Naturopathic medicine is the bridge between the wisdom of nature and the knowledge of science. The show’s guest today is Dr. Mitchell Kershner, the CEO of Healthy Chef Doctor. Dr. Mitchell joins Jen Du Plessis in a discussion about how we can now use science to explain the wisdom we’ve always known, like how garlic helps boost our immune system. Using naturopathic medicine, we can better pin down what we should eat and what we should avoid. Food is not just about food because it involves the mental and emotional aspects of a human being. Do you want to have a better relationship with food? This episode is for you. 

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Naturopathic Medicine And Sugar Detox With Dr. Mitchell Kershner 

I am so delighted to have Dr. Mitchell Kershner here. There are so many facets to what this man does that I know that we are not going to get to all of them during our time together. I’m hoping that I can rein both of us in, probably me, Dr. Mitchell, rein me in because there are so much I want to learn from you. I am delighted to have you as a guest. Welcome to the show. 

Thank you so much, Jen. I’m excited to be here and to share this. I was talking to a colleague of mine in Utah, Salt Lake City and she’s always done okay. She’s always managed because Salt Lake City, Utah is a licensed state for us. After all, not all states do license naturopathic medicine. She said just these last few months, she has gotten more phone calls and more appointments than she has in the last twenty years of her practice because people are looking. I would like to start by giving you my explanation because I’m assuming that a lot of readers maybe have heard of naturopathic medicine but maybe you don’t know what it is. 

Go for it. You do what you need to do. Go ahead and do that, then I will ask you some other questions. 

[bctt tweet=” Naturopathic medicine is the bridge between the wisdom of nature and the knowledge of science. ” via=”no”]

It is a full-on medical degree. I went to medical school. I had to sit through the board exams a few times but that’s another story. We do have continuing education that we have to do every year to keep our license active. The difference being is when I’m sitting in school, when we are talking about things like biochemistry, physiology or any of the other sciences, we integrate the conversation with not only what are the physiological events, what are the biochemical pathways. We integrate how does human emotion plays a role in that, how does anger affects your cholesterol pathway because it’s associated with liver function. 

What I like to do, I’m still working on getting the industry, the whole profession to accept this. My definition of naturopathic medicine is it’s the bridge between the wisdom of nature and the knowledge of science. What that means is we have known for eons that garlic is good for us. We have known it does all kinds of things but we didn’t know why, while the wisdom was to eat garlic. The knowledge is we now look at garlic under a microscope and we can tell you, which constituents are good for blood agglutination, which constituents are good for anti-oxidation, which ones stimulate the immune system. All of a sudden, we have now taken science to explain the wisdom of what we have always known. 

Sometimes the wives‘ tale too, don’t you think? That’s part of the wisdom that comes down. Let me tell everybody about you so that we can start digging into some of this. I’m tickled about this because it’s completely holistic health. You have been in the business for many years and maybe a couple of things. You have been a personal trainer. You had this pat that you came through with lots of different exercising, health, and working at different institutions as a professor. I know you are doing that now. You are also known as the Healthy Chef Doctor and that’s going to resonate with people because on this show, we talk about success to significance and everything in between, life after breaking through glass ceilings. 

Many ceilings were breaking through because of COVID. Our COVID challenge is we are sitting at our desk. You are the author of Working from Home: Mastering the Art of Sitting at Your Computer. We don’t have that hunchback that you are showing, that’s one of the worst things but all the bad things are happening to us and it was unintended consequences of working at home. Now, we’ve got a whole other set of problems that we are going to be contending with. You have written children’s books. I do want to talk about this book, Sugar is NOT the Enemy, The Real Truth about Sugar. I want to hear about that as well. You come to us with lots and lots of ways for us to break through glass ceilings of health and mindset. 

That’s really what we want to talk about is all of these wonderful and beautiful things that you do. I want to just share one thing. I don’t want to talk about it though on this show but I want to drop this seed for everyone that you also do blood type work. I was fascinated by this when you and I first spoke. We had our opportunity to have a one-to-one because we are in a networking group together. I was just fascinated by that the blood types have evolved. We were born with them but that’s for another time. That’s just a little sizzle there. If you want to know more about that as you are reading this, you have to make sure that you are connecting with Dr. Mitchell. 

