Understanding The Importance Of Nutrition In The Management Of Chronic Inflammation With Special Guest Dr David Seaman

Welcome to the Back Pain Solutions Podcast – Understanding The Importance Of Nutrition In The Management Of Chronic Inflammation With Special Guest Dr David Seaman

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Episode Introduction

For most of us with an injury, unless we are a top athlete, the benefits of nutrition is not one of the first things popping up in our heads when thinking about strategies to overcome it. Nutritional advice is often looked at as dubious and judgemental or even cult-like when one follows a strict diet based on principles. Today we hope to clarify the consideration of how your nutritional strategy is essential to your healing process and ultimately your resilience to future chronic injury and pain.

Today we interviewed Dr David Seaman, who has gone a long way in finding out exactly how important it is to take care of the foundation of our healing capabilities in understanding the role of nutrition. On top of his Chiropractic degree he completed a masters in Nutrition and teaches nutrition at more than one chiropractic school, otherwise he attends conferences worldwide.

In this episode we discuss the typical nutritional faults we make and how we are quite often not aware that we are making them. We will talk about how you can make simple adjustments to your diet resulting in less pain and discomfort.

Some of the things you’ll discover…

Why some of us are having difficulty recovering from long term injury
How simple it is to change your diet
How only a few dietary adjustments will make a big difference
How your physiology reacts to injury based on the health of your cells
How passive treatment strategies often times does not offer a solution unless your diet is fixed
What can be seen as “basic supplement” necessary for optimal health

Episode Highlights

We have all heard, and to a certain extent know, that a good diet works wonders for our body’s and minds. The question then is what is an optimal diet and how do we know we are eating well? An optimal diet is a nutritional approach which ensures a nutrient dense formula of food which results in proper uptake and functioning of your body. Today we discuss who this works for and how it can be implemented.

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Episode Transcription

Intro 0:00 When we’re young, we move with freedom and confidence with a great resilience to injury. But somewhere along the line we develop poor habits and become more vulnerable to back pain. Back Pain solutions features evidence based and practical advice to help you take back control of your health and get back to the activities you love. This is your guide to better back health through movement. So join us as we demystify some of the commonly held beliefs about back pain and build your confidence to a stronger back the smartway Welcome to the back pain solutions podcast. It’s Jacob and today I’m interviewing a very favorite chiropractor of mine, Dr. David Seaman. He was the first person to author scientific paper that specifically hypothesized that diets can be pro inflammatory or anti inflammatory. He is a Doctor of Chiropractic. And he has a Master of Science in bio nutrition from the University of Bridgeport, which he finished in 1991. So while in clinical practice in the late 1980s, he became aware of the developing research that linked nutrition to the inflammatory process and noticed that appropriate dietary changes could significantly improve various musculoskeletal and visceral conditions. Welcome Dr. Simon to the show. I first heard of you when I was a chiropractic student myself back in 2007. And it was worth a chiropractic friend who was already a chiropractor who he was into your stuff then and he introduced you, to me, basically, I was already a big fan of good nutrition. And I knew the value of it. And I was, you know, even the other students at college used to think I was crazy because I organize these evenings with videos of you know, raw food as healing diabetes, and did all these sort of, you know, before I really knew anything, I was just I knew that there was something to this, it didn’t make any sense. Yeah, just to leave it out. And so I was I was always into it at night. And I had a lot of sources, but I could never really put my hands on it. And yeah, so I’ve been watching a lot of your YouTube explanation videos, and I, you know, I get a lot from it. It’s great. I can watch it all day. And I read your article about Corona. And that was that was very interesting about how you don’t have to be obese to have the physiology of someone who is obese. And, and and and then that can lead to a cytokine storm and how that can be a bad path for you if you’re not healthy. And yeah, so it’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome. Well, thanks for having me. Can you please tell me a little bit about yourself? What do you do at the moment? Do you do you treat the early do nutritional consultations? Dr David Seaman 2:44 Well, I used to travel to a lot of conventions and do post grad stuff and go to different chiropractic colleges in the States. And I was supposed to go to the the angle European school, I think, and 2020. And we tried again for 2021. But of course that guy cancer. And yeah, so I don’t travel really much in ways to travel like 30 to 40 weekends a year. And then past year 2020. And then this year, minimal traveling just because of the of the restrictions. So I do a lot of stuff online. I work for a reefer nutrition company where we used to do lectures for them and write for them and help design supplements. And then I do some online courses for Logan College of Chiropractic. Currently, I teach two of their online nutrition classes. I’m located in Florida, which is why I like we I guess you can see I’m tanned as I’m in Florida. Jacob Steyn 3:38 Yeah, see that? Yeah. Dr David Seaman 3:41 Yeah, it’s been nice here. Always nice here. So and then I do I teach to neuroscience courses for for Parker in Texas. Okay, and then I do and then I write books. And then I do those videos. So I stay pretty busy. Jacob Steyn 3:55 Sounds like so you’re quite busy in the educational aspect? Dr David Seaman 4:00 Yeah, education. Jacob Steyn 4:01 Do you do also see patients? Dr David Seaman 4:04 I don’t now, I do some some consultations, but no, not so much. I kind of saw the problem with like, seeing patients and trying to figure stuff out like, like, for me when I when I did that video on how how COVID can cause an osmia. You know, it took me a day to like, go through the literature. And it’s difficult to do if you’re practicing patients, there’s too many discoordinate, you’re distracted all over the place. You know, so so let’s say you’re practicing, you got to, and you have a couple of kids and you got a family to take care of. You got billing to deal with and all the other