The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane

Episode 100 The Key to Unlocking Good Health

• Fiona Kane • Season 1 • Episode 100

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In this 100th episode, I explore a holistic way of looking at health. Nutrition is important, however there are many other influences on your health. I outline  those here to help you find the key to improving your health. 

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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The Beat of Nature

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Fiona Kane:

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection Podcast. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. Today is actually episode 100. Woohoo, made it to 100 episodes, and so today, what I want to do is I just want to get back to basics and just in general, talk about good health and what we need for good health, and kind of just review some of those things. So that's where I'm headed with you today, so I will start by talking about some of the nutrition studies, or what I think about some of the nutrition studies.

Fiona Kane:

So what we know is that one of the most studied areas is the Mediterranean, like the Mediterranean diet, right? So a lot of studies have been done there. Most nutrition studies have been done there, and what they do is they've found things like the properties in olive oil, or like flavonoids and things, and antioxidants in olive oil, or fruits and vegetables, or oily fish, or all of those things. Obviously, they're full of great nutrients and nutrition, and they're really good for you. I've got no problem with advocating for any of those foods. The thing that I find, though, is that we often just narrow things down to you should have this many meals of olive oil, or you should eat broccoli, or whatever it is, which is all great advice, no problem there. However, we fail to look at the whole lifestyle of the people who are being studied in the Mediterranean diet. So it's really, really useful to kind of look at the whole picture. So I suppose, with this episode, what I'm looking at is sort of that holistic health thing, the holistic view of what makes good health.

Fiona Kane:

So when you look at those people in these studies, what you find is several things. So, from a food point of view, yes, you find that they are eating food with antioxidants and all the lovely nutrients, bioflavonoids, all of that stuff. So it'll be all of the colorful, different colored vegetables and fruits, and they'll be eating things like oily fish, or they'll be eating meat, or whatever the protein is, wherever they are, but they're eating protein. They will be having good oils, like olive oil, like I said, maybe the fish oil, oily fish, things like avocado, that kind of thing. But essentially, what they're doing, though, is they're not overeating. So whatever they eat, they're kind of having a little bit of everything and they're not overdoing it. So in some of those places, they'll also be having, say, the red wine. So you've got the lovely resveratrol in red wine, which is kind of what causes that red pigment, and they'll be having that, and that's all part of their sort of healthy diet. So they have a little bit of lots of different things, but they don't overeat.

Fiona Kane:

The other thing, though, that they have in common is, in general, the foods that they're eating, and this is not just for the Mediterranean diet studies. This is when you look at all of the different studies where they look at the blue zones and all the places where people live to over 100 and all that kind of stuff. When you look at the common denominator with those, again, with diet, some of them have higher carbohydrates, some of them have lower carbohydrates, some of them have more meat, some of them have less meat. So it's not necessarily what they're eating. As far as the macros how much protein, how much carb, whatever. Far as the macros how much protein, how much carb, whatever but it's also where the food comes from, right? So is the food coming out of a packet that's been highly processed, or is the food locally grown and in season food? And yes, it's locally grown in season food.

Fiona Kane:

So when you go to places like France, they've got rules and laws about things like bread. I think you're only allowed to have four ingredients in bread. So you're only allowed to have flour, water, salt, yeast right. Whereas if you just turn over a loaf of bread in Australia I won't name any of the brands, but there's the top brands If you turn it over and look at how many ingredients is in that loaf of bread, I guarantee you there's probably 30, 40, maybe more right ingredients in bread, a whole bunch of things you've never heard of, so chemicals and additives and preservatives and this and that right.

Fiona Kane:

So they're eating. And not only that, but in France they're probably using the same flour from the same wheat field that has been growing in that farm for so many hundred years. Often there's bakeries there that are kind of like hole-in-the-wall bakeries that have been running for 150 years and using the same yeast right. So essentially they're using same old recipes from hundreds of years ago, often from the same farms and the same farms. So everything's, like I said, local and everything is as close to kind of what was natural 150 years ago hasn't been interfered with and modernized, and all that kind of stuff and all of the extra additives. And of course they're eating things that are in season. So that really matters. So, whether it's like the rice patties or whether it's the wheat in France or wherever it is. Whatever they're eating is local and fresh and all that kind of stuff right.