Here’s the first question I want to ask because I was reading everything about you and, as a health expert, why is sugar not our enemy? Many people are telling us that sugar is our enemy. We need to stay away from sugar, any carbs, and white flour or any white rice sugar. All of this that we need to stay away from. Someone reading this might go, “You mean I can have all that candy? I can have all those sweets?” I have a feeling you are going to tell us that it’s not the case. That’s not what it meant. Take it away. 

I will lead in with, first of all, there is no substance that Mother Nature gave us directly that has ever caused ill except poison, like poisonous mushrooms. We are not talking about that. I‘m assuming most of our readers have had the experience of watching the movie Mary Poppins. If you remember, one of the early songs in the movie is, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” If you listen carefully, she said a spoonful. Never in history have we ever had anybody get diabetes from a spoonful of sugar. Never has anybody ever gotten obese from a spoonful of sugar. What people are not aware of nowadays is, there are somewhere between 58 and 63 different names for sugar. 

They all boil down to sugar but all those different names because of the way that the labeling act works in the legislature, as far as food labels are when a product makes up the most ingredient or the heaviest weight of that product, it has to be listed first. What they have done, what the industry has done and because of some slack legislature on this is they have taken these 58 different names of sugar, broken them up, and put them in the ingredient list in various amounts. 

Now, if they were to clump them all together, many times they need the first ingredient. It’s because they are using this and that kind of sugar, they can break it up and spread it throughout the label so it doesn’t seem like there’s that much. What we now know is that the average American consumes somewhere around 28, 29 teaspoons a day. A lot of that is unannounced. They are unaware because it’s in these ingredients. Mary Poppins was right. A spoonful of sugar does help the medicine go down, not 28 spoonfuls because that causes you to need medicine. 

What is the statistic on how many spoonfuls of sugar there is? How much sugar is in one can of soda and how much water you have to drink to counterbalance it? Do you know that offhand? 

Yes, but depending on the soda. Companies are starting to tailor it a little bit but the average soda contains 7 teaspoons of sugar, one soda, one can. If you look, if you go down the aisle and you look at the juice boxes that we are serving our children, they might have four teaspoons of sugar. They can suck those things down within minutes. That means just like that, they consume four teaspoons of sugar in one little juice box. 

What is the counter to that? How much water do you have to drink? Salt is one thing. You consume salt and you can flush it out of your body with water but sugar is a whole different thing. What is the counterbalance? How many glasses of water, how many ounces do you have to have to counterbalance one can of soda that has an average of seven? 

There’s a basic equation. If you take your body weight. Let’s say I’m 160 pounds and I divide it by 2, that gives me 80. Instead of 80 pounds, convert that pounds to ounces. I need to be consuming a basis of 80 ounces of water a day. If I’m exercising or if I’m doing something outside and it’s warm and I’m extra sweating or losing more water that way, then I need to increase it accordingly. People don’t realize that every time you drop a pound overnight, you are not dropping a pound of body weight. You are dropping a pound of water weight. You go to the gym, you work out and you come out, and you are 2 pounds lighter. That’s not 2 pounds of body fat. That’s water. You need at least a quart of water to replace those. We are all excited, “I just dropped 2 pounds.” No. You are just dehydrated. 

What’s the counterbalance of the teaspoons of sugar? Is there a counterbalance to that that if I’m going to have one can of soda, I better have how much more water just to balance that? Not thinking about the fact that it’s half of my body weight and I need to at least consume that every day. How much more would I need to consume? 

You need to cut down on the amount of sugar you are taking. There is no actual equation that I’m aware of that says that. I always tell people, if you can, have the kids or have yourself make your own sodas at home or own sweets like that. How do you do that? It’s as simple as if you buy a quart of organic juice and you buy a bottle of Seltzer and you mix the two. Basically, what is soda? It’s flavored fizzy water. 

