Heart Healthy, Plant-Based Eating with Dr. Jenneffer Pulapaka [Ep. #1021]

 

This Week’s Episode Special Guest: Dr, Jenneffer Pulapaka

Summary: 

In this episode, Kimberly and  Dr. Jenneffer Pulapaka discuss the importance of heart health and the role of a plant-based diet in achieving it. She shares her journey into lifestyle medicine, emphasizing the need for a holistic approach to health that includes diet, exercise, and sleep. The discussion covers common misconceptions about protein intake, the impact of inflammation on health, and the benefits of cooking with whole foods. Dr. Pulapaka also highlights the affordability of healthy eating and the significance of understanding the nutritional value of everyday foods.

 

About Dr, Jenneffer Pulapaka

JENNEFFER PULAPAKA, DPM, is a Board-Certified Podiatric Physician Diplomate from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. A trained podiatric surgeon who specializes in diabetic limb salvage, she is the founder of DeLand Foot and Leg Center. She focuses on Peripheral Vascular Disease, holds a Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate, and is a Culinary Health Education Fundamentals (CHEF) Coach.  A Certified Sommelier, she also has 15+ years of experience in menu planning and event design in the restaurant industry and has been a featured sommelier at the James Beard Foundation House. Along with her professional chef husband Hari Pulapaka, she founded Cress Restaurant and they both live in DeLand, FL. They are the co-authors of The Heart Healthy Plant-Based Cookbook.

 

Guest Resources:

Website: www.delandpodiatry.com

Book: The Heart Healthy Plant-Based Cookbook

 

Episode Sponsors:

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Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Heart Health and Plant-Based Diets
02:56 The Confusion Around Dietary Trends
05:58 Understanding Protein and Kidney Health
09:10 The Role of Inflammation in Heart Disease
11:55 Personal Journey to Plant-Based Living
14:47 Cooking with Whole Foods and Spices
17:51 The Importance of Fiber and Gut Health
20:58 Exploring Nutritional Benefits of Everyday Foods
23:51 The Impact of Sleep on Health
26:59 Affordable Healthy Eating
29:48 Final Thoughts on Heart Health and Lifestyle

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KIMBERLY’S BOOKS

• Chilla Gorilla & Lanky Lemur Journey to the Heart
• The Beauty Detox Solution
• Beauty Detox Foods
• Beauty Detox Power
• Radical Beauty
• Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
• You Are More Than You Think You Are 

OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY!

• Wellness Insights: How to Listen to Your Body for Nutritional Guidance [Episode 878]
• How the Power Foods Diet helps with Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard EP. 877
• How Not to Age with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Greger [Episode #873]
• How to eat to reduce anxiety with Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidoo [Episode #867]

 

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Transcript: 

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (00:01.494)
Hi Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on our show today.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (00:06.162)
Thank you for having me, Kimberly.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (00:09.282)
You know, when your book came across my desk and once again, everyone’s called the Heart Healthy Plant-Based Cookbook, it really caught my eye because I’ve been so interested, especially in the heart lately, the heart, the physical heart, you know, from a health perspective, from a dietary perspective, also from an energetic perspective, a spiritual perspective, how the heart is mentioned in all these different traditions around the world. But I wondered…

And you tell a little bit about this in the beginning of your book, but if you could share with us why your focus has really honed in on heart health in particular.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (00:46.888)
Well, for me, so I am the pioneer of podiatric lifestyle medicine. And a majority of the patients that I see have lower extremity vascular disease with cardiac complications. So that’s the over, the broad overreaching patient population that I treat. And when dealing with patients, I was a typical physician that

would treat patients with conventional medicine, was, you want surgery or do you want a pill? And lifestyle medicine allowed me to handle patients more broader with treatments, such as using diet, using sleep, reducing stress, exercise.

reducing substance abuse, things like that, that I started to be able to include pillars in their healthcare and see a better outcome in patients. So for me, that’s why it was important. Just because I think I was getting burned out with just, it was the same thing all the time, pills or surgery, pills or surgery, referral, cardiovascular, interventional, cardiologists, what are we doing? And we were not getting off the wheel. You’re just kind of stuck in that cycle.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (02:00.536)
Great.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (02:10.875)
and you weren’t regaining ground, you weren’t regaining your health, nothing positive was coming out of it except for trying to prevent a catastrophic event. So that’s why a heart healthy cookbook is really key to a majority of my patients.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (02:21.974)
Right.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (02:31.84)
Right. And I want to get into that in a moment. There’s such great information here, but one of the things you said is that we’re on the wheel. Many people are on the wheel. And one of the reasons I think people are on the wheel is because they’re confused. And there’s so much information out there, Jennifer, as you know. And it feels like to me, you know, there is decades of

And sort of this general idea that we should limit red meat in particular and these foods that have high cholesterol, foods that feel clogging and common sense as these are really dense foods. But now we’re in a time in culture where there’s, it’s sort of swung, feels like back when I started writing books 11 years ago, I was always talking about this protein question that would come up being plant-based myself. How do you end up protein? And now there’s this

such an over emphasis on protein. And what I see, Jennifer, is confusion. People are eating tons of red meat and they’re like, well, I saw such and such and they say that can eat as much red meat as I want or I should sit down and have six eggs. Can you talk to us a little bit about this confusion about cholesterol, foods that are elevating blood pressure, all the research for many decades that don’t correlate necessarily with these health trends or I don’t say health trends.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (03:52.72)
I mean, that’s great. That is what they are, okay? Bell bottoms, they’re not in fashion right now. They have been in fashion. They went out of fashion. They came back in briefly and they’re out. That’s kind of what we cycle when we deal with food trends. Different diets will keep on coming up historically. But unfortunately, there’s not enough peer-reviewed literature to be behind them.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (03:53.954)
dietary trends.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (04:06.082)
Yes.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (04:22.331)
We don’t have a big enough population to evaluate certain diets that are out there and nor is there research behind it. So those for me are always risky when it comes to patients. So we’d like to stay when I’m looking at or evaluating diets with patients. I always tell my patients when they were talking about plant-based, they’re like, well, can I add chicken? I’m like, well, you’ve been adding chicken in it and we’re here right now.

