Hello, my vibrant friends. Thanks for being here today. So I have a special treat for today. I had a question from one of my clients about where to find antioxidants in our foods. I know if you're a longtime listener of the podcast, you've heard me talk about eating berries and how I love to eat berries every day.
But there are other ways to get antioxidants. So we have a special guest today. We have Dr. Malathi Acharya from the Bay Area of California, and she is going to talk to us today about this topic. Now, also, if you're a longtime listener of the podcast, you'll know that when I talk about integrative doctors, I feel that everyone should make a visit with their integrative doctor every two to three years to kind of get an update on their supplements, which supplements they should be taking, you know, which things maybe they should quit, what are the good quality things to take.
And sometimes you might need more time with an integrative doctor, but even pretty much everyone can benefit from this, especially if you're over 50 because what good supplements are for me might be different for you. And I would say that the last time I saw my integrative doctor, we changed a few things.
So, you know, it's really a helpful thing to do and something that is probably available if you live in a large metro for sure. But you know, Pull out the Google if you aren't in the Bay Area and can't see Dr. Malathi to find an integrative doctor for yourself. So Dr. Malathi is an integrative doctor, as I said, and a former primary care doctor.
And welcome and please tell our audience a little bit about yourself. Thank you, Dr. Awad. I'm excited to be here today with you, talking about one of my favorite topics: food and what we can get from food and antioxidants. I'm an integrative medicine expert. I help people with chronic illnesses take back control of their lives and give them back the hope that they can lead a full and satisfying life.
I also help healthy adults achieve their health goals and age with vitality. I'm the founder of IU Integrative Medicine, which is an integrative medicine practice in the Bay Area in California. Nice. Thank you so much. So why don't we just start with the basics. What are antioxidants and why are they important?
So, in our bodies, there are these chemical molecules called free radicals that are formed. So as our body metabolizes everything, processes everything that it comes into contact with, whether we eat it, whether we consume it, whether we drink it, whether we inhale it through atmospheric pollution exposure, skin exposure.
As our body processes or metabolizes these substances, these free radicals are formed. They're just what we call as byproduct. They're just formed in our body and these free radicals are very unstable and they have the capacity to actually damage the protein and the DNA in ourselves. So that's why it's important to keep these guys, these free radicals under control.
And, you know, sometimes there is a lot of accumulation of free radicals because of whatever is going on around us and in us, or sometimes more as. That's where the antioxidants come in, place. The antioxidants, they come and they make these free radicals stabilize so that the free radicals are no longer floating around and destroying ourselves.
That's why we need the antioxidants. Okay. I've heard some people describe this as like the free radicals are garbage and antioxidants help clean them up. Do you like that analogy or not so much or? I wouldn't say they're garbage. They're just from whatever processes happen. Our body's very good at getting rid of toxic, unwanted substances that we come into contact with, and sometimes it's UV radiation exposure, some pollutant exposure.
Our body always works hard to get rid of them, so we don't have any effects from these. And these are just a result of our body breaking it down. So, byproduct, I would say. Okay. Gotcha, gotcha. Thanks. Okay, so what are some types of antioxidants and where can we get those? The good news is this, the antioxidants are not just one class of foods or one class of wonderful nutrients.
They are, there are different classes of antioxidants and I want to talk a bit. I'm gonna go over them a little bit in detail just to give you an idea that, hey, it's not one or two food sources. There are so many food sources that we can get our antioxidants from, and I'm sure most of you would, at the end of listening to this, you would feel like, wow, I'm already taking so many foods with antioxidants, so I'm gonna be a little more detailed in this.
There are three major types of, I would say five major types of antioxidant foods. One is carotenoids. Okay. And I'm going to go just to make it simple, I'm going to talk about one thing and say the foods that we get that from. Great. Great. Thanks. So, carotenoids are the easiest way to remember. There's any food that's in the red, orange, or yellow range, color range.
So that would include mangoes, cantaloupe, peaches orange. What else? Watermelon, squash, yam, all of those vegetables they have rich in carotenoids and carotenoids are wonderful antioxidants. Now, green leafy vegetables also have carotenoids. Okay, so, and the more greener they are, they have more carotenoids.