It’s not even putting it in the fizzy water bottle thing. I’m going to ask for myself personally because I’m sure people are reading here. My grandkids love apple juice. First of all, they love all fruits. They don’t like veggies as much as they love fruits which is good. They don’t eat any cookies. They don’t eat some of the nasty stuff that people give to their kids. They just don’t, thankfully. They eat a lot of fruit and they love apple juice. They will usually pour this much apple juice and this much water. Just a tiny bit of apple juice and a whole bunch of water for them so it’s very watered down but they are still getting apple juice, which has a ton of sugar. It’s not the same as biting an apple, even if it’s 100% pure concept, purely organic. It’s just not. 

 

At that point, that much, I wouldn’t worry about. If they are putting an ounce or 2 ounces of apple juice in 8 ounces of water, and then they are consuming that, you are talking about a really small amount. The better scenario would be the apple because you are lacking the fiber and you lose some of the vitamins when processing but if it’s a question of 2 ounces of juice and 8 ounces or 10 ounces of water or some of the artificial stuff that’s out there, I will pour that for them all day long. 

I make homemade apple sauce. That’s what we do. Most of the time we don’t have to make it any more sugary and when we do, we use honey. Let’s talk about honey as sugar. 

It’s interesting because I have had this discussion with a few of my colleagues and even some other nutritionists. When you think about buying organic honey, which can sometimes be several dollars more, it’s intriguing because, how do you qualify it for being organic? It means the bees are supposed to have gone out to get pollen from certain flowers that they knew have not been sprayed. You can’t control that. You can try, you can do a pretty good job but what if a bee hits a different flower? Bees do have a certain radius for how far they will fly to get their nectar. If you know for example that nothing in a 3-mile radius has been sprayed, you can call it organic. To get it certified organic, everything has to be tested in that range. 

If something says, certified organic honey, the reason I’m bringing all this up is that not all honey is created equal. There are different varieties, flavors, that depend on what flowers the bees go to get the nectar. What makes honey different from all the other sweeteners is the way that it does develop in our bodies, the way that we digest it. As far as I’m aware, it’s the only alkalinizing sweetener that we have as opposed to even agave nectar or brown rice syrup, or maple syrup. 

There’s something about honey that differs from all the other sweeteners. If that’s your sweetener choice, I stand behind it and thank the bees. When you get a beehive and it happens to be near your house, don’t kill it. Call someone to come and remove it and have it taken someplace else but we’ve got to stop killing the bees. Honey just digests so much better in our bodies. That’s typically my sweetener choice. I’m also on occasion when I’m baking, I will use the monk fruit erythritol combination. 

I use apple sauce for sure as some of the sugar too. I make my own apple sauce. That’s why I do that. I was asking you about honey because I live in the country and we have a little marketplace that comes around and we have a honey tasting, just like wine, and go from white to red. You now have honey where you are going from light to dark and it totally tastes different especially when you get it locally. It’s good for your allergies because it’s everything that’s around you. I went to the store because we ran out and I go, “It’s honey, it’s from the bees.” I tasted it and went, “Never again.” I order my honey now directly from the bee people around here and a place in Michigan because their honey is really good. 

Happy bees make happy honey. 

What is the best way for someone to get off the sugar? What is the best way for them to break through this glass ceiling of saying, “I need the sugar? I need that comfy food.” Most of the time its sugar that comes in the form of comfy food and there are chips that people eat too. How do people get away from this up and down that they do? The highs, the lows that it gives them to detox themselves? 

I’m glad you asked that because for many years, I have worked with a lot of people and I literally can demonstrate. We just launched on my website a 9 Day 9-Step Sugar Detox Program. If you follow it, at the end of the nine days, you are over sugar addiction. It’s up to you if you go back to it. Remember this thing with food is not just about food. It’s also about the mental and emotional. It’s also about what we call comfort foods. Part of the deal, part of the psychological is to replace that comfort food with different comfort food or a different comfort activity. If I feel like I’m drawn to the fridge to go get a sweet but I go take a walk, by the time I come back, then all of a sudden, that craving’s gone away, and now just a glass of water or some nice green tea satisfies me just as well. 

In the meantime, in that interim transition from the typical sugars, what you don’t understand is artificial sweeteners and refined sugars create more of a craving. The more you get back closer to natural sugars and the products that they are in, you don’t find the same kind of cravings. That’s part of the process. That’s why in the book there, I show you all the different names for sugar because they are all processed like high fructose corn syrup, they are masked and it causes you to want more because of what it does in the body. It’s a very acidifying food. Your body does not like to be in a pH acidic state. It prefers there being a balance, whether it’s slightly acidic, like in the stomach, in the urinary tract or slightly alkaline in the blood. If you vary from those, the body is always going to attempt to get back to homeostasis. 

