Dr Louise Newson: [01:00:00] On my podcast today, I've got Dominique Ludwig, who wrote the most amazing book, No Nonsense Nutrition. We talk about how food is medicine, how important it is for us to eat the right type and the right amount of food. You're going to learn a lot from this, so I hope you enjoy it.  [01:00:16][16.0]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:00:18] So you are lovely and relaxed because you've just come back from a great holiday in Greece and I've got your book. In fact, it's a bit dirty because I use it quite a lot, here on my lap, but I've been following you on Instagram for quite a long time and I love it. No nonsense nutrition. There's so much noise in people's head about nutrition, what to eat, what not to eat. As a doctor, I got no training about nutrition, but I am really interested because if I don't eat well I get migraines. So it's a blessing and a curse having migraine, but I can't eat processed foods. I can just go and buy something in a shop. I can eat and I don't have caffeine or anything. But the trick of eating is to feel full and stay full and to feel well. But people don't realise that whole thing about medicine and food. You know, food is medicine and it's so easy now, especially with the GLP1s, to just think you don't have to bother with food. But you, you're just brilliant. So just tell me a bit about you, Dominique, and why you're so brilliant with what you do.  [01:01:25][66.5]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:01:25] So I've been a nutritionist for over 30 years. I'm a King's College trained nutritionist. I thought I was gonna go and work in the food industry after that, did that for a short amount of time and realised I wanted to get back into, I wanted work in clinic. And so I retrained in nutritional therapy and I've done 20 years in clinical practice. Like you said, I've just written my first book, No Nonsense Nutrition. I run two global nutrition programmes as well and I think No Nonsense Nutrition was just something I've been wanting to write for a long time. It's wanting to put into words the things that I say day in, day out in clinic. So I've worked with about 4,500 people, which means you get real-time answers to how things are working. And I just wanted to put all of that into a book, but I wanted to make the nutrition simple and fun to read. And then I wanted to put all the recipes in because all the science then is woven into the recipes. So if you do nothing else and you just choose the recipes, you're likely to feel better. But if you want to, you can dip into the nutritional advice at the beginning, which just gives you lots of practical tips of just how to put the food on your plate so that it's well proportioned, it's gonna fill you up for longer, it's going to nourish your body and make you feel well.  [01:02:37][71.7]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:02:38] Yeah, and it's interesting because when I was at medical school in the 80s, it was all about fat, protein, carbohydrates, but not what the different types were, nothing about all the other nutrients that we need. And now there's so much talk about protein, but people still are confused, aren't they. And, you know, I'm 55 and my metabolism changes all the time. I look at what my children eat and, you, know, that I can't eat the same as them, but we eat differently. So I'm really keen to just have a bit of advice really as to how we can keep as healthy as possible with what we eat for as long as possible because what we're trying to do now is invest in our future health as well, isn't it. We want to be fit and active as we age and I do think our generation or sort of the generation of people in their 40s and 50s are thinking ahead how to stay healthy in ways that perhaps people didn't before but food is important for that, isn't it?  [01:03:34][56.3]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:03:34] There's loads to unpack in what you've just said, so the first thing is when you think about food and you're thinking, yes, protein, carbohydrates and fats, obviously carbohydrates, it didn't used to matter. It didn't used to matter if you ate, or we didn't think it mattered if we were eating white rice compared to a wholegrain carbohydrate like bulgur wheat. So we weren't really making that differentiation where it's all about quality and quantity, how much of that carbohydrate you're going to eat and the quality of it, which then leads you on to what you just said about we were talking about the macronutrients and we forget about the micronutrients. I often say it's like a train that arrives at your station with all your nutrients. And first of all, you've got the big macronutrients, but the micronutrients are so important. All the vitamins and minerals, I describe them a bit like stardust in the body. So they drive every single biochemical reaction that happens in our body that makes us feel well from our brain chemistry to our liver detoxification, to our energy metabolism. So the quality of our food is so important and the more vitamins and minerals we're eating. And if you're thinking about hormones, we might be thinking about zinc, B6, magnesium, that are helping with our own hormone