 Why too much of these nine superfoods may lead to health problems? All right, let's start with health problem number one from cruciferous vegetables. Now, don't get me wrong cruciferous vegetables are phenomenal for you in so many ways. They're sulfur-containing vegetables and sulfur is really one of the best things that we can get into our diet. But I see people who eat cruciferous vegetables several times a day. They have cauliflower rice. They have cauliflower mashed potatoes. They have broccoli. They have bok choy. They have kale. They have Swiss chard and I see gradually over the passage of a few months their thyroid becomes suppressed and it's such that when we back them off on their cruciferous vegetables, their thyroid function returns to normal. So we know that in fact, it was too many cruciferous vegetables. And I see this more and more because people have been told that this is a superfood and you have to eat it every day several times a day. Too much will suppress your thyroid. And again, I see patients six days a week. I look at their blood work every three months so I can see when someone has changed what they're doing. And I became very impressed about ten years ago when people went on cruciferous vegetable kicks and their thyroid got suppressed. And when we removed those, low and bold their thyroid returned to normal. So too much is a good thing for your thyroid. Now kale is also a cruciferous vegetable. Now there's a few health influencers out there that want to warn you away from kale. I did an amazing experiment on myself, unbeknownst to me a number of years ago. My wife Penny got a magic bullet and decided that she was going to make me a kale smoothie before I went off to work. Now I can handle the various aggressive plant compounds in cruciferous vegetables, but when you grind these things up and release them out of each cell, within two hours of downing my kale smoothie, I was visiting the toilet and most everything came out. Why? Because I released all of these plant defense compounds, or my wife did. So just be careful that you really want to use these in their intact form. Don't grind them up into a smoothie. Don't worry about the amount of heavy metals in kale. You're simply not going to eat enough of it, I hope, to make a difference in your life. OK, how about cucumbers and squash? One of the things that people need to know about is that anything with seeds in it is technically a fruit. And fruits have sugar in them, particularly fructose, which is, as you know, one of the leading causes of insulin resistance. And I see many people eating healthy fruits like squash and cucumbers who inadvertently have elevated insulin levels, elevated triglyceride levels. And when we take away these healthy vegetables, they get better. Additionally, if you go to France or Italy and you find a crudity table, all the cucumbers will be peeled and deseeded. That's because cucumbers have lectins in their peel and in their seeds. Recently, I had a patient with some really bad leaky gut. He was gluten free for 10 years because he was intolerant to gluten. It still had issues. So we did our panel of leaky gut and lectin testing. And we found, in fact, he still had very massive leaky gut, still being gluten free. He still had antibodies to the various components of weight. But interestingly, he lit up to the cucumber lectin. And cucumbers were a huge part of his diet. So now we know that for him, the lectins and cucumbers were part and parcel with why he was still having issues. Even something lectin-free, like a sweet potato, we forget that these are still starchy vegetables. And particularly if you have insulin resistant, if you have elevated insulin levels, if you have high triglycerides, then even lectin-free foods are not your friend and will get you into harm's way, not make you healthier. Blueberries. Now, blueberries, if you ate them in season, they're great for you. And in season means, back in the good old days, that blueberries really produced once a year in the late summer and early fall. And you would only get blueberries for a few months out of the year. And then you would never see them again. The second thing is that blueberries have been raised for sugar content. When I was growing up, blueberries were these little tiny, bitter things that you got to put sugar on. Now they're the size of a grape. Even organic blueberries are getting bigger and bigger. Blueberries have been raised for sugar content. Now, I see this over and over again in my patients. They go to a big box store and they buy these big boxes of organic blueberries from Chile, from Argentina, from Mexico. And they eat them like candy without realizing that they are candy. They are nature's candy. And we see their triglycerides rise. We see their cholesterol rise and we see their hemoglobin A1C and their insulin rise all because they're eating healthy blueberries. So what are you going to do? Number one, look for them in season. And whenever possible, opt for wild blueberries, not the ones that are size of grapes. You're actually trying to eat the blueberries for their polyphenol content. And again, the smaller they are, the more polyphenols, which is why you want to eat them in the first place. Next up, Brazil nuts. Now, Brazil nuts are a great source of selenium, but you can absolutely overdo it. And we've actually seen people get selenium poisoning. Now, the great news is you only need three Brazil nuts a day to get all the selenium you need. Now, what's so good about selenium? It turns out selenium is incredibly important for your thyroid health, but perhaps more important. Selenium is really critical to help insulin get sugars and proteins out of your bloodstream and into your cells. But there's a limit to where selenium will backfire on you. And you probably unfortunately won't feel it, but we'll see it on your blood work. So three a day, they're great for you. Do not munch on Brazil nuts every day. Next up, coconut