You asked, we’ve answered.
For this episode of the Health Quest Podcast, we’ve compiled a few of Dr. Sal’s answers to listeners’ questions from past episodes of the show.
Dr. Sal addressed the issue of storing food in plastic containers. He emphasizes the importance of reducing exposure to harmful chemicals from plastics by switching to safer alternatives, such as glass containers.
He also explains the link between chronic inflammation and brain health, highlighting the role of a healthy gut and lifestyle habits in preventing memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease. He stresses the importance of staying mentally and socially active to maintain brainpower and overall wellness.
To support optimal health, Dr. Sal recommends incorporating supplements, particularly antioxidants, to compensate for potential nutrient deficiencies in modern diets. By taking proactive steps and making informed choices, you can align your lifestyle with God’s design for good health.
Key takeaways:
1. Avoid storing food in plastic containers, as they can contain harmful chemicals like bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates which can leak into food and disrupt metabolism and hormone levels. Consider using glass containers, such as Pyrex, for storing food as they are a safer alternative to plastic.
2. Reconsider reheating food in the microwave as the chemicals from plastic containers can leak into food when reheated, and consider using alternative methods such as a cast iron pan or toaster oven.
3. To strengthen brain power and reduce the risk of memory loss or Alzheimer’s, focus on reducing inflammation in the body through means such as consuming fish oil and turmeric, as well as staying mentally active through activities like puzzles, reading, and learning new skills.
4. Socialization and maintaining an open mind contribute to overall well-being and may play a role in longevity, as observed in cultures with high numbers of centenarians.
5. Consider the use of supplements such as antioxidants (vitamin C, vitamin D, and vitamin E) to ensure the intake of essential nutrients that may be lacking in modern diets.
Send a question to be answered on a future episode to [email protected].
Dr. Sal [00:00:00]:
The objective is is to align yourself with god's will. God is telling you very simple, man. I I gave you all the cures just in the foods, and that's the natural foods in their natural state. Nothing genetically modified, nothing with all these chemicals on it. Welcome to the Health Quest podcast, your guide to God's will for good health. Hello. My name is doctor Sal, and I've been a practicing doctor and urgent for well over 30 years, and my goal for each episode is that you'll be able to transform your mind to God's design for your good health as well as affect the way that to eat in the way that you live. If you're new here, we release a new episode every week.
Dr. Sal [00:00:57]:
And if you enjoy the content, would you please leave us a good review? It really helps our ratings and allows our show to reach more people, which in turn, we can help more people change their ways. I'd like to thank you for your support. And it's today's episode, we're gonna be basically taking a compilation of previous episodes and podcast, that talk about a variety of different subject matters that you'll be able to extract information that may be useful for you. You may not have to go back back to the original podcast to listen or you can go back to the original podcast to get more information. But, just taking that little bit of an information, you can now implement it into your daily life habits and then get more of the information as, the understanding behind it all. And with that, please enjoy today's episode of our compilation of previous podcasts. So our first question comes from Royal Oak, Michigan from Susan. Doctor Sal, I understand that plastic is not a good thing, particularly to store foods.
Dr. Sal [00:02:02]:
Can you give me some advice as to what to do after, I have a meal that I need to store for the next day or so. Well, Susan, that's a very good question because we're using a lot of plastic today, and the thing with plastics is is that they contain 2 chemicals, bisphenol a or BPA EA and phthalates, which, and I talked about this before. These are some of the toxins that, a leak into our food, and they could be metabolic disruptors or endocrine disruptors metabolic disruptors, meaning they affect the way we metabolize foods or produce proteins, that either are beneficial for us or they disrupt, the hormone levels in our body. And, certain things like, phthalates can mimic the lipophilic hormones, which actually stimulate more fat production in our body. So plastics is one of the way and if what's even worse than storing it in plastic is that we reheat foods in the microwave with plastics, and that's how these chemicals actually leak into our foods, and we consume them. Now, of course, it's not gonna kill us at the time when we eat it, but over time, this is what's contributing to a lot of these disorders that we're seeing in today's modern society. So we use a lot of plastic for, let's say, our beverages. Let's take those for instance.
