Nutrition and Mental Health: An In-Depth Discussion with Dr. David Wiss on ANEW Body Insight

Welcome to the ANEW Body Insight podcast, your go-to resource for optimal health. Hosted by Dr. Supatra Tovar, clinical psychologist, registered dietitian, fitness expert, and author of "Deprogram Diet Culture," alongside Chantal Donnelly, physical therapist and author of "Settled: How to Find Calm in a Stress-Inducing World," we delve into wellness pathways.

In this episode, we welcome Dr. David Wiss, registered dietitian nutritionist (RDN) and founder of Nutrition In Recovery, specializing in eating and substance use disorders. Dr. Wiss, who earned his PhD in Public Health with a minor in Health Psychology from UCLA, is a scientific author, nutrition and health consultant, functional medicine practitioner, recovery coach, and educator.

Learn more about Dr. Wiss and explore his mobile app at Wise Mind Nutrition. For more information, visit Wise Mind Nutrition.

Dr. Wiss shares his journey of overcoming health challenges and his pivot towards nutrition and recovery. His story highlights the transformative power of nutrition and holistic health practices.

Nutrition In Recovery focuses on the intersection of nutrition and mental health, particularly eating and substance use disorders. Dr. Wiss discusses the complex relationship between these disorders, emphasizing a comprehensive and individualized treatment approach. He bridges the gap between traditional eating disorder paradigms and substance use disorder treatments.

Dr. Wiss addresses ultra-processed food addiction and its parallels with substance use disorders, explaining the role of the dopamine system and how early life adversity and trauma can prime individuals for addictive behaviors. His research delves into the neurobiological mechanisms of trauma and its impact on behavior, offering insights into effective therapeutic interventions.

For more about Dr. Wiss’s work, check out his research publications and follow him on his journey to advance the understanding of nutrition and mental health. You can find more about his practice at Wise Mind Nutrition.

Tune in to the ANEW Body Insight podcast on YouTube at @my.anew.insight and on our website at ANEW Body Insight Podcast. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads at @my.anew.insight for updates and more inspiring content.

Remember, the content shared on this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Join us next time and evolve with us on your journey to optimal health.

Contact Dr. David Wiss and explore his resources at Wise Mind Nutrition:

• Website
• Nutrition In Recovery

Stay connected with us for more enlightening conversations and expert insights on the ANEW Body Insight podcast!

Thank you for joining us on this journey to wellness. Remember, the insights and advice shared on the ANEW Body Insight Podcast are for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making any changes to your health routine. To learn more about the podcast and stay updated on new episodes, visit ANEW Body Insight Podcast at anew-insight.com. To watch this episode on YouTube, visit @my.anew.insight. Follow us on social media at @my.anew.insight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads for more updates and insights. Thank you for tuning in! Stay connected with us for more empowering stories and expert guidance. Until next time, stay well and keep evolving with ANEW Body Insight!

Transcript

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Welcome to the ANEW Body Insight podcast,

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empowering and inspiring your journey to optimal health.

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Hosted by Dr. Supatra Tovar, clinical psychologist,

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registered dietitian, fitness expert and author of Deprogram Diet Culture:

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Rethink Your Relationship with Food, Heal Your Mind and Live a Diet-Free Life,

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and Chantal Donnelly, physical therapist and author of Settled:

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How to Find Calm in a Stress Inducing world.

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We follow our guests’ journey to optimal health,

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providing you with the keys to unlock your own wellness path.

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Tune in and evolve with us.

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Hello and welcome to the ANEW Body Insight podcast.

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I am Dr. Supatra Tovar.

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And I am Chantal Donnelly.

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We are very excited to have Registered Dietitian

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Nutritionist, Dr. David Wiss with us today.

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Welcome, Dr. Wiss.

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Thank you and I'm so excited to be here.

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I can't wait to build some energy with the both of you.

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Wonderful.

