Lynne Bowman

Lynne Bowman was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes more than thirty years ago, and offers herself as living proof that you can cook, eat, sleep and walk your way out of type 2 diabetes, along with other chronic ailments.

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Transcript

Arwen Bardsley: 0:00

Welcome, everybody. Today I am delighted to be speaking with author Lynne Bowman. Lynne has had a wonderfully varied career. She's worked in marketing and advertising for many years from what I can gather from her information. And she's worked across different industries in that profession. She's also worked a lot in the entertainment industry as an actress and makeup artist, a screenwriter and a journalist. More than 30 years ago, though, Lynne was diagnosed with type two diabetes, and she is living proof that you can cook, eat, sleep and walk your way out of this disease and other chronic conditions. Lynne's new book

"Brownies for breakfast: 0:48

a cookbook for diabetics and the people who love them" is a cool, fun and beautiful guide book for anybody who wants to eat healthy. And I can't wait to hear about that brownie recipe, Lynne but let's start with if you can tell us a bit about you about your background, about your why why are you doing the work that you're doing now. But I'd love to, you know, hear the story for for the audience about Lynne?

Lynne Bowman: 1:20

Well, I have to start with the fact that I'm really old. I love that I wanted to get old, I didn't want to check out early. And I plan on another I'm 76 now and I'm hoping for another 25 or 30 years or whatever, of good life. And that's what I want for everybody. And the why of it. I think, Arwen, goes way back, my mother had a chronic disease and she died when I was 18. So I started my life really as a young adult with this deep understanding of what chronic disease does to a family and not only to an individual but your children, your friends, your husband, your everything, I I pretty much lost everything. When she died, my dog the house, you know, my dad started another life, my older siblings were gone. So so in that brief period of time, my whole life changed. And that kind of became the way those things do determined the way so much of the rest of my life went. I wanted to have children too and a home. But I I you know, it was sort of a frightening prospect for me. But as time went on, I'm going to skip some of the details. Butwe can go back to those later if you want. But I I found myself the mother happily, the mother of three small ones that were very close in age, but in a marriage that had to end. And it was abusive and difficult. He was a vet. That's a whole other story that had come back from Vietnam and was damaged and and suffering from it. And so to make sure that I survived and my kids did, I ran with them and started a new life back in California where I had been And so my resume is this funny kind of, you know, patchwork of born. things because I was on the West Coast and I was on the East Coast and I was back on the west coast. But I landed in Silicon Valley in 1980, then single mom with these three little kids. And I needed to make a living because I was the sole support of my kids. So when I was diagnosed with type two diabetes, I my determination was I was gonna do whatever I had to do to survive it and to be there for my kids. I just it was like the idea that maybe I would be gone or not able to was just no, we're not doing that. Whatever it takes, I'm going to do it. And so I tried hard to educate myself about the food. And in those days, all they would tell you about type two diabetes was pretty much well watch your carbs. And you should lose some weight. Even though you're not really particularly overweight, it's good to lose some weight. And what watch your carbs, you know, sugar, you know, try not to eat sugar. And so, and I you know, I took the classes that were offered when they were offered and I read whatever book, but I was not convinced that any of it was really good information. And so time went on, I managed to keep myself in reasonable control my blood glucose was in reasonable range and I didn't test all the time or anything, but I was active and you know, I ate well, but I learned in the process of making this kind of stumbling around exploration of it, that, and I was always a cook. I mean, I knew how to get a meal on the table fast. But I learned how to do it in a pretty healthy way. And, of course, the crazy thing about this is that I was just stumbling upon and discovering the same way of eating, that everybody should be eating. The secret is, and I hope it's not going to be a secret after a while, if you have heart disease, if you you know, have other chronic problems, if you are suffering from inflammation, I mean, the list is a mile long, the answer is eat whole food, plant based, not too much. But if you're eating whole food, plant based, it's almost impossible to eat too much. Because you're you're not eating big food, packaged food. And in America, and I don't know if Australia is as bad but I think our diets are very similar. Yes, every bit of packaged food that you eat has a ton of sugar and salt in it. And there's nothing wrong with salt, I sprinkle salt, salt on everything that I eat. But the kind that the the amount of salt that's in packaged foods is unhealthy. It's a tremendous, it's large, it's big. So it's just a matter of being suspicious of anything in a bag or a box. Anything with a label of ingredients, you know, if there's more than three ingredients, like okay, what's in that. And this is not, you know, this is not real news to people, I think most people have a concept of this or have heard about this or know that. But making the step to actually doing it is the big stumbling block is that you have to cook, you have to go in the kitchen, you have to start with good fresh ingredients, whole food, plant based food doesn't come in a box. It comes at a farmer's market or in a community service, agriculture basket or in your own garden. It's an actual orange or peach, or, you know, head of lettuce. It's not in a box or a bag, and a big one. It's not in a drive thru restaurant. And then, after World War Two, the 50s moms were so thrilled that they can just go to the store and buy stuff, you know, the Campbell's soup in a can and box of cereal and stuff. And that's how, then again, I'm in my 70s. And so people my age, that's how we were brought up. If I ate wonder bread, white bread and bologna sandwiches every day, you know, for years, and we ate the Wheaties in the cereal box. And so we're just now seeing this big resurgence, I think of interest in real food. And part of it is because in addition to something like 88% of us having, I mean I've seen statistics that go from 85 to 98. But huge number of an overwhelming number of us have chronic disease now. And the implications of that are not only we're gonna die and we're gonna suffer, but economically, it's a mess. You know, the the health care expenses in the US. It's it takes people down. Huge number and the last number I saw on that was that 85% of the bankruptcies in the United States are health related. Doesn't surprise me at all. But people kind of don't make that connection that it's your health really, truly is your wealth. And without your health, you are at risk of losing everything may already have or never, never acquiring what you feel you need. So, and we were talking earlier, Arwen, about how it's all connected. Because the other thing is that if you're eating out of a box, or eating beef, let's say from the grocery store, you are contributing in a major way to the pollution that is gonna kill us all. Here I'm granny buzzkill today, and I'm sorry about that. But I think if you're a sentient human being by now you've heard the message that we have a problem with the atmosphere with pollution with losing our trees with with grinding up all of our topsoil and having a go out into the universe. And that all comes back to the kitchen table. It all comes back to what we're eating or not eating.