I’m the thing that’s gotta cause a bump. Why don’t we learn how to not add chicken and not use butter and use a substitute to make it a more healthy option for you? Because what you’ve been doing hasn’t been working. That’s kind of where we are. I only use peer-reviewed literature for the most part.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (05:05.11)
Right.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (05:16.677)
And it’s for me, it’s very hard because right now I do see a trend of patients who come in, they think they’re on a ketogenic diet. They’re not on a ketogenic diet. They’re never in ketoacidosis. They’re never reducing their amount of carbs to get to that state. And most of my patients are complicated patients, meaning that they have diabetes, vascular disease. Chances are they have chronic kidney disease.

When we’re dealing with a lot of comorbidities with patients, we have to be very cognizant when they’re taking high protein diets. One of my biggest concerns is my kidney patients. High protein diets does not bode well for kidney function long term. And Kidego, which Kidney Disease International, when they put out guidelines, the last several years, the primary treatment for

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (05:58.625)
Right.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (06:15.719)
chronic kidney disease in patients was diet and lifestyle. So it was nice that we saw a really good bump or a really good change in how we’re addressing patients with chronic disease. So now that we had a patient with chronic disease, maybe they don’t even know they’re stage three chronic kidney disease. And now they’re just loading up on all these proteins, which kidneys have to strip off nitrogen and it really taxes the kidneys.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (06:39.467)
Right.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (06:46.853)
And unfortunately, it usually puts them in a downward spiral towards stage four. And at stage three, we have some really good studies that look at, can we get an improvement in kidney function if we decrease the amount of unused proteins? For the most part, my patients are not active. I am usually negotiating, can I get three days a week? Just three days a week, can you do 30 minutes three days a week? And the standard of care is exercise is

five days a week, 30 minutes, moderate intensity. So when my patients tell me I need the protein, I’m like, no, not to walk the Pomeranian, a half a block, that’s not really exercise. I’m glad we’re doing range of motion and I’m glad you’re not doing sedentary, but you’re not really in an exercise state to be getting a lot of benefit. I don’t need to worry about protein issues with you.

Now, when I deal with wound care patients, I deal with them. Or if I deal with dialysis patients, when I have a nutritionist, registered dietician that’s on board, then we’re looking at protein loss, but we’re not talking about a majority of patients that are on that. We’re talking about they got a, they went on Pinterest and they got some keto balls, which are hugely high in fat and protein. And nothing about that is gonna help with inflammation, their heart, their blood flow, or their weight.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (07:58.806)
Yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (08:13.201)
Right?

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (08:14.752)
Yeah. Well, you what you say makes sense and it makes sense to me. And then there’s Dan Buettner, who’s been on our podcast several times. He’s coming back on in December, who’s saying, Hey, look at these human populations, which are eating really fiber rich diets. They’re not hyper fixating on protein. And yet their longevity numbers are the best in the world. Then you have Dr. Michael, Dr. Michael Greger, who also came on with all his thousands of studies. He’s referencing saying, Hey,

Look at the research. So why do you think Dr. Jennifer, from your perspective as a physician, you know, it’s like people are going on Pinterest, but I’m also seeing some doctors being like, you know, double the amount of grams that you’re hearing, you know, the recommended doses, one gram per body weight. Where is this coming from? How can, in our culture, we can have such differing views of the research.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (08:45.532)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:12.308)
And to me, common sense, if you want to open up your blood flow, you don’t want to eat clogging foods and really fatty, dense animal foods all day. But how is this even happening in your opinion? Because it’s mind boggling to me.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (09:25.489)
Well, we have different specialists that are out there and everyone has a different way of treating patients. For example, okay, for a good example, I have a lot of patients who will come in for lower extremity arthritis and tendonitis and everyone will keep missing kind of the, I don’t wanna say the elephant in the room, but the fact that a lot of my patients have

obesity class two, class three, and no one’s even discussed about an oral medication for them at that point in time.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (10:00.962)
Wait.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (10:04.165)
Some physicians only want to treat with lifestyle medicine or diet or conservative options. So maybe that’s where these practitioners are trying to maybe cause a bump, but I still prefer to stay with evidence-based. I still want lifestyle medicine on my patients. I still talk about diet, but I’m also an advocate for GLP-1, GIPs, phenamine and topramate.