stuff running around an office who has time to sit down and read stuff. It’s very difficult. You have to be a special person to do both. And I’m not I can only do one. Jacob Steyn 4:50 Yeah I can understand that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, but I think that a lot of people are getting treated by you through others. Dr David Seaman 4:58 Yeah, exactly. Jacob Steyn 4:59 Yeah. So you go Look at it then. Oh, fantastic. So I think a big question for me is, how would you because I’m sure you have experience with this? How would you approach a patient who, who sitting in front of you and has chronic low back pain, and you want to try and get through to them that they, you know, we’re going to treat them manually, we may do some exercises, but there’s a lot of value to their possibility of getting better by looking at the diet. How do you approach that? Dr David Seaman 5:30 Well, it always depends upon the patient and their background and their interest, like so the whole evidence, what’s what’s what’s the right word? The it’s a, I guess they call it evidence based practice, I guess where you take the patient perspective or I forget this I get. Intro 5:45 The was that the the the social…. Dr David Seaman 5:49 The three circles? Yeah, it’s not it’s not the BIOS, it’s not bio psychosocial its the evidence based model, you got the research, experience, patient preference, right. So this is a patient preference thing, you have to figure out who the patient is sitting in front of you. So if you have a neuroscience in front of a neuroscientist in front of you, I would have a different conversation than if I had a plumber in front of me. So I would use different language depending upon it. But let’s just say you just have the average lay person. And and so the easiest way I think, is most people who have back pain, unless its really horrific. radicular pain, they’ll get some relief when they take anti inflammatory drugs to some degree, they may not get rid of it. But everybody, almost everybody will have tried NSAIDs right aspirin or NSIADs. And so the first question should be did did you get some relief? And in most cases, people will say yes, but the relief didn’t last. Right? And that’s a very common experience. And so would you would you agree, or they take Tylenol and they get some relief, but it doesn’t go away? So they wanted to come in to see the chiropractor? Would you agree that that’s pretty common? Jacob Steyn 6:49 Absolutely. Because most most of most of the time a GP probably prescribes as well. and er. Dr David Seaman 6:54 Right, exactly. So So the easiest way, I think the easiest doorway into getting some someone queued into thinking about their, about their health and their diet would be well, the anti inflammatory drugs, what they do is they block pathways that are produced, created by eating too many pro inflammatory calories. So if you eat inflammation, you have to take anti inflammatory drugs, when the drug wears off, the inflammation will be there because you keep eating, because the average American is different is, you know, the Europeans are getting fatter and sicker than they were years ago. Yeah. So certainly less like, for example, when I was looking at, at the death tolls for COVID, comparing the US to Sweden, because that was the most published could find Sweden, to Japan. So so the death rate in Japan from COVID. I mean, they’ve only had over the last year and a half, maybe 3000 deaths in total from COVID. 3000. It’s yours about that. So three times two in America, I think it’s 300,000. Yeah, so what’s the difference? Well, the Japanese population only 1.6% is obese. The American population 42% are obese. The Swedish population 20% are obese. So if you look at obesity, you look at death per capita, then you’ll see that the fatter you are, the more problematic it is. So. So that’s another way way to to look at it. So the obesity issue drives inflammation. And most people who now of course, you could be a normal weight. metabolically obese person, which would be someone who doesn’t exercise and is skinny fat as the way we used to talk about it. When, right. I remember years ago, I saw the I saw this MRI, where is it easy to get or a CT of the thighs of people who weighed the same and one guy was shredded, and packed all this muscle and the other person was was kind of skinny fat, or almost fat, fat, and there’s just all this adipose tissue. So people don’t really realize this whole thing now, particularly in America, I don’t know this this in Europe, where they is called the fat acceptance movement. Intro 9:08 So I’ve seen it in America. I’ve seen some interesting. Yeah, interesting stuff. Dr David Seaman 9:12 I think I think I think Europeans have a little bit more physical health, self respect than Americans do. Americans just can’t stop eating. And they think it’s like a great party. So Jacob Steyn 9:21 I want to justify it. Dr David Seaman 9:23 Yeah, yeah. So so so in Europe, it’ll probably be easier than in America because because I did a lot of videos on obesity and other other stuff and people say oh, be careful, don’t fat shaming and I’m like what are you talking about this is a health issue. So so we eat the calories that then create the inflammation. So then the drugs are going to inhibit that short term and get some relief. And so the idea is to tell a patient. Well, the idea is to change your body chemistry by changing the foods that you eat, so you don’t need medication, and that you will heal and that my manual care will be much more effective for you. And I wouldn’t bring this up I wouldn’t bring this up in the first few, few treatments, because because when people come to see a chiropractor, they expect back cracking and muscle work bending, twisting and exercise. They don’t say, Hey, hi. No more french fries. Yeah, that is a discordant kind of state for the patient to deal with. Yeah. So you have to kind of drop the bomb on them if they don’t respond. Yeah. And what I would do and what I would do to just just replay as part of the initial examination, is you want to always do waist hip ratio, and body mass index, okay? Because and then that will say, Well, what do you measure my waist for? Well, it’s because important too, because waist hip ratio correlates perfectly with ones inflammatory well not perfectly, but very robust. correlates with the patient’s inflammatory state. Jacob Steyn 10:48 That’s a great insight. Yeah. Dr David Seaman 10:51 So as part of the physical exam, blood pressure, weight, body mass index, waist hip ratio, and get those initially, and they should be if they’re elevated, to patients who want to try to lose weight, will, you know, will this impact my, you know, my response? The patient may ask you? And they say, Well, I don’t know. Let’s see how it goes. So it’s not stressful, okay? Because, again, they’re expecting you to crack their back and cure them. They’re not expected for you to crack their