Dr. Sal [00:03:36]:
Well, as a kid growing up, I remember all the, soda pops came in bottles, whether it was 7 Up or ginger ale, and it's not like we were drinking this stuff all the time. We would have it with dinner. Of course, my mom would pour a little bit of wine in the 7 Up or Ginger real kinda make it it was actually the initial wine cooler. So those old Italian mothers were the original wine cooler makers. And, of course, Ernest and Gallo started doing that, made 1,000,000 off of that back in the eighties. But, anyways, but a lot of the beverages came in glass bottles. Coca Cola used to come in 12. Actually started off with 8 ounce, bottles, and, of course, they went to 12 ounce.
Dr. Sal [00:04:19]:
And now they come into these 2 liters of plastics, even bottled water. Now if you haven't noticed, you take the foreign, water that comes in, like your San Pellegrino, your Perrier. San Pellegrino comes from Italy. Perrier comes from France, and they come in these hard plastic bottles that are colored. They're usually green. And when you see the kind of water that comes into that plastic bottle that cringes when you squeeze it, the softer that elastic is the more of these phthalates and BPAs get into that water, especially when it's exposed to heat. Now if you take, like, the old Tupperwares, okay, they were made out of harder plastic. That's actually a better plastics to store it in.
Dr. Sal [00:05:08]:
But what I store my food in is in the Pyrex glass storage containers. And you can get those at Kroger's. And if you go out west, while Kroger's merged with Albertsons, they're pretty much the same. They carry these Pyrex storage containers, and they're, you know, they're circular or square. They're large or small. Of course, they come with a a plastic top that you can cover, but the food is always sitting in glass. I've always preferred glass over plastic because even in recycling and what I found out is that only 10% of the plastic ever gets recycled. And, of course, they've got every reason not to recycle the plastic because they've got labels or they've they've got colors in them, and so they can't recycle them.
Dr. Sal [00:05:56]:
And so we end up taking them to India, and it gets thrown out into the Indian Ocean, and then the fish eat this stuff. I mean, it's ridiculous. Glass is always recyclable. Always recyclable. Glass comes from sal. An an easy and and it's easily accessible resource to make a container that we could store food and beverages in. And, and, of course, you know, the hassle would come in that you would have to drop it off, to get it recycled, and I wish they had more of that as far as putting them in bins that you could put glass in that the recycling units from the cities can come by and actually take that to recycle it. So glass, I think, is the best.
Dr. Sal [00:06:38]:
I don't think. I know is the best way to store your foods. And like I said, Pyrex, and it's not that expensive either. I love it. I love it because they come in different sizes. When I make my vegetables on a Sunday, and I'll make enough for about 3, 4 days, and I make my cabbage and my rapini and my Swiss chard. And, of course, I make a, you know, certain ways, which I'm gonna come out with a a a cooking video on this stuff. But putting them in the glass, Pyrex storages and putting them in your refrigerator is a good way to store your food.
Dr. Sal [00:07:11]:
And when it comes the heating it. Instead of using a microwave, you could always reheat it in a, you could use use a a cast iron pan or if you use a Teflon nonstick pan, use very low temperatures because the chemicals that are in the Teflon that at high temperatures get released and also get in the food. So always cook your foods. It's the best thing to do is to cook your foods at low temperature. And it takes a little longer to cook, but it stores more heat, and it doesn't burn the food or chars it because that, creates these, polycarbons, which can be carcinogenic too as well. So if you're at work, hey. Even a toaster oven works fantastic. Right, put it in that little bin, throw it into the toaster oven, heat it up, and it's a good way to heat your foods without, any of the detrimental effects of the microwave itself.