Fiona Kane:

The other thing too, though, that, when you look at the Mediterranean diet, is a lot of those places they have siesta, so they stop at lunchtime, they get together as a family or as a friend group or whatever it is, and they usually cook and make big, gigantic salads and sit and relax and enjoy time with people and connect and have a bit of a laugh maybe, and possibly have a bit of a snooze. So they have a stop in the middle of the day, where they do the slow food thing there and not going through the drive-through to get their food and eating it and just throwing it down on their way back to the office or the work site or wherever they are. They are slowing down and stopping and giving their body time to go into, rest and digest, make digestive enzymes, allow them to digest the food, and telling their body that they're safe enough, like if you're eating on the run in the car, on the way somewhere, your body might feel that it's unsafe to eat and therefore won't make all of the digestive enzymes and things because you're on the run. What do you want to run from? Is there a lion chasing after you? Whereas if you're doing the siesta thing, your body knows it's safe to make all the digestive enzymes and digest your food right. So if this is the case, not only will you be having less digestive symptoms, but you'll also be absorbing your nutrition right All of the lovely nutrition from the food. So they often, like I said, they relax and do that in the middle of the day. The other thing they have in common is they have a lot of connection right.

Fiona Kane:

So what I was just saying about what they do at lunchtime in these communities they're usually villages and communities and communities in true sense of the word. So where I live in Australia it's not really like that. We all have separate homes and often have gates out the front and locked doors and whatever, and unless you go out of your way to go and meet your neighbors and have a bit of community, many of us just don't have that, and so we're kind of just all of these families that might just be one person or two people or your family just living in a home on their own without the connection to the other people around them when I growing up was a little bit different. We had a little bit more community. I think it's we're losing it a little bit. Let's hope that, um, people start to understand the importance of it and start to get it back a little bit. But we, that community of having it's kind of not just you on your own in your home, it's you and your neighbors and other people, uh, but that they have very much that. And not only do they have community, but as people get older in those communities they are respected. They are the wise elders and so people go to them for advice.

Fiona Kane:

And these people usually are working up until very, very old age sort of thing. So maybe even until they die they're still in the rice paddies or in the olive grove or all their milk and the goats. And not only that, but if you look at some of these places in Europe and these different places in China and various places, they're often really quite, very hilly areas. So these people are doing a lot of exercise just from life. So whether their exercise is about looking after a farm and looking after animals on a farm or olive groves or rice paddies or whatever it is, or whether it's just actually about walking up the hill to the markets or down the hill to the markets and back home again. They're getting heaps of exercise, just that they're not having to go to the gym, they're just getting it from their everyday life. So these people literally have to use their bodies every day, move their bodies to function, just to do their everyday thing right. So, again, so we bring in exercise to it. Exercise is part of it, and often they live in really beautiful places. There's nature and there's beauty and there's animals and there's there's nature and there's beauty and there's animals and there's farms and there's crops and whatever. So it's just a very kind of natural place, as opposed to sort of being on top of each other in a city or something.

Fiona Kane:

So we can't underestimate the importance of, as we get older, feeling that you're part of your community, feeling that you're important, feeling that you're needed and people expecting you to show up somewhere, as opposed to putting people in a nursing home and feeling unwanted or not lucky that you're not needed, that kind of thing. So they are needed, they are part of their community and that's a huge part. When we look at longevity studies, a huge part of longevity studies is being needed somewhere, being wanted and needed and people expecting you to show up somewhere, but also relationships, right? So relationships and so having someone who has your back. So particularly your main relationship if you're married or you have a partner partner is that that person. It's not that you don't have a fight or that you're perfect or any of that, but it's that you know that that person has your back. So if you're in a relationship where you know the person has your back, it bodes well for your longevity but also for your brain function and cognitive function, whereas if you are in a relationship that's combative and if you feel like the person's undermining you or any kind of toxic relationship, it actually has the opposite effect. Where it does affect your cognitive function, you're more likely to have earlier dementia and die younger. So relationships are really, really important.

Fiona Kane:

So sometimes in nutrition we narrow things down to diet and of course we're nutritionists and that's our job and our job is to talk about nutrition. But I feel like if we only talk about nutrition, then we kind of miss a bigger picture and there is a bigger picture around how we look after ourselves and life and that holistic approach to our wellness, the other things to take into consideration are what I was saying before. They don't overeat. They really don't in a lot of those places and when you look at a lot of the Mediterranean diet studies, these were done often on farmers who were fairly poor and very busy on their farms, so they might have been eating only maybe twice a day. So they're not snacking all day, they're sort of just eating a couple of times a day. So they're doing what now is called intermittent fasting and there's books about it and all that kind of stuff. But they're doing what now is called intermittent fasting and there's books about it and all that kind of stuff. But they're just naturally intermittent fasting because that's kind of just what their life looks like.

