How to optimize your lifestyle to make real changes in your health with Dr. Arti Thangudu

Arti Thangudu is a triple board certified physician, certified in endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism, as well as lifestyle medicine and internal medicine, and plant nutrition.  She is the owner of Complete Medicine, which is a direct care endocrinology clinic that focuses on lifestyle optimization to prevent, treat and if possible, reverse chronic metabolic diseases like diabetes, thyroid disease, obesity and high cholesterol. Her clinic is the only hospital in Texas that focuses on diabetes reversal, since she focuses on treating the whole person, offering personalized coaching anc care for each patient.  She is a plant based physician and  emphasizes the importance of a plant based diet to combat all the metabolic conditions her patients deal with.

Today we talk about chronic metabolic diseases and how we can optimize our lifestyle, including a plant-centric diet, to make real changes in our health. 

Highlights from this episode:

  • How we can optimize our lifestyle to make changes
  • How she’s closing the gap in the healthcare system but offering lifestyle medicine to make real changes in people’s health 
  • The difference between mainstream medicine and lifestyle medicine
  • What we can do with all the confusing information out there about nutrition
  • The dire diabetes situation in our country, and especially in Texas
  • Practical steps you can take to wean yourself off of the less than healthy stuff to a more plant centric diet 
  • How we are over-supplementing ourselves 
  • Tips for feeding your kids healthy plant centric foods
  • Listening to your mom gut

Resources

Transcript

Dr. Arti: (00:00)
I don’t think people understand the gravity of the situation and how bad certain foods are, but when you look at like the physiology and the studies, it’s like we really need to have a diet that’s focused on whole grains, fruits, veggies, legumes, and that’s about it.

Hope: (00:20)
Do you wanna wake up feeling like you’re stepping into who you’re meant to be into the best possible version of you? What if I told you that the key to your best life, health and happiness are all around you? You just have to find what works for you. I’m hope Pedraza and I believe that there isn’t just one way to live a healthy and meaningful life, and that all you need is a little inspiration to make changes that last from the inside out. Each week I’ll be sharing tangible tips and inspirational interviews to help you on your journey. These are the steps to take to improve your life and live with purpose. This is hopeful and wholesome.

Hope: (00:55)
Hey y’all, thanks for tuning in today. I’ve got Dr. Arti Thangudu on today’s episode. She is a triple board certified physician, so she is certified in endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism, and she also works in lifestyle medicine, internal medicine, and specializes in plant nutrition. So this girl does it all. We talk about chronic metabolic diseases and how we can optimize our lifestyle to make real changes in our health, including a plant centric diet. She talks about all the benefits of a plant-based diet, how to kind of wean ourselves off of that lessen healthy stuff that we typically eat that’s not part of a plant centric diet. And then what we can do with all the confusing information out there about nutrition, she debunks a lot of the misleading information out there about some trendy diets that many of you might have seen or tried. I think this episode is gonna teach you a lot. So y’all enjoy my talk with Dr. Thangudu.

Hope: (01:47)
Hi Artie, how are you?

Dr. Arti: (01:49)
I’m good, how are you?

Hope: (01:51)
I’m good. Thanks so much for joining and chatting a little bit with me today. And so you are an endocrinologist here in San Antonio, so let’s kind of start with that and just kind of give us an idea of your background and how you kind of gotta where you’re today.

Dr. Arti: (02:04)
Yeah, so I’m an endocrinologist. That means that I am a physician who specializes in hormones. So my main disease that I treat most commonly because we have so much of it here, is diabetes. So I’m a diabetes specialist, but also other hormonal diseases like thyroid disease is another big one. And any other hormones like your stress hormones like cortisol from your adrenal glands or your pituitary hormones or your reproductive hormones, those are my areas of expertise. So I’m an md so what that means is I did undergrad then four years of medical school, a year of internship, two years of residency, three years of fellowship, and then got to practice on my own. And then after that I did further certifications in nutrition and lifestyle medicine. And I actually happen to be the only woman in San Antonio board certified in lifestyle medicine. So that’s awesome. So lots of training, but lots of really wonderful things that I’m very passionate to bring to our community.

Hope: (03:12)
That’s awesome. So tell what is this, tell me a little bit about that lifestyle medicine. What is that?