I want to talk to you about one last thing about sugar, and then I want to move on to working at your computer and what we can do because we are at the tail–end of the pandemic. Thankfully, we became plant-based in January right before the pandemic happened. I’m so thankful that we were taking that path because I think I would have been the muncholic I could have been someone who’s like, “I’m so stressed. I don’t know what to do.” I’m thankful for that. When we are talking about diabetes as it relates to this one piece of sugar, there are three different types of sugar. There’s the pink, blue, yellow, and green sugar, those sugar packs. I can’t remember one sweet and low and ones, whatever the names are, I have heard that yellow sugar is the best for diabetics. These are some fallacies, I’m sure, you are going to tell me. 

Yes, that’s sucralose. You are hitting on a sensitive subject. Both my parents had complications with diabetes, and that’s part of what stimulates me to pursue this and educate people. Honest to God, sweet and low, the pink packet, I believe it was 1977, was about ready to take it off the market because they were concerned about some of the side effects and some of the ill effects that were happening as a result of it. In clinical studies, it showed that it caused cancers in rats and different types of cancers. They were going to pull it off the market and the public outcry. They said, “You can’t take it away. We need that.” 

Now it stays not because the FDA thought it was safe but because of the public outcry, which is a sad thing. The FDA is supposed to be the one overseeing and they folded to not only the public outcry but also to demands from the industry, the artificial sweetener industry. Anything artificial in the sweetener category has side effects. You may not feel them immediately but you will feel them over time. There has been quite a bit of debate even whether or not it stimulates an insulin response. One of the concerns is artificial sweeteners don’t raise your blood sugar. That may be true but if it stimulates an insulin response, it’s going to have other side effects. 

You are going to go grab a cookie instead. 

[bctt tweet=”There is no substance that Mother Nature gave us directly that has ever caused ills except poison. ” via=”no”]

Your blood sugars will drop too low and you will actually go into hypoglycemia, and then you are going to be craving something. Unfortunately, in that state, you tend to just grab the closest thing that seems to look good but rarely is it a good idea. Not to mention the other effects, the other physiology that happens with increased levels of insulin and that becomes its own set of problems. 

I know that very well. My husband is a Type 2 diabetic. All of them are bad even the new white one with the green that looks like it’s plant-based. I don’t use any of them but they are all bad. 

They are all not good for you. The only one that I would recommend outside of the monk fruit erythritol or honey, preferably good quality honey, not something that has been pasteurized to the point where it’s just sweetened. 

Don’t buy it at the grocery store. 

The other one that has any potential, which has some health benefits is Stevia like others, not all Stevia is created equal. It depends on where it’s grown and how it’s processed because some of that Stevia leaves behind this metal taste in your mouth or a flavor that some people can or I can point out but it has to do with how it was processed. In fact, Stevia is not hard to grow. I live in South Florida. I can grow it outback. I don’t have a backyard now but I could. Just taking a piece of Stevia leaf and putting it in your mouth, not only satisfies that sweetness but also stimulates healthy pancreatic function. 

It’s good for men? 

It is. The pancreas, pancreatic function, digestive enzymes, and all of that can balance themselves with good function in the pancreas. That’s where the Stevia leaf and what is called some of the constituents from the Stevia plant can benefit healthy blood sugar regulation. 

That leads me to one more question on that. Now, we have the brown packet. Raw sugar that’s processed in a bag. 

Essentially what happens there is they take the sugar cane. They process it just like they would, strip out. Unfortunately, if you just chew on sugar cane or if you pressed a sugar cane. Have you ever heard of Sucanat? It is basically sugar cane juice dehydrated. That’s it. They don’t process. They don’t pull out and extract the sweetened part of the sugar cane and separate. What makes the color tinge between Sucanat natural sweetener and the regular sugar that we buy is the removal of vitamins and minerals. When you remove those, it makes the sugar turn white. 