oil. Now, coconut oil is a saturated fat. Now, a lot of people hear that coconut oil has medium chain triglycerides, which it does. And people say, wow, medium chain triglycerides. That's what I want on a ketogenic diet. And I agree. The problem is the vast majority of the fats in coconut oil are not medium chain triglycerides. And even one of them that is carbon 12 is a medium chain triglyceride that has no ketogenic effect. In fact, the most ketogenic effects are with carbon six and carbon eight. So coconut oil, sadly, is not going to help you lose weight. It may actually have the opposite effect. I've even seen patients who use coconut oil throughout the day for energy develop fatty tumors under their skin. And when we took their healthy coconut oil away from them, that improved and they shrunk. Finally, if you carry the apoE4 gene, the Alzheimer's gene, coconut oil may not be your best friend. Yes, there are some interesting stories on the Internet of people who were given coconut oil and their memory issues improved. Unfortunately, they were short term. They got better for about three months and then rapidly got worse. And that by a year, there was absolutely no effect and probably worse effect. Take my advice, coconut oil is not your friend. If you have the apoE4 gene and 30 percent of people carry that gene. All right, healthy kombucha. I am a big, big fan of fermented drinks like vinegars, like kombucha, like keyfers. But kombucha, like other fermented foods, is tangy and smart marketeers have realized that to get you to actually keep coming back for kombucha, they have to add sugar. Now, don't get me wrong, you have to add sugar to tea to get fermentation. That's OK. But once that sugar is used up and you don't need much, you shouldn't have to add more sugar to sweeten the kombucha. So buyer beware, you have to look at number one, serving size. Thankfully, most kombuchas now as serving size is one bottle. But buyer beware, you better see the word one bottle rather than half a bottle or two servings per bottle. The second thing you want to look at is total carbohydrate. And probably most importantly is calories. This one has 40 calories in a bottle and it has about two teaspoons of sugar. Now, some of that sugar has been used up in fermentation. But I've seen kombucha sitting next to this one that has as much as 12 teaspoons of sugar and may have 100, 150 calories. And believe it or not, that's the same as drinking a soda. There are some true kombuchas that are fairly decent. This one has 60 calories and unfortunately about four teaspoons of sugar. So buyer beware, the less sugar, the better off you are. The more sugar this becomes a dangerous superfood. Next one up, dark chocolate. Hey, I'm a huge fan of dark chocolate. Dark chocolate contains some of the best polyphenols you can buy. But you've got to be really careful about how much sugar has been added to that dark chocolate. And in general, the more bitter the chocolate, the better. And in general, you should look for dark chocolate that's now been made with allulose as the sweetener and they're available. You have to look for it. Now, there's been some recent studies about lead and cadmium in chocolate. I got news for you. There's always been lead and cadmium in chocolate. But you're not going to be eating much of this all day. You're going to have a square or two. If you're really worried about it, have some activated charcoal and some chlorella or take one of my supplements that contain that. But in general, I see chocolate eaters all the time. We measure heavy metals in them. And I've never found a chocolate eater having elevated lead and cadmium levels. They have other reasons to have elevated levels, but not chocolate. Look for the less amount of sugar, the better. Look for the higher amount of fiber, the better. And as a general rule, the higher the percent of cacao, the better off you are. But too much sugar and it will not be a super food. I see patients who think that because I recommend dark chocolate, that they can have a whole bar a day. And guess what? It won't work. I've even done that experiment on myself. And guess what? It doesn't work. That's why I can tell you how dangerous these things are, because I see it in my patients and if I tell my patients to not do something, I'll try it on myself first to see what the consequences are. How many other influencers, you know, have done that with their patients? Finally, beans and legumes. If you don't pressure cook beans, they are one of the lectin rich foods that you need to avoid. Luckily, brands like Eden, like Jovial, pressure cook their beans. And they're readily available now. So there's no excuse not to buy pressure cook beans, which takes the worry away. There's also no excuse not to have Instapot or modern pressure cooker in your home so that you can pressure cook the lectins out of whatever you're going to eat. Now, sadly, many people produce an impressive amount of gas with too many beans. And yes, you can gain weight eating too many beans. And I see this with my well-meaning patients who are insulin resistant. The sugars in beans are converted into triglycerides, which are stored as fat. Now, if you're not insulin resistant and remember about 80 percent of Americans are insulin resistant, this is probably not going to problem for you. But if you are insulin resistant, like 80 percent of Americans are, and you still want beans, please use lentils. Lentils have far less sugar than regular beans, and they have more protein. So you're going to get a benefit in both ways. And there are pressure cook lentils that you can get from Eden. So too much of a good thing can be very dangerous to your health. So just because you've heard that there's a superfood out there, oftentimes superfoods can become super bad really quickly. I think you're going to love this one. Make sure you never buy a nonstick cookware that says Teflon. And you can still see him lining the store shelves, so put him down.