Arwen Bardsley: 11:13

So is that what I saw you had a phrase about kitchen table culture? Yeah. So would you say anything more about that other than what you've said about what you mean

Lynne Bowman: 11:27

I love talking about it. Because I think it's by that. where we learn the most important things in our life that we learn. And I may be speaking here only from the perspective of my generation, or the generation behind me, I can speak for my kids and I and myself, I was the youngest. So I could hardly get a word in edgewise at my table at home. But, and of course, my dad was king of the universe. And so it was we listened to him. But I got this kind of graduate education in marketing at my dinner table every night, which at the time, I'm gonna, why was she? But that's how valuable is that? I mean, I went out into the world, having listened to my dad, and of course, my mom would pitch in from time to time. But he he was a management consultant. And so that's what he talked about. And that's what I learned. But I also learned how to argue how to defend myself how to eat with a knife and fork and a spoon and where things went on a table. I learned how to share food, how to pass food around the table. I I mean, think about all the things that are a result of just sitting down properly at a table. Where do you put your napkin? You know, what is your napkin? Is it paper? Is it cloth, whatever? What are the implements that are on the table, and we have a generation of kids now, Arwen, who have never used utensils, because they have inner. You know? It's true. There are a ton of kids who have eaten from a bag takeout food, they've eaten chicken bits, hamburgers, pizzas, fish thingys. That's all they've eaten. Because Mom was too busy. This was a way that families have outsourced their food to Colonel Sanders. You know, or Mickey D. And yeah, it's yummy.You know it, but none of it is good for you. I mean, it's, it's really, I'm sorry, it's really awful food. It's fried.

Arwen Bardsley: 13:50

It's not even food a lot of the time is it really?

Lynne Bowman: 13:53

Not even food and and the animals that are crunched up, in the chicken thingies and hamburgers. You know, if you really thought at all about the lives or lack of lives that those critters have had, or the people who who process them, the people who are processing the chicken. So it's not just the chickens that are suffering and the dirt that suffer you know, the runoff from the chicken farm "farm" in quotes, chicken factory, and the people who are being treated badly who are making that chicken as cheap as it needs to be to be. I mean, the whole business needs to go needs to be rethought needs needs to be upgraded or whatever we want to call it but my answer granny here it's like, come on in my kitchen and sit down. And so the cookbook that I did is is because I know it needs to be fast. I know it needs to be simple. I raised three kids by myself. But we sat at the table at least once a day. Typically for supper, I arranged my life that way, especially even though it was not easy. I know it's not easy. But also, I want you to think I want parents to think about what they're giving up when they're doing one more martial arts class, or soccer, or whatever, is that really more important than knowing how to be at a table with your family? Knowing what your mom thinks about stuff, knowing what your big sister thinks about stuff, knowing how to have that conversation, there are so many young people now who are not comfortable initiating a conversation, or carrying on. And I just, I find this really shocking, because, you know, I'm old and crusty, but and my mom was articulate. And so, you know, we had a situation where she spoke and then my brother and sister were always arguing. I think that whatever your family is, all of you deserve to know each other. I mean,