Dr. Arti: (03:18)
So lifestyle medicine is a new field of medicine that focuses on optimizing lifestyle to prevent, treat, and even reverse chronic diseases. So the majority of what we deal with today in healthcare are chronic metabolic diseases. So diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. Those are the things that we’re dealing with all the time. And lifestyle medicine focuses on how we can optimize our diet, exercise, stress, sleep, all of these lifestyle factors that we all know are very, very important. But in a typical five to 10 minute office visit with your physician are not addressed. And more importantly, many physicians or most physicians are not well equipped to coach patients on those things. We don’t learn those things in medical school. And so the statistic is that less than 20% of physicians have any training in nutrition. So while patients expect their doctors to know things, many doctors are just asking Google like the rest of us.

Dr. Arti: (04:25)
And so I felt that this was a very big gap in the healthcare system. And I looked around and I saw that patients aren’t getting better. And the reason was obvious, we’re not targeting the right things, we’re not teaching these people how to live healthfully and so they’re not getting healthier. We’re trying to mask their conditions with medications. And then that’s really all there is time for in the traditional medical setting. And so I started a practice last year that focuses on person-centered care, learning about the person, and then figuring out how we can use a mix of lifestyle and medications and perhaps even de-prescribe, which means take off medications by making them healthier. And people are seeming to be more and more receptive to that kind of approach.

Hope: (05:13)
Yeah, totally. No, I think it’s kind of a more common thing now where people are kind of tired of just the, let me write a script for you and see if this works kind of thing. Mm-Hmm. it’s like, I know my, the, a lot of this stuff that doctor’s giving now is so outdated. Like my husband went to get his, you know, yearly physical whatever, and they give you like nutrition information that’s like telling him to, you know, watch his cholesterol or whatever and it’s like, you know, don’t eat any fat and stay away from nuts and seeds. And it’s like, that’s not even accurate anymore. So it’s, I just feel like a lot of that is so outdated.

Dr. Arti: (05:45)
Yeah, I think that there’s a lot of outdated information, but also, you know, that’s not how physicians are trained. So while we expect that when we go to the doctor, they may not know details depending on what their level of comfort is in that area. So, you know, I think physicians are doing the best that they can with the knowledge that they have. And when they’re pushed outside of their box or given too limited time, then they’re kind of doing, doing their best. And so I, I do think that there’s a lot of confusing information on nutrition out there. Different people are seeing a lot of different things. Not very many people are looking at the science, but I’m really excited to see our community getting more excited and interested in that and people just talking about it.

Hope: (06:32)
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. No. So how do you use, you have nutrition training and nutrition. Mm-Hmm. . So in your practice, um, when you’re dealing with people with diabetes, is that like first and foremost for you? Like is that the first thing you would tell them is like address their diet and give them dietary changes? Like how would, how do you approach that?

Dr. Arti: (06:50)
So every patient is different. And so there’s not like a set script Mm-Hmm that is the same for every single patient. So the first thing we do is we take a very detailed history. So if you are to see an endocrinologist about your diabetes, they should be asking you a lot of detailed questions about your diabetes. That’s why you, you’re seeing a specialist. So I find out how are you diagnosed with diabetes? What kind of diabetes do you have? How long have you had diabetes? What medications are you on, what medications are you taking? Are you checking your blood sugars? How many times are you checking your blood sugars? You know, all of these detailed questions about the patient’s lifestyle, are they sleeping? What are they eating? When are they eating? To give me a good assessment of one, the patient’s understanding of their diabetes. Two, their understanding of nutrition and health in general and what medications they’re on. All of those things. And that’s when I decide where we need to start. Because there are some patients who come in, they’re like, I heard about plant-based nutrition. I read about it, this sounds really interesting, can you tell me about it? And then there’s a patient who says there are three food groups, there is beef, chicken, and pork. Like that literally happened to me today, . So

Hope: (08:14)
Oh my gosh. Totally

Dr. Arti: (08:15)
Different patients, right? So we have to start in different places.

Hope: (08:19)
Yes. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that’s scary. . So, well let’s going off that though. So can you talk a little bit about kind of this situation that we’re faced with just, I mean in the country in general, but then especially I know our city is diabetes is a real problem. Mm-Hmm. . So can you talk a little bit about that kind of the numbers we’re looking at?

Dr. Arti: (08:40)
Absolutely. So in the United States, the diabetes rate is about 9%. In Texas it is about 14%. So that’s pretty bad in itself.