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Well, I'm going to read a little bit

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about Dr. Wiss and then we'll get right into our questions.

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Dr. David Wiss became a registered dietitian nutritionist

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or RDN in 2013 and founded Nutrition and Recovery, a group practice

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of RDNs specializing in treating eating and substance use disorders.

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He earned his PhD in Public health

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with a minor in Health Psychology from UCLA.

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Dr. Wiss is a scientific author with over

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20 peer reviewed publications, a nutrition and health consultant,

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functional medicine practitioner, recovery coach, and passionate educator.

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Learn more about the intersection of nutrition and mental health at Wise

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Mind Nutrition, where you can explore his revolutionary mobile app.

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Available for download today.

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Welcome Dr. Wiss.

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Thank you so much.

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Wow wow wow wow wow!

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What an impressive bio you have been through quite the journey,

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mostly in the nutritional world.

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got your masters at the University of Northridge

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and also did an internship at UCLA medical center.

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What sparked your passion to get into nutrition?

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Thank you.

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And I think you chose the right word with journey.

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it has been a long, non-linear, exploratory ride.

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And, being a dietitian was not my goal growing up.

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I think I had other aspirations.

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And, I ran into some health challenges in the early 20s, and it's

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so typical people that are nutritionists had their own little journey.

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They got into health,

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they found out how transformative it is and want to tell the whole world about it.

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Right. So I have that a little bit.

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It's true, early 20s, trying to figure out my life,

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struggling with some mental health stuff, some addiction stuff.

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And, took a pretty hard pivot in 2006 and got into,

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fitness and nutrition and sunlight and sleep

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and taking supplements and, you know,

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within a few months, everyone was like, I have no idea who you are.

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I know that I want your help.

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Can you help me?

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And, I was like, sure.

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And I started helping people out of passion, you know,

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and I immediately started working as a trainer and,

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was was hanging out with people that were in recovery, helping people.

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I remember the early days being like, yo, let's go to Whole Foods.

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I'll walk aisle to aisle with you and show you some things, you know,

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and I just wanted to share.

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So it's almost as if the profession chose me.

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I thought about how am I going to pursue this path?

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I've always been passionate about, nutrition, but of course,

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passionate about helping people one on one work recovery.

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And so, yeah, I,

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I explored the possible ways to which I could pursue this avenue

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and registered dietitian nutritionist sort of popped up as a path.

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and yeah, I started pursuing that.

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I had to go back and kind of switch gears and go back to a community college

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and take organic chemistry and biochemistry, and I just started doing

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what was needed to, you know, pursue that path.

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And of course, you know, once I got there,

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you know, there was a there was a lot more to think about.

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And I always knew that I wanted to do more, but I built Nutrition

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In Recovery immediately after finishing my, Masters and dietetic internship,

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because I knew that I wanted to really promote the role of nutrition

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and the role of the registered dietitian nutritionist in mental health settings.

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And I've been doing just that for 11 years, and it's going great.

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I love it, I love that you, you know,

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were inspired by your own journey.

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I think that that's, you know, like many of us, and

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I think you and I have a similar, you know, educational path.

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You got your masters, then you got your PhD and,

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got my master's and got my PsyD.

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So I know that it's a very long road and you have to be so passionate about it.

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I'm curious about your focus on eating and substance

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use disorders, especially with Nutrition In Recovery.

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Can you tell us what you know inspired you

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to choose those two specific disorders,

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and how do you treat that in your group practice?

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Yeah.

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So, you know, I did go through a treatment center,

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you know, and that really, really helped me start over my life.

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And of course, you know, there wasn't a point of view about nutrition there.

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It was sort of like comfort food, convenience food.

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I did I was at a place where

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there was vegetables and whatnot.

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There was like support, but it wasn't supportive per se.

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And I definitely was aware that there was abnormal eating behavior.

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That was like super obvious.

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from my own experience, I'm talking about night eating, binge

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eating. People that are, you know, trying to build muscle body image issues.

