Health for Life with Melisa Karabeyoglu

george grombacher 0:02
Well, hello, this is George G and the time is right welcome today’s guest strong, powerful Melissa Kerr. Bailu. Melissa, how are you ready to do this?

Melisa Karabeyoglu 0:09
I am very ready. Thank you joy,

george grombacher 0:12
because I didn’t have you on let’s go. Melissa is a registered dietitian. She is a nutritionist wellness expert. With vivo. They’re the world’s first wellness tracker using an at home urine test to provide instant personalized nutrition and lifestyle advice. Melissa, excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal lives more about your work and why you do what you do.

Melisa Karabeyoglu 0:35
Sure, thank you for the lovely introduction. Yes, it is correct. I am nutritionist very passionate back. And I am the nutrition and wellness expert here at vivo. Our company focuses on helping individuals connect with their bodies, their bodies, cute little messages I say throughout the day and really sensitizing to cues

from our physical well being. We developed this biohacking device, which is urinary test strips. And I talked about how amazing this is, in addition to my own private practice where I counsel nutrition science, I’m also the chair representative for eight, right? International Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics for America. So I served there as well.

george grombacher 1:25
Did you always know that nutrition was what you were going to do?

Melisa Karabeyoglu 1:30
Yeah, if we were going to backtrack a bit, I didn’t know that nutrition wasn’t what I wanted to do until I realized how important it was. Unfortunately, a lot of us realize the value of something when we have lost it. And I grew up in a very health or health conscious of me saying more correctly household. And when I traveled to different parts of the world. And when I went to university in the United States of America, and I experienced the normal freshman 15 weight gain. And I experienced side effects of food products that I was consuming. I started thinking, you know what’s up, I was always an athlete. And I was studying psychology at the time, actually psychology and Brain Sciences. And I was doing research at Johns Hopkins medical institution on children with behavioral disorders, namely ADHD, and anger disruptive disorders. And I realized that they had a commonality in their diet and lifestyle. And from then I became very passionate and helping children. I’ve always known that my purpose in this world is to help the world in some in many different ways. And I found that through nutrition, I was able to really help a lot of individuals improve their lifestyle and therefore improve their levels of well being and happiness.

george grombacher 3:01
Well, I think that that is a wonderful story. And it makes a ton of sense. I was just talking to somebody the other day, and she had mentioned that Dr. Mark Hyman said that 93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. And I think that we’re all well aware of that. We’re struggling with obesity, and then all the other things that are going along with that. When you talk about healthy eating, how specific is that to an individual? Or is there one diet that is going to make sense for for lots of people?

Melisa Karabeyoglu 3:35
Yeah, I mean, that’s wonderful that quote by Mark Hyman and I do think that unfortunately, a lot of individuals in the United States are not healthy. And a lot of individuals might say what’s healthy. And as a dietitian, I try not to use that word with my clients. Because there comes a time when there’s something even called orthorexia to the extreme, where don’t let that come up with anorexia, where individuals become so focused on eating for only health purposes, that they forget the other pleasures of foods such as enjoyment and tastes and sensations. So, you know, these two extremes of being unhealthy and then a population focused so much on health, I do find that, you know, what would define a health conscious or healthy diet would be a diet that support one lifestyle. So, if you are for instance, right now, you are hosting this lovely podcast which I’m so happy to be a part of. You have to do so many different areas throughout the day you have to sit here have the mental energy, have a clear throat, you have to have your blood pressure. A lot of different mechanisms in your body have to work in a proper way so that you can perform at your optimal level and also feel satisfied with your performance. have pure cognition sleep Well feel well. And a diet that would be, you know, healthy for you would be different than a diet that would be healthy for a different person performing a different job with a completely different genetic makeup. So everyone’s diet would vary greatly. And that’s why we really are now in this 21st century, focusing on how to customize and make our diet and lifestyle changes, individualized. So, you know, everyone’s diet is different, everyone’s body is different, everyone’s sleeping pyre is different. We saw with COVID, how much our lives have changed, and how people that work on different schedules, I travel and work all around the world, my diets changed completely past five years. So the word healthy for diet would vary on so many different factors, that unfortunately, there’s not one answer for it. But I would say the answer would be that it would support the individual’s lifestyle.

george grombacher 5:58
think that that’s a great definition or way to think about it, then why wouldn’t it be that way? I like different things than other people like so why wouldn’t my body want to, you know, consume different types of foods, and then enter technology. And now we have the ability to, to figure that out fairly easily. And I think that that’s a big problem that you’re working to solve with vivo?

