New Leaf Functional Nutrition

10/27/2026

And nutritionists too….

The dietary lipids you consume directly dictate the structural integrity of your neural membranes and synapses. That makes walnuts a superfood for the brain, heart, and gut.

Walnuts are rich in alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), a plant-based omega-3 fatty acid, polyphenols that reduce oxidative stress, and prebiotic fibers that feed your microbiome. Adding a daily handful of walnuts is an easy way to protect your health. https://www.realsimple.com/best-nut-for-brain-heart-gut-health-12008618

10/27/2026

Vitamin D deficiency is a major epidemic that is off the radar for most doctors and public health officials. ⁣
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Most doctors think that if you don’t have rickets you don’t have vitamin D deficiency. They couldn’t be more wrong. Most ask what is the minimum dosage to avoid rickets? Answer: 400 international units (IU) a day. ⁣
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But the real questions to ask are: how much were we designed to have and how much do we need to be healthy? It depends. If you have a deficiency, you might need somewhere between 5,000 to 10,000 IU a day. Others need about 2,000 to 2500. However, It's best to work with a Functional Medicine practitioner to determine how much vitamin D you need.⁣
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Amazing things start to happen when my patients’ vitamin D statuses reach optimal levels. Having witnessed these changes, there’s no doubt in my mind: vitamin D is an incredible asset to your health.⁣

10/27/2026

These are my favorites too! Everyone can benefit from foundation nutrition 👏👏

Even with a perfect diet, the combination of many things –including our depleted soils, the storage and transportation of our food, genetic alterations of traditional heirloom species, and the increased stress and nutritional demands resulting from a toxic environment – make it impossible for us to get the vitamins and minerals we need solely from the foods we eat.

Simply put, the evidence shows we cannot get away from the need for nutritional supplements.

Doctors used to think you got all your vitamins and minerals from food. Any extra nutrients were excreted, or worse, became toxic. But the tide is shifting.

Doctors now prescribe over one billion dollars in fish oil supplements. Most cardiologists recommend folate, fish oil, and coenzyme Q10. Gastroenterologists recommend probiotics. Obstetricians have always recommended prenatal vitamins.

Emerging scientific evidence shows the importance of nutrients as essential helpers in our biochemistry and metabolism. They are the oil that greases the wheels of our metabolism. And large-scale deficiencies of nutrients in our population – including omega-3 fats, vitamin D, folate, zinc, magnesium, and iron – have been well documented in extensive government-sponsored research.

Be sure to pick quality supplements. Think of them as part of your diet. You want the best-quality food and the best-quality supplements you can buy.

Guidance from a trained dietitian, nutritionist, or nutritionally oriented physician or health care practitioner can be helpful in selecting the products that are right for you.

10/26/2026

Taking 10 grams of creatine a day with no workouts and no diet program added about 1.1 kg (2.4 lb) of lean tissue in 12 weeks in adults aged 45 to 65, and their bench press strength rose with it.

Creatine is best supported alongside resistance training, and in 22 trials of 721 older adults, creatine taken during training added 1.37 kg more lean tissue than training alone. A 2024 analysis of 143 trials found that creatine raised body weight by about 0.86 kg whether or not people exercised, yet fat-free mass rose significantly only when it was paired with training, and the authors noted that part of the gain may be water. That caveat has a basis, since a month of creatine raised total body water in a trial that measured it directly with deuterium.

Those studies left open whether creatine alone adds lean tissue as people age. In the new trial, 73 adults aged 45 to 65 chose either a 12-week exercise and weight-loss diet program or no program, and within each choice they were randomly assigned, double-blind, to 10 g of creatine a day or a placebo. DXA scans tracked body composition, and 13 people finished in each no-exercise group.

1. Without exercise or diet, the creatine group gained 0.99 kg of lean tissue by week 6 and 1.1 kg by week 12, while the placebo group changed by minus 0.16 kg.
2. Maximal bench press strength improved more on creatine than on placebo, even though neither group trained.
3. Blood creatinine rose 6 to 8% with creatine, an expected effect that can make standard kidney function estimates look lower.

Taken together, creatine alone produced a real difference from placebo, but the pattern fits extra water and stored creatine at least as well as new muscle. Ninety percent of the gain appeared by week 6 and barely grew afterward, the creatine group also ate more calories and carbohydrate, and DXA counts water as lean tissue. In the exercise and diet groups, creatine users gained 1.27 kg of lean tissue versus 0.14 kg on placebo. If muscle and strength are the goal, pair creatine with resistance training, expect about a kilogram on the scale, and mention it to your doctor before blood work.