I’m an advocate for that. And I’m also very realistic with them that usually when you get on a semi-glutide, you will have to stay on that for life. And then they get upset. And then I just remind them you’re not upset that you’re on lisinopril for life. So now can you look at the benefits of being on a medication long-term, how we’re going to reduce our comorbidities? Maybe you’re going to

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (10:44.887)
Yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (11:03.105)
reduce your diabetes, you’re going to reduce your arthritis and your tendonitis and your like my diabetic patients who have a collapse of the midfoot and I have to deal with all the bone deformity and the ulcerations. So we have a lot of comorbidities that are around obesity as a diagnosis and we haven’t allowed the patients yet flexibility to look at it as a disease and to be treated as such with

medication or with diet. So I just don’t only do that. I’m there with conventional medicine, but that may explain why some doctors, like one of my patients today, she was in obesity class three and her doctor was telling her about fiber. Great, wonderful. I am glad he had that discussion, but she’s looking at one total knee on one side and now we have another total knee that’s possibly starting on the other leg.

and I had all the tendonitis and tendinopathies in my ankle and in the foot. And he’s still trying to tell her to lose weight and she could lose about a good 75 pounds and then she’ll feel comfortable and then we may see start to see improvement. But he that was the way he wanted to approach it. So that may be the way some physicians want to approach it. It’s not I like better peer reviewed research and

A lot of the high fat, high protein diets do not have large scale populations to be looking at. So we don’t hear the nuances. And you know, and I love the Blue Zones. We just had a dinner the other evening that my husband hosted and it was about the Blue Zones. And it was, you know, really…

they just the way they eat is healthy. It’s not a planned thing. They don’t make a concerted effort to be like, I’m going to get my fiber in. I’m going to get those things. They actually just eat a more healthy way than we do. And they’ll do conservative, like they’ll have an occasional glass of wine or they’ll eat, you know, fish twice a week or meat every so often. But it’s a more realistic diet.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:07.009)
Yeah, it’s

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:19.746)
Well, it’s simple, I think, and it’s accessible when you’re cooking one-pot meals and you’re not hyper fixating on numbers. It starts to get really confusing when you start to get heady, I think, versus intuitive and more in your heart, what your body’s drawn to. There’s this section, Jennifer, in your book about inflammation. That’s also one of the things we know is a precursor to heart disease, to many different illnesses in the body.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (13:29.084)
Yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (13:40.807)
Mm-hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:47.53)
And when you are eating more fiber, it’s feeding those short chain fatty acids, which is helping to reduce inflammation. I, one of my, I’m concerned when people are just focusing on overloading protein, I’ve noticed in people, it’s like protein no matter what. So more meat, more protein bars, more protein shakes. They naturally get less of these colorful fiber-filled anti-inflammatory foods. And so it starts to create this imbalance.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (13:51.74)
Mm-hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:17.378)
when you’re focusing, your compass is set towards something very different.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (14:22.285)
find that most patients when they’re focusing on proteins aren’t actually really talking about a whole food. They like to do bars or smoothies or supplements. They’re not actually thinking about food or whole food, whether it’s grains or beans, lentils, seeds, nuts. They’re not really there. They will with their protein.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:29.461)
Right.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (14:52.045)
as in their meats, animal proteins, they will fixate on that. And some of that can be due to the fact that we live in a society that praises wealth and a sign of prosperity has been for a long time that if you eat meats, it’s a status symbol versus I’m going to have a bowl of grains and lentils. there are sometimes we have…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (15:13.73)
Yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (15:17.767)
food can be personal and there are barriers or boundaries that people have to get around when it comes to eating a more healthy way. Because sometimes those family recipes are not healthy. They haven’t been there and that’s why you have a family history of heart attacks, gout, kidney disease, diabetes. It’s, know, the family cycle keeps on feeding you the wrong information.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (15:39.053)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (15:44.076)
Well, Dr. Jennifer, when did you become plant-based? And I know a lot of this was informed from research. And now, you your husband is, you know, a partner in ways. You guys host a lot of things together. He’s been honored by the James Beer Foundation as a featured chef, working with all these amazing foods. When did you come into this path exactly?

Jenneffer Pulapaka (16:05.741)
So I first took my turn at 21. I became vegetarian. I decided if I was going to eat meat, I needed to go to a slaughterhouse and appreciate or accept the way the animal was being brought to my table. So after I had that experience, I became a vegetarian. I was not comfortable with

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:18.413)
Hmm?

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:29.208)
Yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (16:31.463)
I was not comfortable and I could not do it and I wouldn’t do it. So I decided at that point in time to become a vegetarian. And that was a pretty rapid change for me. I gave up red meat first. gave up chicken was the last thing. And then I think I finally had like a steak as one last hurrah. And I couldn’t get through eating the steak that I wanted to because I knew it was gonna be great. I couldn’t do it knowing that I went to, it was a…

It was a cattle slaughterhouse. I just was like, I can’t. So I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 21. I’m 55. So it’s been a few years. Vegan, I say as much as possible. In my house, I’m vegan. When I go out in public, it is always a battle with how much egg is going to be utilized, dairy.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (17:24.6)
Yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (17:29.453)
in some instances. I’m always able to get vegan vegetarian options, but vegan is a little bit difficult. And if I’m going to get it out in public, it’s usually pretty pretty bad, I say. I usually get pasta primavera.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (17:36.471)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (17:44.716)
Well, that’s why Dr. Jennifer, I don’t need out very much because I feel like at home there’s, and you can eat these beautiful recipes in your cookbook. It does make it much easier when the more home meals you do eat.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (17:56.008)
Yeah, you get pasta primavera, plate of sides, you’ll get a salad, or now I can get like a black bean burger. That’s like the, that’s the standard that I get when I eat out. So for me, it’s hard because yes, I do have my husband who is like, you know, a super creative chef when it comes to that. And he was vegetarian until he was 21. After he came to the United States, he was here a few years and then