back it not work and then say, okay, no more french fries. Right. So you got to ease into it. Jacob Steyn 11:25 Yeah.I learned that the hard way with some of my patients. Yeah. Yeah, Dr David Seaman 11:30 Yeah. Oh, yeah. I did, too. And then that was before I realized that there were objective markers that I could use. Yes. And, and then now that I know that we’ve known for a while now I’ve used it in the schools that I’ve taught at the Postgres stuff is much easier. And it’s really like, not complicated, you don’t need to be, you know, you don’t need to know what a cytokine storm is, and be able to name cytokines to basically, to be able to do a waist hip ratio on somebody. And everybody knows, if you want to be healthy, eat less crap, it’s not that complicated right? Jacob Steyn 12:01 And it’s like you say, you want to try and bring the message across without making it stressful, because a lot of people who are trying to lose weight have been busy with it, you know, and they may have failed and, and they’ve just come to you to relieve that specific pain. And, and then you have to be very delicate in the way you bring it over. But I am, yeah, I’ve stepped into that trap a few times. And I’ve been, you know, too much to the point because what I see sometimes I see the, the limited potential to heal because somebody is chronically fatigued, or, you know, something. Dr David Seaman 12:37 And chronically fatigued means chronically inflamed. And so that’s the problem. And so the first objection that I was presented with years ago with this whole thing was talking about the whole inflammation thing, I always get the question, well, isn’t inflammation, the healing process? Well, yeah, as long as it resolves. If the inflammation doesn’t resolve, now you have chronic disease manifesting. And so of course, after an injury, you’re going to be flamed up, but but your body should have the wherewithal to turn off the flame and heal the tissues. Now, the problem is that whenever people when people become obese and hyperglycaemic, or or not obese, but not but not physically active, and living on too many refined food calories, they become chronically inflamed. And so they’re the ones that need to make to make the shift. And it takes place over time, for example, and that’s actually interesting as we age, disc pathobiology tendon pathology and joint pathology correlates to cardiovascular pathology. Very interesting. Yeah, so basically, tendinopathy, osteoarthritis disc herniation are essentially manifestations of heart disease in musculoskeletal tissues. And so if one can conceptualize that as the as the chiropractor, then then it becomes a different way of looking at it, because because we were all taught and physical therapists have all been taught that these musculoskeletal tissues, you know, they’re their mechanical tissues. But that doesn’t make any sense because our, our mechanical tissues are made of body chemistry. So you can’t separate mechanics from chemistry, and that is the failing in my experience of all chiropractic colleges currently. I mean, they may talk about it, but it’s not like in their head. It’s not in the DCS head or the PTS head. So I’ve talked a lot of pts to her like, I never really thought of it like that. It’s really simple. I mean, you just look at type two diabetic patients compared to normal age, age and weight and match controls. The diaper no sorry, not not weight, but just compared to the normal aged people of the same age but does not diabetic diabetics will have reduced motion across all joints tested compared to normal. Okay, the diabetics are far more likely to have osteoarthritis tendinopathy and disc degeneration and disc herniation. So it correlates hyperglycemia atherosclerosis, heart disease, Use correlates with progressive joint muscle, bone tendon, disc dysfunction. Jacob Steyn 15:06 That’s interesting. And with like diabetes, I think, if I put it if I tried to put in the right way, you have actually got an inflamed cell. And that’s going to be for the whole body. Yes, if you bring the inflammation down of that on cellular level, you’re going to influence not only the the organs and the cardiovascular system, but also the joints and the soft tissues and…… Dr David Seaman 15:30 Everything. Yeah, yeah. Because Because when you look at say, they’re there, even some, some some papers, they’re very interesting. They say, basically, if you have type two diabetes, you’re going to have tendinopathy, somewhere, it just may not be symptomatic. So here’s another here’s another way way to look at it. So you have and you know, someone who’s and people are many people are obese or even know that they’re obese. That’s the thing because they think well obese is when you like, are so massive, you can’t move but that’s not the case, you’re talking specifically about pre diabetic as well or already what most people most people who are obese are up close to pre diabetic, unless they’ve got really good genes because some people can handle the the body fat accumulation and not go pro inflammatory for a much longer period of time. So you can be you can have two obese people same age, one can be hyperglycaemic, hypertens diabetic, and the other person has none of these no problems at all. So they’re like metabolically fit but obese. Interesting. So it’s not just big and fat, you’re sick. So those would be the obese patients, the overweight patients who respond to your care, yeah. Because they’re not inflamed. So they’re so their inflammation, envelope of tolerance has not been breached. You do your manual care, and they feel that amazed me when I was in chiropractic college used to shadow a DC in practice, who I’m still friends with for over 30 years now. And I was amazed. So he had this obese woman come in, I mean, this is a big woman, and she laid facedown on the activator table. And, and, and she and she was just filled the whole table wide. Okay, and so when he did the gun to click, click, click, you know, he’s clicking through three or four inches of fat. And I’m like, there’s no way that in my mind, like, there’s no way this is going to help you. So she gets up, she just got no more pain. This is I love coming to you. Amazing. I was only like 25, then I guess. And I saw them like, Huh. So some big fat people respond great. Some don’t. Most leaner, healthy people, they tend to respond great. Some don’t you know, what is what’s the what is the unifying factor among the non responders. And that was the something that jumped into my head. I was 25 years old in chiropractic college now 35 years later. So yeah, so that’s really interesting how that works. So the obesity issue does not mean you’ll have a non responder, it means that you might. Intro 17:47 Okay. Very interesting, because I thought they go up together, you know, and the more overweight you are, the more inflamed you’ll be. But not.. Dr David Seaman 17:55 Oh absolutely. Generally, that is very true. But but