Arwen Bardsley: 16:19

You're stuck with each other anyway, you might as well get to know eachother. Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, do you really want your kids going off to university or wherever they're gonna go without that background without the knowledge, without knowing how to sit at a table and have a conversation and, and appreciate their food and know what their food is, and value their food and understand where the food came from? I think that's such an essential life skill. I totally agree. And it's something I've always it's always been a given in my household as well, that we, it's and like you, it's probably only for I would call it dinner, our you know, meal at the end of the day where we all sit down together. But you know, occasionally if we're all around at other times, as well. But I agree, it's just so important to to have that ritual. Because there are so many benefits that you get from doing that. That people have just abandoned, haven't they? So, I mean, I think a lot of it as well is about I agree that parents are running kids around to so many activities. And that doesn't help. And it's and I totally agree with you. It's probably too many activities a lot of the time. And I also think, you know, there's a lot a lot of the problem comes from women being the ones who do most of this work on top of their paid work.

Lynne Bowman: 18:06

Yep. And the housework

Arwen Bardsley: 18:09

and the housework. Exactly. That's what I mean, like they're doing, still the bulk of it. And and data shows us that, that that's the case. And, you know, it's about rethinking how all of that works. But that is not for this podcast. That is a very big topic. Yeah, yeah. But you know, it's, it's, it's just a massive problem with with how our society runs. And we've just got to learn to slow down as well, like yet, that shouldn't be, you know, going from this to that to the other thing for for the four hours after school every day, it's just about being being still and being together and appreciating everything about that and the food that we're eating.

Lynne Bowman: 18:53

It's also, Arwen, I think it's about joy. I would love to think that people can really bring joy to the table with them can have a joyful time at the table and a joyful relationship with food. You know, in the health business, we talk a lot about our relationship with food. And when that breaks down for some reason or other, I don't like the thought that some people really suffer with their relationship with food that food is dangerous and difficult and threatening in some way. I think that's true in many cases, so I know when what I write and what I produce is about making it simple and joyful. If there's a way to do that, that's what I want for folks.

Arwen Bardsley: 19:53

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So with your, you kind of briefly mentioned that, you know, you did all the things that you could possibly do to help yourself overcome the diabetes Type Two diagnosis. Can you just give us a bit more detail about that? I mean, you said you were active, and

Lynne Bowman: 20:18

well, I will. And the thing is that they, in the back of the day, they would say, this is a progressive disease, it's a chronic disease, that is not going to get better, it's going to get worse. Okay? Who wants to hear that message? Right. And so I just, I think part of me just went no, I'm not doing it. But but in fact, what's happened and, and a turning point for me, Arwen, was in 2019, I went to a conference, the Plantritions conference. And these were medical doctors from all over the world, who are kind of outliers in their field, because they believed in healing with food. And these were people the names you will know, T, Colin Campbell, big name and in nutrition history. And Dean Ornish, who has been out there for a long time, reversing heart disease, and no one believed he was doing it or could do it. So there was this gathering that was not too far from me. And I'm went I'm just gonna go to that I really need to go to that. And I had my book about half started, and I thought, I'm going to see if any of these folks would agree that this was a tool that they might use in their practice. So I went to this conference, which, and it was at a big conference center, and for eight hours a day, well, more than that, because it was from eight in the morning until eight o'clock at night, the the PowerPoints, more PowerPoints, more data, and more data and slides and slides, and overwhelming science based evidence that we know how not to have heart disease. And we know what really causes diabetes. And it wasn't what I thought I had been eating a diet that was almost entirely meat and vegetables for years. And now these guys are saying, you know, it's the meat. It's the meat, it's the fat in the meat that is actually interfering with metabolizing the glucose in your body. And so of course, I sat there and listened to this and went, wait, what? You know, because it was so not what I had been hearing and reading for so many years. And what I had been doing was partially good, because I wasn't eating a lot of crap. And you know, I was eating a lot of vegetables and so on. But I was also eating a lot of meat. And, like everyone, I had always heard that you know, chicken or chicken breast, not too fatty and... Well, according to these guys, the worst thing you could possibly eat was chicken the most tainted meat on the market was chicken and they had all the receipts they explained all of it and showed the pictures and and talked about the kids that they were doing surgery on who had plaque in their veins at the age of eight and 10. So on so it was it was mind blowing for me to hear and see all this and these were highly reputable people, surgeons, you know, practitioners of all different kinds from all over. This wasn't like three quacky guys from Detroit. This was this was a really reputable, august bunch of people. So and by the way, and the food that we're serving was vegetarian, vegan. And I kept thinking boy, this is not great food. It's really not the best I've ever had. They could do much better here. So when we finished and I got in the car, my husband came to pick me up I said guess what? I'm a vegan The car was quiet for a while but after a while he said okay, now. I'm in. So I we ran an experiment in our home with my one subject you know who's cooperative always with with my husband. That's two. He's pretty good about it. But for I had just had my bloodwork done. And so for six months, I did not eat one bite of meat, no animal food at all. No cheese. I went vegan completely. And I didn't throw out my leather shoes, but food wise, I was completely vegan. And at the end of six months I got Got my bloodwork done. And my physician, same one I'd had for a long time said, Wow. I, my hemoglobin a one C. And if any of you don't know what that is, you need to find out because it's a test that everybody needs to take when they're there 40 or so to get a baseline for where your blood glucose is, it's an average over a period of three months. And it's a pretty reliable test, it's important to know that and if your number's good, great, don't worry about it for a while. If your number's not too good, then you know, you need to start watching and being more careful than you're being. So my hemoglobin A1C had dropped three points. And she said, My physician said, you know, Lynne, in women your age, that just doesn't happen. And I thought, yeah, okay. Well, it just did. You know. So by now, my hemoglobin a one C is down a full 10 points. From what I saw, and it was not bad to begin with, for an old lady diabetic. And so that's exciting. It's exciting to think that not only can people like me, reverse their numbers, and I mean, I'm getting I'm bumping right down on normal, not diabetic range. Now, after having been in diabetic range since my 40s. So, if you believe me, there's evidence right there. I mean, that's a, it's a party of one. But I'm not the only one. There are lots of people out there who are getting these kinds of results from eating good food from moving, and I'm Yes, I work out three times a week. And I do TRX and I do pilates in a little gym up the street with my girlfriends. So it's really fun. It's social, which is another aspect of this, it's important. I have a little treadmill that I can do some cardio on, and I have a big garden and so it's I'm active, up and down the stairs. Very important. But you you have to eat well, and you have to eat whole food. And you can't eat. I you know I if you want to eat meat, you can eat meat, but only truly grass fed and finished meat because it's a whole different animal, literally than a farm. factory farm raised cow or pig. You know, I think what happens is you really stop wanting meat. Your body can people always ask me about the sugar thing. How don't you crave sugar? And the answer is no, I don't. Because when you quit sugar, your body chemistry changes. And your saliva actually the composition of your saliva changes and your taste changes. So you truly, and I know this is hard to believe if you're chomping on you know cookies and eating ice cream at night. But you really do get to the place pretty quickly where you don't want it anymore. And no one can be more surprised than me that I stopped wanting meat. I was a huge meat eater. And it just doesn't sound good anymore. It doesn't smell good anymore. I do eat some salmon, some fish some shrimp.