Dr. Sal [00:08:06]:
So Pyrex, you can get them at your Kroger stores. I'm sure you can get them at some of the other, grocery stores. Like I said, Albertson out west, and I'm sure you could pick those up too at Macy's and some of these other department stores as well. Our next question hails from New Jersey. His name is Ron from New Jersey. What could be done to strengthen our brainpower and avoid memory loss or Alzheimer's? Well, Ron, if you had listened to some of my podcast, we've again, a lot of these disorders like dementia, brain fog is all due to this low chronic inflammation that's taking place in our body. We all have this leaky gut. Our body allows certain proteins, to seep in through the intestinal system, into the circulatory system, which then sparks an immune response, which leads inflammation, which then is like, even with gliadin and lipopolysaccharides, these are detrimental, and they they permeate through the blood brain barrier and start to affect the neurons and the brain cells and alter the neurotransmitters, helps to build the plaques up, which causes Alzheimer's in the long run.
Dr. Sal [00:09:22]:
So reducing inflammation is one of the key factors. Again, we go off and your your fish oil and your turmeric really helps out in that. The ways to build strength is to keep the mind constantly active, whether it's doing puzzles, reading. You know, there was a great TED talk with an what's called the 92 year old bodybuilder, and this 90 year old man, was saying how we all retire at 55 and 60 years of age when we're really at the best in our life. I mean, we we've got some life experience. We've got some knowledge. We should really be starting our lives off at 60 years of age, and he kept himself physically active reading, writing, taking classes. There's a friend of mine.
Dr. Sal [00:10:13]:
He just got his master's in law, and there was an 82 year old Ernie who went back to law school to get his, LLM is what it's called, and I guess that's your master's in law. So keeping yourself active, reading. Just just don't sit around watching TV all day. That's that's a mindless thing, and and you'll start to get a lot of negative communications from television that just doesn't really do you any benefit, a long term either physically by sitting around and watching hours of TV or intellectually. So, again, reducing inflammation, keeping a good healthy gut, helps reduce, a lot of that. You know, keep yourself open minded. One of the other things that I didn't mention, which is really important, and we noticed this about Centurions, is socialization. So if you take the blue zone and these are countries that are within an area around the world, and most of them are islands.
Dr. Sal [00:11:18]:
One is Okinawa, Japan, the southern part of Japan. There's, Ikaria or Ikaria, which is in the Mediterranean. It's one of the islands of Greece, which is the further east, just 30 miles west of the Turkish border, Sardinia, Italy, Loma Linda, California. And it's the way these people eat and their lifestyle that these people naturally live to to be a 100 years old. One of the other areas that I wanna mention is the Hunza province of Northeast Pakistan, where if you die at the age of 90 2 it's like dying at 62 here in the United States. I mean, everybody lives to be over a 100 years old. Of course, these people live up in the mountains. They they don't they're not surrounded by any industries.
Dr. Sal [00:12:04]:
Their their soils have not been, intoxicated with the chemicals and the byproducts that come out of these, factories. These people eat everything natural, all organic. They're physically active. They live up in the mountains. So when you go to the American Academy of Antiaging Conferences, we talk a lot about these cultures and these civilizations and what they eat and what they do, and then we transfer that and saying, well, this is what we have to do. So, yes, in America, I do take supplements. I take a lot of supplements because even our foods, even though you're eating health, our foods just don't have all the nutrients that you might see in some of these other areas the way they grow them. More fruit is a day or 2 before it's ripe or after it ripens while it's on the tree.
Dr. Sal [00:12:58]:
Picking the fruits off the tree 2 weeks before they're actually ripe, doesn't allow for all the nutrients to get into that fruit or vegetable, in its appropriate time. So that's why supplements are important. Taking a lot of the antioxidants, your vitamin c, vitamin d, vitamin e. These are very powerful antioxidants to take as supplements on the side, and I just hope that you enjoyed this episode. And, thanks again for joining us. If you have any other questions, please send them in through the web page. Some of these, questions that you may have may be answered just by listening to our podcast, so tune in. Give us a good review.
Dr. Sal [00:13:42]:
And with that, I'm doctor Sal. Have a great day, and god bless.