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And I saw that there was a very interesting,

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complex intersection between eating and substance use disorders

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that was a little bit different than the traditional eating disorder

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paradigm, right?

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The, you know, mainstream eating disorder model is like very restriction

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focused, very much has certain,

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patterns of,

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clusters of other mental health diagnoses.

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And, you know, the message that I started to,

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to cook up, you know, from, from helping people was, you know, a

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little bit different than the traditional eating disorder message.

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And I, I wanted to bridge the gap between these two fields

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because I saw that they weren't really cooperating with each other.

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And there was very different points of view

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about things like sugar and sugar addiction.

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And there seemed to be this huge split

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where people were looking at the other people like they were crazy,

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they had lost their mind, and there was just this unresolved energy.

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And I found myself sort of in the middle of it

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because I'm doing classic eating disorder work.

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But I'm also teaching nutrition at substance use disorder, facilities.

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And there wasn't a clear message,

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like there wasn't a manualized textbook message that was going to work.

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And so I thought maybe I could help

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develop some of my own messaging.

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And that's really what birthed Nutrition in Recovery and some of the,

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some of the research and publications that I've done to really

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look at things like addiction, like eating, hedonic eating, nutrition

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in recovery from stimulants, you know, the body image issues, all of that stuff.

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And it's a really interesting area.

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And there isn't a lot of empirical research.

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And I really thought that I would, you know, kind of be involved

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in an avalanche of studies.

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And, you know, I've done a few and it's it's slowed down.

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There still isn't really good data on, you know, nutrition interventions

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for addiction recovery.

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And there isn't really good data on co-occurring

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eating and substance use disorder.

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And I think it's because those two fields haven't been very cooperative.

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And so I have a vision for, integration and, and more collaborative work.

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And I'm part of a few organizations that are trying to make some of this

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happen.

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But I think, as you probably know, change is slow change is hard.

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Sometimes it takes a full generation.

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Sometimes you have to wait for the old gatekeepers to move on before

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we can step in.

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And there's, a lot of work we need to do, and I just feel so grateful

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to be a part of it.

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Oh, that's wonderful.

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And I would assume with the, substance use and eating disorder connection

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that the dopamine pathway might have something to do with that.

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If you could just briefly explain that in the simplest terms for our listeners,

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because I think I do get a lot of people

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who have, you know, what they proclaim as food addiction.

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And I do see it very similar to substance use disorders.

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Give our listeners a little picture of what that looks like.

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Yeah.

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Usually there's some sort of a background in early life adversity

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or trauma or PTSD or some other really clear risk factor.

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Right.

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attachment issues, relational ruptures.

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There's some clear risk factor to prime someone for addiction like behaviors.

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Right.

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So sometimes the food comes

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first and people find,

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ultra processed foods or highly palatable foods

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we sometimes call it at a really young age and start over,

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activating the dopamine system as a way of reducing negative affect.

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Right.

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It's a very predictable, very clear path

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to making negative emotionality go away in the short term.

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And so it's not surprising that people become

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emotional eaters or hedonistic eaters, comfort eaters.

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There's so many different terms, but the one that you use is one that I use

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and I, I use it lightly because I know that there's a lot of controversy

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around it, but it's called ultra processed food addiction.

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And it's real. Right?

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And so, yeah, many people find that first

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and then maybe have body image issues related to it, find,

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other substances later on in the teenage years.

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And it becomes this sort of whac-a-mole, as some people call it, where you're able

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to use substances, alcohol, stimulants, and the food noise goes away.

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And then when someone gets sober and they're in treatment,

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the food noise comes back, and that's when all the eating behaviors reemerge.

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So you could use the term, cross addiction.

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I think the phrase self-medication works really well.

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But essentially what happens when someone over exposes themselves

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to a rewarding substance is that it becomes more salient

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and the person will assign it more value as something that is survival

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promoting to help make life feel more manageable.