Arwen Bardsley: 28:57

And, are you totally vegan still like do you use you know, butter or whatever? Or?

Lynne Bowman: 29:03

Well, it does. I do eat some fish, I'm pescatarian or whatever you call it. i i salmon is particularly you know, the fatty fish are really important nutritionally because of the vitamin D. But I also that's what I crave. That's what sounds good to me and tastes good to me. And I have a way of preparing it. It's in the book. It's simple. It's not messy, and you don't add fat to it. So yes, I use vegan butter. There's some wonderful products out there now that are plant based and more all the time. All kinds of really good substitutes. I talk in the book, I keep waving at it, it's behind me, but I talk in the book about sugar substitutes, because I think sugar is a difficult issue for a lot of people and people don't know how great food can be. Because we're kind of going on old information. There have been some sugar substitutes out on the market in years past that were like, yeah, no, aspartame and then the news comes out like no it's bad and so, so everybody kind of has this bad feeling about them. But there are foods like monkfruit, which is a whole food. It's a great sweetener, chicory root, whole food, great sweetener. allulose. It's slightly processed from, actually I think they make it from sugar cane, but it's a no calorie sweetener that doesn't spike your blood glucose tastes great. And people still, when you put a sign on something, and it says sugar free, the typical reaction is Oh, no, thank you. You know, like, really! I promise you it and I wish I could just hand you one of my brownies. They're made, Arwen, with pumpkin. Which, in Australia, y'all like your pumpkin like we do here. They're made with just and I just use canned pumpkin typically. And, and also nut butter. I use an almond butter, you can use a different kind of nut butter but almond butter works great. And the combination of almond butter and pumpkin means you don't need any flour. And you don't need any oil. Whole Food and what else is in it cocoa, just whole cocoa with nothing in it and then I sweetened it with one of my preferred sweeteners, whatever I've got in stock at the time. And some baking soda and what else hardly anything. It's just a simple one bowl. Put it in the oven, and you got brownies when they're absolutely delicious and and then I put a frosting on it there. We have, do you have Trader Joe's where you are. Well I use a candy bar that I get from Trader Joe's you can find equivalents I'm sure it's a good dark chocolate candy bar that is sweetened with this one is maltitol, which some people you just have to watch the amount of it that you eat the sugar alcohols, which are non caloric. And I melt it I put a little bit of soy milk in with it. And it makes a beautiful frosting. glossy and pretty and I put it on the brownies. Nothing could be simpler. It's so easy. And if you don't tell people they will never know. Yeah, that it's good food healthy foods sugar free. Oh, and eggs. And I use eggs. You can certainly use egg substitutes. Which are made out of flax seeds, and they work fine. But I do eat eggs. And I think eggs are actually if you know the chickens name, if you know where the chicken came from, if you know that that chicken is healthy and happy and eating worms and grass and things. And the and the yolk is that gorgeous? deep orange, yellow that healthy eggs are eggs are really good food. And if you're strictly vegan, okay, that's okay. You don't need to eat them. But if you're if your issue is health, eggs are a really great food. There's nothing wrong with them if they are not factory farmed. If they're good backyard or neighborhood eggs, they're fine.