Fiona Kane:

And I'm not saying that everyone needs to intermittent fast that really helps some people and less for others but just saying there's something to be said for not snacking all day and especially not snacking way into the night and just having a couple of really good meals. And obviously that really works for many people in many cultures. And we just sort of do the other way. We go over the top and we have too much and you know and it's, and we don't work for it. So, instead of, like, walking down to the markets and carrying it back home or or milking the cow or or tending to the fields or the trees or whatever it is, we have Uber Eats or that kind of thing as well, or we have meals that we heat up in the microwave, that sort of stuff. So we don't actually physically work for our food at all. And because we it's stuff that sort of often instant stuff or just arrives by Uber or whatever, like I was saying before, our bodies aren't always fully prepared for it, as in fully prepared to digest it.

Fiona Kane:

Because when you're cooking a food, when you have to create your own meals, you know sort of from scratch, you've got to maybe go out and get the herbs and the vegetables from the garden and whatever it is. When you're kind of really connected to your food, and then you're making or preparing it, you're cooking it. Part of that process is you're smelling it and you're smelling the food as you're cooking it and all of that sort of stuff. So again, your body's getting the message and your digestion starts before you eat. It starts when your saliva starts, because your body starts to go oh, wow, there's food coming. Oh, I can smell it right. So digestion starts there.

Fiona Kane:

So if you're preparing your own food, there's time for all those processes to happen, whereas if it just arrives in an Uber, eats motorbike and you're sitting in front of a telly and it lands in front of you, you start eating. There's no preparation, your body hasn't been prepared and it lands in front of you, you start eating. There's no preparation, your body hasn't been prepared. The same in the drive-thru or whatever. So the way we eat, and eating in a relaxed way and eating in a calm way, and eating until we're satisfied, not until we're bursting all of those things make a difference and these are the things that they're kind of naturally doing in those communities and they're not stuffing themselves in snacks in between or drinking, you know, coke or Diet Coke or something like that while they're eating their meals. So you know it always comes back to basics with what supports your health.

Fiona Kane:

So it's looking at all of the things. It's also looking at sleep, and sleeping well, and generally people who live in those kinds of communities, they get plenty of sleep. Now, in some places it's like I said, in some Mediterranean places, like it might be in Spain or places like Italy, they might be stopping at lunchtime and having a rest there and then being up till late in the night. When we look at information about sleep, it seems that having good quality sleep is important. However, whether or not that good quality sleep is something that you do all at once or whether it's split into two, I don't think it matters so much, and that's what a lot of those communities do and they're doing quite fine. So they'll have a rest at lunchtime and then they might be up and have dinner at 10 o'clock and maybe go to sleep a bit later, but then they might get six hours then and two hours lunchtime. I don't know. I don't know the exact amounts, but that seems to work for them.

Fiona Kane:

But certainly getting good quality sleep, and getting enough sleep, really does matter. Our body needs time to rest and digest, and when you're sleeping it's when it does its cell replication, and that matters because if the cell replication goes wrong, that's what can lead to things like cancers. So that's really important, and it does its detoxifying and getting things out of your system and basically all of the repair work for your body. So sleep is really important and that's something that we're not doing as well with as well in our communities. Now the other things that affect us in our communities, obviously, things like stress.

Fiona Kane:

So if you live in a village atmosphere, if you think of what it would have been like growing up in a village once upon a time, there's just generally fairly expected roles in that village. You know you're going to grow up and you're going to be a mom or you're going to be a farmer or whatever it is that you're kind of the expected role and you live with the circadian rhythm, the cycles of the sun and the moon, right. So the body's circadian rhythm. When we go along with our circadian rhythm as in we're up during the daytime, we go to sleep when it's dark, that kind of thing our body actually responds really well to that. And when we don't, it doesn't respond really well and we can get quite sick. Which is why shift workers really have a lot of challenges with their health, because shift work does mess with your circadian rhythm, with their health, because shift work does mess with your circadian rhythm. And messing with your circadian rhythm appears to be a really challenging aspect to how we manage our health in the modern world, because it's really our body responds well to just us being part of that cycle, part of that circadian rhythm cycle.