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And we do see, the opposite, where people don't

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really have any food issues until they get sober.

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So it wasn't like there was a lot of early life sneaky eating in all of that.

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There was alcoholism, turned into, addiction.

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And then when the person got sober, the brain is freaking out and they said,

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where's, where's the regular daily dose of dopamine?

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And it's like, here it is caffeine, nicotine, sugar, ultra processed foods.

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And that can create new problems.

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And I think an early recovery.

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There's some room for some of that. Right.

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Like let's be realistic.

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The brain needs a certain amount of stimulation.

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Right.

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but the question

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that I always posed was like, okay, what about after six months of sobriety?

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What what happens after a year?

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At what point do we reevaluate some of those things?

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So yeah, you're absolutely right.

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A lot of it does have to do with neurochemistry,

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just basic dopaminergic needs.

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And, you know, they at least seem like needs

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because that's the way the brain works.

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But we really know that they're more like wants

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that can be managed through really good counseling and other interventions.

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Yeah.

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It's so amazing to me when I think of addiction, whether it is

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alcohol, food, any kind of of addiction, I think of them as coping strategies

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and as you had mentioned earlier, there's trauma, there's ongoing stress.

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Right. So what tools do you have to cope?

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And if you take away the food tool, is there another healthy tool

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that we've replaced it with,

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or are you going to go to the alcohol and or vice versa, as you were mentioning?

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So to me, it's really about the fact that we haven't given people

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all the proper coping strategies and tools and techniques,

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and I it sounds like you are replacing the food

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with those healthier options to calm the nervous system

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and to deal with the past trauma and the past history.

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People are carrying around with them.

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And so my next question

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actually leads right into that, because I know at UCLA you got your PhD

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and you were researching adverse childhood experiences, also known as ACES.

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and correct me if I'm wrong, ACES

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were originally discovered from scientists who were looking at obesity.

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and, I'm just curious.

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Maybe you can explain to our audience what ACES are first and.

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Yeah, and then maybe what you have found and how you work with them

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and and how that's informed your your practice.

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Yeah. Thank you for the background piece.

00:14:18:08 - 00:14:20:17
I think it's important and not a lot of people know that.

00:14:20:17 - 00:14:24:23
The principal investigator of the Adverse Childhood Experience Studies

00:14:24:23 - 00:14:27:23
Dr. Filletti, prior to implementing

00:14:27:23 - 00:14:30:23
this instrument in the Kaiser system,

00:14:31:07 - 00:14:35:00
noticed that they were involved in a weight management program

00:14:35:00 - 00:14:39:05
and that people who were having

00:14:39:05 - 00:14:43:20
the worst outcomes, dropping out of treatment, gaining weight back

00:14:43:20 - 00:14:48:07
more readily, happened to have a higher level of childhood trauma.

00:14:48:08 - 00:14:48:17
Right.

00:14:48:17 - 00:14:53:12
And I think that was the piece that really kind of gave birth to, wow,

00:14:53:12 - 00:14:56:22
maybe there's more to ACES than just,

00:14:57:23 - 00:15:00:23
social factors ascribed meaning.

00:15:01:01 - 00:15:04:07
But I, I did actually do some pretty deep dives

00:15:04:07 - 00:15:07:23
there, and I learned that it gave birth to this sort of idea

00:15:07:23 - 00:15:10:23
that people were,

00:15:11:17 - 00:15:15:01
regaining the weight as what they called a protective measure,

00:15:15:23 - 00:15:19:14
as a way to prevent future victimization.

00:15:19:22 - 00:15:24:23
And I think this emerged from psychodynamic theories in the 80s and 90s

00:15:24:23 - 00:15:28:02
that people were intentionally gaining weight

00:15:28:02 - 00:15:31:02
back with a history of CSA.

00:15:32:00 - 00:15:35:24
because, right, they didn't want to feel vulnerable.