Arwen Bardsley: 33:50

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot to be said for any animal products where the, I mean, to me, one of the main things is that the animals are treated well, and that they're living as they as nature intended for them. And I think our factory farming thing with meat here. I'm not sure that it's quite as bad as the US but it's still bad. Yeah, so I mean, like I will only buy organic biodynamic meat now and I'm like you as well that I don't. When, so I share care of my boys with their dad and when they're not with me, I don't eat meat. Really? Because I don't need it. I don't particularly want to Yeah, I don't.

Lynne Bowman: 34:42

It keeps your kitchen cleaner too.

Arwen Bardsley: 34:44

Yeah, it does, it does actually.

Lynne Bowman: 34:46

Your house smells better.

Arwen Bardsley: 34:48

Yeah, yeah. So true. But yeah, but with teenage boys. They do like their meat and I know that that Yep, they can and they were both very into their sport. And so my my older one, as we talked about before, is living overseas. So I don't have to worry about him feeding him at the moment. But my younger one is extremely athletic does hours and hours of sport every day. And, you know, it's easier to get the iron and a number of other nutrients that you need if you're eating meat. So he does want to eat meat, and that's fine. I'm happy to eat some meat with him, but I don't need it. And I only buy really

Lynne Bowman: 35:32

Well it's interesting to to see that there good quality meat. are so many athletes now, you know elite athletes at the very top of their sport, who are proving to everyone that the old saw about needing steak and needing meat, it's not true. These guys and gals are beating the meat eaters their performance, they are outperforming the people who eat meat. And we don't need to go into all the chemical reasons why. But anyone who feels like they would be jeopardizing their strength. By not eating meat is just there's there's no evidence of that at all. And in fact, there's a lot of evidence of the opposite that that you are doing some damage long term if you are eating a lot of meat regularly.

Arwen Bardsley: 36:30

Yeah, totally. Yeah, there was that "Game changers" documentary.

Lynne Bowman: 36:35

Yeah. And then people came out and wanted to debunk it and everything, but there. Now we know with every month that goes by new stuff bubbles out because people are kinda getting it. They're understanding that as a civilization, if we can still call ourselves that I'm not sure some days, but human beings do great on a diet of whole plant based foods. And no only that but the Earth does way better when we eat that way. And we need to start thinking about that seriously. If anyone who's listening to this, who doesn't yet think about that we you really have to include it in your formula. I mean, it's important, it's extremely important that

Arwen Bardsley: 37:27

Yeah, we are not going to have a planet that humans can survive on for much longer if we don't turn that around now. Yeah, yeah. So just in case anybody out there is not clear on what you mean, when you say Whole Foods. Can you give us your words around that?

Lynne Bowman: 37:50

I will. Okay, how do I define Whole Foods? It's food that comes to you in the form that it was created by nature. So an apple is a whole food, a strawberry?A, some rhubarb.Do you do do rhubarb in Australia? I love it. The pink vegetable, I call it celery in drag. You know, no calories. No, it's so yummy. So good. And free. Usually, I mean, it just grows like a weed once you get it going. It's fantastic. So that's a whole food, something that grows naturally out of the dirt. Or, and of course, animal foods can be whole foods too, if they come to you in their natural state without being mixed, or aged or anything. And so the difference there would be that, for example, a processed Salami is not a whole food. And in fact, the processed meats like salami and pepperoni, the preserved meats. If you don't know this, I'm telling you now, they really are implicated in cancer. There's no question now that that these meats are contain carcinogens and are going to cause you a problem over time. So the difference is that an animal can be whole food if it's if you haven't aged it or mix it up with stuff or processed it. But essentially it's anything in a bag or a box with a list of ingredients on it is not whole food. So if you make your own granola is cereal, for example, I give you the recipe, it's great out of whole oats and whole pieces of fruit that you cut up or that you dry or that someone you know has dried. Nuts are Whole Foods. It's I don't think it's that hard to kind of get the formula. A nut is a nut and oat is an oat, it's when you have something in a box that you read the ingredients. And you don't even know what half the things in it are. That's not whole food. And it's processed food made by big food our short name for... You know, I didn't know this a couple three years ago, it came as in kind of a rude shock to me to understand that there were buildings full of people in New Jersey, by the way, Arwen, we talked earlier about this, who do nothing but engineer food for cravability. One one of their favorite words. There are some others, they are in business to see that you truly cannot stop eating those chips or those cookies or whatever they are. It's an industry that is designed to keep you eating. Do they care about your health? No. Do they care about shareholder value? Yes. Are you being an idiot eating the crappy food that is making them rich and making you unhealthy? Yes, you are. I don't want you eating that food anymore. It's wrong.