there are the outliers who can be physically you know, obese in terms of measurements, but but but biochemically fit. Well, but but they’re going to fall apart sooner or later, it’s just that it’ll take it’s taking a little bit longer compared to younger people compared to other people the same age or younger or older, who had been flamed up for a long time. Intro 18:19 What if I may ask, what would be your way to go in advice? For somebody who has not, or at least have a chronic low back issue? And metabolically you know, that they’re not doing very well? Where would you where would you go first? Dr David Seaman 18:35 Well, you have to get measurements, right? And so so. So as you know, the human mind is very much functions very well, if if if, if your frontal lobe forces, the rest of your body, you’ll have this talk with yourself. Okay, so I did my waist hip ratio. I am 1.2. And I should be below point nine, five for a guy. Okay. So my goal is to get to be below point nine, five. So you make the numbers the goal, and that way, it’s a game for the brain. It’s also a game for the game for the limbic system. So you have this goal. So you first have to have a goal without a goal. There’s no hope. So you have to have a goal Jacob Steyn 19:21 Direction. Dr David Seaman 19:21 So So the goal. Yeah, absolutely. So So human mind loves goals. So as long as they’re attainable, and and understood, and you’re committed to it, which is very simple. You can do waist hip ratio, BMI and you got to get normal. So you say, Okay, well, how do I do this? Well, the main thing actually, do you follow a golf at all? Intro 19:40 No, I played a little bit in the past. No other sport. Dr David Seaman 19:44 So in America, we just had the PGA Championship, and Phil Mickelson won it so any of your golfing listeners will know who Phil Mickelson deal with Phil Mickelson is name Yes. Okay. Okay. All right. So So Phil Mickelson became obese, famous, great player one many, many, many, many famous tournaments. He became obese. He developed psoriatic arthritis. He was actually doing n brille commercials, you know, for which is the the TNF receptor antagonist, which is commonly used for autoimmune disease. And so the guy was enormous. He was this lean model looking guy when he was in college and first in the pros, and again, like 5060 pounds of fat. So someone got to him. I don’t know who it is, but someone got him. I said, Listen, dude, you know, you got to get rid of that body fat. So he does it. He and as a 51 year old, almost he’s almost 51 he won the PGA Championship playing as 25 year olds. So in the interview, they talked about like the sacrifice everyone the sacrifice it takes to become, you know, to achieve a goal like this. And he, so they asked him like, so Phil, what do you have to give up? What you do? He goes, Well, I had to give up food. Yeah, so what was he eating? He wasn’t eating a lot of vegetables and fish, right. And healthy. Meat fish, chicken, right? He was he was eating all kinds of crap. So you had to give that up? Yeah. So he had a goal to get rid of his psoriatic arthritis to become fit and lean and strong hit the ball as far as 25 year old, so we had a goal. So you have to take not only the waist measurement goals, you have to take the life goals. And then the next thing is, what is the patient’s preference? Do they want to be a vegan? Do they want to be an omnivore? Or this new thing? The carnivore diet? Most people are omnivores. So this means that they’ve got it no matter which one you choose, you want to get rid of refined sugar, flour and oils, and is best to make it a goal to be completely free of those calories for a month. And then rip and replace those calories with with vegetation in most cases, okay. And that is very easy for people to do, because everybody already knows I should be eating more like vegetables typically. Or you know, or eating all year round. But in the summer fruits kind of become more popular because like, Oh, can I have fruit because I’ve got blood sugar problems? Well, you need to then measure your blood sugar. If you have a diabetic problem, maybe some fruits should be not consumed. But most people can consume fruit as long as they reduce their calories. So they start to burn off the excess body fat. And when you’re in that reduced calorie state, you’re also creating an environment where mitochondria and skeletal muscle can go through their biogenesis process. And then because what happens when you go become diabetic is that muscle cells lose their density of mitochondria, you can see electron micrographs I did a couple of those videos. Yeah, where you literally see this abundance of mitochondria in a lean, healthy person. And literally like no mitochondria in the type of diabetic person, which can be reversed. As long as you reverse the dietary pathology Intro 22:47 May I ask why one month of removing the refined sugars, flour and oil? Dr David Seaman 22:53 Well, you can’t say forever, that freaks out the, the, that freaks out the the the food possessed mind, right. So you have to, you have to chunk it for for most people. And then what you do is Okay, so once you get all your markers normal, and you are now a normal physiologic person, you can eat those foods again, if you choose to, you know, they don’t help you. But if you want to get a taste once in a while, you just got to make sure that your waist ratio and BMI stays normal. Intro 23:21 Right. And then you also hope that once somebody has felt what it feels like, being healthy again, that that would be acting as a motivation to stay that way. Dr David Seaman 23:32 Yeah. And one of the things that I’ve experienced with with with with with, I don’t, I guess, certain chiropractors who are sort of possessed by you know, if you don’t do adjustments all the time, then you’re not really a chiropractor. They think that what I’m saying is, I’m actually people say this. So what you’re saying is, people don’t have to come to me anymore, all they got to do is eat salad, like no, I didn’t say that. What I said was you’ve got a non responder in front of you, or a potential non responder in front of you. And if you want to be a responder to manual care, you have to get the by the biochemistry into a inflammatory state that is not pro inflammatory. And so so so so that I think is a good mindset for DCs to think about. And in most cases, what you’ll now have, you’ll have patients who respond. So it’d be like responding party in your office and all these people who are physically active or sitting down when they’re working and they fill up aches and pains here and they want to go do some athletic whatever you guys are doing during your seasonal years. And their aches and pains. They come in and they leave without pain. Yeah, that’s much more fun than dealing with these. These obese smoking people who are blaming everybody they’re depressed. Oh, by the way, as one’s body mass index and hyperglycemia and inflammation