Fiona Kane:

So, essentially, back in the day and in a lot of these village atmospheres, you know, in the evening people rest and they calm down. And in a lot of these village atmospheres in the evening, people rest and they calm down, and you might be sitting by firelight or by candlelight and you would have maybe been kind of reading or chatting, or you might be listening to a radio or something like that, but you were doing something that was fairly kind of calming and relaxing and then going to sleep. But now what we're doing is we've got this gigantic televisions or we've got our phones or we've got different gadgets and things that are in our faces or playing games until late at night or whatever we're doing. So we're doing things that are revving us up, that are shining a little light into our eyes and really keeping us very kind of active, our brain very active, until right before we go to bed. And then we get into bed and we can't sleep and we wonder why.

Fiona Kane:

But then there's also the other aspect of just in general, how in some ways we've got a lot more freedom now that we don't have to grow up and be in the village and do the thing that they're doing in the village and get married or be a farmer or whatever was expected of us. But then it leaves open to all what are we going to do? And there can be stress associated with having lots of options Well, what am I going to do? What should I do? Who should I be? And so we're living with that kind of stress which we never used to have before, and also just the general stresses of life, because most of us have got busy lives on the run trying to figure things out. You know, financial crisis in the world and people struggling with their finances and relationships and all sorts of stuff. So there's a whole lot of things that drive up our stress, particularly in sort of Western societies that they don't have in other societies, and some of that, too, some of it we create as well.

Fiona Kane:

The interesting thing about when you look at societies if you go to places like I've traveled to places like Cambodia and Vietnam and when you go to places like that, I know one of my mentors, shandu, who's been on here before. She spent 10 years living in Africa and I think I want to get her back on actually to talk more about that. But when you are at a place like that, your world is actually about survival, so you don't worry about stuff that doesn't matter because you don't have time to, and there's actually this kind of an advantage in that, whereas I think in the Western world, especially now that now we're more modernized and life is a lot easier for us in a lot of ways, like physically easier for us than it was for our descendants, our ancestors, it was easier for us and because it's easier for us, we have more time to think and we have more time to navel gaze and we have more time to think oh, who am I and what is my identity? And I think that we get so caught up in our head that we create problems and we create challenges for ourselves and we're creating a lot of mental health issues. I believe we're so anxious because all we do is think about ourselves, and that was an episode I talked about when I was talking about a quote from Jordan Peterson. I can't remember the exact language, but essentially he kind of said when all you do is think about yourself, that's actually what causes depression and anxieties. But so it's actually really, really useful for us to think outside of ourselves. So, uh, in once upon a time we had to do that. We were part of a community. Less so now. But if you are in that situation now in the modern world, I would say that doing something that allows you to think about outside of yourself is really helpful for your mental health. So, whether that is in having a family and having children, or whether that is in volunteering somewhere or caring for your family or whatever that looks like, but being involved in a community group or in an interest group or something like that, but basically getting outside of our head for a while because, yes, it is useful to, and I've always advocated for understanding and knowing how to process and deal with your emotions, and being in touch with our feelings and being in touch with our body All of that is important for health. However, it can go too far.

Fiona Kane:

Where we're so, we're navel gazing so much that we cause ourselves a whole bunch of stress and anxiety because we just think way too much about things. If you have time to think about what kind of plastic surgery do I need and do I need to lift my eyebrows or lift my lids or get rid of? Get a Botox? If you have time to think about that you've got too much time on your hands and maybe there should be something else you're doing to fill up your time. I'm not saying that it's, you know, evil or bad for anyone to get surgeries or do any of those things, but just saying that in a society where we've got a lot of time to think about those things, then maybe we've got too much time on our hands and we could be doing something more useful. So same with a lot of modern things that we are creating and that we're creating problems where we don't have them.

Fiona Kane:

So just having awareness around that as well, that our mental health does better when we, you know, we live a life where we're doing something, and we're doing something that's not just about us and we're going out and achieving something in that world. And whether that's volunteering, whether that's supporting people, something that's not just about us and we're going out and achieving something in that world, and whether that's volunteering, whether that's supporting people, whether that's a great career, whether that's creating your own business, whether that's making heaps of money or whether that's just being a really supportive part of a community, I don't think that the what you're doing, I don't think matters it's. The main thing is you're doing something where you feel like you're contributing in some way to the world and you feel like you've achieved something at the end of the day and probably done something that's going to be useful to someone else. I think if we do that, that's really, really helpful. So just be aware that the way we live and if we spend too much time thinking about ourselves, that's also not healthy. So our kind of navel gazing thing that we have now and children having way too much time to think about themselves not healthy.

Fiona Kane:

And I saw on I think it might be on Netflix. There's this. I can't remember, it might not be, but anyway I'm one of those streaming places. I saw a little bit of a documentary about men and men's groups. I can't remember what they were called. Now it's like the Manosphere, but it's different to that.