He tried meat. in his professional career as being a chef, he’s been very broad. He cooks a lot of seafood. He’s notoriously known for producing fantastic fish dishes. But I think it was his upbringing that taught him about spice and seasoning and flavor that makes him so good about making plant-based cooking.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:55.786)
Right, he grew up in India.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (18:55.973)
because it was second nature to him, correct. He grew up in India and he came here when he was young. And a lot of us, like I said, we do not have contact with food anymore. And when I do culinary and coaching classes with my patients, we do small group exams. I bring them in foods and we talk about things like that. Like I have an example.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (19:20.617)
Well, and while you’re getting that, I want to mention there’s some call-outs in the book and I want to get into some of the specific information, which is really interesting. But even to educate people, there’s a spice section in the book, you know, and it’s, this is something that everyone in India might know, for example, but here it’s saying, you know, spices are using any part of the plant, but the leaves, if you’re using the leaves, you’re, then it’s considered an herb. And if you’re not using the leaves, it’s a spice.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (19:30.961)
Yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (19:46.737)
Mm-hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (19:49.006)
So I think this appreciation and sort of deeper understanding when we’re looking at any sort of plant and the parts that we’re using starts to create a deeper connection when you’re working with herbs, when you’re working with spices, when you’re cooking. It can be really simple, but it starts to get more, it feels really connected.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (19:52.807)
Thank

Jenneffer Pulapaka (20:08.871)
He does a good job. think common spice substitutions like that. was originally we did this in one of the first books that we had. You know what? That’s great. I don’t know how many it’s on page 27. I don’t know how many times my patients will ask. Well, if I don’t have fennel and they get scared about cooking recipes and like, you know, if you don’t have fennel.

you know, use a substitute, you know. And if you don’t have it, just don’t use it. Move on. Find something else. Do you like gilding? You know, move forward with something, you know, but they get nervous about substitutions. And I think as you start to cook more and do more and be more hands on, then you’ll realize, you know, I don’t have lemongrass, but yeah, I just use, I just had lemon zest and I use lemon zest and I felt good enough.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (20:40.926)
Right. You said that you-

Isn’t that funny?

Jenneffer Pulapaka (21:05.957)
And then I wanted a little bit more herbaceousness, so I put some basil in it and that was my lemongrass. Perfect. Great substitute. Did you like the food you ate? Yes. Then it was perfect, right?

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:16.142)
Yeah, exactly. Again, less rigid, less heady and confused and more in flow, you know, the energetic part of being living a heart led life. And what I really liked too about the recipes, and I made a bunch of notes if you guys are watching this on her YouTube channel, I’m holding them up. There’s really great information worked into the recipes, which I appreciate. So for example, on page 42, where you talk about kale,

Jenneffer Pulapaka (21:23.686)
Mm-hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:45.164)
And one of the things that you mentioned is nitrate and nitric oxide and how it helps to open up the blood vessels contributes to the, it’s a vasoactive effector. And then it says, eat it, don’t juice it. And I’ve always been more into smoothies and kale salad instead of juice. Yeah. If you could talk a little bit about that.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (21:45.799)
it.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (21:57.896)
Yeah, I love that.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (22:06.311)
So, and I lecture on this one all the time when I’m talking because you have that nitrate, nitrite, nitric oxide pathway. And nitrates start in the mouth. You start to break it down by chewing. You need mastication with the saliva in order for that enzyme to start as it’s breaking down to your end result is nitric oxide. So it starts in the mouth. So therefore that’s why I’m like, you can’t do it.

interesting there was a study that recently came out that was looking at toothpaste and mouthwash. So they were they’re looking into the fact that sometimes when we have this 24-hour toothpaste, well sometimes the bacteria or the enzymes that are in your mouth have a purpose and sometimes those things you know can interfere with that.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:35.192)
Hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:42.966)
yes, I read that in here.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:49.134)
you

Jenneffer Pulapaka (23:02.915)
It wasn’t a robust enough study, not a big enough population, but it’s an interesting point to see how is that going to play out down the line? You know, are they going to be looking more into that? Because we know you talked about inflammation, gut biome. You know, they do poo samples all the time on people who eat vegetarian, vegan, and meat, you know, and they’re looking to see which ones had the healthiest. And out of all of them, when people

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (23:02.957)
Right.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (23:24.483)
Right?

Jenneffer Pulapaka (23:30.213)
have really aggressive disease states that they have to kill off a lot of their bacteria and restart. They’ve had surgeries, really complicated patients, and then they’re inoculating that patient with somebody else’s poo, feces. They don’t use, it’s not animal-based. It usually is vegan plant-based that they’re using on that because