balance where we need to make sure we're getting enough. So if we're a eating a more processed diet that doesn't have as many nutrients, we're unlikely to feel as well. And I think the other thing that you, leading on to what you've just said is, you know, when we talk about protein, we didn't know how important it was. I think it's the magic duo of protein and fibre. And I don't want, I don't like overemphasising one macronutrient over another. But what I see in clinic is if you focus on the protein and make sure you've got maybe a quarter of a plate of protein and then you add on half a plate vegetables, that gives you around five grammes of fibre and then some healthy whole grains which might top you up by another five grammes. If you're focusing on the fibre and the protein, you naturally start to balance the plate because you're the vegetables, the whole grains, the protein, then the healthy fats. It just works, so you start to feel better when you do that. So I think they're a dynamic duo. They fill us up for longer, balance our blood sugars, they help with weight management, and I think that's really important.  [01:05:40][125.9]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:05:41] Yeah, and talking a bit more about the difference between bioidentical sort of what you know, the natural hormone treatments that we prescribe and synthetic hormones. And I say 'hormones' in inverted commas because they're not hormones, they're just chemicals made to look like hormones and behave like hormones, but they don't. So I was really a study from the 1980s the other day about women who take the contraceptive pill, which is, all contains synthetic hormones, and how it blocks the absorption of B12, zinc, folate and I was really shocked because no one taught me this at medical school, so I was just thinking about all the millions of women globally who are on synthetic contraceptives and having more processed food than many of us ate many years ago. It's quite hard then for them to absorb even if they are eating those micronutrients. Is it something that's on your radar? [01:06:34][53.4]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:06:36] It's on my radar. If I see someone on the contraceptive pill, I might ensure they're getting enough zinc, magnesium, B6 and some of those nutrients. I think really, if we're eating a really good whole food diet, we should be able to cover our requirements and we should have a slight surplus, but you're exactly right. The problem is that it depends what we're eating. If a quarter of our calories come from snack foods, that 75% of foods we snack on between meals are not particularly healthy, which means that a quarter of our diet might not be as healthy as the food we put on our plate at meals, which is why I always put so much emphasis on three meals a day. And so just put the food on your plate, have bigger meals with, and add extra things like some walnuts and crumbled parmesan, some, you know a dollop of hummus, whatever you're adding to your plate. Add more to your place because I think that will serve you better. You'll be less hungry between meals and you'll be getting more nutrients in your diet as a result. So I think it's an issue and I think also we become a bit blasé about our micronutrients and think that everybody's just getting enough. And it's not that we have necessarily deficiencies, deficiency diseases, we're not falling into that classification, we call it more sub-optimal. For example iodine or something like that, we've got a big rise in iodine insufficiency, particularly among teenage girls, which has been linked, we think, to a reduction in dairy and plant milks and things like that. So our food habits then change the amount of nutrients we're getting as well.  [01:08:07][90.9]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:08:07] It's very interesting, isn't it. And even magnesium, there's a lot of people who are deficient or insufficient in magnesium, but you can't measure it as a blood test easily because it's in the cells that it's low, but even the way the plants are grown, the chemicals that are used in the soil, all of that makes a difference as well, doesn't it. So just going back to basics really, sourcing ingredients, like a carrot is not a carrot. It's all very different, isn't it. It's quite hard to know when you're out and about. You think you're buying an apple and it's gonna be healthy, but it varies so much, doesn't it, between supermarkets and farmer's markets and everything else.  [01:08:48][41.6]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:08:51] I think just choose as local as you can and flavour is a determinant of the quality of food as well. So if you're going to get an apple that's been flown in from South Africa and tastes like water, it may not be as good for you as one that you're gonna pluck off a tree in your local area. So I think we can't get too worked up about that, because we can't always control our environment. All we can do is do our best. And I think just by basing your diet around healthier whole foods. Cooking from scratch where you can, and just trying to boost the amount of nutrients in our food, that's really all we can do. And I think that's always been my approach, it's always back to basics. And it doesn't have to mean fancy recipes and everything being difficult, because most people are time poor. I think really it's about actually how you just arrange the food on your plate, so you can literally arrive at the fridge. And I do this most days. I arrive at the fridge at lunchtime with absolutely no clue of what I'm going to eat. But I just get out all the vegetables, whether it's red cabbage, red onions, some peppers, cucumber, carrots, chop them up or grate them into a salad with a really nice olive oil salad dressing. Go find my protein. Maybe I've got a ball of mozzarella, a tin of mackerel, might be a salmon fillet, something like that. And so I've immediately got my protein on my plate, add some extras, add some cooked lentils or some healthy whole grains. And I'm kind of there. So I've just made an instant meal, but I haven't really had a plan or it's not a complicated recipe. You can just make your food work with your biology just by understanding how to put the food on your plate, which is something we cover a lot in the book.  [01:10:30][99.1]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:10:30] Yeah, so what's been your, what's been the most popular recipes that are in the book? I'm sure there are loads. [01:10:34][3.6]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:10:34]   Okay, so what surprised me, shall I tell you a funny story, when I was doing the food photography, I was obviously fretting over every recipe, and the food stylist said to me, oh don't worry, you know, not many of the recipes in the books are cooked by people, and so I think I, what she was saying was that, you know, lots of us have cookery books and maybe we only make one recipe. What I find astonishing with this book is how many people are coming up to the book signings with tabs all the way through the book and people are writing. I've had hundreds of messages from people saying how many of the recipes they're cooking from the book, and how they're just eating. I had somebody today say that they've just been making recipes from my book and they've got Hashimoto's thyroid disease, and that they said that their antibodies have normalised over three months. So this is the power of food. There's no, you can't make claims and it's different with every person, but eating real natural food can have a positive effect on your health. But favourite recipes. I think firecracker chicken seems to come up a lot. It's like a takeaway, but it's really healthy and it just uses the juice of one orange to sweeten it instead of, you know, lots of sugar. So that's been really popular. I think the breakfast sprinkles is a fun one and people really like that. It has all sorts of 10 different nuts and seeds. And then I've topped it with pitaya powder, which is dragon fruit powder and it's really vibrant pink. So when you shake it up and put it in your yoghurt, everything goes bright pink, which is really fun. And people really like that because they can make it up, and just then eat it throughout the week. And they're getting loads of plant variety in there as well, which supports the gut microbes.  [01:12:11][96.3]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:12:11] Yes, yes. I saw something the other day, actually, I went to the house and they, and I'd already made this before, you know, your seed and nut loaf?  [01:12:18][6.6]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:12:18] Yes.  [01:12:18][0.0]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:12:19] That must be really popular as well, mustn't it, because it's so, I mean, I've just got it in the freezer. I cut it up and then put it in the freezer. So then I can just get a slice at a time because sometimes when, well I'm always really busy, but I cook a lot for the freezer because then I know that if there isn't anything in the fridge, I've always got something healthy in freezer. And that's been brilliant because it's so easy to make as well.  [01:12:43][23.6]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:12:43] Yeah, you don't have to knead it, you don't have to prove it, put it in the oven, it freezes really well. You've got loads of plant diversity in there, and I think unlike, you know, regular supermarket bread, because it's so dense and nutrient-based...  [01:12:55][12.1]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:12:56] You can't eat much of it.  [01:12:56][0.6]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:12:56] You don't need very much, so lots of, it's really interesting, even the sweet recipes, like there's some really nice salted caramel bars in there. If you compare them to a traditional chocolate bar, you know, you can just inhale them and it doesn't really feel like we've eaten them. Whereas you only need a small amount. Another really popular recipe on the bread one is the red lentil bagels. They have been a really big hit as well. And you think, how can that possibly work? It just does and it's really it's a really fun recipe that one. [01:13:22][26.1]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:13:23] I think that's what's great. And I mean, obviously, the way the pictures are brilliant. But but it just, it's