Fiona Kane:

It's the people who are obsessed with the way they look and looking in a certain way so they can attract women. There's a whole online community about this and they're literally ordering things online to inject into their faces and stuff to, because you know you should have, like this should be two millimeters over here, and then this section here of your face which I'm pointing for those listening, between my mouth and my nose it should be a certain length and if it's like too many millimeters wrong, then you should fix that. And wow, like there's a whole community devoted to fixing every little imperfection you have so that you can attract women. And even when they're given evidence, generally women aren't as obsessed about that as they think they are. There are a percentage of women who are only about looks. Yep, there's a percentage of all people who are. But generally speaking, women have other priorities and how many millimeters you're, the gap between your nose and your mouth is is not something that women are doing. But uh, but yeah that there's this whole community that are encouraging this and um. And of course, you know the gym and all that sort of stuff.

Fiona Kane:

There's nothing wrong with working out, don't get me wrong, but these people are obsessing and spending a fortune on chemicals and things that are. You know who knows what they're putting into themselves and what damage they're doing to themselves. But they don't care if they're doing damage to themselves or causing themselves health problems, as long as they get the perfect look and to have enough time to be in a community board doing that. That's not healthy. That's just so not healthy. So we need to be getting out there and being involved in the world and less focused on ourselves.

Fiona Kane:

Now I'm just thinking. I mean I suppose there's always things you can miss, but if there's anything specifically I've missed, I've talked about eating well and eating in moderation, and eating local produce as much as possible and in season and all of that sort of stuff. I've talked about making sure you get plenty of sleep. I have talked about community and relationships and the importance of those to our health, moving our bodies, movement and circadian rhythm, and also that includes some sunlight. So don't completely take yourself away from sunlight altogether. I'm not telling you to go out and roast yourself like we did back in the 80s, but we do need sunlight. We need to get light into our eyes. I don't mean looking at the sun, I just mean being outside during the day and that natural light coming into your eyes. That's part of how we make melatonin, which is our sleep hormone. We also need some light and some sunlight on our skin so we can make things like vitamin D. So we do need some sunlight and some sun. So that's part of it as well.

Fiona Kane:

And the other thing, too, is we need to do things that help to manage our mental health. As I was just talking about there. A lot of that is involved in being connected to your community and taking yourself away from things that make you obsessed about your looks and things. If you're a member of a group that's making you think that you need to have plastic surgery to be okay, then you shouldn't be a member. Leave that group right. If Instagram's making you feel that way, leave Instagram. I'm not saying look. I had this conversation with Sam Ebelwhite when she was on. I think I'll get her back on as well. We talked a little bit about plastic surgery there.

Fiona Kane:

I am not completely against it and completely judgmental of people who have it. I just think that from a health perspective, from a mental health perspective, sometimes we get a bit obsessed with those things and there's better things we can be doing and it's not supportive of our health or our mental health, especially to be really, really obsessed about it. And sometimes, when people start on that track, sometimes people just go and do one thing. It makes them feel better about themselves and they feel good. That's fine. But what happens more often than not is people do one thing and they want to do the next thing and they want to do the next thing. Well, look, I don't know if it's more often than not, let's just say often, right, and that's not healthy. You look at the Michael Jacksons of the world and the cat ladies and all these people that do all these horrible things to themselves. Anyway, I hope that that was sort of a bit of a useful roundup of just all the things that are really supportive of our mental health. Also, anything to do with language and the stories we tell ourselves and I've done quite a few episodes where I talk about that sort of stuff the language that we use, the stories we tell ourselves. That is really, really important and can really change what our lives look like and our health outcomes as well.

Fiona Kane:

So, anyway, look, thank you for everyone who has supported this podcast. We're, like I said, up to episode 100, which is pretty exciting. Now please help me out, though. There's not enough people seeing or listening to this podcast and I really really want to be able to continue. I really really want to be able to continue. So please like, subscribe, share and also rate and review the podcast. And just right now, please just hit share and share this episode or share this podcast with someone that you know, because I really want to keep going and I feel like it's of value.

Fiona Kane:

I get a lot of feedback from people that they enjoy it and they get value from it. So please do some of that online in reviews, that kind of thing. So if I get love online in all of those places, then what will happen is algorithms will show this episode to more people and all that stuff, so all the algorithm stuff. Anyway, thank you so much. I really appreciate your support and I hope you have a great week. I like here to have conversations, real conversations about things that matter and I hope to keep continuing to do that as well and the wellness connection. So thanks for your support. See you next week. Bye.

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