status goes up. So does depression. Okay. Intro 24:49 Yeah. So yeah, so they all there’s a lot of links between a lot of these things. And Dr David Seaman 24:53 Yeah, absolutely. The unifying thing is is pro inflammatory state which is not complicated to deal with it. If you don’t want to learn any biochemistry at all just get make sure people’s waisted ratios are proper. So if one’s waist hip ratio is proper, their BMI is proper Carly’s with the waist hip ratio, and their blood pressure is normal, the chance of them being inflamed is pretty minimal. Unless they’re not sleeping because Sleep, sleep deprivation, chronic stress can all create the flame that will create a non responder also. Yeah, yeah, it’s really interesting because they that was done a few years back maybe 1015 years ago, we looked at C reactive protein, which is a great, great inflammatory protein measurement. And they found that when people were deprived of sleep down to like four hours a night within 1015 days, they had CRP levels that were similar to people who have cardiovascular disease. Whoa, okay, just by reducing sleep for 10 days. So think about this when you were in chiropractic college when I was an undergrad, the end of the final exam week, you felt horrible, usually? up late, right? Not moving Jacob Steyn 26:02 Aches and pains everywhere! Dr David Seaman 26:03 Right? Yeah. So right there that shows you these healthy, robust people can feel like old sick people in one week of during final exams. You can even be eating well, just not sleeping and stressing and not exercising for a week and make you feel sick. Intro 26:19 You know, I have a little one now. So I know what that feels like. And we’re quite myself, my wife, we’re quite we make a real point of being a bed at 10. You know? Dr David Seaman 26:28 Yeah. Jacob Steyn 26:29 We have a routine. And if we have a night of not good sleep, then your one night is good. As long as the next night. We get it? Nothing really. We don’t really feel that. But I had a week ago, I had like four nights. I think I didn’t sleep well. Because I actually sleep with my little one on the same bed. My wife sleeps in a different room. And this way, we all get really good sleep. Right? Smart? Yeah. And, but he was waking me up a couple of times in the night, a few nights in a row. And I just started feeling exhausted. And I don’t I never feel like that. Dr David Seaman 27:03 There you go. Jacob Steyn 27:04 Demotivated. Dr David Seaman 27:06 That was that was the inflammatory state that was created by sleep deprivation. Right? It is actually, you’ll actually feel far worse. Like, if you ate french fries at every meal for a week. You wouldn’t feel like that. But you get four hours a night sleep for a week. You feel like you’re gonna die. It’s unbelievable. Yeah. Jacob Steyn 27:27 Interesting. Yeah, I with my patients, I do nutritional consultations. And I really just keep it to a basic, where I removed flour, sugar, and tried to get people to eat less bread, pasta, rice, pasta, rice. And then I go for twice a day vegetables. You know, I’m myself, I’m an omnivore. So I try to encourage people, especially when we think of nutrient intake to also eat meat, especially if there’s some chronic fatigue situation going on. And, and the responses I see are just, it just keeps amazingly. It’s done. It really is. And I’m not doing any anything specific. Besides, I work with a little bit of omega threes. But that that’s that has a long term effect. So not so immediate with most people. But vitamin D I, I deal with a lot of patients, I get them to measure vitamin D. And then we we for a month, we do high doses every day. And then we measure off the five, six weeks again. And I had a patient of about 30 years of age who the other day told me, she said she came in and she sat down and she said I just want to show you something and she got a phone out. And she showed me a little video clip. And it was while she was pregnant. And I saw congratulations. And she’s like, yeah, you know, we’ve been trying for a very long time, but I think because of your help, I’m pregnant, and I was like, I can’t be the adjustments. Right, and it was the vitamin D most likely, you know, because she was very fatigued and vitamin D was very low and we worked a few months to get it up there and and then she became pregnant. Dr David Seaman 29:10 I will say that if there’s one nutrient that would have that kind of really impressive outcome it is vitamin D, which is probably the the global deficiency issue, although iron deficiency anemia, if you started to think about third world is a big deal there and other places but just globally. Vitamin D deficiency is enormous, huge, huge issues. Jacob Steyn 29:32 I can’t exactly remember the numbers but there are 1000s of cell receptors on the ovaries for vitamin D. It’s the eyes and the ovaries if I remember correctly, and so if you’re really low, then that might be a problem. Dr David Seaman 29:49 Well, actually the the vitamin D so so so you get sunshine or you taken the the cold calciferol. it goes. You get a pass through the liver and you get your 25 Oh HD and 25 Oh h d3 is what’s measured as you know, in the blood test. So 25 when I went through school because I graduated chiropractic college in 86. And so when I learned vitamin D and undergrad and in chiropractic college it was it was all about the the vitamin D that teach the cold calciferol goes to liver 25 Oh HD and then that goes to the kidney, you get 125 dihydroxy. And, and that influences intestinal absorption and bone health. And that’s all we learned. So then, don’t forget, it was in probably in the 90s. And they they start to identify that you have that almost every cell key cell in the body is able to produce 125 D in the cell itself. And that includes Yeah, eyes, ovaries, testicles, I mean, just wherever you go, the reproductive organs, pancreas makes no difference where you go immune cells, they all have the ability to produce the the 125 dihydroxy. What that does inside the cell is involved with like one or 2000 different gene regulation patterns is absolutely stunning. And so you think about the COVID issue, right? They scare the crap out of people. What they should have said to people is we’ve known because people haven’t we’ve known we’ve dealt in terms of literature. Since night, since the Spanish Flu of 1918 obese people were more likely to die. So they’ve known that for over 100 years. So when you hear that argument about, well, we weren’t prepared for this pandemic. Well, the Japanese population was because they’re thin. Yeah, not just because they wear masks. They’re thin, and they’re healthy. And so they have been prepared. The Swedes and all the Scandinavian countries, we got about 20% obesity, 80% of your population was prepared in America, our population is perfect for horrific outcomes. So the obesity thing has been known for a very, very, very long time. So they should have been told