Dr. Christine Hafer

Did you know high fructose corn syrup decreases Vitamin D levels?

Vitamin D is a regulator of T cells, which are responsible for many things, including immune function and cancer prevention.

Gut health for kids.

The best way to have a healthy gut is to have a healthy diet. But our kids will have exposures that harm their gut health regardless of how clean and nourishing their diets are. It’s inevitable. Antibiotics, toxins, pathogens, sugar, processed foods, pesticides, glyphosate, stress, chemicals in our water/environment… many are unavoidable.

What’s your strategy to make sure your kids have a healthy gut lining and microbiome with lots of keystone bacteria?

My food philosophy:

When a patient comes to me with chronic health issues, autoimmune disorders, and gut health problems, many times they have been told they will need long term restrictive diet to improve.

General long term restrictive diets may actually decrease microbial diversity in the gut. Increased microbial diversity is a good marker of gut health.

Temporary restrictive diets (like FODMAP, histamine, oxalates…) may help symptoms and determine causes of inflammation caused by diet. But my long term game with food is always be to add in as many different foods as possible to achieve good gut health. While it’s true that there are some trigger foods/allergies some may never be able to tolerate, the goal of any health development plan is to increase adaptability to our world.

Gut microbial diversity and nervous system balance (I am a chiropractor after all) are two of the best ways to adapt better to our world, and function at our best.

Gut infections trigger food reactions.

“Multi-disciplinary research has revealed that electrically conductive contact of the human body with the surface of the Earth (grounding or earthing) produces intriguing effects on physiology and health. Such effects relate to inflammation, immune responses, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.”

J Inflamm Res. 2015; 8: 83–96

I don’t mean to brag, but I knew every lyric at the grocery store today.

Mitochondrial health is completely overlooked by our current paradigm, and it’s at the center of so many diseases and disorders.

Anyone else?

I tried to figure out what was up with my body with western medicine for years, and had very few answers until a chronic condition was present. And what was maybe worse for me (as a trained chiropractor) was telling holisitic providers the same problems and being given a million things to try that never moved the needle to improve my health.

The reason I started my functional medicine training was because my functional medicine doctors listened to me and found real solutions to underlying health problems. I started to actually get better.

Health will always be something I need to focus on creating. We all need to take our own health into our own hands. But, a good, knowledgeable functional medicine doctor can be the difference between trying random solutions and finding real answers.

High protein meals can be super tasty.
And clean.

This meal clocks on at 41 grams of protein. 40 grams of protein at breakfast is ideal for breakfast, as it is filling, fuels muscles, and supports metabolism. There’s good quality research that indicates that a large protein breakfast is the most important meal for fueling muscles and metabolism.

2 eggs
1/2 cup egg whites
4 Jones chicken sausages
1/2 cup roasted broccoli (left over from dinner)
Topped in 1 oz of shredded truffle goat cheese

What’s your favorite high protein meal?