Nora Gedgaudas, a world-renowned nutritionist, neurofeedback practitioner, educator, author and clinical practitioner in Portland, Oregon joins me to chat about all things to do with nutrition and the intimate connection between our food, our immune system and our mind and body.

Selected Links from the Episode

Nora Gedgaudas website, books and program:

Primal Body, Primal Mind

Rethinking Fatigue

Primal Fat Burner

Primal Restoration Program

My book, A Life Less Stressed

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Dr. Ron Ehrlich:                  Hello and welcome to “Unstress”. I'm Dr. Ron Ehrlich. In this podcast not surprisingly, we focus on stress and pillars of health. We hear so much about various diets and paleo is certainly up there with one of the most popular and I think with good reason. Autoimmune diseases are also a big issue as you were here in this episode actually even bigger than I thought and I thought there are over 80 autoimmune diseases. Now that is the body attacking itself and depending on your genetic predisposition if your predisposition is your skin, your weakness you might have psoriasis. If your gut is the weak link you might have Crohn's or coeliac. If thyroid then you'll have an under or overactive thyroid, Hashimoto's or Graves’ disease. Nerves, it could be Parkinson's or multiple sclerosis. If it's your joint, you might have rheumatic fever.

Autoimmune diseases are big ones. The point is while the manifestations of those diseases are very different or appear to be different, the causes have some common overlaps and common themes and all and that's all about gut permeability or not all but a great deal of it is about gut permeability or leaky gut where undigested proteins enter the bloodstream and the body mounts an attack and autoimmune response. It's an issue as you'll hear that is clearly on the rise.

Now another issue inflammation is another subject we touch on in this podcast or rather chronic inflammation which is a common denominator in almost every physical and mentally degenerative disease. Cancer, heart disease, even depression. You'll hear the word cytokines and they are markers and the body's response to chronic inflammation. So, there are mediators if you like. Well, all that prefaces my guest today Nora Gedgaudas.

Now, Nora is a world-renowned nutritionist, neurofeedback practitioner, educator, author and is in clinical practice in Portland, Oregon in the USA. She has an incredible in-depth knowledge of all things to do with nutrition and intimate connection between our food, our immune system and our mind and body. Now I first got to know Nora in 2009 when I read her fabulous book “Primal Body, Primal Mind”. Now, as soon as I read it together with my friends Vicky and Tim Poulter we have a group called “Nourishing Australia”. We brought Nora to Australia for a series of lectures and it was a huge success and it introduced many Australians to ancestral diets beyond just paleo.

We call this episode “Beyond Paleo” because Nora's approach is unique. It's backed by some very solid science lessons from the past, some very thorough testing and clinical observations and some common sense. Her approach just makes so much sense. She is a wealth of knowledge. Nora also references Western A. Price who if you didn't know and took what I consider to be one of the most important pieces of research ever undertaken, even more relevant today than when he undertook it 80 years ago. Now Price was a dentist and what he was doing was looking for the cause of tooth decay. He visited traditional cultures living on traditional ancestral food. But what made it so unique was that at the same time he visited the same genetic groups who had just moved to nearby towns and cities and consumed Western diets. So,