I had one of my early nutrition instructors tell us, “Guess what happens when people die?” We turn white. White rice, white sugar, and white flour are basically food devoid of any nutritional benefits. It’s the same thing here. The Sucanat still has its vitamins and minerals. If you gnawed on sugar cane, you would get that sweetness plus some minerals. That sugar in the packet, the brown packet that says, “Sugar in the raw is white cane sugar,” that has been processed out that they add a little molasses back to give it that color. That’s it. 

Stay away from it. It’s all about just going honey. I’m sure people have tons of questions because I’m probably not asking all of them. I’m sure we could have this entire show just on sugar. I want to get to what is prominent now. Sugar is a big thing because we are consuming sugars as we are sitting at our desks. Tell us about your new book. Tell us why you were compelled to write this. You may have been writing it before the pandemic came and it just was perfect timing. What do we need to know about sitting and how we can start moving? 

 

There’s a variety of things. First of all, it’s a very easy-to-read book. I made it that way on purpose. I didn’t include all the technical stuff. There are seven tips to help prevent what is called computer–related injuries. See our eyes, it’s now a new diagnostic criterion in our medical handbook. We now have insurance companies that are starting to cover. For example, a computer–related injury is carpal tunnel syndrome. Carpal tunnel for those that don’t know, is when the wrist gets inflamed and it’s because of the hand positioning. One of the things to keep in mind is called the 20/20/20 Rule. Every twenty minutes, look away from your screen. Look at something about 20 feet away and stare at it for twenty seconds. 

That’s smart because your eyes start getting affected. I know so many people had to get glasses. 

What you don’t realize is that the 20-foot mark is where our eyes are it‘s most relaxed. Anything that starts moving closer to us from that 20–foot mark, we have to then focus our eyes. 

That’s the 20/20 vision, at 20 feet. 

As things move farther away from that 20–foot mark, we then have to shift our eyes as well to focus on that. That’s why the 20-foot mark, the reason for that every twenty minutes because imagine that we have eight different muscles, all–controlling our ocular, our eyes in all the different directions. The screens are so close and with all these little pixels of light that are coming off the screen, our eyes are constantly under this strain. We don’t think about it but that’s why I tell people when it’s at all possible to put your desk and your computer near a window so that you can look out, you can get fresh light in, not everything is artificial and not everything is just coming off your computer screen. 

Some of these are tips. Posture is a tip. We are meant to be moving around and I can tell you for sure, they have done studies on it. Even twenty-year-olds who sit for hours and hours, what’s happening is, our most exercised muscle these days are our thumbs and our eyes. We have had people complain of migraines that never had migraines before because of the light and the pixel view from the screens. This blue light that we are exposed to, which is new. This is basically new research. Blue light has been around, blue light comes from the sun. You notice it comes from the sun, which means we are usually supposed to expose to it when we are outside in the sun or during the day, not artificial and not staring at a screen at night for hours, especially the bedtime. 

There was a study done in Australia, they took a teenager still in high school who was spending hours on her phone and her computer. Her sleep, appetite patterns, moods were off and she just didn’t realize it. They managed to convince her and a small group of teenagers to go through the study, which was they had to stop using their devices at 11:00 at night and go to bed. The first week or so was hard for them. He was laying up in bed until 1:00 in the morning on the device because it will keep him awake. By putting it down at 11:00 or sooner and going to bed at a reasonable hour, about two weeks later, her mood shifted. Her grades were getting better. Her appetite was returning to normal. It took almost three weeks and she goes, “I even feel better.” For a teenager to admit, that was monumental. 

When I’m not on the screen, I have these blue glasses on when I’m working on my computer almost all the time, especially when I’m going to be doing something intense. I’m like, “I’ve got to get those on.” Tell us about the blue glasses. They are dime a dozen. They are cheap and wonderful. I love them. It takes the strain off my eyes. I find that I’m less squinty. These aren’t prescriptions or anything. Tell us about the blue glasses. What’s your take on that? Should we all run out and get blue glasses? 

[bctt tweet=”Happy bees make happy honey. ” via=”no”]

They are called blue light–blocking technology glasses. As far as a response to how effective are they? This is all so new. We don’t know. I don’t know. There are still a lot of fear theories. There are a lot of hypotheses around, whether or not it’s affecting. They may be protective but if you feel better, then it’s working. 

