Bowel movements are something I discuss with every wellness client.

I like to find out if they are consistent and daily, or if they have issues with constipation or diarrhea, because you can tell a lot about someone’s digestion based off of how they are pooping.

Poop can give you a picture of how things are going inside of your body, which is a very helpful overall indication of your health. So, I think it's a good place to start in raising awareness about your health and keeping an indication of how things are moving.

I look at my poop every single day, and I ask my clients to do so also, and after this episode, I will encourage all of our listeners to do the same if you aren’t already!

So let's smash right through that ice barrier with poop and talk about why poop can and should be the ultimate health indicator that we should watch on a daily basis.

During my first year as a masters student, I believed that all things written in the name of science were trustworthy, full of integrity and truth.

As long as the research I was reading was from a research study, published in a scientific journal, I assumed it was reliable.

But then I took a course in my second year called “Evaluating the Literature” which was dedicated to helping science students interpret and evaluate research studies to determine their validity. This training opened my eyes up to how many poorly conducted research studies are out there in circulation, and is training that has guided me well for the last decade or so, through my masters in Nutrition and beyond.

As I’ve paid closer attention, I’ve discovered that many nutrition studies are highly corrupted by the food and pharmaceutical industries.

So, today I want to share with you some tips to help you recognize good research, and weed out bad research, and determine the validity behind some of those “scientific” claims you see in the news and online. Join us for a rousing discussion of the hidden corruption in the nutritional science industry and learn how you can separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to interpreting scientific articles. 

The adverse health effects of plastic chemicals have been known by scientists for decades.

Phthalates and Bisphenol A (BPA) are perhaps the most infamous unsafe plastic chemicals, but there are hundreds more that pose equally as dangerous - if not greater - health risks. The dirty secrets of the plastics industry have been swept under the rug for almost a hundred years, but today we expose them for what they are.

Join us in this episode to learn why BPA-free and phthalate-free "safe" alternative plastic products may pose a threat to your health, what the consequences of their use might be, and how you can protect yourself, and your family, from harm.

The symptoms of blood sugar imbalances are everyday occurrences for most people.

The signs of these blood sugar swings might include:

When these continue to go unchecked more severe dysfunctions can occur, including:

For some of us, difficulty maintaining stable blood sugar can be the result of a pre-existing condition, like PCOS or an autoimmune condition like Type I diabetes.

For others, unstable blood sugar is caused by a lifetime of dietary and wellness decisions that weren’t the best.

But for all of us, there are some simple hacks that can help you balance your blood sugar and improve health outcomes.

Join us in this episode of the Renegade Nutrition podcast as we discuss 5 Simple Hacks to Balance Your Blood Sugar, and learn how you can eat the foods you love without sending your blood sugar for a wild ride!

We all know that vegetables are good for us, and most of us know we ought to eat more of them than we do, but many of us struggle with finding ways to get enough in our diet each day.

Vegetables are fiber-rich, nutrient-dense foods filled with antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins.

They provide a myriad of health benefits like:

But even with all of these known health benefits, it can still be hard to eat enough vegetables to see the benefits of their nutrition. One of the biggest problems is that most people don’t think very creatively when we talk about eating more veggies, and what they hear is “eat more salad,” which is not what I mean!

So in this podcast, we will walk you through some of our favorite tips, tricks, and recipes to make eating your vegetables not only easier, but more delicious and enjoyable. If you follow these vegetable hacks, you'll soon find that it's simpler than ever to get enough veggies each day!

Many of us go to our doctor’s office once a year for our annual checkup. Often this visit includes getting some basic labs drawn and blood pressure taken.

As long as our labs all come back "normal," we go about our lives and don't think about our health again until the next year.

Yet many people who are told that everything is "normal" actually don't feel all that great.

More than 35% of Americans have pre-diabetes, 68% struggle with sleep, and 47 million of us have metabolic syndrome, a dangerous combination of high blood pressure, excess belly fat, impaired fasting glucose, imbalanced cholesterol ratios, and high triglycerides.

Yet even for these unhealthy individuals, their numbers can be “normal.” 

Earlier this year, health enthusiast Dhru Purohit wrote a comprehensive article explaining optimal reference ranges for various lab tests.

It was such a great resource that I wanted to share it with you in today’s podcast.

If you want to get the most out of your annual labs, learn how to interpret your numbers and find better health, this one is for you!

The holidays are always a good time to talk about making time for self-care and stress management. More heart attacks and strokes happen between Christmas and New Years than any other week of the year. 

A year ago, I was in the midst of a demanding and ungrateful work situation. After a lifetime of pushing myself too hard in order to appear and feel successful, I hit complete burnout, because I basically hadn’t made time for self-care in like, 32 years. And it really wasn’t pretty. It lead to challenging physical, emotional, and mental health issues. So I learned the hard way, you have to have to have to make time to rest.

No matter what diet you follow, how much you exercise and what supplements you take, if you’re not managing your stress you will still be at risk for chronic health conditions like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, hypothyroidism and autoimmunity. But as pervasive as stress is, many people don’t do anything to mitigate its harmful effects.

In this episode, we take a good look at what self-care is, why it’s so important, and how you can start incorporating self-care into your own life, today!

Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine are a complete medical system that has been around for thousands of years, and yet many people, particularly in the US, have never experienced the benefits of it. In fact, the majority of people know very little even about it! 

Acupuncture can bring relief for a myriad of health issues, including:

Join us in this episode with acupuncturist Alice Spitzner Claussen as we discuss how acupuncture works and what its benefits are, and find out if acupuncture might be an answer for you today!

Find out more about Alice on her website: http://www.twigandneedle.com/Home.html 

Today as we enter into the holiday season, where sugary treats abound, I want to talk to you about insulin resistance, and why everybody should be testing for it, whether you think you are at risk or not

Being overweight is no longer necessary for the development of Type II Diabetes - more and more we are finding it even in individuals who appear to be at a healthy weight.

Just because you are at a healthy weight does NOT mean your blood sugar is under control - issues can lurk below the surface for some time, wreaking havoc in the form of chronic inflammation and disrupted metabolic health, before more obvious signs arise. 

Learn in this episode how insulin resistance may be affecting your health in unseen ways, how to test for it, and what you can do about it!