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (23:50.381)
Yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (23:59.528)
Those are the bacteria that you want in the gut biome in order to decrease inflammation and really help with your immune system. And some of the largest confluence of lymph nodes are in and around your GI system, in and around the intestine. So that’s really vital and it’s really important.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (24:05.431)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (24:20.91)
Wait, I’m laughing Dr. Jennifer because we do talk about poop quite a bit in my house and I always have, I went from being constipated to really healing my bowel movements and my body when I did become plant-based and my kids. I always teach them about eating fiber, why it’s really important and they’ll like, mom, mom, you have to see this. And we don’t have that shame in our house. They love showing me their poop, which may sound funny in some households, but it’s always.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (24:36.252)
Mm-hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (24:50.446)
perfect and it’s formed and they go every day and they just have amazing digestion. They’ve both been plant-based since conception and it’s something they’re actually really proud of.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (25:00.85)
Yeah, you know, it’s well, I am constipation with children is usually dietary diet, dairy related, you know, and it’s also skin the health of someone’s skin. Teenage acne is associated with dairy. So in and it’s always it’s always upsetting when I tell someone that they’re like, What do mean, I didn’t have to be on Accutane. I’m like, well, you could have given up dairy.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:07.871)
Gross.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:17.612)
Yeah, exactly.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (25:28.239)
and try that and see if that trial worked for you first, you know, as you were young and you know, milk was designed to make babies grow. It wasn’t designed to be feeding adults. was, it has growth hormones for babies. That’s naturally what that product was there for. So.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:43.648)
Exactly, exactly.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:50.222)
We’re cows, baby cows.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (25:53.244)
You know, the whole thing is you don’t see a bull out in the pasture nursing.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:54.316)
Well, so…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:58.51)
That’s right. Well, so Dr. Jennifer, I’d love to go through some more of these notes, which I think are super interesting. There’s one on page 146, and this caught my attention as well. It’s about eggplant. you write, eggplants have many cardiovascular properties. One example is the compound delphinidin, which can induce endothelial vasodilation.

by the activation of nitric oxide. So, and then you go on and you talk about how it helps to lower blood pressure. Well, sometimes we hear to, you know, sort of a blanket statement to avoid eggplants or eat them less because they’re great shade. Can you talk about eggplants a little bit?

Jenneffer Pulapaka (26:38.799)
So a lot of that will come in with my rheumatoid patients. They’ll get scared of eggplants. The new treatment paradigm for patients with rheumatoid is you get to a state where you feel that you’re not in an inflammatory position, and then you slowly start to add a single food group in and evaluate how you feel with that. So it is variable with patients. It is no longer

omit all these foods and never taste them again. So some patients when with my rheumatoid patients will bring them back in. Try eggplant, see how it worked for you. Did do you feel that your joints were more achy? You know, my god, my ankles were killing me or they have it maybe in their hands that their hands were hurting. You know, look at that or yeah, I was eating it and I didn’t notice a change. Okay.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:08.814)
Right.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (27:34.642)
go back to baseline, then add another food in. So start to gently add some of the foods back in and that helps. But like one of the reasons how it works with vasodilation, when I deal with patients and talking to them, we have vascular disease. We have two different types of vascular disease. I mostly work with my patients. It is atherosclerosis and arteriosclerosis. Overall,

atherosclerosis is the one that we’re talking about here that most people think that is when you have a blood vessel that is the obstructive where something is in the canal or in the lumen that’s obstructing flow going down to the heart to the legs that’s that is atherosclerosis the other one is arteriosclerosis that is within that wall itself within the wall of an arterial an artery it has smooth muscle

and its design is when you’re exercising and you want more blood flow to come in, those smooth muscle cells, the vascular smooth muscle cells will dilate and that allows the vessel to get larger and more blood flow to come in to get to the muscles. So that’s kind of how things like that work and that’s how nitric oxide will go ahead and work is it helps with that vascular smooth muscle. Now when you talk about arteriosclerosis,

There can be several reasons, but the most common one we see is medial arterial calcification. So within that wall, you’ve got calcification. And when that starts to occur, it becomes problematic for patients because calcium in that smooth muscle does not allow the smooth muscle to dilate or compress like it should in a normal functioning vessel. So the best way to say that is more

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (29:17.88)
Yeah.

Right.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (29:27.271)
non-obstructive or unobstructive vascular disease. And that’s taken a pretty big uptick really since I think 2016 we started talking more about it. And really it’s just now getting into the cycle pretty good.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (29:31.694)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (29:43.136)
Right. Well, I love how these everyday foods, are relatively inexpensive and accessible to people, can have such a powerful effect in getting back to the heart health. So if someone doesn’t have rheumatoid arthritis and they don’t experience symptoms, is it safe to say, because sometimes we hear these statements like everybody should avoid nightshades because they can potentially cause inflammation. But if you don’t have those preexisting conditions and you’re not

Jenneffer Pulapaka (29:56.167)
Mm-hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (30:11.608)
personally experiencing symptoms, would you say Jennifer that, you people could still try to add these foods in their rotation?

Jenneffer Pulapaka (30:18.983)
Correct, I would add the whole foods into the rotation for me. The benefits of having eggplant is the amount of fiber. So that we’re talking about my diabetic patients, my patients on high cholesterol that are still not therapeutic on their statins. Those are great foods to really help cycle and push out a lot of what’s in our system.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (30:22.731)
Okay.

Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (30:39.448)
Got it.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (30:44.992)
I love it. And then another food I want to call out, and I love how you talk about this, which is mushrooms, which adds such an amazing texture, especially when you’re plant based. They feel sometimes like they’re from a different world. I mean, not even edit. We hike a lot in Hawaii where we have our farm and we see so many different types of mushrooms. It’s amazing. Mycologists have identified the edible kind. I think there were some really brave early mycologists, but you right here on page 148, mushrooms produce a compound called

Erthogelanin, which decreases pro-inflammatory adhesion molecules during atherogenesis. So again, are there particular mushrooms you recommend working into our diet or should we see which ones look fresh?

Jenneffer Pulapaka (31:30.469)
So, right, Lion’s Mane has a lot of research that’s coming at Lion’s Mane right now. Mushrooms are always, I wanna say mushrooms are one of the biggest ones that I find patients say they have a dislike for. And it’s the texture of mushrooms that usually gets them. If it’s chopped up or ground into it, they don’t really care so much, but textural wise, they do.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:45.397)
Really?