So all the green leafy vegetables are also good sources of antioxidants. Then, there are seaweed and algae, certain seaweeds and microalgae. They're also good sources of carotenoids, so if any of you, you know, are fond of seaweed, that's also a good source of antioxidants. The second class of antioxidant nutrients are flavonoids.
And when we talk about flavonoids, there comes berry and grapes. So that's the most common, right? Red berries, red grapes. So the commonest sources are berries and grapes. Now, citrus fruits also contain the flavonoids. So citruses, you know, have both types of antioxidants. Onions, apples, they also have a different type of flavonoid and so are rich in antioxidants, dark chocolate.
Dark chocolate is a great source of antioxidants. It has so much flavonoids. There's just one caution with dark chocolates. They can be contaminated with cadmium and lead. So, you know, when you choose a brand of dark chocolate, you know, Consumer Labs has information on which brand they test a few brands and they tell you which one has acceptable levels of cadmium lead and which one does not have.
So that's one caution that, keep dark chocolate is a is rich in flavonoids, rich in antioxidants, and very protective against cardiovascular disease and, you know, the, the, the active healthy substances called ochin. Wonderful source of antioxidant. You know soy, soy has isofluranes. And that is a wonderful source of antioxidant too.
So, you know, there are plenty of sources for us to tap into based on each one's taste and what they like and what they need. The other group, the third group of compound is Glucosinolates. They are also antioxidants and they,
the easiest way to remember is the big cruciferous family of vegetables, which has cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and kale.
These guys are what I call as the. King of vegetables and they are rich in antioxidants too. The other things I know you must be thinking, oh, we are talking about antioxidants, vitamin C. Vitamin C is also one of the most important antioxidants that are present in our, you know, that's work in our body and sources of vitamin D.
We all know citrus sources from citrus fruit, but what, what addition to citrus oranges. Grapefruit, grapefruit, and kiwi also has a lot of vitamin C, and so does peppers, red and green peppers. Those also have a lot of vitamin C, vitamin E, the alpha-tocopherol is also a powerful antioxidant. And where can we find vitamin E?
Vitamin E is, you know, in seeds, nuts, and seeds. And you know, as you alluded to before, nuts and seeds. Nuts with portion control is important, but nuts and seeds, especially with their coverings are great sources of vitamin E, whole grains. And it's important to remember in the grains, the, the vitamins and the micronutrients are more in the cover around the grain.
So it's very, it's important for us to make sure we avoid refined grains and consume whole grains. What else? And egg yolk. Egg yolk is also an important source of vitamin. So these are the five different classes of antioxidant compounds and the foods that we can get it from. Great, great. I have a couple questions for you. Kind of going back when we talk about soy, does it have to be a certain thing like that, like the edamame beans or soy? Is, is that the same as tofu or what's, you know, as far as looking at antioxidants in soy, where, and soy milk, you know, where do we find this?
Great question. When we talk about soy, it's important for us to choose the soy products that are least processed or refined. Okay. From that perspective, edamame, Tempe, miso, and tofu. Okay. And I'm, I'm gonna talk about that in a minute, but edamame, Tempe, tofu, and miso are the least processed forms of soy and are very healthy.
Soy milk is also good, but when, when, you know, it's important to read the ingredients, often even organic soy milk, there's a lot of additives that they add to it. You know, that kind of gives it the sweet. You know, flavor. So that's the, you know, the less additives that soy milk has better. But soy milk is also a good source of soy and the goodness that we get from soy.
Okay, great, great. Soy powder is the most processed, and that's something that I would avoid. Okay. Okay. Do you, have you heard of soy curls? I know. I'm gonna ask this on the side. One of my kids said they ordered soy curls, they were dried, and then they rehydrate them and cook with them. You, this is something I found recently, so I, I apologize for asking this kind of off the cuff, but have you heard of those or?
No problem at all about asking. I have not heard of soy curls, but to me when, when, when you described how they, you know how it's, I, I I tend to kind of wonder if it's processed a lot. Yeah. And that, that I would, in my mind always brings up a red flag. Okay. Yeah, I kind of, when you said it, it kind of made me think that too.
'Cause I thought, well, all the things they have to do to make it so that they can send it. Exactly. And that's a great way of thinking about things. Right. You know how if, if you, if you are asking the question, Hey, is it processed? How do I figure out it's, can you get it home and eat it easily out of the packet?
