Mi Gente Presente with Karla Salinari

We speak with Karla Salinari, the Latina Health Coach, about how to use food as medicine and to EAT with a PURPOSE.

Website: www.karlasalinari.com/

IG: @thelatinahealthcoach

Facebook: TheLatinaHealthCoach

Transcript:

you know we in puerto rico use an amazing array of vegetables and spices and herbs that are so anti-inflammatory so amazing why not use them to serve the purpose of improving our health and people are like wow this is amazing right it's about providing the knowledge for people and then saying hey try it

and the best part of today is it's our 50th episode so oh that's amazing we are celebrating thank you for choosing me guys that's amazing thank you and dr sagar doesn't know what poppy shampoo is but he's he's poppy shampoo poppy shampoo is that a puppy shampoo i don't know what papi shampoo is poppy is like little like little poppy papita what were you talking about poppy shampoo all right i'll let somebody else explain it to you but welcome back good people recommended daily dose i am dr clinton coleman along with dr sarat sagar aka papi shampoo poppy shampoo that's right now if you're listening or watching please make sure to subscribe rate and review we have a great guest today carla salinari she's a holistic health coach based in brooklyn new york she is the creator of flip box as seen on nbc she helps women and men i hope overcome fear anxiety confusion around eating welcome how are you carla hi welcome happy new year thank you for being here thank you for having me thank you so much now you have to tell us what a holistic health coach does that that's an interesting concept how did you get involved in that and what led you to to do this a holistic health coach is a coach that sees food as medicine that sees food as a way to heal to nourish the body to help reduce inflammation to help just kind of heal the body improve relationships with food through kind of like a holistic approach right just just that kind of using food as their friend versus um kind of following a script in order just strictly to lose weight or to really uh reduce cholesterol so it's improving their relationship with food that way do you think that's something that we we got out of that we used to do because that sounds like really opposite polar opposite of what physicians do now it's more about medicine but it sounds like you know food has been always should be medicine i think you've probably gotten away and gotten away from that absolutely i think it's going back to our roots right we're going back to the way that our ancestors used to eat it's going back to our the way that our ancestors used to treat the root cause of issues um that we would have to deal with before right and and of course i'm in front of two doctors which we owe so much to um but i think that having a more helpful some more than others