My eyes are not as strained. I feel like I can relax my entire eye socket when they are on. Now, I’m slightly squinty. I’m not even looking at a screen. I’m looking at my camera, which has a cockamamie blue thing around it. They drive me nuts. I can’t use them at all but is that enough? I’ve got the little blue one here. It’s 20-20-20. Every 20 minutes, look 20 feet away, stare for 20 seconds. That helps our eyes. 

Set a timer because what you are talking about at the end of one hour, you have spent one minute, not just relaxing the eyes because if you relax the eyes, you will find you will relax the shoulders and the neck. If you want to get crazy, do some deep breathing in the twenty seconds. One of the things that we are finding is hypoxia is also a result. People don’t realize you are sitting there. You are not needing to stimulate a deeper breath so you are not oxygenating the lower lobes of the lungs. That deep breathing can alter your pH, your mood and certain hormone reactions that are occurring in the body because it needs oxygen. When you are sitting there in that kind of stilled state also slumping over, you are not filling your lungs properly. 

I have learned that over the last couple of years, mostly because I have a lot of back pain from years of crossing my legs and talking on the phone and typing, the crocked head thing. I’ve got years and years of all these kinds of crazy back pain. I have worked on breathing. People would tell me, “You don’t breathe. You don’t take deep breaths.” Breathing now becomes part of my daily meditation or my prayer and my daily everything. Even when I’m on these shows, I am breathing. I’m taking deep breaths. You don’t see them as like I’m taking a deep breath when I’m talking to you. I am taking deeper breaths than I ever had before and I’m sitting very straight and erect. I do that anyway, it’s how I am. That breathing and I have been saying that to my husband and for my kids saying, “You’ve got to take deeper breasts during the day. You really need to.” 

What we have found is what we call shallow chest breathing. In the lung capacity, in the chest, the left side of our body has two lobes and the right side has three lobes. When we are sitting casually and just doing simple breathing, we are filling the upper lobes and maybe a little bit of the middle lobe. Guess where lung infections mostly occur? In the lower lobes. Most of the time, if it’s a bacteria cause, they are anaerobic bacteria. Meaning they do better in a low to no oxygen environment. Deep breathing, literally you don’t need medications. You don’t need antibiotics. You do a couple of deep breaths regularly throughout the day, you fill those lungs with oxygen, you will take care of any potential bacteria that might be just hanging around waiting for a moment. 

Isn’t it amazing how beautiful our body is? Our body is absolutely beautiful. 

Believe it or not, you can measure not only your blood pressure, your blood pH, your mood swing, and your mood condition by how well oxygenated you are. If ever you are feeling a little stressed, I like to suggest you take a deep breath in through the nose because for some reason it fills the lungs a little differently than that quick inhalation for the mouth. Fill it, hold it for about four seconds because what is that doing is it’s saturating the lung tissue with all that oxygen. Remember your breath, we only have about 21% of the air that you breathe is oxygen. The rest is some other elements in the air. Deep breathing, saturates the lung tissue, the oxygen gets absorbed, and then it gets distributed throughout your body. All of a sudden, your mood has changed. 

Decreasing like you are blowing through a straw. I was told if you sit and do that five times, in for 4 holds, for 4 out, for 4 hold, for 4 on that low side too, five times, you can take yourself from a state of flight or fight to out of those states. If you are feeling stressed or you are like, “This deal’s blowing up. This is happening and my kids are killing me.” Focusing on that breathing and counting and breathing and focusing on it, takes you out of that state of fight or flight because being in that constant state is where all the heart disease and all the other things come from, is that constant state that we are in daily. We talked about eyes, we talked about breathing. You may want to say something more about that and I want to go to the physical body, moving. Say what else you wanted to say about what I had just said. 

I was going to say, I think for now we have covered that pretty well. Deep breath, give your eyes a break, and one last tip on the 20–20-20, is when you are looking away, roll your shoulders, breathe deep, movement, which is why we are going to step into the next topic, which is our bodies are not meant to be that sedentary. When we sit for extended periods, usually meaning more than an hour at a time, we are causing disc compression because of the amount of weight in our upper body sitting on the lower spine. 