Hope: (08:52)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Arti: (08:53)
San Antonio though it’s really hard to find statistics from like 2019, but in 2014 we had a statistic of 14%. And we know that diabetes rates are increasing by about 1.5% a year. That’s crazy. So that means now we’re looking at something like 20%. And we also, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, well diabetes is an illness of the poor. Right? Well, in San Antonio, sure that that is true. The higher diabetes rates are in the lower socioeconomic, lower income statuses. But in San Antonio, that isn’t the only population being affected. So with incomes over 50,000 a year, we’re still having an 8% diabetes rate. That was a few years ago. And so that is like the same as the national average status people and and our lower less than 25K a year salary group, it was 25%. Wow. A few years ago.

Dr. Arti: (09:58)
So this is really dire. Yeah. Really, really dire. And the issue with diabetes is we, it is so commonplace now that it’s just like, oh, patient has diabetes. Right? That’s fine. Right. No diabetes is a travesty to me it’s an emergency. Pre-diabetes, 30% of our population has pre-diabetes.

Hope: (10:20)
Wow.

Dr. Arti: (10:22)
Probably more. And pre-diabetes, in my opinion, is an emergency. When you’re diagnosed with pre-diabetes, if you don’t do anything, you probably have diabetes in five years. And also you can reverse it when you have pre-diabetes, you can take your life in a trajectory that is horrible, poorly controlled diabetes, or you can make healthful choices and just make diabetes. Never something that you ever have to deal with. So in people who have pre-diabetes, my opinion is we need to be aggressively treating people with lifestyle. I don’t mean we need to put people on like five different medications, but we need to be giving them good evidence-based ways to improve their lifestyle so they never have to deal with diabetes.

Dr. Arti: (11:09)
Because diabetes is no fun. It’s like you gotta check your blood sugars all the time, or you should be, you have to be more careful about what you eat. You have to take medications that have side effects. And then if you don’t, you end up with things like vision loss and losing your feet. San Antonio is the amputation capital of the country.

Hope: (11:32)
Oh my gosh. Are you serious?

Dr. Arti: (11:35)
Yeah. We have more amputations than anywhere. Vision, kidney, heart, heart increased cardiovascular disease. It’s not an easy disease to deal with at all. And it’s something that you have to constantly be thinking about. And so the best medicine is prevention. Mm-Hmm. . So, um, that’s really my mission, teaching people how they can never have to deal with this. Because in San Antonio there’s a lot of this idea that, well, it’s genetic. I’m Hispanic, so it’s genetic. Mm-Hmm. . Well, less than 20% of your risk of diabetes is related to your genetics. The rest is lifestyle. So, and I’m Indian, right? Indian people have really high incidents of diabetes just like Hispanics. And so I have many family members with diabetes. And so this is speaking for me too. I don’t believe that I’m gonna get diabetes because of genetics. I believe that if I can manage my lifestyle, then I will not ever get diabetes. And I think people need to be thinking that way.

Hope: (12:43)
Yeah. Because I think that I hear that a lot too. ’cause my husband is Hispanic and so he has a lot of evidence of that in his family. But I think a lot of times people just kind of throw up their hands and they’re like, oh, I’m gonna get diabetes. And so they don’t really do anything like you’re saying like the preventative measures. Mm-Hmm. . So what can people do? And, and, and I also think, I mean, I think it’s twofold. I think they don’t take preventative me measures, but then I also think a lot of times they’re not exactly educated enough to know how to do it. Like, I mean you said it yourself, you had a patient who thought two food groups were beef and pork. So I mean, how do you, how do you kind of bridge the gap there?

Dr. Arti: (13:19)
Yeah. So I think that’s where it’s really important for people like me to be getting out in the community and talking to people and also putting healthy foods in places where people can find them. But the other thing is, like I said, it’s not just the uneducated people, right? Many people are, I would say the majority of people are not eating very healthfully. And so, I mean, most people are not eating their recommended daily fruits and vegetables. They’re eating a lot of processed and refined foods that the types of foods that are expensive and heavily marketed are the ones that are really bad for you. And so I don’t think people understand the gravity of the situation and how bad certain foods are, but when you look at like the physiology and the studies, it’s like we really need to have a diet that’s focused on whole grains, fruits, veggies, legumes, and that’s about it. , if we can shop in our produce section for 95% of our groceries will be doing good. And hey, guess what? You’ll be saving a lot of money too.