Arwen Bardsley: 41:46

Yeah, so true. And yeah, like you said before about sugar as well that all of these things interfere with our hormones through the gut through your gut microbiome. And what you're eating is going to change the makeup of that microbiome and that unfortunately, the bad critters, when they get into a position of power, and they want to keep growing and outnumbering the good critters in your gut, then they can they send messages to your brain saying eat more sugar or eat more whatever is in these, you know, nasty food like substances. So

Lynne Bowman: 42:24

I'm glad you're bringing up the microbiome because this is another thing that we've started paying so much more attention to in recent years. It's fascinating, actually. And a lot of people haven't received the news don't understand that when you eat sugar, particularly, you are feeding the bad guys to use your language. And in fact, if you want to grow cancer cells in your home lab, if you have one, what you feed them is sugar. That's what they like, that's what makes them grow. And I Why would you want to do that, you know, if you know you have cancer, or if you don't want to have cancer, that's a thing you can do to improve your health is to stop feeding your cancer, the sugar that it craves, because, yeah, it's we I mean, the whole the mitochondria thing. We are just learning about this whole fascinating microscopic world of our gut, and how much power it has over our brain over our our whole system. We are nothing but vehicles in a way for our microbiome. It's running the show, you know our our we are serving our gut we are this creature carrying around these cells that full of mitochondria who are doing something we don't even know what they're doing in there. But yeah, it's fascinating and I don't pretend to have a deep understanding of it but I'm trying studying and reading because it's so interesting is how if taking it back to the kind of granny level in a way Granny's have always known right that that if you keep your belly happy, if you keep if you keep your innards feeling truly good. Everything works, you know, everything works better. And especially if you start eating really carefully and eating a whole food plant based, not too much. You feel so much better. You stop having pain in your belly and you stop having acid reflux, you know GERD whatever, and you stop hopefully taking all those stupid medications that you have to take, because of your acid reflux, why not just get rid of the acid reflux? Why not just stop having it? Because so many of these things are strictly a result of what's going on in your microbiome because you're eating crap. Fast food Excuse me?

Arwen Bardsley: 45:24

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have more bacteria cells, or, you know, bacteria than we do human cells, or at least its equivalent. There's varying things you hear about that. But yeah, they we're, as he said, we're carrying around all these little critters, and they really control us. So it's super important, what you're putting in your gut that is going to feed them or starve them and build up the good ones. And you will feel a million times better if that's what you're doing. And, yeah, I just always love to say as well, that food is the energy that we put in our bodies. Now, that seems obvious. But then so many people, you know, talk about how they feel tired, and how they just don't feel great. They don't sleep well. And, you know, it's all as you said, it's all connected. It's all one thing. And you've got to start paying attention to that you cannot expect to feel great if the energy that you are literally putting into your body is crap.

Lynne Bowman: 46:32

And I don't know if we can say this about Australia, maybe we can, but in the United States, everybody is feeding their Labrador Retriever so carefully. They're buying the best food for Sparky. You know, they're they're doing they're giving him whatever he needs for his health. And then they're eating a hotdog.

Arwen Bardsley: 46:54

Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure it's the same here.

Lynne Bowman: 46:57

Yeah, I don't get. I'm glad for Sparky, that they care and that they're feeding him carefully, and thinking about his future and his energy. But how can you not have this deep understanding that you should take that care of yourself, too. And, you know, and I know a lot of people there's a there's a relationship, you feel deprived, if you can't eat what you want, when you want to eat it. But that, that can change if you make a decision. If you're able to just make that decision, a commitment. And give yourself a few weeks to adjust. Then what you let's talk about timing your food too, because I'm sure you're hearing about this, Arwen, a lot but the intermittent fasting idea it's old, it's not fad. It's a very old way of thinking about food, really. And I like to compare people know about Paleo, you know, and, and how did our ancestors eat and we should eat the way our great, great, you know, grandparents ate and well think about it. They didn't eat three meals a day, they didn't eat all day. What did they eat, they ate when they could get food to great extent. And they could they ate when grandma went out in the woods and foraged for mushrooms and herbs and so on. And maybe you pulled something out of the river, the guys didn't pull down a big creature for meat very often, you know that that was a once in a while kind of thing. They ate plants, a lot of plants, and they ate plants when they had plants, and they ate fruit in season. That's right. Which is a tricky thing now because all of these things are in the grocery store all the time. You know, you can get grapes from Chile and apricot from Turkey and all these things. And so, especially if you are inclined as I am to have blood sugar issues, fruit, even whole fruit can be a little bit of an issue because you're not meant to have all kinds of fruit all year long. I think it does make sense to be somewhat careful to eat fruit that's in season for your microbes for your microbiome. It seems happier when you do that.