Melisa Karabeyoglu 6:21
Yeah, yes. We, you know, as someone who was more into nature, I was, you know, for all of my 20s I was a reading yogi who refused to, you know, look at phone for like, four hours before, it’s less of a blue light. I was very extreme in that way. Ironically, I was living in New York City, which is truly technological and modern. But I as you as you grow older, you realize that there are benefits to so many different parts of technology. And yes, it helps us connect, it helps us work remotely helps us function to make this podcast, it’s helping our listeners listen right now to this podcast while they’re driving while they’re working out while they’re cooking for their kids. But it also helps us connect with our body. And a lot of engines say, Well, I don’t want to connect something to my body, you don’t really need to, what you can do is you can use things that your body naturally excrete like sweat or tears, or you know, even skin cells, or in this case, urine. And then we can use something that we use all the time, which is almost attached to our body. Firstly, my thoughts, our cell phone to quickly snap a picture, and within 90 seconds, it can read your body’s results. So, you know, this is a new biohacking device, similar to other things that we’re used to, like, fix it for the aura ring, in a way for you to kind of learn more about your body.

george grombacher 7:49
Fascinating. And so just through urine in this example, it’s telling me what?

Melisa Karabeyoglu 7:55
Yeah, it’s so interesting, because I think as individuals and someone who worked in healthcare, I was so used to only thinking of blood as a way to measure and blood is an excellent way. And we always encourage, you know, our customers to always, you know, use a multiple, multiple, multi perspective approach. So of course, blood tests are amazing. But urine tests are really quick. And if you can’t visit, you know, a lab all the time, it’s a great way to bring it to your home. So your body would always urinate what it doesn’t need, just like it would excrete what it doesn’t need from your food. And we can look at your urine to see if you’re having enough, too much too little magnesium, for instance, in your diet, which is really cool. Because we’re constantly marketed that we should take magnesium, a lot of individuals are deficient in it, but some don’t really need to. So it’s a way to use something that we naturally creep to understand how much of it you’re having in our diet on a daily basis.

george grombacher 9:00
Okay, so I, I, do I pee on the strip itself? Do I pee into a cup and dip the strip into it? How does that actually work?

Melisa Karabeyoglu 9:10
Yeah. So I think the way I could simply is like, you know, for those who can’t see us, I’m holding this chip in my hand. And you would open this right before you use it. We recommend not to use your first year and because your first year is usually very concentrated, unless you urinate a lot throughout the night. Usually when you wake up and you urinate your first year is very concentrated, and therefore it can be high and a lot of biomarkers that may throw off your results. So it can be your second appliance until you’re pretty much you know, last year end of the day. As long as it’s consistent every day, you would urinate on the strip, and then you would wait for 90 seconds for it to dry. You would quickly snap a picture of it on our app. And what’s really cool about our app is a really emphasizes how much individuality makes a difference in your diet in your lifestyle, and how much of a nutrient you need. So for this reason, you would really need to customize your, your app, for instance, on my app, it says, because I’m vegan slash vegetarian, I have the markers in it that show it so it would not recommend me for example, etc, if my magnesium is low.

george grombacher 10:31
Got it. So it’s not going to offend everything about your being by saying, Go have a cheeseburger, like what are you talking about?