Or do we have to do something with it to eat? So that's, yeah. Great. Great. Thank you. Then I wanna go back to the dark chocolate question too. Absolutely. Tell me again and I'll put this in the show notes. Where do we look up our dark chocolate brands? Consumer labs.com Okay. Is a resource that you can look for.
They test different dark chocolate brands, so consumer labs.com. Okay. That'll be a great help to people too 'cause 'cause people love to talk about their dark chocolate. Yeah. And you want the good, you want the good, healthy kind, so that's great. Any other cautions we have to think about with these?
Antioxidants, thank you for asking that because so, you know, getting antioxidants from food is the best way. Mm-hmm. Because when we get our nutrients from. Especially plant-based foods, they come with, you know, if you eat, if you eat broccoli or you eat a piece of broccoli or you eat in a greeny, it's just not one constituent.
We get, we get a lot of nutritional const, you know, a lot of nutrients from each fruit or vegetable, and they kind of balance themselves out. Mm-hmm. So nothing is excess, nothing, you know, not one thing is dominant over the other. So it's always best to get antioxidants from food sources. That way we are not overdoing one particular compound to another.
Antioxidants are also useful as supplements, and some of them are useful as supplements, some are not. So that is something that is best done after consulting and integrative physician to go, which is good, and for, you know, personalize it. What are we taking it for? What do we need?
The best way to go because it always comes balanced that way. The other thing I wanna put it out there is in, in patients who are undergoing cancer treatment mm-hmm. It's always this controversy and confusion about, can I take this, can I talk? What about antioxidants? We do, we know that some of the cancer treatments work by generating these pre radicals to get rid of the cancer cells.
During treatment, it's, it's okay. It's completely okay to take consume foods with antioxidants. That's perfectly fine. Okay. But it's, it's very, very important to avoid any antioxidant supplements during that active treatment. Okay. And once again, it's always good, you know in addition to the oncologist to have an integrative doctor.
To support and guide you during that process. Nice. I've been in noticing, of course I live in a big metro, but I've been noticing that some of our cancer centers have integrative doctors now. So people can find someone easily if they're going treatment, undergoing treatment. And, and how about after, after treatment, treatment is done and they tell you, go eat a healthy diet and you know, what should people think about then for their antioxidants?
All that we talked about. Anything from food plant sources are totally fine. Okay. And should they, is it still a good idea if they haven't had a visit with an integrative doctor to do that for supplements and, and those furthering Yes
, yes. Integrative doctors, you know, integrative medicine has a big role in cancer survivors.
You know, it's always that, what, what should I do? What should I avoid? What all should I eat, you know? What, what other, the question that I, you know, in the mind of a cancer survivor, how can I remain healthy? I wanna avoid another cancer, what all should I do? So you know, there's a lot of role for an integrative doctor, for cancer survivors, and that's one of my special areas of expertise is helping cancer survivors.
Nice. Nice. Well, thank you so much. I, I, you know, we've, Why they're important to stabilize these free radicals. But we have to be careful if we're undergoing cancer treatment because we may need free radicals to be around. And what types and what foods to look at adding. And I love that there's so many things that's lovely.
And the green tea and, and and so many different kinds of foods, like you said, I. Had some antioxidants I didn't know or I was eating. So that's a great thing about this. Right. You know, there's so many foods that have it that if you're someone who embraces vegetables and fruits, you're getting it. Yeah.
That's great. That's great. Thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate your expertise and everything that you shared with our listeners today. It was a pleasure talking being with you here today, Dr. Awad.
So, Dr. Malathi, if you can let our audience know, how can we find you in person and online? Absolutely. You can find me at my website. It's www.ayur.today. I'm going to spell that. It’s A Y U R dot today, T O D A Y. Great. Great. And I will make sure that all of your, that your website and any other social links that you would like to have will be in the show notes so people can find you easily.
Thank you. Thank you again. I really appreciate this. If you are looking for a guide, you're a woman over age 50 who would like help on your final weight loss journey please combine me at heatherawadmd.com and I would love to talk to you. There's a place where you can book a call and apply to work with me.
So thanks everyone for your time today.