If you can imagine between each vertebra is this round disc that has fluid in it. The way we are sitting, we are sitting a little bit more hunched forward, we are causing the disc to collapse more towards the front end of the intervertebral disc. The compression from the upper vertebrae to that lower, we are pressing those discs. Over time, we have started to find that the disc starts to wear down and what happens then is we pinch nerves. That’s why we get things like sciatic and low back pain. 

That’s why I’m at a standing desk. Which by the way, right before this call, I was in my standing position for an hour on the show. Now I’m in my sitting position for this one. I alternate myself all day long. 

I do have one of those desks. I could stand up and do some standing. I bring my computer, my laptop up top, I bring my keyboard up top, I switch the monitor to point a little higher up. That’s the other tip. If your monitor is a little bit lower than eye level, if I’m not looking mid–monitor, I now have to tilt my head forward. What you need to realize is that most cranium, most heads, weigh somewhere between 12, 13, 14 pounds. If you are tipping it forward even just a little bit, you are asking these muscles in the upper back here to strain to try to keep it from falling forward. That’s why it’s important to sit back. While you are sitting there in those in-between moments if you’ve got to pause too, do a little stretching. Move the muscles around, move the low back around like side bends, twists and put your feet up. 

I do a lot of ankle movement during the day just to keep the flow going. What we are talking about is only 1 or 2 of the suggestions that you have. In this book, it had seven. 

Seven chapters. Each chapter comes with a variety of tips and exercises. Diagrams that show you exactly how to do these things to avoid carpal tunnel, to avoid finger pressures, to avoid swelling and poor circulation to the feet and toes. There are all kinds of things you can do even while you are sitting there. 

 

It’s so important for us. We could go on forever and ever but it is only one episode. I want to say thank you because I learned so much from the sugar pieces. This is why I love being a podcaster because I’m so curious. It‘s my opportunity to ask questions that I want to know. I’m hoping that everyone who’s reading this, it questions you want to know as well. I know we haven’t touched on everything that you could offer to us. I want to encourage everyone to get your book. It’s Working from Home: Mastering the Art of Sitting at Your Computer by Dr. Mitchell A Kershner. This has just been so powerful. I know that I’m going to be still working with you for another six months. I’m going to continue to learn from you because I know you do typical beauty stuff, the blood type work, you are a nutritionist. We haven’t even talked about food other than don’t have sugar. 

I’m going to leave your audience with two things. One, a lot of this information is on my website, Dr. DrMitchellKershner.com. I also want to leave you with a consideration that there is a perfect diet. Everybody has got a diet plan, everyone has got their diet ideas, paleo, keto and all these theories. I teach a nutrition course and I teach an overview of naturopathy as part of the courses I teach at the university here. There is a perfect diet. The one that is the closest to what we need is seasonal. 

As much as possible, there’s a reason for the season. There’s a reason that fruit in its natural state is the sweetest in the summer. There’s a reason that we harvest mushrooms, onions and leeks in the fall. They are immune–boosting to get us ready for the winter. There’s a reason that we harvest a lot of greens in the spring because they help us detox and prepare our bodies for the changing weather and climate. If we followed Mother Nature around the clock, both with food intake, sleep and activities, we would be a lot healthier. We wouldn’t need to be needing all these medications. Did you know that the average American over 65 is on somewhere between 5 and 7 different medications? 

My husband is twelve now and he’s 58. That will give you an idea. I’m on nothing. I’m on absolutely nothing. I take supplements but I take no prescriptions whatsoever. 

The other piece I will leave you with is when as much as you can, farmer’s markets are a great resource. If nothing else to find out what’s in season at that time, it’s a great place to shop and support local farmers. Without farmers, we wouldn’t be eating. 

[bctt tweet=”Anything artificial in the sweetener category has side effects. ” via=”no”]

You will get honey there too. I’m all about the honey. Can you tell? I love honey on my oatmeal. I use honey in my tea. I cook with honey. I think honey is one of the best things in the world. I love honey with carrots when I’m doing cookies. 

I want to point out, There’s such a difference in flavor between regular store–bought ultra-pasteurized and the stuff that somebody just brought in from hive, a world of difference. 