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:50.028)
I would like to.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (31:56.332)
And you know mushrooms do have based on the way they’re they’re grown We do get a little bit of b12 hit from mushrooms, but it’s really not enough to substitute so for most of my patients I am substituting them with B12s on that side and that’s in some of my patients joke. They’re like well you take b12 I’m like, okay, I take b12 and I take vitamin D

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (32:07.651)
Yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (32:21.735)
For the rest of it, I’m not taking the lisinopril or the otorvastatin that you’re taking. I’m not on diabetic medication. And they’re like, okay, I see where you’re going with this. like, right. I’m gonna go with my B12. I put vitamin D in it because I’m pale and I get skin cancer. So I stay out of the sun.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (32:35.702)
Well, you know what, too,

No, but I have also heard that they’re injecting B12 in cows to help with their lifespan and their longevity and the soils are depleted, which is where a lot of the natural B12 is coming from. So I’ve also heard the argument that whether you’re taking a B12 plant-based or you’re eating a cow or an animal that has been already supplemented with B12, there’s still a supplementation hierarchy happening.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (32:53.755)
Mm-hmm.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (33:00.103)
Mm-hmm.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (33:08.731)
Yeah, I have heard that too. I don’t know enough about that, but I have heard that on that side. And I do believe that my patients, if they’re more comfortable with getting B12 injections, I think that’s fine. For the most part, when I have patients in an inflammatory state or a vascular disease, those are some of the things that I do look at. Are there B12 levels appropriate? Are there vitamin D levels appropriate? There’s discussions around vitamin C.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (33:13.015)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (33:21.143)
yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (33:37.765)
Those are some of the things that we look at. We just don’t blindly look at patients. Pretty much all my patients go through the same labs that they would go through on a cardiologist for lower extremity vascular disease. And I’m making sure that they’re therapeutic.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (33:49.838)
When you’re looking at someone’s blood work, sorry, doctor, you’re looking at someone’s blood work and you see some elevated inflammation and maybe they’re going through, know, their white blood cells are elevated, they’re going through some kind of virus or a sickness, or maybe they’re chronically elevated, how quickly would you potentially see changes in their blood work and inflammation levels?

Jenneffer Pulapaka (34:14.375)
So for those, if they have an infection, that’s their white blood cells, I can see that. But I’m also looking for C-reactive protein and carbohydrates. Those are my main ones that I look at. Or HSPRP, inflammation within a vessel wall. Things like that I start to pay attention to. Do I see the inflammation? Yes or no. Sometimes it can be transient and sometimes I have comorbidities. I keep on saying it again, where I have…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (34:23.564)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (34:26.986)
Okay.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (34:41.635)
a rheumatoid patient with diabetes and vascular disease, where’s the inflammation coming from? Which process do we need to curtail when it comes to a patient? So sometimes, like I said, if we can, I can get them to look at diet, diet and exercise. That’s great. Also, I also always worry about sleep. So I got to throw that one. Even though we’re talking about this.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (35:07.309)
Yeah

Jenneffer Pulapaka (35:09.945)
I write for sleep studies for my patients a lot. If I have a patient with vascular disease, whether it’s cardiac or lower extremity, so if they have blood flow and they could not get a bypass, they couldn’t one, get a bypass or a stent that was successful in that leg, and no one’s addressed the fact that they have sleep apnea, I would like that addressed so we can work to improve their oxygen levels.

especially at night, which they really deplete. And my wound care patients in general, most of my wound care patients, I think my studies are, I think it’s like 90, 92, it’s above 85 % on both studies that looked at sleep apnea or chronic obstructive sleep apnea with patients in wound care. And they found out that there was a high correlation. So if you’re not sleeping,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (36:04.011)
yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (36:06.343)
your cortisol levels are irregular and if you’re not sleeping your growth hormones do not come on at night to help heal a process. So we’re in that pro-inflammatory state.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (36:20.598)
Wow. It all links all these parts of the lifestyle really all together. And sometimes I think it’s, you know, over time it’s easy to ignore and be like, you know, I’m to elate or go out or sort of, you know, neglect parts of the lifestyle. But what I love is this discussion of saying, hey, it’s not just one factor, but looking at everything and they are important. If you’re chronically not sleeping, it’s going to add up.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (36:22.343)
It does. It does.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (36:45.467)
Correct. You can start to see. And some of my patients are chronically not sleeping. If they have vascular disease in their feet, it hurts at night. They have a lot of resting toe pain and we can’t get them stented, know, sitting them upright, helping them sleep at night. These are things that really over time helps promote better vascular health. But from a

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (36:52.846)
Mmm.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (37:13.731)
outside way because maybe they’re not a surgical candidate. Maybe we’ve reached the limit of their medication. I still believe in treating my patients with oral medication, oral statins. That is still the standard of care. I know there’s the debate on, we have everyone on statin, but we still haven’t seen an improvement in cardiovascular disease or heart attack deaths.