Hope: (14:33)
No kidding. . No kidding. So with your nutrition background, I know your plant-based, right? Mm-Hmm. like personally. Mm-Hmm. . So how does that kind of translate into how you teach your patients? So are you pre, so you know, quote prescribing them to eat plant-based. How are you, you, what is kind of your approach to giving them dietary recommendations?

Dr. Arti: (14:55)
Yeah, so I do recommend that they adopt a plant centric diet. And for different patients that means different things. For example, my patient who’s thought that meat were was all the food groups. Like he’s not gonna go zero to 60 meat to plants overnight. That’s just not practical. So I like to give patients the ideal because I think it’s unfair to not give them the ideal. And that would be a plant, whole food plant-based diet. And then we talk about the specifics to them, what they actually feel like they can achieve. Because the last thing I wanna do is give a patient a prescription for medication or diet that they’re not gonna be able to take. Mm-Hmm. that’s not useful to anybody. So what we usually do is we say, okay, what’s one thing that you think you can do? And there I have patients who are like, oh, you told me to do a plant-based diet, I’m doing that.

Dr. Arti: (15:52)
And they start it the next day and then like their blood sugars are like all of a sudden great. Mm-Hmm . And there are people like that. And then there are people who are like, you tell them the same thing 10 times and they really are not able to make progress. But then the majority of people fall somewhere in between. And so I try to get my patients to learn what is helpful. I give them a lot of resources, a lot of coaching. They have access to me between visits and then they can decide because ultimately you are the driver of the ship. This is your life. And so if what I think is ideal medically for you is going to ruin your quality of life, then it’s not worth it anymore. Right. And so we try to figure out ways that together we can come up with a plan that the patient can actually adhere to and enjoy doing. And the great thing is that when people start seeing good numbers or they start to feel better, they wanna keep doing it and life happens, people fall off the wagon. But I just encourage them, you know, one bad choice doesn’t define you, just pick yourself back up and go back at it the next day. It’s okay. Don’t, don’t let this idea of all or nothing thinking get you completely off track. It’s not all or nothing. It’s consistency and getting back on the wagon when we veer a little bit off.

Hope: (17:22)
Yeah, I agree. So what are your thoughts on talking about plant-based diet? You know, like you said before, there is a lot of mixed messaging out there in terms of, you know, the right diet and all of that. What are your thoughts about the whole whole grains part of it? So I know with the whole foods plant-based diet, you include whole grains and legumes in that you hear some people talk about the whole keto thing or we should go, you know, low carb or no carb, especially those who are, you know, Pre-diabetic or diabetic. So how do you, what are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Arti: (17:52)
Yeah, so whole grains are, I’ll address the whole grain part first and then we’ll talk about the keto part. So whole grains are intact grains. So they contain all three parts of a grain. When you refine a grain, like you make brown rice into white rice, you pull out all of the nutritional value and the fiber and leave just a starch. Okay? Fiber helps bring down cholesterol and blood sugar. And so, and also fiber helps you feel full. So with white rice, you are just left with starch that skyrockets your blood sugar and you can eat it all day long because there’s no fiber and it’s super yummy and it’s addictive and you just wanna eat more and more. The same is true for white flour, processed, things like that. Whereas a whole grain, like brown rice or quinoa, you have all that fiber and all those nutrients and so you’re probably not gonna eat as much quantity.

Dr. Arti: (18:52)
And also you’re getting blood sugar lowering help with the fiber in there and you’re getting nutrients from it. So that’s why whole grains are much better of a choice than refined grains. I think whole intact grains are the ideal. So like the brown rice and quinoa is better than even like whole wheat flour. If you turn around a label and you look at the ingredients and it says enriched whole wheat, what that means is enriched is a nice word, you think it’s a good thing, but really what that means is that they pulled out all the nutrients and then added a couple back in. So that is actually a bad word. If it says enriched on there, avoid it.

Hope: (19:33)
Yeah. I think that one gets people, it’s tricky.

Dr. Arti: (19:36)
Mm-Hmm , it’s a deceitful little word that they put in there to sell product. And then now moving on to the ketogenic diet.