easy. There's not loads and loads of ingredients that you think you haven't got. And it just, it's the colour as well, because it is that whole the more that we eat of the rainbow, the more colour, that gives you more nutrients straight away, doesn't it? [01:13:44][20.8]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:13:44] And everything's put on the plate. So the whole point of the book is that the pictures actually shows what you're going to eat. So rather than just giving you a recipe with some chicken breasts where you've got to go and think, well, now what do I serve it with? What I've done is I've put the vegetables on there, I've put the healthy carbs on there. So it's everything you need is on the plate and everything balances. So every single recipe in the book is balanced with around 30 grammes of protein, around 10 grammes of fibre. And so If you were eating three meals a day, that would be around 30 grammes of fibre a day. And if you're just eating from the book, you'll get well over 30 different plants a week. So I call it my triple 30 principles. So just by choosing those foods, you're likely to feel fuller for longer, your attention should be better in the afternoon and focus. You should just feel better from one meal to the next, but it's tapping into your natural hunger and satiety mechanism. So you're eating enough, like you, I think you said at the beginning, lots of people don't eat enough food. And I see that a lot in clinic where when we hit midlife, there's this sort of invisible memo that goes out that says that everything that worked in your 20s and 30s doesn't really work so much. So we start to store more fat around the middle. We are gaining weight. Our blood sugar regulation isn't quite as good. We're losing muscle mass. We're maybe not sleeping as well, which is making us hungrier the next day. So lots of things start to happen and shift in our metabolism. And people as a result often start to exercise more and eat less. But when you start to put the principles in place of fibre and protein and the balanced plate, you're eating lots of food, but it's working with your biology. So it's increasing all of your satiety mechanisms. It's stretching your stomach to tell your brain that you're full. You're switching on the hunger hormones in your small intestine. You've got like mini laboratories in there that are scanning your food in real time. And they're sending messages to the brain to say you're full. And then you've got those deep satiety hormones like GLP-1, PYY, GIP, which then are there your long term satiety. So when you're eating foods that are bulky and hard to break down, the bits of the residue of that food is switching on or is reaching the cells that produce those long term, satiety hormones. So that really keeps you going from one meal to the next. You're not feeling the need to snack. You're not feeling deprived. You're just feeling satiated.  [01:16:02][138.4]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:16:03] Most people now have heard of GLP-1s, but don't know that we make it ourselves. And it's so much better if you can stimulate it yourself.  [01:16:14][11.1]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:16:16] You can but it only lasts one to two minutes. So you're sort of relying on little bursts of GLP-1, almost like a little sparkler going off. But it's only part of the picture.  [01:16:24][8.8]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:16:25] Of course it is.  [01:16:25][0.0]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:16:25] So when we sometimes, when we're talking about food increasing our GLP-1, it is not quite the same as the medications which are going stay in your system for a long time. But it's everything together. It's the bulk of our food, and it's eating the fibre and the protein. We just need to switch on the whole cascade of satiety. And that can be transformational. I cannot tell you how many people have written to me to say that the food noise has gone and just how that has just changed their life because they're not thinking about food. They can walk past the biscuit aisle. [01:16:55][30.2]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:16:55] It's incredible, isn't it. I used to have really sweet tooth and when I was a junior doctor, I mean it's impossible, it still is now, to get good food when you're on call and then you know there's always biscuits at the nurses' station and chocolates or whatever the patient had given and it was three in the morning and I'd have some and then the more you have you and and my sugar levels must have just been up and down it must have been horrendous but and for some reason then it didn't seem to trigger migraines but then when you change your diet and you don't feel hungry like if you even if you offered me a donut I wouldn't want it whereas if you'd offered me it 20 years ago, 30 years ago I would have gobbled it up and inhaled it literally and never, but it takes a while to change that but it's not like saying you can't eat it because then you would just be hungry and think about the donut all day long but if you're having different foods it's just different but somehow for women I think we do think about food more than men for all sorts of reasons. But when we don't have our hormones or we have a hormonal imbalance, it can trigger, can't it, this craving for food, which can be really difficult for people. So having the right, I mean, I'm always talking about hormones and of course, hormones can balance and help metabolism, they can help with insulin resistance, but it's often in conjunction with having the the right food choices can be transformational. But, you know, our hormones are linked with what we eat as well, aren't they?  [01:18:19][84.5]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:18:22] So you've got, there's two, you've got the liver and you've the gut. So your liver is how you get rid of old hormones. When you've used the hormones, it goes to the liver. How well your liver's functioning is really important and certain foods can actually improve how our liver works. So things like cruciferous vegetables are really important like broccoli and cauliflower. And then what goes on in your gut is really important and people don't always realise this. So first of all, we've got something called the istrabalone, which is like a sort of your, that is part of the microbiome that can affect how we process estrogen. Just having the wrong type of bacteria in your gut can actually affect how your estrogen levels are and how much of it you're going to excrete.  [01:19:05][43.2]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:19:05] Yeah, and it's also the metabolites as well of hormones that need to be removed. But our hormones also help improve our gut microbiome and not just estradiol, but progesterone and testosterone has a really beneficial effect. And when our gut microbes are happy, it helps our mental health, doesn't it? It helps our metabolism and everything else as well.  [01:19:28][22.9]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:19:30] So just going through menopause can change the microbiome when estrogen falls so you're right, we can have less diversity in the gut. But yes, how we, eating more fibre has been shown in research to have a positive effect on things like depressive disorders. And they're still sort of trying to work out exactly why this happens. But we're getting closer, I think, to it. We make a lot of serotonin in our gut. So 90% of the serotonin we make is in the gut. There's other mechanisms in play that are also improving our mental health and it might be the metabolites that we're making in our gut actually helped to facilitate the neurotransmitters in our brain. They also think it's linked with inflammation because eating enough fibre lowers our systemic inflammation which can also affect our serotonin production in the brain. So I think it is complicated and I don't think we know all the answers to that yet. But I see this in my programme. This is a really nice sort of anecdote. I have a self-reported questionnaire at the end. So I ask people questions and let them tick a box. So people that have changed their diet with me on a programme I do called Renew, Reset, Recharge, then will change their diet for 28 days. It's a bit of a weight loss programme, but they're also resetting. And around 45% of people who finish the programme tick a box to say that they feel happier.  [01:20:52][82.5]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:20:54] That's great isn't it.  [01:20:55][0.4]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:20:55] They feel better in their mood, happier and they describe it as just feeling happier. [01:20:56][1.2]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:20:57]  So that's higher than any antidepressant research isn't it?  [01:21:01][3.9]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:21:03] It's really interesting. So there's obviously lots going on. And it'll be great when we have all the answers to this.  [01:21:09][6.0]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:21:09] I mean, the thing is, we'll never have all the studies because it's impossible to do so, especially with food and when it's self-reporting, it's really hard. But when I'm sort of inquisitive, I always think, let's go back to the basics. And this is really basics. It's not like cutting edge science. This is very simplistic, in some ways and obvious. And but it's somehow been forgotten for so many years. If I go back to when I was growing up in the 70s, food was fresher, it was easy, we didn't have processing of foods in the same way, you couldn't eat the snacks that people do, you could just go to a petrol station and drink some of those horrible coloured fluids that are now available, you know, there's all sorts of things that have changed, but I think stripping it back and cooking from scratch, lots of people still don't do, so it's got to make a difference, hasn't it. And like you say, there'll be, there's so many different ways, but sometimes it doesn't matter. As long as it's not doing harm and eating healthily is never going to do harm, is it.  [01:22:08][58.3]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:22:10] I think just in the environment we live in with social media, we're always looking for the next thing, the next biohack, the next longevity tablet, supplement or whatever. And I think having been a nutritionist for 30 years, I think we sometimes are so wrapped up in our ice baths and our green powders that we're forgetting what's right under our nose and it's nutrition. And while I'm very clinically trained to work with many conditions simultaneously, actually, what I've learned is and I call it zoom out. When I run programmes or I get people eating this way, like in the book, and people just, you know, start to eat a healthier, balanced diet, lots of the small ailments that they had or symptoms disappear. So I had somebody on Monday who said, who was following the triple 30 principles in my book. And she said, I've stopped taking acid reflux medication. I've been on it for 10 years. So these are self, like I say not the same for everyone, but blood pressure might drop. HbA1c might normalise, menopausal symptoms improve, joint pain can improve, autoimmune diseases can improve just from changing our diet. So sometimes we need to zoom out, not over complicate and over medicalise everything in nutrition. And I think just by changing diet first and see what changes and then work with anything that's left over is kind of what I do in clinic now rather than jumping in and completely turning someone's, you know, diet upside down or giving them 20 supplements. Often that's not necessary. I think that's really important. I think we forget just how powerful food is on its own and we need to stop chasing the next thing. And what we do every day, those consistent habits like having breakfast, lunch and dinner. Trying to get enough sleep, trying to, as much as we can, control our stress levels, although that's really hard. It's those things we're doing every day that are really going to affect our long-term health. Not chasing a supplement we might take for three months and then decide it's too expensive and then stop taking it.  [01:24:12][122.2]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:24:12] Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's so brilliant and what you're doing is incredible. And changing eating habits of so many people and families, I'm sure, as well. So I really appreciate you coming. Before I end, I always ask for three take home tips, though. There's a lot that I want to ask you, but three things if people, I know a lot of people, a lot of listeners feel quite overwhelmed when I talk about food. And there's always people have got their own thoughts and own theories. But going back to your book, No Nonsense Nutrition, just three things that you think people could all do that's quite easy, that's gonna make a difference to them.  [01:24:49][36.6]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:24:50] I think start with breakfast, you don't have to eat it the minute you get up in the morning. But I wouldn't push through till lunch. I think particularly for women, my female clients do much better when they have breakfast. If you front load some of your calories in the day, you're less likely to sofa snack later on. And I think what you eat at breakfast actually dictates what you're going to eat for the rest of the day because it, because you're not chasing calories because you've under-eaten. So I think it just makes you much more calmer, you're likely to have better choices at lunch, and then find yourself snacking less in the evening. So breakfast, I think, is really important. Just have some really useful ingredients in the house, whether it's tinned sardines or mackerel, bottled beans, oat bran. I'm a big fan of oat bran, I really like that. Having some nuts and seeds in. Having, just having some real basics in that you can just so you can throw meals together quite quickly can be really helpful. What else would I say? I think when you're in the supermarket trying to get a wide variety of vegetables as well just choose different colours, different types of vegetables. Throw them all into your salad. We so often just go for lettuce, tomato and cucumber and that to me is like a very sad looking garnish. Get colourful vegetables, hard vegetables, make more than you need because if you make a salad with hard vegetables it can last for two to three days. Make more than I need and using hard vegetables is going to give you more of the phytonutrients in the plants, it's just a really easy way of getting diversity in. [01:26:27][96.9]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:26:28] Yes, You make it look so easy so follow Dominique, buy her book, and thank you so much for coming today.  [01:26:33][4.8]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:26:33] Aw, thank you.  [01:26:34][0.4]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:26:34] Thank you.  [01:26:34][0.4]
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Dominique Ludwig: [01:26:35] Thank you for having me.  [01:26:35][0.4]
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Dr Louise Newson: [01:26:38] So just a quick one. It would be really great if you could follow or subscribe to this podcast. This will really help me reach more people with evidence-based information about hormones and their future health and also means you never miss a future episode. Thank you.  [01:26:38][0.0]
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