I understand that’s out there, but when it comes to PAD, peripheral arterial disease in the legs, statins are still a treatment option for those patients. But when your doctor puts you on and you have to ask your doctor, am I therapeutic? Did it work? How do you know it worked? What’s the measure that you’re doing? What’s the measure that you’re checking? But sometimes we’re not checking these things and we need to be doing that a little bit better. But it doesn’t.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (37:54.487)
Yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (38:09.923)
mean that I am not going to sit there and review usually every six months their food. How many grains, know, how many portions of grains do they eat a day? You know, it’s amazing. They’ll be like, I don’t know, like one a week. okay. You know, how many vegetables do you eat? I eat a few a week. Okay, great. You know, we start to see these bigger problems that kick in. And

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (38:36.216)
Right.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (38:39.727)
You know, food is a lot. It can keep you up at night. It can prevent you from sleeping. You know, if you’re not eating appropriately before you exercise, may not feel like you it’s given you enough energy to complete the tasks that you want to do. It may not allow you to decompress from stress. If you’re drinking a lot, that’s a food. That’s alcohol, you know.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (38:46.862)
Sure.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (39:08.113)
Fat than alcohol, the calories.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (39:08.311)
Yes.

It’s funny how, you know, I could say for me, it was such a huge focus and learning how to eat well. And then once, you know, thinking about it back from calorie counting to trying to figure it out. then, then it started to feel really easeful. It was just like, you’ll get a few recipes under your belt and you know, eat these ways. And then it was amazing how much brain power is eventually freed up because you were feeling good. You just know what to eat and it doesn’t have to be so complicated.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (39:24.871)
Mm-hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (39:40.398)
which is what I would want for everyone to just learn some of these really healthy, delicious recipes. And then you don’t have to overthink everything all the time. Then you can have fun and you can have your shopping lists. One of the things you talk about in the book, the staples and certain things. it just, I don’t know. I feel like we’re at a point in culture, like you saying earlier, where there’s just so much confusion and thinking and measuring and.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (40:00.116)
So.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (40:06.862)
Am I supposed to be counting carbs or is it the sugar? Am I getting enough protein? And it’s moved very far away from natural eating.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (40:14.183)
So that’s one of the things that we talk about in the book, but also we talk about it here in the office or in food health in general. So usually when I do group exams with patients, I’m gonna show you, you can kind of see maybe a little bit. Okay, you can kind of see. Okay, these are four kind of cards that we make them do. I make them pick a global regional cuisine. They then have to pick a grain, a protein and a primary veg.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (40:31.075)
Yep.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (40:42.735)
I know grains and proteins are the same, I want to tease that out a little bit more for them. So on one of the group exams we did there, I’ll give you an example. I told them they were going to make a sauce, a dressing, a thing. And I asked for them the flavors of Asian. think they picked, didn’t pick the regions they did. So was Asian. So then some of the things that they thought in a sauce was,

I see sesame seed oil, peanuts, soy sauce, ginger, onions, and miso. Right? So now we talk about how we work with those foods in a healthy way that we can start to make a dish on that side. So then the grains they picked were bulgur and the protein was lentils. And then a primary veg, they went between water chestnuts, okay, and mushrooms.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (41:41.815)
Mmm.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (41:42.028)
So they fought between those two. But anyway, we just did four. We did four places that we went to visit. They picked India, Mediterranean, and then Mexican. It’s funny, as we got down, they had to pick a primary veg in each place. One primary veg was carrots. I’m reading the other one was roasted tomatoes or roasted peppers. I gave them both. Then we had water chestnuts and the mushrooms. And then we got to Mexican.

This is what they said to me as we’re going to primary veg. They came out and they actually said, so what are the vegetables like lettuce? I’m like, we need to go shopping because you, you have completely forgot what vegetables are. So on, on one of them, I just went out to, we have a local outdoor Mexican market that has so many fresh.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (42:18.796)
Ha ha ha.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (42:23.757)
Yeah

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (42:28.077)
Wow.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (42:37.455)
available vegetables out there. just started, I had one of my staff videotape me just picking and grabbing all these different items. I brought them to the house. They had a raw version and they had a roasted version with just a little bit of salt, pepper and then hand rubbed olive oil when we roast them. That’s it. They tasted the raw and the roasted and they were just amazed. They’re like, I

I didn’t know you could roast, you know, what was it? tomatillo. I’ve never had a tomatillo. I don’t know what that is. So that’s when I, I’ve talked about it before. We are not intimate enough with our foods. Food is personal. And I think when patients start to get, like in this book, when you look at all the fresh ingredients that are out there,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (43:17.891)
Yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (43:35.504)
You have to get back to shopping for onions, shopping for corn, preferably corn you roasted and then cut off the cob, know, shopping for getting arugula, you know, getting fresh basil, getting things, getting whole vegetables when you start to do these. Learn the difference between canned beans and dried beans and how do you do it? You know, is there is there room for both of them? Yes, there’s room for both of them.

Now we even have a frozen beans that we have out there that are an option for patients. Those are better than can. Dried is great. Fresh is great. Try to find fresh is really hard. But that’s realistically what we’re looking at is getting back to touching your food, being heart healthy. The food tastes great. It doesn’t need a lot.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (44:13.603)
Yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (44:29.179)
You know, we start to substitute for salt. use vinegar and acid. Those are your two good friends. You felt like you needed more salt, give a squeeze of lime or lemon or a splash of vinegar. That’s how you get that same pop, that mouth feel that you were going for. Those are important when you’re getting rid of sodium. Those are important.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (44:30.19)
It’s true.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (44:39.083)
Hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (44:43.393)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (44:54.348)
Yes, or reducing it at least. Well, I liked, you know, one of the things I think is really important with recipe books, like you said, is fresh inspiration, so that people are like, wow, this is easy, I can do it. It’s, it tastes really, or it looks really good for me to make. And there’s such a variety of different cuisines. I love how there’s a kitchen recipe. I’m a big, my family makes a lot of kitchen.