Melisa Karabeyoglu 10:37
Yeah. Yeah, so the app would record that you say that you don’t want to consume dairy, and therefore would not recommend dairy. It really does. Take into consideration what you use as a preference. So if you prefer it, for example, that we have a very large population of ketogenic diet followers. So we would recommend those individuals to follow a, you know, a ketogenic diet to make their make their nutrition nice.

george grombacher 11:07
Got it? All right. So it says, George, based on your preferences, you’re on keto. And you’re short on magnesium, just I’m just throwing out examples here. Therefore, you should consider adding or potentially subtracting this food item into into what you’re currently doing to more optimize?

Melisa Karabeyoglu 11:27
Yes, yes, an individual to food, it also is one of lifestyle advice. Because, you know, as we may know, sometimes food isn’t everything, I forget that as nutritionist, sometimes my friends will have a headache, and I’m like, Are you hydrated, or I save a lot of things always related to food is your blood sugar low, but really, a lot of our health is also about our lifestyle. So it also recommend you to, you know, increase meditation or exercise, for example, one of our parameters is oxidative stress, which is inflammation. And, of course, you can get inflammation from a lot of components of our diet. You know, if you’re having a diet with too much, you know, nitrates, etc. But it also will encourage you to do other lifestyle changes, such as meditating daily, or, for instance, exercising sleeping enough, you know, so the app will really give you personalized recommendations. And what’s really awesome as the app is made by a team of engineers, and also a large team of healthcare workers, so dietitian, nutritionists and doctors.

george grombacher 12:35
Nice. All right. So it is it is knowledge. So now I know, instead of guessing it’s making suggestions as to positive interventions from not just the food itself, but also other lifestyle factors. How else are how else? Are you thinking about attacking the problem? Or if that’s the right term of helping people to be healthier through through the app through the company?

Melisa Karabeyoglu 13:05
Yeah, so so we really do focus on everyone’s individualized response and how they’re responding. So if individuals are, you know, testing daily, we can give them daily recommendations. Some individuals prefer to test on a weekly basis, what we really do is up to the person who is taking the test if they are going through a major lifestyle change, and they want to make drastic changes to their diet.

george grombacher 13:32
Got it? Okay. And somebody does say, you know, what, I’m, I consider myself to be overweight, I need to do more, I need to lose weight. Otherwise, maybe I had, you know, who knows if that’s their perspective on things?

Melisa Karabeyoglu 13:51
Yeah, it really does depend some individuals do, you want to lose weight from individuals who really just want to maintain their health, some individuals have a lot of inflammation. Or, for example, we have a large population that also use our app to measure their calcium because calcium is another parameter that’s really popular, especially, you know, amongst postmenopausal females, it’s really important for them to measure their calcium and monitor it. So we have a large population of individuals who prefer to stay at home and use this as a way to monitor their mineral intake.

george grombacher 14:30
Nice, that makes a ton of sense. We need to make things convenient for people certainly, and as convenient as as as as as possible. So, yeah. In terms of, I really appreciate being proactive and, you know, monitoring and kind of like what we’ve been talking about, for this vast population of people that are struggling and perhaps I’ll just put on your nutritionist hat or your dietitian hat. Earlier, you talked about how a lot of the time we do need to hit some kind of a rock bottom, before we actually make a choice or change or something gets taken away from us. How do you think about creating sustainable diets if that if that’s the right term?