00:15:35:24 - 00:15:39:17
And I do think that that theory has some really good merit.

00:15:40:14 - 00:15:43:14
and at the time, it seemed like,

00:15:44:18 - 00:15:45:24
the best that they could do.

00:15:45:24 - 00:15:47:20
And I believe it to be true.

00:15:47:20 - 00:15:50:19
But in the last ten years, 15 years,

00:15:50:19 - 00:15:53:19
we've really started to understand how adversity,

00:15:55:04 - 00:15:58:13
different forms of abuse can actually become biologically embedded,

00:15:58:21 - 00:16:02:03
how it can affect the, the nervous system and the immune system

00:16:02:03 - 00:16:05:12
and actually change the brain, change the reward pathways.

00:16:05:12 - 00:16:08:12
And and so when I did a initial dive

00:16:08:19 - 00:16:11:19
on the background of this sort of ace

00:16:12:02 - 00:16:15:12
BMI link, it seemed to be lacking.

00:16:15:12 - 00:16:19:09
And understanding of the biological mechanisms, right of trauma

00:16:19:09 - 00:16:24:09
and how that can prime someone for addictions and addiction-like eating.

00:16:24:14 - 00:16:28:07
One of the huge findings from the original ACE, research from

00:16:28:07 - 00:16:33:11
Kaiser San Diego was, you know, that people that had four or more ACES

00:16:33:15 - 00:16:37:10
were like 5 to 10 times more likely, and had a higher,

00:16:37:20 - 00:16:42:07
than odds ratios to use illicit drugs to inject drugs, etc..

00:16:42:15 - 00:16:46:12
And so based on this psychodynamic theory

00:16:46:19 - 00:16:50:10
that I think I heard a lot of my clients and patients say, I remember

00:16:50:10 - 00:16:52:21
asking one of them, I was like, do you believe that? That's true?

00:16:52:21 - 00:16:55:16
And they were like, no, I don't, my therapist told me.

00:16:55:16 - 00:16:59:21
And so I've internalized it for many, many years, and I'm sure it's true.

00:16:59:21 - 00:17:01:14
I believe it to be a good theory.

00:17:01:14 - 00:17:02:20
I'm just saying it's incomplete.

00:17:02:20 - 00:17:04:12
And it became mainstream.

00:17:04:12 - 00:17:08:04
And, I started to think, well, if ACES

00:17:08:12 - 00:17:13:08
are such a strong predictor of illicit drug use and there's biology there,

00:17:13:18 - 00:17:18:12
why wouldn't we be able to transfer that model using a food addiction model

00:17:18:16 - 00:17:21:15
and start to look at how ACES predict,

00:17:22:18 - 00:17:23:07
hedonic

00:17:23:07 - 00:17:27:19
eating, loss of control eating, and the mechanisms from substance

00:17:27:19 - 00:17:32:04
use disorder and addiction like eating are the same, right?

00:17:32:18 - 00:17:34:24
It's the meso-limbic dopaminergic projection,

00:17:34:24 - 00:17:36:19
Yeah, it's the same pathway.

00:17:36:19 - 00:17:38:01
Right. Amen.

00:17:38:01 - 00:17:40:07
Right. Exactly. Crystal clear story.

00:17:40:07 - 00:17:40:20
Yeah.

00:17:40:20 - 00:17:45:14
And, you know, I did a systematic review meta analysis on ACES and BMI.

00:17:45:14 - 00:17:49:13
And, you know, one of the things we did in the systematic review process was

00:17:49:19 - 00:17:53:00
just see what the authors kind of

00:17:53:12 - 00:17:56:00
used to explain why ACES.

00:17:56:00 - 00:18:00:17
Why do people think ACES lead to an increase in BMI over the lifespan?

00:18:01:00 - 00:18:04:00
And, you know, of course, we were trying to figure out what,

00:18:04:10 - 00:18:07:12
you know, perspectives people were adding to the field.