in combination with medicine and all the advances that have been brought you know to the table with western medicine i think it's a wonderful way to improve overall health and wellness right i think that you know we go to doctors because we need help we need quick help and it's also important to treat the root cause of the issues and that's where a holistic health coach like me would come in and kind of help you guys the physicians help your patients thrive so that they're not dependent on medications for the rest of their lives are you working with other healthcare providers physicians nurses what have you are you working directly with patients or clients or both so i think that it's a little bit of both um the way that it works usually is i'll have um someone reach out to me um through reference through word of mouth and they'll say it usually it usually always happens the same way they'll come to me and say i want to lose 40 pounds right or i want to lose 30 pounds or i want to get back to my pre-baby weight which is usually the script and then it always turns into so much more than that it's i have an unhealthy relationship with food which usually might translate into there's um some type of food sensibility or some food allergy and then i will then say well have you seen a physician that specializes in x y and z and then it usually turns into me referring them to a specialist that i know about or someone that we've worked together in finding and then that specialist will then know that that my client is working with me and then we'll work side by side in helping them reach whatever goals they're trying to reach which is usually not anything like what they came to me when we first met first met right right so then it becomes about reducing inflammation it becomes about you know understanding how food affects their body it becomes about improving their sleep it becomes about you know reducing how much sugar they're consuming so it becomes completely different and um it just so happens that because i'm latina i'm puerto rican um i see such a huge disconnect right i mean that's what led me on this journey myself this is what you know this is what my story is i i gained 82 pounds when i was pregnant with my daughter after i came home from the hospital i had no idea how i was going to take the weight off without you know going on some ridiculous unsustainable juice cleanse or some cabbage diet or some ridiculous diet that as we know long term is never going to work and you know i decided to go to nutrition school i decided to just understand you know i said this isn't working something you know something's got to give what is it that's going to work and in doing the research for myself i had so many aha moments and i knew that i had to help other people because like myself there were so many other men women out there that you know in mostly the latin community could benefit from everything that i was learning too and here we are right and sure and not only that we're being faced with such this pandemic right where doctors like yourselves i mean we were just talking about this how you guys have been slammed with so much work right in the epicenter of of this crazy pandemic and you know you're you're relying on us to stay home and stay healthy but what does that mean a lot of a lot of people don't understand improve your immune system right what does that mean how do you do that well through a natural diet through understanding how you're feeding yourself right and that's what us holistic health coaches do and this is what we're promoting so that's an incredible background by the way and i think clint and i both want to dive in multiple aspects of what you spoke so i'm going to ask one question that we can just go back and forth but that's really a fantastic overview um i noticed you mentioned the word relationship quite a bit i think it's because how people look at it so i wonder like are you you know a lot of people say they eat for emotional gain you know um clinton when he gets very nervous he'll eat a whole bucket of popeye's chicken and i told him not to but that's an emotional you know issue here but i like what you really what you said and i'll tell you as a health care provider as a physician we you know don't necessarily have time or our training to do this where we tell people that no yes food sustains you but you know you have to look at it separately it's not just something i do three times a day not something that i do when i'm bored or my boyfriend or my girlfriend breaks up with me or when i'm emotionally upset or whatever it might be or i need a sugar high so i like what you said about relationship but how do you get that point across that you know food is medicine hey look at is every time you eat it's an opportunity to infuse your body with something good you know and and and to take a step forward and it's an opportunity you know not just to fill your face full of potato chips or whatever so i like the idea of relationship but how do we get that idea across you know to people sure so one of the ways that i tell my clients is this look at a plate of food and ask yourself how does this serve my purpose right so you look at your plate and you say there's no such thing as good or bad food right if you if you flip the script if you change the narrative and you look at your plate and you say how does this food serve me right so i'm not telling you don't eat your popeye's chicken right but if you're looking to improve your health if you're looking to reduce your cholesterol if you're looking to improve diabetes and all that stuff you're going to choose differently by nature right so it'll make you make better choices in the morning so i'll tell my clients if you're looking to have sustained energy better mental focus improve your digestive system you're not going to choose a bagel with cream cheese why as you guys know better than anybody else you're gonna spike your incident levels you're gonna be hungry in three hours what are you gonna do you're gonna look for something else that's sugary not only does that apply to you but it applies to the kids right and we can talk about this as it as it relates to remote learning and all that stuff in a little bit yeah so you're spiking sugar spiking sugar spiking sugar it's not don't eat the bagel every once in a while if it's something that you really enjoy but if you choose foods purposefully right you make better choices right because you understand how that meal is going to affect you so if you understand that you're spiking your sugar levels if you choose a bagel versus scrambled eggs with a piece of avocado some kale and a drizzle of olive oil not only is that going to serve as an anti-inflammatory meal it's going to keep you full longer it's going to protect your digestive system and it's going to it's going to um protect your immune system so what are you going to choose the bagel or the eggs right i think a lot of people don't have anything right they don't they're not enabled but they don't have that instead of knowledge well what's what's the disconnect though right like uh i think i don't i don't know the answer but you think that um people focus on the pleasure of food more so than anything because if you treat it like medications you wouldn't take a medication if it wasn't serving a purpose right you wouldn't take a high blood pressure medication to treat your diabetes or you wouldn't take a pill at all if it wasn't beneficial to you so i think that analogy would apply to medicine but why do you think that it's such a barrier for people to feel that way about food when we know it's such a beneficial thing to eat healthy it's in my opinion it's the lack of education right so it in and also and and this has been my experience and i hear it time and time again we have the wonderful world of google we have the wonderful world of the internet instagram facebook and all that stuff people are incredibly overwhelmed there's a wealth of information there's so much knowledge people are incredibly overwhelmed and what do they do they shut down it's too much information i don't know what to choose i don't know what's good for me it's not that difficult right but there is that lack of information right there that people are not making it easy for other people to understand so for me that's why i took the route of the latina health coach which is how you can find me out there on social media instagram and facebook i simplify that for you i take traditional latin flavors traditional latin recipes and i turn them plant-based and i explain to you why it's purposeful to eat this way for example during the holidays i shared a bunch of traditional puerto rican christmas recipes and i made them better i upgraded them i like to use the term upgrade because i feel like people can relate to them so it's not about giving up the gandule which is the rice and the pigeon peas right it's about upgrading them you know we in puerto rico use an amazing array of vegetables and spices and herbs that are so anti-inflammatory so amazing why not use them to serve the purpose of improving our health and people are like wow this is amazing right it's about providing the knowledge for people and then saying hey try it what's the worst that can happen you get a mushy rice big freaking deal do you know what i mean like it's not like you're going out there and you're buying all of these things and it's so expensive it's not it's out there let's go back to basics let's make that chicken noodle soup and take the benefits of that collagen it helps your hair your skin and your nails isn't that what your great-grandmother used to do when you weren't feeling that great right yeah eat with purpose nourish your body and what about that's fantastic but uh so you know going one step further specifically as a latina as a puerto rican um so are you looking at maybe taking traditional foods and you know saying okay we can use more because i noticed you mentioned plant-based so i know certain cultures are more uh meat-based uh cultures right uh you know my background is from india it's a it's very much a uh you know not a meat heavy you know and i'm a pescatarian but a lot of people say well that's how i grew up my grandmother made this you know oxtail whatever you know i think it's more of a dominican dish but i know it's all throughout the caribbean uh curry goat whatever it might be so are you looking to change the way they eat from going less meat to more plant but still incorporating traditional in your case puerto rican um flavors spices etc or are you trying to get them to change completely because i i think that's a problem we see you know in the africa we have a lot of different ethnicities obviously here african-american puerto rican indian you want people are hard to break habits of things they're used to right so if you tell them to completely change how they eat and they're used to eating how their parents their grandparents and culturally how they were taught that becomes very difficult what i like what you're saying is that you you take traditional flavors of your ethnicity and just use them in a more healthy uh healthy manner yes no i don't want anybody to feel like i'm telling you stop eating i am super vegetarian my five-year-old is strictly vegetarian my husband is a carnivore right right you know we eat very differently in this house but our objective is the same we eat whole foods high quality foods that nourish the body so when you go and then you find the latina health coach the reason that i chose to promote plant-based recipes is because i want to bring you back to reminding you right and and i'm and i'm going to explain to you why i say reminding you i want to remind you about all of these traditional spices and and and a new doctor coming from an indian background i mean there are so many amazing spices right turmeric black pepper cardamom that are incredibly healing right and nourishing america especially very anti-inflammatory i love chicken exactly exactly in the combination of turmeric and black pepper right um it it's so good healing and so anti-inflammatory when you mix those two together so this is a perfect example so it's not about telling you don't eat the meat it's about reminding you about all of these vegetables all of these fruits all of these spices and how to reintroduce them if you choose to pair them with with animal protein that's great but let me remind you that animal protein isn't the only protein it's one of the many proteins that you can consume so when you come to me i i provide plant-based ideas if you want to go to another holistic health coach then maybe they want to provide with i don't know gluten-free paleo or whatever i think that that's the difference but in no way shape or form am i trying to convince my audience to go plant-based it's just a way to come to me for more plant-based options now now dr sagar is often confused with the dominican telemundo host but i am i have the same high cheekbones actually but for someone

