i started working with an esthetician and i started doing a custom routine that was tailored to my skin my skin looks a hundred percent better i mean it’s there’s no comparison now to five years ago, i feel like i reverse age just simply because of that and it’s a lot of work but so is every other aspect of health and it’s a lot easier for me to do this now than to like wait until i you know look like I’m 50 or 60 or 70 and start getting PRP and exosomes because those are expensive of course and so i use a whole bunch of different brands of products i mean i focus on clean beauty so the most significant thing here is like i mentioned toxins we don’t want to be putting toxins on our skin because we are poisoning those cells and it might make you look great now to use some unique cutting edge like you know plumping serum but if that pumping serum is poisoning your cells and damaging the DNA in those cells then in two or three years you’re going to look significantly older just because of that product. So I can’t stress this enough: whatever you choose, you will want to choose clean beauty. If you don’t know where to start, a great resource is the environmental working group, that’s awg.org. They have a whole list of clean beauty, and they’ll at least tell you what ingredients to look for and not to use. So for me, I tend towards drier skin. So my skin kind of tends to look like if I get too dry, I’ll get breakouts which seems counterintuitive, so for a lot of people, they’ll get flights. They’re like, ” Oh, you know, I don’t want to put any moisturizer on because I break out. Still, your skin is dry, so the key was putting lots of layers of moisture on top of my skin and ensuring I’m staying internally hydrated. So I do a combination of a face wash in the morning. Then I do a serum that’s a brightening serum. Then I do a hyaluronic acid serum and top it with a toner. Then I put an oil and oil-based serum on top, and then I do a moisturizer. Hence, I do many things in the morning, which takes me a lot of time. I don’t love doing that, but it’s my self-care. Right now, I feel like that’s my workout in the morning because I’m preventing, you know, I’m preventing needing those higher level interventions later on. I don’t get botox or any of that stuff. I’ve never done anything cosmetic to my face. Hence, it’s like what I do in my home care and what my esthetician does in her facials.
NourishDoc: That’s great, no, I think that’s great, and all of us should right have some routine, routine is perfect, and oils, as you said, are probably better than you know, not that I’m trying to discredit some of the beauty companies here but on the other hand oils are better on your skin than natural than buying some formulation that has all variety of chemicals in it, and we think oh we’re getting younger now I’m putting it on that, and a few years later to your point it’s not the same.
Dr. Terra: Yeah, exactly, it’s just not; yeah, I’m particular about all of the products that go on my skin, so like my shampoo and my conditioner and my lotion, all of that is all clean. If I wouldn’t put it in my mouth in terms of ingredients, I’m not going to put it on my skin; not to say I’m going to eat my facial products, but you know, I just make sure that those ingredients are safe.
NourishDoc: Okay, well, someone commented great information; well, thank you so much. Anything else you’d like to add and Dr. Terra?
Dr. Terra: I don’t think so unless there were any questions.
NourishDoc: Yeah, if someone has a question, you can ask that; you know this is like a working time 10 o’clock a bit, but if people have any questions or any comments, you’re welcome to put it in the comment here or DM as direct messages and yeah thank you so much, Dr. Terra, for excellent information this is anti-aging medicine we’ve been talking about food as medicine primarily and try to avoid getting into all these therapies that of course, they are available, but we are not propagating going and getting yourself more talks done here we’re talking about more using natural and food as a medicine too to look your grade. Okay, well, thank you again, and everyone has a great day; we’re wrapping up now; thank you, bye-bye.
Dr. Terra: Okay, bye, everyone.