00:18:07:12 - 00:18:11:17
And of course, like, you know, there's a lot of, you know, obviously,

00:18:11:20 - 00:18:13:21
this is a perfect example of

00:18:13:21 - 00:18:16:20
if you want to study something, you have to look at the biology,

00:18:16:20 - 00:18:20:04
the mechanisms, you have to look at all the psychological factors.

00:18:20:04 - 00:18:22:08
And then of course, the social determinants of health.

00:18:22:08 - 00:18:26:02
People that have a lot of ACES also tend to live in lower income neighborhoods

00:18:26:10 - 00:18:30:07
and have right less access to groceries and unsafe parks.

00:18:30:07 - 00:18:34:12
Like, there's so many different ways that one could approach this type of thinking.

00:18:34:20 - 00:18:36:18
And, you know, I'm very fortunate to have training

00:18:36:18 - 00:18:39:18
that allows me to think in all of the different ways.

00:18:39:20 - 00:18:42:20
But I did take particular interest in the biology.

00:18:43:01 - 00:18:46:23
How do how does trauma change the human body

00:18:47:05 - 00:18:51:08
to make someone more susceptible to impulsivity,

00:18:51:15 - 00:18:55:07
loss of control and self-medication through substance use?

00:18:55:07 - 00:18:57:10
And, you know, we have a lot of mechanisms,

00:18:57:10 - 00:18:59:14
and I don't know how deep you guys want to go into that.

00:18:59:14 - 00:19:00:12
But, you know, it's

00:19:00:12 - 00:19:03:24
and we got the nervous system, the HPA access, the immune system.

00:19:04:05 - 00:19:06:07
We've got gut microbiota.

00:19:06:07 - 00:19:09:07
We've got Amygdala.

00:19:09:13 - 00:19:13:08
changes its structural functional morphological changes in the brain,

00:19:14:08 - 00:19:16:15
executive functioning.

00:19:16:15 - 00:19:17:23
it's it's it's rich.

00:19:17:23 - 00:19:22:13
It's a deep, deep area of study how trauma affects biology and how biology

00:19:22:13 - 00:19:26:09
affects behavior, and then how behavior creates a feedback loop.

00:19:26:18 - 00:19:27:23
And it's fascinating.

00:19:27:23 - 00:19:32:06
And it's really, you know, ripe for investigators to do some really good work.

00:19:33:00 - 00:19:37:20
Well, speaking of really good work, and I support your research there

00:19:37:20 - 00:19:41:00
and can attest to seeing the effects

00:19:41:00 - 00:19:45:02
of trauma on my clients, especially the ones who suffer

00:19:45:02 - 00:19:48:22
from eating disorder, disordered eating, substance use.

00:19:49:05 - 00:19:52:01
Yes, yes. Amen to all of that.

00:19:52:01 - 00:19:55:01
You also have a wealth of research

00:19:55:01 - 00:19:58:16
that you have conducted since you started school.

00:19:58:21 - 00:20:04:00
Can you give us some, you know, just highlights something that will,

00:20:04:06 - 00:20:09:06
you know, pepper the audience to want to go and look into your research?

00:20:09:06 - 00:20:12:10
Well, what are some of the the highlights of your research?

00:20:12:18 - 00:20:13:13
Yeah, thanks.

00:20:13:13 - 00:20:18:22
I think that it's worth mentioning that when I was in, school at UCLA and studying

00:20:18:23 - 00:20:23:04
community health sciences, there wasn't there wasn't a faculty there

00:20:23:04 - 00:20:27:15
that was privy to nutrition or nutrition for mental health.

00:20:27:23 - 00:20:31:09
So I had to do a lot of that on my own with,

00:20:31:16 - 00:20:34:12
you know, people from other universities.

00:20:34:12 - 00:20:37:13
I have my own little team of collaborators,

00:20:37:13 - 00:20:40:13
and a lot of that was like, outside of my PhD.