for someone i guess in particular of the latin necks dealing with those types of patients you know we see a lot of these cultural barriers are there any recommendations for doctors or healthcare providers when dealing with patients who don't look like them as far as i'm recommending health and wellness tips without i guess imposing on uh you know i don't say cultural restrictions but on cultural norms or cultural sensibilities you know there's a trust issue and you can dive into how covet affects that but we know it's certain that you know certain people are have a distrust of of physicians uh they've been uh perhaps not treated in a proper way in the past right um so we talk a lot about our show about you know racism public health issues all these things but we know that early but sorry i'd like to cut you off no i'm just saying you know we're talking about kobe and clinton will jump in but we know covet specifically has hit the hispanic community in latin uh community especially in northern new jersey in new york tri-state area disproportionately hard you know so we feel like there's definitely a need for more outreach uh more targeted outreach in these communities but you know as physicians we get trained for culture competency things like that but you know i think we can learn a lot kind of the way you approach your patients but just uh simple things like um not necessarily covert related but say i want to lower someone's carbohydrate intake and rice is a staple or ice or even pasta is the staple in their culture that's i find that very difficult to address and change right probably because i don't understand like you know what's culturally acceptable or what the cultural norm is do you have any recommendations for doctors to address those particular things i i think and and and this is my recommendation to to all of the physicians out there i think that it's important that you guys all have culturally diverse health coaches that you guys work with um i think that it goes hand in hand and i think that it's that it we want to help our people thrive right i want to help my people thrive and you know i am currently doing a series on telemundo that um here locally in new york channel 47 that is helping this entire week um how can we help our community lower inflammation and help improve the immune system through budget-friendly meals right like and the way that we're doing it is um you know post christmas and how can we do this and and one of the things that i keep in mind is budget friendly meals right and and it's so easy right but i know that because i grew up around this food right so what do i do i think about what are the foods that i grew up with right but we don't expect you guys to to to know that but that's where a holistic health coach would come in and you know we can take that responsibility off your plate while helping your patients thrive right so and it's very important and i've seen it and i think that now um i think with this pandemic people want to be healthier people now more than ever know the importance of straightening the immune system taking care of themselves eating healthier less fried food more vegetables i mean now i my patients my patients my clients are telling me i want to eat a little bit more plant-based you know at least one meal a week but meatless monday is a huge trend right hashtag meatless monday you know i i'm sure followed by

