The Power of a Nourished Mind-Body: Exploring Wheatgrass and Ginger Benefits

In this episode, Dr. Wakim delves into the powerful connection between mindset, health set, and the nutrition we provide our bodies. With an extensive background in interventional psychiatry and a passion for non-pharmacologic approaches, Dr. Wakim reveals the secrets behind his daily ritual of consuming wheatgrass and ginger shots. 

Discover the science behind how what we put into our bodies affects our overall well-being and resilience.

Tune in to the Endgame Podcast as we uncover the science behind these superfoods and how they contribute to creating a resilient mindset and health set.

Introduction - Mindset and Health Set (0:00)
Putting Your Health First (01:35)
The Nutritional Power of Wheatgrass  and its Antioxidant Properties (04:57)
Wheatgrass and Gut Health (07:04)
The Benefits of Ginger and its Anti-Inflammatory Properties (08:33)
Exploring Acai Berry (10:59)
The Importance of Fresh Fruits and Vegetables (12:03)
Conclusion - You Are What You Put Into Your Body (15:32)

If you want to try juices, smoothies, bowls, and shots that have ingredients proven to support mood, brain health, energy, immunity, and more, visit Salud Juicery 👉 https://www.saludjuicery.com/

Transcript

0:00

That's many reasons why I turn to wheatgrass every single morning as a way to get my body in the right health set, mindset, environment to be resilient and successful. That day, that week, that month, et cetera. Welcome to the Endgame Podcast, where I bet you didn't know what you didn't know. I'm Dr. Ryan Wakim, successful entrepreneur and your endgame coach. I'm here to talk to you today about something else that's near and dear to my heart, which is this idea of you get out of your body, what you put into it. As a psychiatrist and as someone who has really delved deep into interventional psychiatry and procedural psychiatry and in kind of non-traditional non-pharmacologic psychiatry. One of the things I learned early in that path was the idea of mindset, was the idea of health set, and how different things impact that. And you've heard me talk before about motion drives emotion. You've heard me talk before about how you put your body's natural state in homeostasis and create the e ecosystem or atmosphere for which your mindset and your health set can be actually healthy to create the resilience you need to be successful. Going back to the classic example on the airline. You have to put your own oxygen mask on first before you can help someone else. The same is true with your health set and your mindset. In order for me to be an effective business leader, entrepreneur, coach, mentor, I have to take care of my own health first. And so every morning I do some sort of stretch or exercise, physical activity, movement, and I put a big emphasis on what I put into my body, and that's what I'm here to talk to you about today. The mindset and health set as it relates to the nutrition that you give your body. I actually own my own juice bar. That's how much I believe in you get out of your body, which you put into it, meaning, the nutrients, the vitamins, the minerals, the supplements to truly create that peak state that athletic, that ultra performance atmosphere, right? That ecosystem and environment for being truly successful. And so it's critically important to me, so much so that I own a juice bar and so much so that I start every morning with a wheatgrass and ginger shot. I actually brought that shot today and we'll do a little bit right now. Sorry. I like it really gingery and that was very gingery. So let me talk to you a little bit about what nutrients, what vitamins, what minerals, what's important, what's the science, what's the thought process about why, and actually to keep it super simple on the front end, think about food as a color palette. And the reality is when you, when you look at food with the exception of fake foods, so synthetic foods, colas, synthetic sweeteners, things that are processed or made, not of the earth, not of nature, not genetically normal. But when you think of that, which is of the earth, of nature and you think about what's healthier or what helps, it tends to be the things kind of at the extremes, the brighter and or darker stuff. So when you think about bananas or strawberries or blueberries or raspberries Those different colors, those different colored palettes, and being either very bright so something that's strikes your eye when you're in the grocery store or something that's very dark and those things tend to come with their own health benefits. So, I'll go through a few different things that I know to be helpful and I've seen be helpful in my patients and in my team. But then understand that there's a myriad of other things. This is simply you know, here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, what you can get and find healthy locally and natural again. Genetically engineered, although important for starvation, important for feeding. Genetically engineered comes with its own set of possible risks or lack of benefit. So, but when you think about, you know, what, what are some products, what are some things to look for? You know, when I think about the juice bar, what are some things we really promote or want to make sure that we promote? And for me, you know, first