00:20:40:19 - 00:20:44:06
It was more like what I did clinically and my passion project.

00:20:44:06 - 00:20:49:16
So I was doing ACE research, as part of my dissertation.

00:20:49:23 - 00:20:51:09
And there is several studies

00:20:51:09 - 00:20:54:09
linking depression, anxiety and other mental health outcomes.

00:20:54:15 - 00:20:58:11
But the work, my passion work has really been on

00:20:59:00 - 00:21:04:06
conceptualizing cases where people have food addiction

00:21:04:16 - 00:21:08:06
and an eating disorder, and trying to understand

00:21:08:14 - 00:21:13:10
using temporal sequencing and using a history of ACES and adversity

00:21:13:18 - 00:21:18:22
on how best to intervene from a therapeutic and nutritional,

00:21:20:06 - 00:21:21:04
point of view.

00:21:21:04 - 00:21:25:20
So there was a study called the DEFANG, which was like the early days, 2016,

00:21:25:20 - 00:21:30:06
I believe it was, the Disordered Eating Food Addiction Nutrition guide,

00:21:30:13 - 00:21:34:19
which helped people understand that there was a continuum,

00:21:34:19 - 00:21:39:02
a spectrum that it wasn't just like it's either this diagnosis or this, that people

00:21:39:02 - 00:21:42:14
fall in these gray areas and we have to think in

00:21:42:14 - 00:21:45:15
these non binary ways if we want to treat our patients.

00:21:45:24 - 00:21:49:05
Too many people learned like this is how we do it over here.

00:21:49:10 - 00:21:52:06
This is the approach or this is the food philosophy.

00:21:52:06 - 00:21:52:23
And I've always been

00:21:52:23 - 00:21:55:23
the guy that says, throw all the food philosophies out the window

00:21:56:01 - 00:21:59:03
and try to think about the person that's right in front of you

00:21:59:03 - 00:22:02:12
and do a really good timeline, figure out their life history.

00:22:02:12 - 00:22:05:12
And so the DEFANG was the first paper to think about

00:22:05:12 - 00:22:08:17
how one might think about nutrition interventions

00:22:08:22 - 00:22:13:22
when there are, substance use disorders, eating disorders and other addictions.

00:22:14:06 - 00:22:17:00
And then, you know, it was missing the trauma link.

00:22:17:00 - 00:22:20:00
And so there's a there's an actual case study in there.

00:22:20:12 - 00:22:24:04
and then, you know, a couple of years later, we added to

00:22:24:04 - 00:22:27:14
that in the paper is called Separating the Signal From the Noise

00:22:27:20 - 00:22:30:09
how psychiatric diagnoses can help discern,

00:22:31:18 - 00:22:34:18
food addiction from dietary restraint.

00:22:34:24 - 00:22:37:23
the major criticism of food addiction in the eating

00:22:37:23 - 00:22:41:06
disorder world is that it doesn't adjust for people's dieting behaviors.

00:22:41:06 - 00:22:44:08
It doesn't control for someone being underweight

00:22:44:08 - 00:22:47:09
or being very restrictive or having a lot of rules.

00:22:47:18 - 00:22:52:06
So we, yeah, we built a eight step process

00:22:52:12 - 00:22:56:00
to help people figure out if it's more likely to be addiction,

00:22:56:08 - 00:22:59:21
or if it's more likely to be restriction and what to do about it.

00:22:59:23 - 00:23:00:16
Right.

00:23:00:16 - 00:23:03:16
And that was a really meaningful contribution.

00:23:03:16 - 00:23:07:10
And, you know, I've since I've been building on that work,

00:23:08:03 - 00:23:11:03
we've done, some intervention work

00:23:11:09 - 00:23:15:07
using lower carbohydrate, approaches with,

00:23:16:05 - 00:23:21:02
social support, group therapy for treating addiction like eating and,

00:23:21:13 - 00:23:24:24
yeah, more recently, I, during the pandemic, I collected data

00:23:24:24 - 00:23:26:02
in my own private practice.

