April 7, 2026

388: What Keto, Paleo, and Low-Carb Diets Actually Do to Arteries

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Have you ever wondered why your energy just isn’t there, even though you’re doing everything the health ‘gurus’ told you to do?

A reliable health study followed 2,200 people for eight years and measured exactly what low-carb, animal-based diets do inside the blood vessels.

Here is what those in the keto and paleo world seem to be ignoring: blood flow affects every single area of your body without exception, and when your arteries are calcifying and stiffening, the nutrients can't properly reach your cells, and the waste builds up. You can imagine how this affects every part of your body, not just your heart!

You were called to change the world, not to be taken out by what is on your plate. Listen now.

Ready to love the meals that fully fuel your calling? Inside Accelerator, you’ll master our proven 5-Step Framework to fast-track yourself to steady energy, clear focus, and maximum impact in your mission. Join the Waitlist - doors open soon. Not yet inside Peak Performance Network? Join today for the faith-filled support + simple WFPB strategies that power your body optimally. 🥣 Craving maximum flavor? Grab our Cookbook Bundles and all the Bonuses where you'll discover how quick and delicious feeling good can be! Click here to get our favorite dried fruits and frozen berries shipped directly to your door.

WEBVTT

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What area of your body is not affected by blood flow?

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There

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isn't one.

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isn't one so lack of blood flow is going to cause you to have problems in what area of your body?

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Every single area

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Every single area.

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And,

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bones, I mean, everywhere.

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why is that the case?

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What is the blood actually doing?

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It's twofold.

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It is delivering nutrients to your cells.

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And it is taking out the garbage.

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So if the blood isn't getting there that needs to be there, then you're not getting the nutrients delivered to the cells in all the areas of the body where they need to be.

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And you're also not getting the garbage taken out.

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So the garbage is now piling up in those areas.

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This is why it is so important to have healthy vessels.

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and what foods do we know?

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The time and again, the reliable research shows that not only maintain healthy vessels, but can open up clogged vessels as well.

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As a purpose-driven entrepreneur with a calling that is not slowing down, if your body keeps saying no, when your mission says go, you live exhausted.

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Welcome to Power On Plants, the podcast where we harness the incredible power of whole plant foods and God's word to skyrocket your energy so you can 10 x your productivity And your kingdom impact.

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I'm Anita Ruel, a nurse and certified integrative nutrition health coach,

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And I'm Jared Ruel, a physician assistant certified in lifestyle medicine.

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and in every episode we show you how to fuel your body the way it was perfectly designed to thrive.

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So inflammation naturally fades away and your energy skyrockets and you can finally have the body that fully backs you and living your God-given dreams without any exhausting dieting methods like keeping up with numbers or small portions, or will powering through your meals you don't even like in another attempt to get healthy.

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We know there's so much confusing information out there about how to heal your body and it can wear you out if you're thinking.

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I just wish someone would walk me through the exact steps to finally feeling good in the way that's exciting and enjoyable.

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So at last, that's exactly what we do inside our accelerator program.

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You can learn more about it at power on plants.com/accelerator.

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Here is something that you may not know.

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Every week we talk about how I'm a physician assistant certified in lifestyle medicine, but what does that exactly mean?

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Being certified in lifestyle medicine, what that means is every year I have a certain amount of continuing education to complete articles, to read, things of that nature.

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And so recently I came across an article that I was sharing with Anita and that so many times we have conversations and she said, oh, you've gotta share that with our listeners.

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So that is what I'm doing today.

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You know, anybody at work, at home, friends, family, wherever, who is currently on a ketogenic, low carb, paleo, carnivore type diet.

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I mean, I hear it all the time, either with patients or just out and about.

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What about you, Anita?

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Do you ever hear people talk about that?

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Are you kidding me?

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It's constant all the time because we think we somehow are missing out on the protein if we're not eating the animal products and carbs are the devil.

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Carbs are the enemy, but it's really just so sad because these are the ideas and the lies of our enemy that are keeping us stuck.

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That's why I love this study that you discovered this week, and I can't wait for you to share what all you discovered inside it,

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Well.

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People go on these diets is to try to get some kind of benefit, some kind of health claim, lose weight, get stronger, lower their blood sugar levels,

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and it makes sense.

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We all want to feel good.

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We all wanna be healthy.

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So from that standpoint, trying to figure out what to do just makes sense.

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So the study that I came across, it was released in January of 2021 and it looked at data from another study.

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they were looking at what are the effects of a low carbohydrate diet, specifically on coronary artery calcium.

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Now, what that is, we'll break it down coronary arteries.

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Now, coronary means crown around our heart.

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They're large vessels, large arteries that go around the top of it, and it looks kind of like a crown.

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So they're called coronary arteries.

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Coronary artery calcium is the show of a buildup of calcium within the walls of those arteries.

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you may be thinking, well, calcium, that doesn't sound so bad except for whenever you deposit a lot of calcium in the artery walls, they get stiffer.