and foremost is wheatgrass. I've, I've mentioned it before. I, you know, every morning wheatgrass and ginger. You know, and, and why? And so when you think about wheatgrass, it does a couple of really critical things. So, number one it's a very powerful antioxidant. Think about how dark it is. Wheatgrass is very, very dark green. And so again, thinking about those color contrasts and brights and darks, So very dark green has chlorophyll in it, which has been shown to have antioxidant properties. Antioxidant properties means it really creates an environment around the cells of the body to protect them from oxidative stress, protect them from the stress that when your body has a stress response or releases free radicals and tends to oxidize the the cells, which then can create damage and. And you know, obviously death of a cell. So when we think about how we protect our cells and how we promote healthy and new cells, especially in the brain neurogenesis, we think about what is antioxidant in nature. And wheat grass is one of those things. So again, very dark green antioxidant. Anything that's antioxidant also tends to be anti-inflammatory, cuz again, inflammation is stress response. It is the body's natural stress response to repair something, but too much of a good thing's a bad thing, and that's often what we see. With things like inflammation or especially chronic inflammation. So wheat grass protects or provides an antioxidant effect. It also is incredibly healthy for you. For your biome. So your human biome, your gut biome. Your microbiome, this is the concept of, you talked about kind of your mind, gut connection or you, you know, there's this classic, you had a bad, you had a bad gut feeling about this or and that's really because the human microbiome is full of neurotransmitters. So your, your GI system, your stomach actually has some of the highest volumes of serotonin and other neurotransmitters outside of the brain. In fact, most of your neurotransmitters are not found in your brain, and a huge amount of them are actually disproportionately related to your GI system. It's actually a common reason why traditional medications, antidepressants can lead to sexual side effects, GI side effects, skin side effects. And so as we think about how we foster a really healthy microbiome we do that through what we eat, right? When you put stuff in your body and it gets absorbed in your GI system, that obviously impacts that system and wheatgrass. So two ounces of wheatgrass is basically the equivalent to your body of five pounds of fresh vegetables. So when you think about. All the anti antioxidant properties and oxidative stress protection and anti-inflammatory and then also really good for your microbiome and really healthy for you. That's many reasons why I turn to wheatgrass every single morning as a way to get my body in the right health set, mindset environment. To be resilient and successful that day, that week, that month, et cetera. So really critical. Wheatgrass, ginger or the wheatgrass portion of my wheatgrass ginger shots. So then let's turn focus on ginger. Ginger, also you know, once it's juiced, you'll note that it's, it's actually quite orange or yellow in color. So actually the other thing I drink a lot of is lemon and ginger juice with a little bit of cayenne and turmeric. So we call this a solar ray at our juice bar. And and again, if you could see the, the color extreme here, very bright yellow with some orange to it with the turmeric and cayenne. But that ginger, that very bright yellow comes with again, its own set of antioxidant properties, anti-inflammatory properties. One of the key ingredients there, one of the key components of ginger when we juice it is ginger roll. So it's that sugar alcohol from the ginger plant and again, creating that ability for chronic inflammation assistance for free radical assistance in reducing oxidative stress and and inflammation. Those things we know, you know, not just for your gut, but we know when you reduce oxidative stress and inflammation. That actually has a dramatic impact on, on mental health. So when you look at the new agents coming down the pike as it relates to treatment for depression and anxiety, a lot of those have nothing to do with traditional serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, the monoamine theory. Most of those actually have GABA or glutamate activity or. Anti-inflammatory. So there are, there are drugs coming down the pike being developed right now for depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions that are actually just anti-inflammatory drugs. And there's some good signs on this already with some traditional antibiotics or anti anti-inflammatory. I'm not trying to make this a psychiatric presentation, but the reality is ginger, along with wheatgrass and these antioxidants, anti-inflammatory, Help to create that environment for, again, resilience, less cell damage because of less oxidative stress and free radicals and anti-inflammatory in nature. So, ginger, wheat grass, I do it every morning. I suggest you consider the same, just given all those microbiome and other properties we've talked about. Another key ingredient we use a lot of at salute is one called acai. So acai berries again. If you think about color palette, very deep, dark, purple color. And with