[EP.15]TOXIC SUPERFOODS With Sally K Norton MPH

Dr. Joel Rosen:Right Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another edition of the age-reversing blueprint podcast. And I’m excited to talk to our next guest. She is Sally Norton, who is an Ivy League nutritionist and author of her new book Toxic Superfoods How Opposite Overload Is Making You Sick, and How to Get Better. Today we will be talking about genetic testing oxalates and identifying foods that may be making you worse or better. And ultimately, in the overall clinical picture, Sally recovered from her health issues by lowering her oxygen intake and burden. And she’s here to talk to us about that today. So thank you so much for being here today, Sally. Sally K. Norton, MPH:Thanks for having me. You’re gonna enjoy it. Dr. Joel Rosen:So yeah, we were talking a little bit beforehand before we got started. And but I always like to ask my guests you know, tell us your story. Because your story is usually yours is why you’re doing what you’re doing. So maybe give us the listeners a little bit about what you’re dealing with I know, when you were younger you were planting a farmer. And you’re, I’ve heard some of the stuff that you’ve talked about in the past. So maybe take us through a cliff notes version of your health challenges. Sally K. Norton, MPH:Well, I got committed to learning about what I teach and what I’ve written about with the book. Because when I did finally figure out what had been dogging my health since I was a kid, particularly at age 12, but probably very much earlier in life. You know, I was 49, about to turn 50 When I figured this out. And, because in my career, I’ve worked in medical schools, multiple ones, and been in the public health field my entire life. And I had all these great connections with doctors who do integrative medicine, functional medicine, all the complementary and alternative therapists, I’ve seen them all, I’ve spent tons of money on it, and no one can help me. I couldn’t help myself, I have a degree from Cornell Nutrition and a public health degree from a major Institute here in the US. And nobody could help me. Despite my, you know, affluence of connections, and knowledge and information, I was ignorant, and we all were ignorant about what was messing up my health. And I realized that I couldn’t be the only person who was sick because of sweet potatoes, swiss chard, and healthy eating, which is ultimately what I found out, which is heartbreaking. Because yeah, I have this big organic garden. And a lifetime of being a goody two shoes at the dinner table, to you know, my siblings didn’t like that I was a bad example at the table who would eat her vegetables. You know, so it’s all worked against me doing the right thing. And it turns out that many other people have this problem of being sick because of stuff that we eat all the time that we think is fine to eat. And that’s a pretty shocking message to run into. Luckily, I live long enough to figure it out. But it takes a while to recover from it. So where I am now with my health is I no longer have the arthritis, but I no longer have a uterus or ovaries. I mean, you lose things along the way of being sick and not knowing why I still have back problems. I have all kinds of problems in my spine, which include pits and holes and the bones and stenosis and, bone spurs and for set joint arthritis up and down, very flattened and bulging discs, all kinds of degeneration of the tissues in here and year 11. I’ve started my 11th year without a high oxalate diet, I feel like my body’s still working on and proof spine, how much of that tissue can recover? I don’t know. Eating a high oxalate diet causes calcifications and fascia and connective tissue, it turns on all kinds of genetic weirdnesses in the body where suddenly perfectly innocent cells become aberrant cells and you get this calcification and so on. So, you know, a lifetime of healthy eating led to a lot of oxidative stress, connective tissue damage, hormonal damage, thyroid damage, brain damage, digestive problems, rheumatoid rheumatism, and so on. So I had the whole gamut. For the most part, I spent years in crutches and wheelchairs, I had to leave Cornell for four years of medical leave because my feet were so bad. And it was after I changed my diet at age 49, that my feet finally started working. Dr. Joel Rosen:Well, yeah, you know, and it’s you met going back to having the wealth of practitioners and competent people around, you would suggest that it’s new, and relatively for myself speaking oxalates up until maybe 656 years ago, was like, what is that? But the research goes back, you know, 100 years, maybe talk about the early research that shed light on what oxalates are and how deleterious they are, and maybe give us an idea as to why you think it’s usually it’s 17 years behind the research before the field generals catch up with the ivory towers, but we’re talking about hundreds of years. So at least 100...