The no-exercise groups were small, and the creatine gain had a wide confidence interval of 0.2 to 2.0 kg. Exercise status was self-chosen, but creatine versus placebo was randomized within each choice, so the key comparison holds. The trial was registered about nine months after enrollment began, and body water was not measured, so the study cannot say how much of the gain was muscle.

References
Chun J et al., Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2026
Chilibeck PD et al., Open Access Journal of Sports Medicine, 2017
Pashayee-Khamene F et al., Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2024
Powers ME et al., Journal of Athletic Training, 2003

10/26/2026

We know that an impaired gut microbiome can be triggered by a number of things. ⁣⁣⁣
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These include a high-sugar, high-fat, low-fiber diet; impaired immunity; use of drugs, like antibiotics, birth control pills, and estrogen; and psychological stress.⁣⁣⁣
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Refined grains, and highly processed foods convert to sugar when we eat them and SUGAR is what FEEDS the bad bacteria. Anti-inflammatory medications, acid-blockers and antibiotics have been proven to lower the biodiversity of the gut flora. ⁣⁣⁣
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A study published in Clinical Microbiology and Infection showed that the biodiversity was significantly lower in the participants taking more than one of these medications. ⁣⁣⁣
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The great news is that the gut microbiome can be healed. ⁣⁣⁣
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You can start healing your gut by first removing the bad and adding in the good stuff. ⁣⁣⁣
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Good bacteria love healthy whole, organic, plant-based foods, ones that are high in fiber and nutrients and contain no artificial ingredients. ⁣⁣⁣
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Focus on fibrous foods such as cruciferous vegetables, berries, garlic, onions, lentils, nuts and seeds, avocado oil, and olive oil. And supplement with probiotics. ⁣

10/25/2026

10/23/2026

You can create fiber inside food that didn't have it before. The trigger is temperature.

When you cook starchy food, water enters the starch granules and the long amylose and amylopectin chains unfold. This is gelatinization, and it's why hot rice, hot pasta, and hot mashed potato are so easy for your body to digest. The chains are loose, exposed, and your digestive enzymes break them down within minutes. Your blood sugar rises fast.

When you cool that same cooked starch, the chains do something interesting. They realign and partially recrystallize into a tightly ordered structure called retrograded starch. Your digestive enzymes can't break the crystals as efficiently. The starch reaches your colon largely intact, where your gut bacteria ferment it into short-chain fatty acids including butyrate. Resistant starch is especially butyrogenic compared to other fibers. The FDA and AOAC classify retrograded starch (resistant starch type 3) as dietary fiber for nutrition labeling purposes. Same molecule. Different physical structure. Different physiology.
The numbers across foods:

White rice (Sonia et al., 2015, Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition). Researchers measured resistant starch in three preparations: freshly cooked, cooked and cooled at room temperature for 10 hours, and cooked and refrigerated at 4°C for 24 hours then reheated. Resistant starch went from 0.64 g per 100 g (fresh) to 1.30 g (room temp cooled) to 1.65 g (refrigerated and reheated). The clinical follow-up was a randomized crossover in 15 healthy adults. The cooled-and-reheated rice produced a meaningfully lower glucose response than the freshly cooked rice. Same calories, same ingredients.

Potato (Larder et al., 2018, Food Research International). Boiled potatoes cooled for 24 hours at 4°C had up to 114% more resistant starch than potatoes cooled for one hour at room temperature. The exact magnitude varies by cultivar.

Pasta (Hodges et al., 2019, Foods). Randomized crossover comparing freshly cooked pasta, cold pasta, and reheated pasta. Reheated pasta produced a smaller and faster-resolving glucose curve than freshly cooked pasta. The mechanism is the same starch retrogradation that happens in rice and potato.

A few honest caveats. First, "your enzymes can't break the crystals" is a simplification. Pancreatic amylase has reduced activity against retrograded starch but isn't blocked entirely. Some still gets digested. The functional shift is meaningful, not absolute. Second, the magnitude of the cooling effect varies by food, by cultivar, by cooking method, and by cooling time and temperature. Longer cooling at lower temperatures (24 hours at 4°C beats 10 hours at room temperature) produces more retrogradation. Third, repeated extreme reheating can partially reverse retrogradation, but normal microwave or stovetop reheating does not.

Practical implication. If you eat rice, pasta, or potatoes regularly, cooking a batch and refrigerating overnight before reheating roughly doubles the resistant starch content of the same food. Your post-meal glucose response is lower. Your colon gets more butyrate. The fiber on the nutrition label is what was in the raw ingredients. The fiber you actually consume depends on how you cooked and stored the food before eating it.
Same food. Different temperature history. Different physiology.

Sonia et al., Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2015
Hodges et al., Foods, 2019
Larder et al., Food Research International, 2018