that comes anti-inflammatory antioxidative or antioxidant. So we use a lot of acai e we do acai bowls as part of our the products we offer. So very similar to what I've already talked about, but note that, that, that too can be incredibly impactful. And can be paired together so they're not mutually exclusive. It's okay to do wheatgrass plus ginger and some s i e or turmeric, which can be helpful for blood sugar levels and n GI systems as well as cayenne. So we, we add those things to some of the products too. And then finally just, you know, a little broader picture, looking at just fresh fruits. And, and we've talked about veggies with the wheatgrass, but fresh fruits in general. Berries, citrus fruits, bananas, they're often packed full of other minerals and vitamins are critically important. So b12, folic acid Zinc you know, there's, there's a number of reasons and other positive benefits from just fresh fruits and vegetables that aren't just purely free, radical, or antioxidant nature. We know that folic acid, b12, vitamin C, all vitamin D, all of those things play a critically important role in balancing out your physical and mental health as well. And in fact, we know again scientifically that if you struggle with the folic acid pathway, if you don't convert folic acid to its usable form through a different enzyme that you can actually. Put as much antidepressant as you want in your body, or you can do as much anti-inflammatory antioxidant as you want. But you're not actually able to create new neurotransmitters. So, you know, if you give someone a medication, you're trying to help adjust their serotonin levels and you can't make new neurotransmitters, you can't make new serotonin. I always used to tell patients, it was like you weren't filling up your gas tank, so you know, you could jam on the gas pedal all you want, but if your engine's outta gas, you're not going anywhere. So those, you know, those vitamins and minerals are also critically important. We can't forget about those things. It's not all about just anti-inflammatory or antioxidant. It's also about making sure you have the ability to make the neurotransmitters you need or the micro microbiome, you know, developing some of the factors and hormones that you need as compared to strictly beam. Anti-inflammatory or antioxidant. We know vitamin C is critically important. We know vitamin D is critically important. Again, folic acid, b12, all your B vitamins. And a lot of the products, you know, a lot of the fresh fruits, again, especially the ones that are either quite bright or very dark, tend to come with that. As supplemental to the fact that they often taste great. So the things that you would want to pick out in the produce section tend to be both very healthy for you and taste really good. And so that's part of the reason why juicing is, is so popular anyway, is it's really the ability to get what you need, you know get, get outta your body, what you put into it. As I always say. But do it in a way that you can, you don't have to sacrifice kind of taste or or desire for food or hunger. So again, number of benefits here. I'm, I'm just scratching the surface. There's a whole lot of others and I definitely encourage you to to dig deeper where you want to. The reality is there's so much. That obviously I can't pack that into to one podcast, but so just recapping again, mindset, healthset creating a cleaner environment or fertile environment. A more resilient ecosystem comes with this ability to have anti-inflammatory or comes from creating an environment through anti-inflammatory antioxidant. And then again, providing the nutritional support you need from the vitamins and minerals to truly both create the neurotransmitters and the hormones and the factors you need. And also the pleasure around eating and drinking these things. So in conclusion I just want to point out one more time that I believe very heavily in the idea of you get out of your body, what you put into it, that medication only goes so far. And that's the path I took in my career as a psychiatrist. And that in order for you to be ultimately successful, whether that is as a CEO an entrepreneur. In your personal life, in your professional life you do have to create that foundational mindset and health set. And one of the ways we know you do that scientifically, again, I can provide all sorts of science here, is through getting out of your body what you put into it. And so take that as an opportunity. I, I know we, we focus a lot on New Year, new me. We're far beyond new Year's Eve at this point. But it's never too late to make a change. It's never too late to start adding in healthier alternatives to things that are maybe easier, less healthy and try to turn a corner and create that ecosystem and environment. For resilience and success. So, I'm Dr. Ryan Wakim, successful entrepreneur and your endgame coach. I'm here to teach you how to exist today so that you can expand tomorrow and create the ultimate endgame of your wildest desires. If you like this podcast, please like it, subscribe, share it. Don't hesitate to email or comment. I'm always happy to share my knowledge and experience in the juice health and wellness space specifically as it relates to almost, but more, most specifically as it relates to wheat, grass, and ginger. So, talk to you soon.