Arwen Bardsley: 49:44

Totally agree. Totally agree. And also getting back to what we've said a couple of times about the health of the planet. You know, having your grapes flown from you know, somewhere else in the world. That's not helping that either. So it is absolutely eating local stuff that's local to you is going to help you and the planet

Lynne Bowman: 50:06

and the timing issue. And I've found in, in my own experience, and again, kind of relating it to diabetes. And many of you out there who are having blood sugar issues, we were told to eat all the time, you know that you should eat small meals all day. And that was the way to keep your blood sugar. And that's wrong. It's just not right. What really will control your blood sugar is to skip a meal, frequently, and a lot of us have arrived at a place where we eat one or two meals a day. That's it. And, and so it's called timed eating, or intermittent fasting or time restricted eating whatever you want to call it, it's keeping your eating kind of confined to six, eight hours, something like that, and the rest of the time, don't eat. And if it sounds a little harsh, I promise you, it's not you would be surprised if you haven't tried this. When you do. You can drink tea, drink coffee, water, but don't eat, particularly at night, try and stop eating in the afternoon for five, six, whatever you can manage to make your last meal. So for example, if your last meal is going to be at six, then you want to kind of keep your eating from about noon, till about six at night in that period of six hours. In my case, I tend to eat earlier in the day, that's when I'm hungry. And so I'll eat a breakfast at nine or 10. And then I'll eat a nice meal at one or two. And I'm done. That's all I need. That's all I want. So I go to bed on an empty stomach, and I go to sleep. And what happens is you sleep better. If you're having sleep issues, it's quite likely that it's because you're having food issues. And if you already know that you need to have a dark room, you electronics need to be turned off and you need to do some sort of sleep ritual. If you're having sleep problems, I'm willing to bet you've probably read some of those things. And you might be trying to put those things in practice. But if you want to add this to your practice, it's going to it's going to improve your sleep. If you don't have food in your belly, when you go to sleep, it's going to help you. And this is I love showing off my new favorite word autophagy such a great word, but we love that word. And it means that your body knows how to cleanse itself, the cells within your body have the ability to actually recycle other cells dead yucky pieces of cells, they recycle this stuff. But in order to do it, you need to let them have space and rest to do it. They have to not be busy digesting that pizza that you ate at 11 o'clock at night. Yep, you need to let your body rest. And then all the little cleaning things that need to happen. Go to work. And that's what keeps your body running. Well, that's what keeps you healthy into your old age, is if you've had this autophagy process working well for you that that it's like your closets, right? You gotta clean it out, you can't just let this stuff build up and ignore it. Your body has stuff in it that needs to be cleaned out and not just in your, your digestive system in your gut, but all through your body. Your cells need to be cleaned and refreshed and they know how to do it and they will do it if you just leave him alone. If you just stop with pizza at 11 o'clock at night, they will do it. So this was a fairly new concept to me in the last couple of years and and I find that interesting and exciting. And I want to be good to myself and I want you to be good to yourself. Because it it each of these things that you add to your practice help they make you feel better.

Arwen Bardsley: 54:36

Yeah, they do. Yeah. And I think for people who that is a really brand new concept of time restricted eating. My suggestion would be to just gradually wind your eating window back you know starting with if you have breakfast currently at eight o'clock then can you push it out to nine o'clock or whatever it is. But I yeah, I do. out as well, myself and you do you don't? It's not a problem you don't it's not that you can't fall asleep

Lynne Bowman: 55:07

It's easier than you think it is.

Arwen Bardsley: 55:08

Yeah, it is easier than you think. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and you, you know, you can do all the things you would normally do without eating, you know, I'll go and do a big workout at the gym with you know, and I haven't eaten since, you know, 730 the night before. And you know, it's not going to be till midnight when midnight, midday when I eat, and that's fine. I can do it. And it doesn't affect my performance. It's yeah, you and it's and

Lynne Bowman: 55:35

And we all are individual about this. So you need to find what works for you. And what you know, I'm, I'm a lark, right? I'm a morning person. And, and so that's when I want my energy. And I, you know, the food makes sense for me and so on. But there are people who don't want to go to bed until midnight, one, two. And that's different, and you have to find what works for you. But the people that I've talked to about this, and a lot of the people that are teaching me about this, it's remarkable how easy it is. It's a habit, like so many other things, we have been in a habit of three meals a day or four in some cases, you know, the snack at 10. And the Starbucks at four in the afternoon, with a donut and yeah, whatever. These things are habits, they are not necessarily must do behaviour.