Thank you so much, Dr. Mitchell for being with us. I want to encourage everybody to go to his website. We can get information about your 9 Day Detox, as well as your sugar detox, and about anything that you are doing. Grab his book, share it with your kids, make it part of a book club. How cool would that be? It’s like a post–COVID book club on getting healthy. I encourage you to share it and a reminder again, you have children’s books out too because I know this is a big passion for you to get kids out of the diabetic world that is just so bad and being unhealthy. We thank you for putting those together. 

 

If anybody is looking to break their sugar detox, I have my program on an extremely special limited–time offer. It’s like $69 for a 9–Day Sugar Detox Program. I will not be able to keep it up there for long at that price but now is the time to break that bad habit and buy good honey. 

Thank you so much, Dr. Mitchell. We appreciate it. I appreciate everybody reading and taking time out of your day. I know that we went a full hour on this show. I try to keep them a little closer to 45 minutes. This is a very important topic as we are all contemplating. Do we stay at their house? Do we go to work? Even if we go back to work, we are going to be experiencing a different atmosphere. Our tissues have got accustomed to the chair that we have at home, the situation at home, and now our bodies are going to say, “What the heck?” If we go back to work, it’s going to be changing so you want to be aware of those surroundings. We will catch you next time. Thank you. 

 

Important links

• http://www.HolisticFitnessDoctor.com/ 
• Mitchell Kershner 
• Working from Home: Mastering the Art of Sitting at Your Computer 
• 9 Day 9-Step Sugar Detox Program 

 

About Dr. Mitchell Kershner ND

I am Mitchell Kershner ND. I am a Naturopathic Doctor holding a license from the state of Oregon. I have been in the health field for about 32 years with my introduction to the field of nutrition beginning with course completion from Miami Dade Community College in 1987. From 1985-1987 I was trained and then worked as a personal fitness trainer at several local gym/spa/health clubs.

Having completed the nutrition work and going on to receive a license for massage therapy from Lindsey Hopkins in 1989, I realized there must be a profession that combined these fields of health care along with my interest in exercise. That is what led me to seek and find Naturopathic Medicine. Upon completing my prerequisites from FIU, I transferred to Portland Oregon where I studied Naturopathic medicine.

Upon graduation, I relocated to Taos New Mexico and began my private practice. Approximately 3 years into my practice I was offered an opportunity to instruct at the satellite campus of the University of New Mexico in the nursing program biology/science department.My instruction began with teaching clinical nutrition at the undergraduate level. After completing several semesters, a position became available for the Anatomy and Physiology course. I continued to teach there for 7 years. During that time, I was also offered a position to teach Exercise Physiology to the massage program students, which I accepted and taught for one and a half years.

During my stay in the northern New Mexico area, I joined the Taos Search and Rescue team and was on the medical crew. That time was very exciting and opened many opportunities as well as deepening my understanding of regional health. Aging family and a desire to pursue more education in the culinary world, in 2010 moved back to South Florida and attended culinary school in Ft Lauderdale and received a diploma equivalent in Culinary Arts.

November of 2011, moved to Stuart Florida area and started a business: Healthy Chef Doctor, a company dedicated to health education via guest lecturing, Simple and Healthy Cooking demonstration and education as part of Cigna Health South Florida, company Lunch and Learns as well as corporate events.

In May of 2012, joined Toastmasters International and presently hold the designation of Advanced Communicator Silver (ACS) and Competent Leader (CL).

To date, 2020, I have written several books, one of which is a children’s book –
– Tooth Ahoy, Pirate Pete’s Voyage to Healthy Teeth. Its primary objective is to have an impact on childhood obesity and diabetes, as well as overall childhood health.
– Also written and published: Working from Home – Mastering the Art of Working at Your Computer.
– A third manuscript completed in 2020 was: Sugar is Not the Enemy, the real truth about sugar.
-Along with that, an online program entitled: 9 Day 9 Step Sugar Detox program. It’s a holistic approach to helping people easily and effectively break their sugar addiction and learn how to replace those foods with healthier choices.
I have a deep passion and drive to teach and motivate people to learn and develop the skills in making better choices leading to a healthier happier life, for them and their families.

Sincerely,
Mitchell A Kershner ND

 

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