it's not about not doing taco tuesday let's upgrade taco tuesday and let's make it a healthier version it's not about giving up the foods you like it's about finding a healthy upgrade to it and you could totally do it yeah but you need that education you need that you know you you have to understand and if you know about meal upgrades like mushrooms mushrooms are a great meat substitute they're packed with so you know what i use i i use portobello mushroom i don't eat beef i'm hindu and i gave up chicken but you can only eat so many veggie burgers in your days right so i agree thoughts on a portobello i didn't realize portobello can serve as the main part of a sandwich and you know you can still put all the things you would put on a hamburger what have you and it tastes delicious you know it's it's absolutely yeah yeah and you could saute it the same with tofu and it acquires whatever taste you give it you know you can make veggie burgers i mean i know that you're veggie burgered out but you can make veggie burgers like from four ingredients right so there's so many alternatives to the things that you can make you know and you can make tons of stews and you can ins you know it for us puerto ricans you there's no me there's no meal that is complete without rice right but what about quinoa right yeah it you know and when made right people tell me oh it doesn't taste like anything how about you toast it with a little bit of ghee what's ghee clarified butter and then butter indian butter and it's you know you know blending the cultures together how many of my clients aren't now hooked on ghee who had no idea what ghee was before so it's about blending culture blending flavors bringing all of these things together i love that because you know in southeast asia white rice is a staple and and same well how about long grain rice or you know or how about kiwa you know so you're blending the east and west i like that i think we need to have you after the show do a private consultation for dr coleman um because he has a lot of hate quinoa yeah you know you don't like it when i say veggie burger he says uh prime rib so we have a lot of work to do with him still true and you know go going off of that so okay so similar to my husband loves the meat but okay so let's upgrade the quality of your meats there's so many great delivery services i mean you know we can talk about these offline get the best quality meat that you can find and then just eat less of it right like we don't need to eat so much meat right we can eat better quality meat a little bit less of it include more veggies in your plate add more you know healthy fats olive oil more anti-inflammatory and then just kind of you know do it that way promote healthy alternatives that way and i think what part of the problem that we ignore is that a lot of the problems like obesity diabetes high blood pressure all the inflammation is a western phenomenon we've gotten away actually probably more so from our our cultural roots as far as nutrition because if you go you know if we go back to where you know our families are now i'm sure that's not as rampant diabetes and obesity so it's probably getting away from our staple culture so it's probably not the rice it's probably the other crap that we uh we put in our food so you know i'll follow it up flynn that's a great example and this is just and then i want to ask carla about you and how with kobe 19 has affected you know clients and we talk about code 15 and people gaining weight and but someone had asked me their day but you know why are we seeing more impacts in africa uh from coba 19 and there's some ideas being floated around that a it's a younger population but b the incidence of obesity and diabetes and metal box syndromes in africa is exponentially less than other parts of the world and it is thought that plays at least in part a reason why africa at least right now thankfully is not you know being ravaged by kobe 19 like other parts of the world especially in the west right like the united states so i think that speaks to what you're speaking of that you know other countries that are not necessarily ingrained with the western diet don't have the same levels of metabolic syndrome which we know increases inflammation the body we talk about all the time on our show and how it relates to infections and otherwise but you know how has i know you've already touched upon it but covered 19 and have you seen people uh you said healthier but have you seen people reaching out because they're at home and they're not they're snacking all the time i know i suspect a lot of older people who are working adults um are having issues with weight gain is that something you've been seeing or people reaching out to yes absolutely i think um i know that i speak for myself and a lot of my colleagues that are holistic health coaches as well we've seen we've seen a lot of that and you know not only for the adults but for the children as well and we should pay attention and this goes back to the point that i was trying to make before when i was giving the example about the bagel you know children just like us right have blood sugar spikes so think about that and the audience should think about that too when they're feeding their children sugary snacks and then expect them to sit in front of a zoo for four hours that's right and then and then wonder why they keep asking for snacks you know i have a five-year-old and i'm a health coach right but at the same time she you know she's a child and i try to do the best i can but keep in mind that she's also a young child and doesn't really understand things the way that we understand them as adults as health healthcare physicians as health coaches as well but we try to do the best we can and you know keeping healthy alternatives at home making a conscious effort to try to keep them hydrated making sure that they're taking their supplements making sure that they have healthy alternatives so that these things doesn't don't happen to them as well right so not only do we have to pay attention to our dietary needs and making sure that we're staying healthy with a strong immune system but for them as well right and that's something that yes to answer your question has been happening so as i've gotten so much you know so much work during the height of the pandemic because we're not moving you know we live here in new york city where um you're either getting on or off the subway walking here walking there to be completely non-active i mean our digestive system is slowing down our immune system is slowing down and we're not doing anything but sitting home in front of zooms eating and you know packing on the pounds if we're lucky we get a 20 minute workout in our living room right and yeah it's affecting it's affecting a lot of people and then of course as you guys know we're not going outside so we're not getting exposure to sunlight so we're even more deficient in vitamin e vitamin d so you know that's affecting a lot of people too so yes of course they're coming to to me to you know trying to understand how they can improve you know their diet how they can what supplements they can take to stay healthy and just try to stay you know as healthy as they can while being at home do you see patients eating more or clients eating more now the holidays are over right the whole seasonal seasonal effective disorder in new york is kind of gray and cloudy same thing with new jersey you know so i think a lot of people say well i got nothing going on let me just eat eat you know so i think like you said we have to break that relationship i think that's that's extremely important i mean what you mentioned about every meal or everything you ingest is an opportunity to do something healthy for your body whether it's you know lower build lean muscle mass lower inflammation i mean if people can start thinking about those terms that's very powerful that's very powerful yeah it is absolutely yeah so i'm i'm currently writing a a bilingual cookbook highlights exactly that yeah so basically the book is food that loves you back and and one of the things that you know it's it's a latinx cookbook and it's light-hearted and basically what we did um what i did with the help of my family is that we took family friendly recipes passed down from generations and turned them fast and just you know and and highlighted that you know what is at the end of your fork can either improve your health improve your health or harm it so why don't we just take that initiative to make better choices smarter choices and flip the narrative and like i said and i'll continue to say over and over again it's not about giving up the foods that we like it's about upgrading them and about changing it so that the next generation of of you know of the kids and the kids kids could continue to do the same you know we can make the same delicious desserts that our grandparents used to make let's just use better quality ingredients i mean i made coquito which is puerto rican eggnog oh and instead of using refined sugar and instead of having refined sugar i use maple syrup right so we upgraded it we didn't change the flavor and we still enjoyed something that brings us together as a family yes that's what my my kids say that all the time

yes she did i can only say clinton speaking someone spanish here it's without him saying but you do a very nice accent so says poppy shampoo i always wanted to be a host on either telemundo like the bienvenidos like the real deep sexy voice carla can you tell us where and you mentioned before but tell us kind of where people can find you on social media online and and beyond yes of course so you can find me at that latina health coach on instagram on facebook i do a bi-weekly segment on telemundo 47 here in new york so you can find me there as well this week i'll be on all week between six and seven a.m so you can catch me there as well um and yeah you can find me on my website at www.carlasalinary.com and then the book will be out closer to the fall summer fall of 2021 so this year oh we really look forward to it yeah that's very exciting thank you thank you thank you thank you now your passion really uh you know speaks for itself i mean it really just comes screaming out of the screen here but it's very impressive and i think um everything you're saying is applicable to anyone right of any background nationality culture um and there's so much to learn uh from people like you and we really appreciate you sharing your wisdom your knowledge uh hopefully you can help clinton i think i'm gonna sign him up for some classes with you uh because he does need some help you know we uh i haven't made the full push to plant-based i you know i have to i'm still a pescatarian but i'm still thinking about making that eventual jump but i think clinton could use a little nudge in that direction yeah too much sweetest fish and now laters and all that stuff so carla thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom your knowledge and most importantly your passion uh thanks to all our listeners out there remember to rate review and subscribe until next time find us on spotify apple podcast and wherever you may see a podcast and as well as youtube until next time be well thank you very much for having me