lose weight, eat vegetables, take vitamin D, take fish oil. That’s what that’s what we should have been told back, you know, in January of 2020. But Alaska has not taken place. Exactly, Intro 32:08 Exactly. And I remember in the beginning, when people were actually told to stay inside. So in some countries in the summer, last year, they were told to stay inside. So a family of ours they are, well, Mom and Dad and three little ones, and they have a small apartment, and they had to stay inside. And that was where they are 30 30 plus degrees Celsius. So and then you just think, okay, yeah, what a perfect recipe for someone of age, not to get some to be inside to be lonely to be depressed, you know, and if they get infected. So, yeah, and I actually had a patient who works for a government institution here in the Netherlands, the government institution that that regulates and controls and advisors with the pandemic. And I asked him, What, what about vitamin D? Why did the government not advise people to, you know, have have their vitamin D checked at the GP and then accordingly, advised to take it? And he simply told me that he was he wasn’t very happy with the question. And he just told me that no, vitamin D is a it’s a fat soluble vitamin that builds up in your body and people can overdose with it. And you know, that that’s where we lost. That’s where I kind of ended the conversation because we at the same time, the government here says that 60% of the people are deficient, and that’s with the 50 millimoles per liter, lower level, brain. So if we would really test on say, 125 or 150, upper level, I don’t know how many percent, far more would be deficient. Yeah, so I just, you know, I just thought okay, right. That’s the way that is being looked at I guess. Dr David Seaman 34:04 It’s terrible. The people in charge Should I mean, that I’ve heard the term and I like it, you know, the powers that shouldn’t be the powers that be the powers that shouldn’t be because look what they’ve done. Stay indoors, no vitamin D. And of course when you’re indoors and stir crazy. What are you gonna do? You’re gonna overeat so the obesity problem in America and elsewhere has has increased. So we’ve actually created a greater population of sick people with this whole lockdown thing. It’s horrible. Intro 34:32 Yes. I I wish we had more time to speak about this because I have so many cannot have time if you want. Alright, great. I am. Yeah, we spoke a little bit about vitamin D i, especially when it comes to general health. Do you know more about research on vitamin D and musculoskeletal health? I know I saw a paper where they they were doing like looking at rats, I’m sure with rats and mice, and they saw that there was less or slower degeneration of the, of the disks with rats, where they were sufficient in vitamin D. Do you know, but I didn’t see that. I did not read that. But I wouldn’t be surprised. Yeah, it was a really good paper. You know, they they described all the pathways and interesting. Dr David Seaman 35:23 Yeah, well, I would say this in terms of supplements, you know, if you want to stay really, really simple, and because most chiropractors they just don’t think chemically, but we think we eat though, so the easiest way to do it would be what do you what do you recommend avoid sugar, flour, refined oils, which is just the basic thing. And then and then you said omega three is vitamin D. And I would throw one more in there that’s very inexpensive and that’s magnesium. Those three those three nutrients have a such a broad impact on physiology. It’s stunning, actually. And adequate day three and Wesley if you become deficient in magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin D, and omega threes, that trifecta will flame you up and just compound the flame created by obesity and sedentary living and lack of sleep. Okay, so if you can get a handle on those and take the magnesium, the D and the three, you’re in great shape. Intro 36:14 Mostly, that was actually a question I had for you. What would your suggestion be in terms of basic supplementation? Dr David Seaman 36:20 Yeah, those three and that’s a multi in there if you want, but, but the multis are like the average person, they’re not struggling because they don’t have enough B one. The problem is lack of because stress depletes magnesium, okay. And stress also depletes vitamin C and vitamin C actually has an has an anti cortisol effect. It’s really interesting. I didn’t know this until this whole, this whole COVID thing started when they looked at animals that produce vitamin C, and their basil, the resting cortisol levels when you stress them out, if they produce vitamin C, their cortisol goes up very, very mildly. Okay, so they did this with a sturgeon, which is a vitamin C producer, and I think a trout that’s not a vitamin C producer. And this and the trap was had far more stress compared to the vitamin C producers. So I amended Yes, I’m, this is so simple vitamin C, but 3000 milligrams per day, it appears magnesium 400 to 1000 milligrams of magnesium, vitamin D, depending upon where the deficiency is about 5000 I use is pretty good number for average. And omega three is three, omega three is a couple of grams per day. You don’t need to have a degree in biochemistry and nutrition to be comfortable with those four things as well as stop over eating and move. Jacob Steyn 37:37 Right? Yeah, absolutely. Dr David Seaman 37:38 They’ll have a patient, you’ll have a population of patients who will just feel great, and they’ll never go away, you’ll have helped them and they’ll come back when they have aches and pains you got this great practice and as opposed to these walking wounded, depressed, obese miserable people who are just lost. Well, well said it Bluetooth ion Do you do sometimes use a precursor of a supplement for that with certain patients or? Well, interestingly, glutathione, the the the nerf to enzyme, the system that creates glutathione is stimulated by by anti inflammatory botanicals, for example, is activated by lipoic acid. So so for me if I was going to take a substance to to improve glutathione would probably be lipoic acid is cheap. Yeah. And it has diverse effects. It drives ATP synthesis as well. I’d also be a co q 10 guy, because as we age, our co q 10 production kind of drops off. But you know that now we’re adding on there so we can I mean, I would I would add either co q 10 or lipoic acid and then as long as you’re spicing with your meals, you’ll you’ll have enough drive to get good if I own but if you take beautify on him, orally, it gets broken down. It may not be read, rebuilt and lysine or l glutamine. Yeah, glutamine. Oh, yeah. Those are all fine. Sure. Yeah. The precursor for glutathione is its cysteine glycine and glutamic acid and most people get enough of that in their diet if they’re if if the reading you know, animal proteins, fish, chicken eggs, etc. So to me that really isn’t isn’t the issue