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Arteries aren't supposed to be stiff.

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supposed to be pliable.

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They're supposed to be stretchy so that every time your heart beats, it pushes blood into the arteries.

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The arteries will expand a little bit and then contract.

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it helps to keep that flow of blood more constant.

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If they don't stretch, it's more pressure, more resistance that the heart has to work against.

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And then eventually, as those arteries get clogged, less blood flows, and then we end up, in the case of the heart, a heart attack, and that you do not want.

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That's a big mess because first of all, you think about the extra load of work on the heart.

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So if you get that calcification.

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You have the calcium being laid down, the arteries are getting stiffer.

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Now the heart is having to pump harder, pump harder.

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What's that gonna do to your heart over time?

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It's gonna wear it out a whole lot faster.

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And then what's the result like when you have the buildup inside the vessels?

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What is actually happening there?

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Your heart is working harder, but over time, less and less blood is making it through.

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It's like if you have a hose.

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They get stopped up and you're trying to push water through it, there's gonna be resistance and less and less water is gonna move through that hose.

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The more and more it's clogged.

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Right.

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You can see how that's true.

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and then after Jared shares this study findings, Let's talk about what happens as a result of those tubes being clogged.

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what's going on on the other side of that, not just inside the heart.

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So the.

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called cardio.

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It took 2200 people and followed them over the course of eight years.

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was an observational study where they just looked at what were they eating, and the people, they just kept a diary over those eight years of what they were eating.

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placed in any certain group, but they were just looking at their overall eating habits.

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What they noticed is that as more people trended to an animal heavy diet, they had a higher risk of coronary artery calcium.

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meaning developing and getting worse, whereas people that move more towards a plant-based diet, a plant leaning diet.

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Had less, or in some cases no risk or worsening or progression of coronary artery disease.

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Now the study I was reading was actually looking at that in light of it being a low carbohydrate diet versus just looking at what did the people eat.

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what they found is that people that eat a low carbohydrate diet, if they replace those calories and they define low carbohydrate as being 45% or less severe calories being from carbohydrates.

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We know that our diet should be roughly 70% carbohydrates, just if you're eating a good wide variety of plant-based foods.

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So if people are eating that way and replace those calories with fats and proteins from animals, they had the progression of coronary artery calcium.

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And that's exactly what we see.

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Keto, paleo, all those types of things.

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So you're eating more and more of the animal products.

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So what you're saying is in this study.

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As people started replacing carbs with the animal fats and proteins, they started laying down more calcium in the vessels and the vessels would be getting stiffer at that point, and there would be difficulty with blood flow.

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And it's really, it's the whole pathology of this process.

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Oh, I had a patient just say this, a few weeks ago I had a study done where they looked at the calcium artery score in my body and I didn't have any, so that must mean I'm healthy.

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fallacy with that is the calcium is a late change, meaning you already have inflammation and damage going on that then allows for that calcium to be deposited in the walls of your arteries.

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So just because you may have a calcium artery score of zero doesn't equate into boom, I'm healthy.

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It's kind of like being on medications and your blood pressure's normal.

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Well, you say I'm healthy.

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Well, not really.

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You're a managed sick person because without the medications.

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You have high blood pressure.

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So in this case they say, I have a calcium score of zero.

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But that doesn't equate to there's nothing going on.

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It's just that is a change we see later in the disease process.

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And one of the beneficial aspects of the cardio study is it actually looked at people that were younger.

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It started looking at people in their twenties and thirties.

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Studies done like this previously looked at older people, more like forties and fifties when that calcium would already start building up.

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So then it's kind of hard to determine what exactly caused it.

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In this case, they started looking at people as early as their twenties and thirties, and were able to actually see that progression, see that development happen.

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And what they found is that low carbohydrate diets, where they replaced it with animal-based proteins and fats, a progression and increased the risk of calcium deposits in their blood vessels.

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have you ever said to your children before?

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Okay.

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When you're thinking of doing something, I want you to march that out.

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Over time.

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You need to march it out and look at how's this going to affect your future.

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I know we've said that more than once our kids.

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and that's just like what we're talking about here.

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We wanna say to you as a person who wants to feel your best because you have things you wanna accomplish in this life, God-given dreams that you wanna live out, you want the body that fully shows up for you.

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In order to arrive at the place where those things are possible, when you're looking at a method of eating, a way of eating, you want to march it out over time and not only look at.

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Maybe getting some results when you first start doing something.

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but asking yourself what is actually going on beneath the surface here?

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What's going on beneath the surface?

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And these studies are the types of things that are so eye-opening because they show us what's going on beneath the surface.

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And it's not one study.

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It is study after study after study.

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The animal fats the animal, proteins, the animal products are what is causing.

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The calcification and the stiffness in the vessels.

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What they notice is that if people did a low carb plant-based diet, they did not see that same process happening.

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So what their conclusion is, the animal-based foods are creating inflammation.

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So it wasn't just the higher protein, the higher fat, it was the source of that protein in fat.

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Now, we don't say go do a low carbohydrate diet.

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We say do a smart carbohydrate diet.

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If you eat a whole food, plant-based diet, you'll get the carbohydrates, the protein, and the fats that your body needs.

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And it's like we talk about often.

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one of the things we want you to understand is that any type of change in your diet can cause you to have some results.

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So on the surface level, You might feel a little better'cause you've changed up some things.

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Maybe you've gotten rid of some things that were sabotaging your health and put a few things in there that are making you feel better.

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But what is going on underneath the surface?

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And so when we know that the animal products are causing the blood vessels to stiffen, now we wanna say what is happening with the blood?

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We talked a little bit about what's happening with the heart.

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It's growing more tired over time because it's having to work harder.

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But then what's happening if there's less blood being sent throughout the body?

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Think about it.

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What area of your body is not affected by blood flow?

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There

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isn't one.

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isn't one so lack of blood flow is going to cause you to have problems in what area of your body?

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Every single area

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Every single area.

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And,

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bones, I mean, everywhere.

00:12:45.813 --> 00:12:47.073
why is that the case?

00:12:47.104 --> 00:12:48.994
What is the blood actually doing?

00:12:49.120 --> 00:12:49.990
It's twofold.

00:12:49.990 --> 00:12:52.306
It is delivering nutrients to your cells.

00:12:52.755 --> 00:12:54.855
And it is taking out the garbage.

00:12:55.155 --> 00:13:02.745
So if the blood isn't getting there that needs to be there, then you're not getting the nutrients delivered to the cells in all the areas of the body where they need to be.

00:13:02.894 --> 00:13:04.994
And you're also not getting the garbage taken out.

00:13:04.994 --> 00:13:07.783
So the garbage is now piling up in those areas.

00:13:07.783 --> 00:13:12.331
This is why it is so important to have healthy vessels.

00:13:12.490 --> 00:13:14.081
and what foods do we know?

00:13:14.245 --> 00:13:23.095
The time and again, the reliable research shows that not only maintain healthy vessels, but can open up clogged vessels as well.

00:13:23.240 --> 00:13:26.735
If you have not yet seen the new documentary that Dr.

00:13:26.735 --> 00:13:29.921
Michael Gregor just released, go and check it out.

00:13:30.535 --> 00:13:33.265
Yes, you can have a movie night with you and your family.

00:13:33.265 --> 00:13:35.365
It's called How Not To Die documentary.

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It's available for free on YouTube.

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Just search To Die documentary.

00:13:39.467 --> 00:13:40.038
It'll pop right up.

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Everyone needs to see this.

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He shows the pictures that we're constantly talking about, where you can see the vessels opening up, where there appeared to be no vessel.

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Now there's a vessel.

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Where there were vessels that were clogged and blocked off, you see them opening back up.

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It's amazing what these foods can do, and it should not surprise us because according to Genesis 1 29 and other parts of the Bible, it is clear that these are the foods.

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Our bodies were originally designed by their maker to thrive on.

00:14:11.274 --> 00:14:14.813
But then the research backs it up time and time and time again.

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And today we've shared with you yet another study that shows that animal foods can clog your arteries.

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While whole plant foods can keep them open or open them back up.

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So the takeaway in today's episode is do not be afraid of carbo.

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Hydrates, you do not need to try to count points and carbs and macros, and proteins and all that stuff.

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Enjoy an abundance rich variety of the most nutritious foods on God's green Earth.

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foods.

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And those are the five power foods.

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Fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes.

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Fill your life with them.

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Fill your plate with them.

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Find the ways that you actually enjoy eating these foods.

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Our challenge to you today is just pick one animal-based meal that you currently eat and swap it out For a plant-based version that you actually enjoy.

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I emphasize the last part because it's the most important part because if you don't enjoy it, you are not going to do it.

00:15:19.927 --> 00:15:22.567
That may be your biggest mind-blowing takeaway today.

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It needs to be a whole food plant-based replacement, but it needs to be the one that you actually enjoy.

00:15:28.527 --> 00:15:30.417
Maybe you enjoy it because it's quick.

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Maybe you enjoy it'cause it's not difficult, it doesn't have a lot of crazy ingredients in it.

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Maybe you enjoy it'cause it's absolutely delicious.

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Or my favorite is when you find the recipe that has all three.

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And that's my main requirement for any recipe I put out for you or anything that goes onto our plates here in this house.

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Because I know how important it is to enjoy your food and be able to fully enjoy life with your family.

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Eating the things that you actually love, that love your body back.

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and if you're inside our community, peak Performance Network.

00:16:01.586 --> 00:16:10.527
Our challenge to you is to then share that one meal substitution that you made and how it made you feel, and what you loved most about it.

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We can't wait to hear all about it, friend, and if you're not a part of PN yet, get inside@poweronplants.com slash p pn.

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There's so much goodness there waiting for you.

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Have a great week.

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We are praying for you know that you are loved, and we will look forward to seeing you again soon.