00:23:26:02 - 00:23:30:17
So I got out an IRB and just started doing my own research for my own clinical

00:23:30:17 - 00:23:34:11
practice, which is, you know, something I'm very proud of to be able to do

00:23:34:22 - 00:23:39:21
the entire process from the collection to the statistics to the writing.

00:23:40:06 - 00:23:43:16
And, yeah, I have a few papers that are,

00:23:44:24 - 00:23:48:05
in review 1 or 2 that just got published and more coming,

00:23:48:10 - 00:23:51:10
but it really is along the similar lines of thinking about

00:23:51:13 - 00:23:54:11
ACES and,

00:23:54:11 - 00:23:57:14
ultra processed food consumption, eating disorders,

00:23:57:22 - 00:24:02:07
food addiction, and like, which one is coming first?

00:24:02:14 - 00:24:04:04
What's the stronger signal?

00:24:04:04 - 00:24:08:00
So I done some structural equation modeling, which is basically mediation

00:24:08:00 - 00:24:10:01
analysis using all the variables together.

00:24:10:01 - 00:24:12:04
And yeah, I'm really excited to share,

00:24:12:04 - 00:24:15:04
that that what the world should be coming real soon.

00:24:15:20 - 00:24:18:20
Your fancy, your fancy.

00:24:20:21 - 00:24:23:00
I had a lot of late nights at the computer

00:24:23:00 - 00:24:26:00
being very unwell, if you want to know the truth.

00:24:26:23 - 00:24:31:08
picky and fancy and, yeah, a little, dedicated and persistent.

00:24:31:08 - 00:24:32:21
Right.

00:24:32:21 - 00:24:34:10
That's all the good side of it.

00:24:34:10 - 00:24:37:07
Yeah, my wife knows the dark side.

00:24:37:07 - 00:24:39:22
The wife always knows the dark side.

00:24:39:22 - 00:24:41:10
Definitely.

00:24:41:10 - 00:24:46:01
Well, we're a little bit short on time for this half of this podcast.

00:24:46:01 - 00:24:50:20
We haven't even gotten to all of our questions for this half, but this was.

00:24:50:22 - 00:24:52:21
Juicy enough, I think, though.

00:24:52:21 - 00:24:58:15
Oh, you've got a wealth of information and I certainly can relate to your approach.

00:24:58:21 - 00:25:02:12
I do think it has to be an individualized approach.

00:25:02:12 - 00:25:06:23
You can't, just apply a model and have everybody fit into that.

00:25:06:23 - 00:25:10:16
And you certainly can't just stick anybody into these diagnoses.

00:25:10:16 - 00:25:11:19
I always find

00:25:11:19 - 00:25:15:20
that there is a continuum, a gradient, and we should be aware of that.

00:25:16:11 - 00:25:17:20
that's why I don't diagnose

00:25:17:20 - 00:25:21:17
until I absolutely have to, because I feel like that just pigeonholes

00:25:21:17 - 00:25:25:07
somebody into a category that they may not completely fit into.

00:25:25:16 - 00:25:28:10
So I do appreciate all of your research.

00:25:28:10 - 00:25:31:13
We are going to take a break, and then we'll be coming back

00:25:31:13 - 00:25:35:07
next week for the second half of this amazing interview,

00:25:35:21 - 00:25:40:04
with Dr. David Wiss, and we will return next time.

00:25:40:04 - 00:25:42:07
Thank you so much for joining us.

00:25:44:05 - 00:25:48:03
Thanks for tuning into the ANEW Body Insight podcast.

00:25:48:10 - 00:25:51:22
Please remember, the content shared on this podcast is for entertainment

00:25:51:22 - 00:25:54:24
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00:25:55:09 - 00:25:56:11
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