of the glutothione and glutothione gets recycled also. And it gets recycled by but it’s it’s recycling from the oxidized to the reduced date is supported by and driven by lipoic acid and cokie 10. Okay, so I like I like big global supportive solvents that have multiple effects. So co q 10. You can either do cokie 10 or lipoic acid as far as I can tell, okay, Intro 39:46 Great. That’s that’s a very good insight. Yeah, sometimes I will just listening to you know, I just feel like the message is so simple. It’s so Step one, you got to of course, as a clinician, a chiropractor, or somebody who works with patients, you got to be able to bring that across. So people get the message and, you know, doesn’t really help if I know how important it is the people you work with, need to understand and need to know. And, of course, then they can make an informed choice. But I feel like sometimes I you know, I’ve had I’ve had once I had a guy coming in, and his wife was sitting next to him and I edit the report of findings and I was telling him in a way because I knew he was from his his his history he was he was really eating terrible he was always on the road and then stopping and eating snack bars and Netherlands that’s just awful. And said, Look, you’re not gonna get better if we don’t change your diet. And his wife was getting so upset with me. Gave me a when he came here to see you for his back and, and why do you Why does he have to be different than I think maybe she thought I was attacking her. The food that? Yeah, Dr David Seaman 41:05 The problem is, is that since food, so if you think about your, whatever food it is, like if I think about a food that I really like a lot like Pfizer, if I could just go to a pizza, or whoppers from Burger King, I still like those things. I don’t eat very much. And I eat pizza once in a while. But, um, but but that’s what I would like. So why? because it tastes good, right? So that tastes good. It becomes a limbic system event, it becomes emotional, right? becomes emotional. So if we were if we were hunkered down in a military situation, somewhere we’d be dodging bullets. We wouldn’t care what we were eating. Right? So if you’re dodging bullets, and all you had was was was fantastic fish and vegetables, it would be like, amazing, right? You wouldn’t care. Because you had other concerns. Yeah. Not getting killed. The average person living in the modern day, they care about endlessly satisfying their palate, because their lives, in many ways are just stressed out so much. They just get the enjoyment of this pleasure food. And so it really becomes an issue of like, how you how you broach the topic with with with people, I think the best way is again, to just talk about, you know, obesity, overweight, equals heart disease and heart disease. I mean, there are papers that actually say is atherosclerosis is osteoarthritis, heart disease of the joints. I’m paraphrasing, but there are papers out there like that. Diabetes… tendinopathy is diabetes of tendons. ation is far more common in hyperglycaemic people than a normal glycaemic people and she got the bad genes for it, which is, which is, which is really a lot of people don’t don’t realize that, you know, when anyone comes in and a guy radiating pain, and they’re young, you should automatically ask about family history very carefully, because you’ll typically find relatives, either mother or father, or uncles and aunts or grandparents that have disc herniation. Also, which means that their genetic disc herniator that’s been studied years ago, there’s a bunch of different genes, tryptophane genes. Well, the other genes that are collagen genes, couple other genes. Jacob Steyn 43:11 Often they’ll just tell you. Dr David Seaman 43:13 Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Some don’t ask, though, but that’s different. So if that you find that now you got someone who is disposed to it, which means you have to change that patient’s loading style. So if they’re, if they work in a shipping place with a lug and load around, they got to change the job, because because they are just genetically disposed to herniate. But the average person is not. And it’s the lifestyle that induces the herniation. Intro 43:41 Well, that’s, that’s good to know. Great. Yeah, no, awesome. But yeah, I’m trying to think of something broader than than the basic. Dr David Seaman 43:56 Oh, just just, just real quick, one of the things that you said before is, is like what I what I described, and what you do is just so simple, it’s not complicated. Now, this is one of the biggest push backs I get, people will say, It can’t be that simple. I’m like, What are you talking about? Of course, it’s that simple. You kidding me? Like, like, how do I get my bicep stronger? When you take a weight and you do curls? It can’t be that simple. It is that simple. Yeah. Do a lot of curls. your bicep will get bigger, its not that complicated. So I think the reason why a lot of DCs and pts resist this is because it’s so simple. It’s almost like, well, it can’t be that. I mean, I don’t want to do this thing. So therefore, I’m going to reject the fact that it’s simple and make it more complicated in my own mind, say, Well, I don’t, I’m a structural person. I’m a mechanical person, you know, so So, you know, Mackenzie Mackenzie is a pretty popular that to me, I’ve went through I went through parts A, B, C, and D. And so people would kind of because I know that I’m a nutrition guy, they would say, Well, you know, what do you think they might say? Well, just when you bend backwards, just think about broccoli. Think backwards, you know, whatever, whatever your directional preferences, which is mostly extension, right? Think broccoli, think fish while you’re doing it don’t think french fries. Make it easy. Don’t make it complicated. Jacob Steyn 45:15 No, actually, what you’re saying is a lot of people should consider just implementing it in their approach with patients. Dr David Seaman 45:21 I got a great story for you do you wanta hear this. Jacob Steyn 45:24 Please go for it. Dr David Seaman 45:24 Okay, so so when I was teaching at at Palmer, Florida a decade or so ago, I taught a, a graston elective and I did other soft tissue stuff and show them in range loading. And this one, one, he was a American, but I think pure Scott, just big strong guy like the Highlander games kind of guy. me this guy was just just big. And so he’s he’s had thoracolumbar junction pain since he was like 15 or 25. Now, I guess that’s your 15. And he’s been in Chiro school at that point for like two and a half years, anything else? He does, nothing has helped. And so I asked him like, Well, you know, he says, I tried some ginger and turmeric and on and on, that didn’t do anything. So So getting back to what we first started, I said, Well, do you ever take you know, anti inflammatory drugs, Advil, ibuprofen, whatever? He goes, No, not very often I go, have you ever taken it for your pain? He goes, Yeah, I go, Well, what happens? He goes, the pain goes away for three days completely. When I take Advil three days, so everyone listen to this. I think 25 in the class, three, totally pain free and he has the pain since he’s fifth for the last 10 years. So my next question was, was last time he ate a vegetable? not complicated question. And he goes, this is the answer. He goes, I don’t remember. I said, Well, I was asked him you had fruit? I don’t remember. Like, okay, what do you eat? He goes, Well, he. So he’s like a typical, like, Guys, why eat? I eat the rice, and chicken, or rice and tuna, maybe eggs, and rice, some like so. So here’s what you got to do. The additional vegetable calories will be meaningless. But assuming that you’re eating a lot of rice, change, get rid of like 80% of the rice and do sweet potatoes and vegetables and have fruits for snack. So this was on on Tuesday of week one. It was it was Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, week one. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday week two, we start on sweet. We find this out Tuesday night. So he starts it and we didn’t talk about it the next class and the next day and the next week. So the week later I said so. Any difference? He goes a 50% better? Like, that’s pretty good. He goes, it could be placebo. Like, it certainly could. It certainly could. So like I said, Well, are you gonna keep? Are you gonna keep doing this? And he goes, absolutely. So I didn’t see him. He was in the clinic I’d seen for like three months. So that’s like, Hey, how’s it back pain goes, Doc, it was gone. Like, like three or four days after the last, the last elective been gone ever since. So here’s a student in chiropractic college, who is almost done with school. Right now we should be happy for nutrition. Maybe it wasn’t I forget how to, if I had him that that point was so long ago. But it just wasn’t in the head. Because there’s this disconnect. But it was that simple. And here’s a guy who was like, 25 Yeah, gonna be a chiropractor in chronic pain. Every treatment that he was given did nothing for him. Nothing. Now, that’s an outlier example. But I’ve seen many of those people, young people who weren’t physically fit and strong and athletic, and live in chronic pain. And in two weeks, he was pain free. Jacob Steyn 48:48 Yep. Wow, great story. Yeah, that’s a good one. For me. For me. I, at least what I see with a lot of my colleagues over here is, you know, I tell them about my nutritional consultation. And they kind of look at me a little bit strange, like, Okay, tell me more about that, you know, how, what, what do you do? I’m like, Yeah, I have a little form, they fill in, you know, getting an idea of what their their diet looks like. And I have a couple of questions about what they feel like, and when they wake up early, and fatigue and so on. And like, Okay, and so what do you tell them to eat? And I’m like, Yeah, I just move them off the refined stuff. And I get them onto a lot more at my at least twice a day vegetables, especially if I think that there’s a good reason for that. And I want to make sure they don’t eat processed meat and good meat. And if there’s any problems with especially wheat and dairy, then we’ll look at that. But I keep it very basic and very simple. And they I can see they’re kind of thinking well, now I can’t do that. And I think for a lot of them. It is because they don’t necessarily Feel that they eat well enough themselves? Yeah, because they know me, at least a lot of my chiro friends and people that I know, they know that I’m, I eat very, very strict, but I’ve been busy with it for more than 10 years. And, and I think that’s where it comes in people just, they I think a lot of chiros don’t necessarily believe it themselves. And so I think that’s why they don’t really want to bring the message across. Dr David Seaman 50:29 Yeah, I’d say that, that that is the failing of chiropractic colleges. Think about your first year of chiropractic college was all basic sciences, right? All basic sciences. And those basic sciences, you want a lot of pathways to learn about, you’ll learn glycolysis and Krebs cycle, electron transport, you’ll learn some inflammation stuff. And that’s all discussed, like in a in a vacuum, as opposed to in, for example. So for you, you’ve been eating well, for 10 years, you recommend to your to your patients, and then in four days, you feel like you’re a single man, because you didn’t sleep well. Yeah, yeah, that shows you the power of not sleeping, despite the fact that you already do eat healthy. So so it’s a great failing in our, in our in our healthcare education, where they don’t talk about how lack of sleep, lack of exercise chronic stress, we should avoid, like, we can’t have like, you can’t avoid all the stressors, right? You can’t. But you should be able to not choose stressors, that was your choice. Like the whole, the whole COVID thing was not our choice, right. But I could have bought six more cars. And during COVID just because I want cars and now I’m in debt. Now I get that stressor. So that will be a stressor that I take on because I because that would be an idiot to do that. Right? So we should live within our means because that’s where most stress comes from financial stuff, choose relationships properly, get adequate sleep, if you have a kid like yours, when this goes like that, well then maybe switch out with your wife and she can say with a little one, you can get a good night’s sleep and it just so you work it out and take naps, you can work it out. So the fact that people find that to be difficult, is again, it’s a failing of the first one year of Chiro school, med school PT school, because they because they learn basic sciences and what they learn is they learn to disliked the basic sciences because they are annoying. And they’re typically not discussed in a clinical context. So you have this rejection of basic science and the brown finally frickin be a clinician. Now, why should it You better remember those courses that you were taught poorly and you didn’t like you hate them and you have an aversion to them now, that’s why so you get this recoil like you said, you know, look, there’s Bigfoot. No, go eat some vegetables. It’s not that complicated. Jacob Steyn 52:39 Great, I think I think we’ll end there. Yeah, I’d love to speak to you again. Maybe about Corona. Dr David Seaman 52:46 Yeah, sure. Jacob Steyn 52:46 If that’s okay. Dr David Seaman 52:47 Yeah, absolutely. Whatever you want. Jacob Steyn 52:49 Great. We’ll, we’ll we’ll make an appointment for that. I appreciate it Dr. seamon. It’s a it’s been absolutely great. And, yeah, I wish you all the best. And hopefully you can travel again. And do you think like before after this Corona madness. Dr David Seaman 53:06 Yeah. I appreciate you having me on Dr. Steyn. Appreciate it. Jacob Steyn 53:08 Great. Great. Have a good day. Transcribed by https://otter.ai