Dr. Arti: (19:44)
So in terms of diabetes, diabetes is a disease of insulin resistance. Type two diabetes is caused by insulin resistance. So that means your body is making a lot of insulin. The pancreas is the hormone that secretes insulin, but your body cannot use that insulin effectively, therefore we’ve termed it insulin resistance. You got insulin but you can’t use it. And the reason that you can’t use it is because of fat. Okay. And it’s because fat is mucking up the cellular signaling processes that help your body utilize its insulin. So insulin is a very, very important hormone. You need it to live, but in high levels it causes you to gain fat. It’s an anabolic hormone, it makes you gain fat. And so when you have high levels of insulin because you’re insulin resistant, now your cardiometabolic risk factors have increased. Okay. So what is a ketogenic diet?

Dr. Arti: (20:43)
It is a low carb, high fat diet. What does it do? When we study it to insulin resistance, it worsens insulin resistance. We’ve known this for like a hundred years in scientific studies. Mm-Hmm. . And so when you are treating diabetes, there’s two ways to look at it. One, do I treat the blood sugar and two, do I treat the underlying cause? And in my opinion, treating the underlying cause is far more effective than treating the blood sugar. So on a ketogenic diet, you’re not eating carbohydrates, so your blood sugars are not going high. But if you were to eat an apple, you can’t Mm-Hmm. because your blood sugar will now skyrocket because you are glucose intolerant, you cannot tolerate carbs. And you’ll see that in patients with diabetes, they’re like, oh, I can’t eat an apple. Well because you’re so insulin resistant that you can’t eat this healthful beautiful apple.

Dr. Arti: (21:44)
And now we have to figure out how to decrease that, that insulin resistance so that you can eat, eat healthy foods. I mean fruits are so healthy, but we’ve just created this environment where people don’t think that they can eat fruits and veggies. Yeah. Right. They can only eat meat and so they can’t even tolerate the healthy foods. The other thing is saturated fat. Saturated fat is pro-inflammatory, it increases cholesterol. I mean there’s some studies that say up to 30% of people on a ketogenic diet have increase in their LDL cholesterol, which is your bad cholesterol. Right. And so I had a patient on a ketogenic diet with an LDL and the one eighties, one nineties, which is high, very high mm-Hmm . And within three months on a whole food plant-based diet and no additional medication, we decreased it by a hundred points to normal.

Hope: (22:37)
Wow. That’s insane.

Dr. Arti: (22:40)
And she went from eating 30 grams of carbs a day to 200 grams of carbs a day, lost weight, was able to eat far more enjoyable foods, less stressed out about her blood sugars. Blood sugars improved and insulin sensitive. She was a type one diabetic. So I know exactly how many units she needs for different foods. I know very specific details about her, her insulin sensitivity improved very significantly. And so I am not a, a fan of the ketogenic diet. I don’t think it’s sustainable for people and I don’t think we know enough about the cardiovascular safety to be recommending it. And also in diabetes we can achieve the same or actually better glycemic control using a plant-based diet without the risks of worsening coronary artery disease and insulin resistance.

Hope: (23:38)
Yeah, that’s amazing. And I, I’m glad you said that. I mean, I know lots of people have their own opinions about it, but I think there’s so many misconceptions because like you said, people don’t know the science, you know, they hear people lose all this weight and all of these things, but they don’t know the science. Like that’s, I mean, the change in that lady with type one, I mean that’s evidence in that. I think that’s crazy.

Dr. Arti: (23:58)
Yeah. And I also think that the ketogenic diet is very trendy and it’s like people lose weight really fast. But what happens when you’re eating such high protein is you don’t feel as hungry and ketosis makes people not feel hungry. And so you’re having a calorie restriction, right. Which will lose weight. And also it has a diuretic effect. So you’re losing a bunch of water weight. And so, you know, there are two things that have nothing to do with the fact that the diet is high protein. Right. And low carb. Right. It’s just, it’s just kind of what happens physiologically. And you’re, the other major thing is you’re missing out on all of the phytonutrients, antioxidants, fiber, all of these things that we know and we’ve studied well to understand that these are important for health and they don’t come well packaged in a supplement. And so eating a beet pill is not the same thing as eating an actual beet. Right. And so I think we’ve kind of over supplemented ourselves or tricked ourselves into thinking, well I can get so much from this like tiny little pill that has everything I need in it. Well no, the body doesn’t use it as well. And there are things in fruits like water and fiber that you can’t get from a tiny little pill.

Hope: (25:24)
Right, right. Yeah.