Arwen Bardsley: 56:31

In fact they're bad. They're there. They're don't do really, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So true.

Lynne Bowman: 56:38

and and when you think about how our ancestors ate and what we're hardwired for, what we're hardwired for, is to survive, not eating just fine.

Arwen Bardsley: 56:50

Yeah, that's right,

Lynne Bowman: 56:51

you know, we were not created to sit down to the table and eat three or four meals a day. No.

Arwen Bardsley: 57:00

So true. So we are just about out of time, Lynne. So a bit more about your book. So tell us about that whatever you want us to know where we can get it. And

Lynne Bowman: 57:13

well, and I have it right here. And, and I have it bookmarked for things that I keep looking at myself. I, it's a simple book, which is I'm not a chef, I'm a grandma. And I think it's important for people to have really doable things, you know, kind of go to recipes that are forgiving, that are made out of the things that you have in your cupboard. And, and in the book, I talk about how to stock your cupboards and what to take out when we get rid of and what to have. Because there are a few ingredients that when you have them in your kitchen you go, I'll tell you about one of my secret sauces is truffle salt. It makes everything taste amazing. It's so good. It sounds a little expensive, a little pricey, but just a few sprinkles of this and all of a sudden your eggs or whatever you're making your vegetables are like wow. So I have some ideas there. But it's all designed to be super easy and fast for people to do because I don't know most of us really don't want to spend our day in the kitchen, or even a couple of hours before a meal. I mean, I'm I don't have that kind of patience. So it's made for people who maybe don't love to cook but love to eat, that's the idea. And, and so yes, there's pies, cakes, brownies, sweets, but there's also just regular meals that are the kinds of things that are a good strategy to have in your fridge. So you come in the door and instead of going wrong, you will go into the fridge and pull this out and eat this thing. One of the things comes to my mind is coleslaw. It's a great, great go to food that works in all different kinds of ways. And it just gets better after a day or two in the fridge and then it's there and you can pull it out and eat it. It's so easy. And the recipes are designed for kids. Eight years old, or grandpa 85 grumpy, he can do it too. It's simple. It's easy and get it on Amazon its comes in Paperback or hardback or you can download it but I really want you to have it on your sink in hardback if you can on your countertop. So that you use it cuz I didn't do this. So you would just shove it up on the shelf. I want you to make the recipes and eat the food. And it's kind of a fun book, but I tell some stories about things in it too. So there's that and I hope you'll enjoy it. It's and oh, your independent bookseller if you go and ask for it, because, yes, we want to support our booksellers. If you ask for it, they can get it from their wholesaler. Ingram Spark is the wholesaler that everybody buys. They're one of the big wholesalers that everybody buys books from. So just ask for it. And they'll order it for you. And they can get it.

Arwen Bardsley: 1:00:24

Yeah, totally second that, let's support our local bookstores, where we can rather than giving Amazon more of our money. But yeah, if you, and probably I would say probably some of our other, you know, we've got a local online, and I'm sure you have other online book bookstores as well, which we have here. And the names just gone. booktopia booktopia. Yeah, so I'm sure we can get it through there as well.

Lynne Bowman: 1:01:00

Yeah, so please ask for it. Wherever you want to buy books. And you can you can look on Amazon at the reviews and so on and see how people have received it. And I and my website is Lynnebowman.com L-y- n- n- e, B-o-W-m-a-n.com. I love hearing from people. I love getting questions from people. And there's a little contact form on the website that you can send me a note and I will get it. I'm happy to get it. You can sign up there on my list if you want to. And I send out recipes when I come up with something I think oh this is amazing. I want everybody to know, I will send out more recipes. So you'll get stuff not every week because a lot of work but you'll get it every once in a while and

Arwen Bardsley: 1:01:50

well I think that's better because we all get way too many emails

Lynne Bowman: 1:01:53

we get way too much. But do send me pictures when you make something and you think wow, look at this came out amazing. I love getting pictures. Because that proves to me that somebody out there actually used the recipe and is making their family and their own health better.

Arwen Bardsley: 1:02:12

Right. And you on social media Lynne?

Lynne Bowman: 1:02:15

Yeah, it's yeah, all of them. Instagram and Facebook and everything. And so if you go on the website, that's the easy way to find out you can then click through social media and see me on all those other platforms YouTube channel, yes.

Arwen Bardsley: 1:02:34

Okay. All right, great. Well, I have it's been really fun and really informative. I really appreciate your time. And thanks for coming on and hopefully you get lots of book sales from Australia and the other places in the world where people are listening or watching this interview.

Lynne Bowman: 1:02:53

Well, I hope you'll enjoy the book, everybody.

Arwen Bardsley: 1:02:57

Thanks, Lynne.