And then there’s different Italian desserts or foods. And then there’s a dessert section, of course. But yeah, like you were saying, it’s simple foods. And I want to emphasize that they’re also quite affordable because I think there’s a mindset too where, to be healthy, it’s really expensive. And that’s if you start to get into, you know, some of these pre-made foods or things that are…

Jenneffer Pulapaka (45:35.217)
Mm-hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (45:46.452)
a more esoteric, but the basic foods you can get, you know, broccoli and Brussels sprouts, which are such amazing, heart healthy foods and tomatoes and mushrooms and things that are. Yes.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (45:57.092)
lentils, lentils are so affordable. lentils and grains they are so affordable and even the dried beans I always tell my patient try it if you don’t like if if you don’t like it what did you what did you waste on that you wasted maybe $1.50 at the most okay don’t do that preparation again move on you’re not spending a lot of money in foods that have been consistently affordable and we talked about that a little bit earlier

you know, meats, dairies, cheeses, those are all more expensive than lentils, beans and grains on a global scale. And that’s why people were chasing, you know, a ribeye, prime rib, lobster, they were chasing those foods because, you know, I’m ordering lobster when I go out to eat, look, look at what I do, you know, that affluent point that still is in our

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (46:32.824)
Yes. Yes.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (46:54.001)
cultural dynamic when it comes to food, but they are affordable. They are so affordable. They really are. can, the bang for your buck that you can get with grains, beans, and lentils is just incredible. Some of the other vegetables can get more expensive, but the work courses that are there, which are for me, grains, beans, lentils, those, you you feel so full.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (46:56.887)
Yes.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (47:21.799)
It’s a nice feeling once you’ve bulked up on that and they can be made to taste different in each different queen.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (47:33.622)
Yes. yeah. It’s funny how, like you said, this status symbol, ironically, it’s the quote peasant foods, where the people are eating that as the majority of their diet are experiencing incredible rates of longevity and reduced disease and heart disease as well. So thank you so much, Dr. Jennifer, for sharing so much of your passion and wisdom with us about lifestyle, about heart health.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (47:42.279)
Mm-hmm.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (47:48.785)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (48:03.406)
Can you call out where we can learn more about your work, where we can get your heart healthy plant-based cookbook?

Jenneffer Pulapaka (48:12.583)
Heart Healthy Plant-Based Cookbook. We do have the website, Heart Healthy Plant-Based Cookbook website. So that’s easy.com. And also it’s on Amazon and it’s in the large other publishers. is Penguin. Random House is the publisher, is the primary one. Hatherly is a specialty publisher that we use. So it’s found, it is found. You will be able to find it, like I said, on Amazon. There is, I believe, a Kindle version out there also.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (48:20.183)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (48:33.548)
Okay.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (48:42.213)
I just feel that, I’m sorry, when I’m cooking and I do this, this is one of my, this is not my version of my book, because mine’s got these hideous little posty thingies all sticking out of it. That’s what I find is really good, because I have my notes flagged over all the sides. It’s very colorful so that I can go in there and do that. But you don’t get that when you do with a digital version. I’m always like, I like to touch it. I like to play with it.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (49:00.212)
yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (49:07.989)
I agree.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (49:11.217)
Cause then I may make notes on my side that, no, I didn’t want to do this. decided I didn’t want, I didn’t want, Basil, wanted Dill. So I’ve made my own edit, you know, which is what we want people to do. Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (49:22.879)
It’s food holding the book. I’m a huge hardcover, hard choppy book reader myself.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (49:27.718)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I enjoy that. the heart health, the heart healthy plant based cookbook.com is where to get it or Amazon books, a million orders, those places. Thank you for having me on. Hopefully this was fun. Hopefully we have a good, kind of overview about vascular disease, both from the heart and from the lower extremity, how food is important, not just one aspect, but kind of all the different ways we add it in.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (49:37.624)
Perfect.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (49:41.954)
Well, thank you so much.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (49:59.836)
the social components of exercise is improved with food. We’ve kind of covered everything, so I’m really excited about this.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (50:08.638)
yes. Well, thank you again so much for sharing some of your passion, your wisdom. And I just want to call out again, there’s such great notes about the different foods and ingredients that I really loved. And I think they’re really inspiring to read as you’re cooking. So we will link to Jennifer’s book and our show notes over at mycelinic.com as well as links to other articles, podcasts I think you could enjoy.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (50:19.399)
Thank you.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (50:29.242)
Yeah.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (50:33.084)
Whoa!

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (50:34.882)
Thank you so much for tuning in with us. Thank you again so much, Jennifer, for being with us. And also please, I want to mention to you all to please share this episode with anyone that you think would benefit, family members, colleagues, loved ones. As we mentioned at the top of the show, cardiovascular incidences, heart disease is such an issue today. And the more we can support each other with sharing this type of information and life saving.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (50:39.815)
Thank you.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (51:04.526)
potentially life saving lifestyle measures, how to eat, how to live, we can really support others. So I encourage you to share the show. Once again, check out the show notes and we’ll be back here in a few days for our next interview. Till then sending you all so much love and see you back here soon.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (51:17.831)
Perfect.

Jenneffer Pulapaka (51:22.499)
Enjoy stepping into heart health.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (51:24.558)
Ha ha.