Melisa Karabeyoglu 15:18
Yeah, it’s a well, I think for creating something sustainable, it would mean that it would be able to be replicated over and over again, very easily without a large economic cost or a large amount of effort. And it will be very practical for the individual. Also not harming our ecosystem, you know, terribly, because that’s also part of sustainability, if I can say so. So I died that would be known to break that up. And to make sure that it’s practical, I always, even when I’m creating recipes, I always choose recipes that are one or four, two steps, nothing that requires, you know, so much different preparation methods, I think that requires tons of ingredients, just because it really does, prevents individuals from even starting the recipe, a lot of individuals will become perfectionist, and they’ll make this I’m gonna make this, you know, beautiful cake and, and they somehow 15 minutes and they almost lose it, or they take two days to make it because it’s such a complex cake, I always try and encourage simpler recipes, simpler food ingredients, so whole ingredients. For instance, not using, you know, like tomato concentrate to add to your soup, adding tomato itself, or, you know, trying to really focus on adding ingredients that only have one ingredient sounds really rhetorical and make sense when I say it, but a lot of us don’t do that we cook using a bunch, we cook using ingredients that are actually having their own subcomponents. So for instance, not to make cookies with a cake mix. This really does play into how conscious we are about what we can do and therefore makes, you know, eating healthier, much more mind much more seamless, because we’re mindful as we’re preparing our food. Preparation of the food is really important in sustainability of a diet because it allows for us to really connect with what we eat. And it actually research shows, it really helps individuals become more satisfied. I’m not saying more full, because that’s actually a physical and neural cue, but more satisfied, because when we see loss of food, when we’re preparing, when we’re touching, when we’re smelling when we’re cutting, when we’re washing when we’re chopping the food, when we’re quickly studying, we’re putting on the plate, by the time we have it on the plate, we’re ready. So connected with that food. It’s a different type of connection, and we just sit down we need to eat, who are much more satisfied. And then, you know, to continue to sustainability question you mentioned about how to make a diet more sustainable. I would also say that it would be, you know, in addition to being easy to prepare less ingredients, you know, preparing yourself, I would also encourage that the diet should be consisting of foods that is really easy for the individual to digest. Meaning that the individual doesn’t feel very sleepy, groggy, irritated, right after it, you know, they eat, they shouldn’t have to take a big nap after they eat. And also, they should feel energized, the whole reason why we eat is actually to get energy makes sense. Also, when I say it, but we don’t really do it, we’re actually eating for enough calories to perform our next task. A lot of individuals get so lost in the process of eating, they forget why we’re doing it. It’s really for animalistic reasons so that we can, you know, nourish our bodies and, you know, have optimal health so that we’re able to reproduce and create healthy offspring. Lastly, for a sustainable diet, of course, I would, you know, advertise his diet that’s plant based, doesn’t have to be, you know, something that’s completely vegan or vegetarian pescetarian. I don’t think that’s realistic for a large amount of people. And I don’t encourage any type of restricted eating. You know, I was being for a long time. And now I eat, I have a diet that’s full of a lot of different foods. It was hard for me to do that, because I did feel very guilty, but I realized my bike had different needs than you know, the person, the right of me. So a diet that’s, you know, mainly plant based, but at least 70 to 80% plant based is already so much better, and for our environment for our ecosystem for our bodies for our soil for our waterways. That would be another factor of a sustainable diet.

george grombacher 19:41
Excellent. Thank you. Melissa, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn? Where can they learn more about you and how can they connect with vivo?

Melisa Karabeyoglu 19:51
Yeah, so thank you for having us. It’s been a pleasure today. You can learn more about vivo by connecting us with us at our website. though, actually today for your viewers, VR viewers and listeners, we are going to offer a special promotional poll, which is a generous amount of 30% off of your veto subscription purchase. So if you were to go to VI VI O O dot I owe details on the website, you can use the code George 30. So GE o RG E three zero at checkout to get 3% off for listening to with live podcast. And you can also connect with us on Instagram. We have a really good Instagram is vivo app V IV, oh, ATP. And at that Instagram, you can find great resources, podcasts, recipes, a lot of other health and they can help you motivate to stick with your wellness goals and connect with other like minded individuals. We also have a really active Facebook community page where all of our users say hey, I’m thinking this past my learning is really low. And then another individual says maybe it’s because you’re consuming high amounts of coffee, you really have to connect with other individuals. My own Instagram is also found through vikos Instagram I’m smile with Melissa because I focus on improving wellness to improve one’s mood and feelings and happiness.

george grombacher 21:21
I love it. If you enjoyed this as much as I did show Melissa your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also also appreciates good ideas go to v i v o.io. Check out the grave resources and enter George 33 zero at checkout 30% off find them on Instagram under vi vo app vi vi o app a PP. Find Melissa at Smile with Melissa check out the Facebook group and check out your Selenium level because you drink too much coffee that sparked an interest in me Melissa for sure. Excellent. Thanksgiving, Melissa. All right. Thank you so much, George. And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai