In this interview, Michael Mathieu talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about his work on improving people’s health.
“We don’t have to think so hard, if we give the body the right foods it needs.” ~Michael Mathieu
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| Michael Mathieu |
Foundational health, according to Michael, is the idea that, if the basic building blocks for health are put in place, and that if easy-to-digest, high-density foods which have all the nutrients needed is consumed, then the human body knows what to do with this to maintain and heal itself. (“We don’t have to think so hard, if we give the body the right foods it needs,” he maintains.) He notes that people with chronic health issues need to have these investigated, but the foundational pieces of having the right diet need to be in place. Where people who are seeking to prevent issues are concerned, Michael notes that diet is all that needs to be focused on, but for somewhat more serious issues, supplements are important. These approaches, he remarks, are intended to ensure that resolving issues doesn’t happen “by chance.”
One of the big problems with today’s diet in the United States, Michael notes, is the present trend towards vegetarianism and veganism, which causes the health of a lot of those who follow such diets to fall apart. “There can be multiple reasons for why,” he admits, “and this is where the story becomes a little bit complex.” Michael noted the example of dentist Dr. Weston Price, a dentist who, in the 1930s and 1940s, traveled around the world and noted that the healthiest people in the world had, in their diet, high amounts of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D and K2. These vitamins, he notes, have several different functions in the human body, one of which is telling other minerals where to go, making these crucial in creating flexible and dense bones. Michael remarks that such vitamins, in the modern diet, are diminishing in amount consumed, due to the focus nowadays on consuming lean meat. The latter is due to the belief that animal saturated fats cause cardiovascular disease, a review of the research showing these findings indicating that the research methodology was bad, as egos were involved. He remarks that such a belief isn’t “holding up” to the data presently available.
Michael also that the basis for people going fully carnivorous - that is, eating only meat - is presently based on incomplete or nonexistent research. That said, he gives the example of the Inuit people, who have apparently existed on a carnivorous diet for thousands of years, as a group of humans which have “robust” health and which indicates that plants aren’t as important to health as popularly believed. Michael also notes that adding animal meat to one’s diet has, in his practice, been shown to improve his clients’ health.
Michael and others like him are thus now focused on re-educating people, given all the bad information on nutrition that is present. He explains that, as an electrical engineer, he delves into research with an open mind and goes to where the data and results lead him, as engineers are trained to be unemotional where getting results are concerned. In his practice as a health coach, he works to keep adapting the diets he has given to his clients so that they can achieve their goals.
Michael also notes that a lot of people are becoming “citizen scientists,” who do not have the biases that medical professionals have, are driving the paving the way where nutrition is concerned. He points out that medical professionals get no training in nutrition and that they are “overwhelmed” with their practices that they don’t get into the research available, which leads to medical professionals relying on what was taught to them in medical school. Michael also remarks that critical thinking is somewhat missing in today’s medical training, and that is something that he brings to the table.
Michael notes that there are chemicals in plants which are actually toxic to us, which makes sense, given that plants produce toxins and anti-nutrients - compounds which are typically found in crop plants which interfere with the absorption of nutrients by the human body - as a way to defend themselves from being consumed by animals. One example of this is oxalic acid, which is produced so a plant can store calcium as well as to defend itself. Oxalic acid, in the human body, crystallizes by binding with such positive-charge minerals like calcium, magnesium, zinc and iron. Not only do these minerals become unavailable to the body, as the body has no way to break the bonds of the minerals from oxalic acid, but the oxalic acid can also rob the body of such minerals. These crystals, which are as sharp as glass particles and can range from nanomolecular sized (which can then cause damage to a cell it enters) to those seen with the naked eye (such as kidney stones). Only a certain amount of these crystals can only be eliminated per day, which means that what is left will accumulate and become toxic to the body. Where his practice is concerned, Michael notes that reducing oxalic acid can help even those who don’t have kidney stones.
(In a conversation conducted after the interview, Michael identified the following foods as being high in oxalates:
Rhubarb, beet greens, spinach, Swiss chard, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, beet roots, celery, carrots, yams, tomato sauce, parsnips.
Nuts, seeds, chia seeds, poppy seeds, hemp seeds, sesame seeds, tahini, almonds, cashews, peanuts.
Unripe avocado, blackberries, figs, guava, kiwi, olives, plantain, pomegranate, star fruit.
Most beans, Black beans, soy flour, soy milk, soy protein, pinto beans.
Most grains, wheat germ, rice bran, potato flour, whole grain bread, corn grits, green banana flour, buckwheat barley, amaranth, quinoa.
Black tea, green tea, chocolate milk, almond beverages, rice milk.
Black pepper, cinnamon, cumin, curry, onion powder, parsley, poppy, turmeric.
Michael also recommends a gradual tapering of consumption of such foods over time, rather than stopping consuming these all at once, as suddenly dumping oxalates from one’s diet could prove to be intense.)
As an example of a client who successfully changed her life is a young woman, Sarah, who was 20 years old when she consulted with Michael. Sarah, all her life, has had such health issues as low energy and chronic constipation, and she consulted Michael after being diagnosed with celiac disease, which is one where the small intestines of people will get damaged when they consume gluten. Sarah later on discovered that she has osteopenia, which could lead to osteoporosis, and a bit later she experienced pain, nausea and vomiting whenever she ate, due to her spleen being so oversized that doctors considered that it might need to be removed. Michael also remarks that, until she was diagnosed with celiac, none of Sarah’s doctors asked her what she was eating.
Sarah kept a diet diary, so Michael got a sense of what she was eating, and after asking a lot of questions and reading her many medical tests, Michael suggested moving her diet from that of the typical American to one where she ate more meat and fat and cut back on plants to reduce oxalates, as well as cutting back on carbohydrates. (As he is not a medical practitioner, Michael can only suggest, rather than directly tell, a client what to do and what not to do, where their bodies and health is concerned.) Because of her condition, where her vitamin D levels were low, Michael recommended supplements to boost her levels of vitamin D, as well as levels of vitamins A and K2. Where vitamin A supplements are concerned, Michael did his research on the right kind of vitamin A supplement to recommend, as he is leery of fish foods, given the amount of heavy metals and microplastics in the ocean, and is concerned that some vitamin A supplements use a form of that vitamin which is not easily absorbed by the human body. In less than a week, the nausea and pain when eating was gone, and two weeks later Sarah felt so rested after waking up that she stopped drinking coffee (she had been drinking coffee for years to get her energy level up after waking up). Sarah then told Michael, after around a month and a half of being on the foundational diet she was on, that she felt healthier and more energetic than she had felt all her life.
People can get in touch with Michael at michaelmathieu.com. He also has a YouTube channel called Michael Mathieu Foundational Health, the content of which is presently in the process of being expanded. His Instagram account is CarnivoreQuad.
Experience the magic! Where ever you are, I bring my 25+ years of experience healing bodies directly to you. Highly skilled, finely tuned, efficient and effective! By combining osteopathic and energetic bodywork, diet, nutrition, fasting strategies and other modalities, I can help you design a customized foundational health program to optimize your true potential. Feel free to book some time with me here. michaelmathieu.com
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