Dr. Arti: (25:25)
And supplements are a billion dollar industry by the way. Like no one’s doing that stuff for free. Or my little fruit is like so cheap and no one’s gonna, well no doctor’s making money off of fruit. Right. If anyone has anyone who can help me make money off fruit, please lemme know .

Hope: (25:42)
Right. You’d be rolling in it. . No kidding. So with your own, your kind of personal philosophy on nutrition, how do you feed your family? How does that relate to your family?

Dr. Arti: (25:55)
My family is a whole food plant based diet.

Hope: (25:57)
That’s awesome. All right. And you have kids, right? Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Arti: (25:59)
. Yep. I have a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old.

Hope: (26:02)
That’s awesome. Yeah. And so they’re plant based.

Dr. Arti: (26:05)
They are. They are. Yeah. So they, my 4-year-old is, she’s just the best. She’s like incredible. But she eats like a mountain of tomatoes, , and she eats so many peas. And it’s really funny, our, we have an au pair who helps us take care of our kids and she’s a nutritionist and she’s actually the person who introduced me to plant-based diet. And when she first met us, she said that when we put out our daughter’s plate, which was like a mountain of peas and then tomatoes and all kinds of crazy things, she was like, there’s no way this child is gonna eat this plate. Like it’s one too much food and two, it’s all vegetables.

Hope: (26:50)
Right. .

Dr. Arti: (26:50)
And she’s so impressed when my daughter ate it all, my son is two, he is perfectly in terrible twos right now. He he’s much more of a challenge.

Hope: (27:01)
Yes. I feel you on that. I’m with you on that one. .

Dr. Arti: (27:04)
But he, you know, it’s just consistency. Mm-Hmm. , we don’t really have, I try not to keep much junk food in the house because I don’t want to eat it and I don’t want my kids to eat it. So we don’t have options of junk. So, you know, kids will eat when they’re hungry and if they, as long as they’re growing fine. If they’re refusing to eat the 2-year-old, it’s just, okay. Yeah. Well let’s move on to the next thing. The good thing is like my kids eat a ton of fruit, especially my son. Like he prefers to eat fruit, ask for a banana every day. And I’m okay with that. Yeah. I’m like, you know what, fine. You wanna eat a banana for a dinner? Right. , it’s okay.

Hope: (27:48)
We’ve had those days like, oh, I guess we’re just eating blueberries for dinner. Okay. . That’s how it’s playing out today. Well then do you have any tips, since we’re on the topic about kids, do you have any tips just even if people aren’t like feeding their kids a plant-based diet, but just get to eat to get their kids to eat more fruits and vegetables or I guess more vegetables maybe?

Dr. Arti: (28:09)
Yeah, so I think just consistency and having them try and try and try and try again. Because kids are just, they’re kids, right? One day they’re just in a mood and they don’t wanna eat it and they don’t want anything you want them to do. And that’s okay. And there are things that are easy, right? Like if I were to give my kids chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-A, they would probably eat them, right? Or, well, my daughter wouldn’t because she thinks, she says chickens for her friends, but

Hope: (28:41)
Awww

Dr. Arti: (28:42)
My son would probably eat them. But if I were to give her a cookie or a cupcake or some chips, something processed, like those foods are scientifically created to be addictive and to get us to like them. There are food scientists that exists, food scientists exist to enhance flavors, to make things yummy so people get addicted to them. So people keep buying them and it works on kids. And so I think it’s important to not succumb, like don’t get so worried that your child isn’t eating their peas so well, they’re going to eat this cereal or junk food. They’re gonna eat fruit loops. They won’t eat their fruit, but they’ll eat fruit loops. And at least I fed my child something. I think that’s a trap that a lot of us get into. And even me sometimes I’m like, oh, my kid didn’t eat that much.

Dr. Arti: (29:31)
I feel like I need to feed him something. But really, if the kid is growing great and they’re not showing any signs of hunger and you come, they came home from daycare and their lunch is like completely empty, probably doing just fine. Yeah. Like kids will eat when they’re hungry. And then the other thing is, don’t hesitate to talk to your pediatrician about it. Like if your kid isn’t growing well, well maybe there’s something else going on. Or maybe they have food aversions or maybe you need to see a speech therapist or, or things like that. Some of this is just kids being kids and sometimes it’s not. So use your mom gut. That’s always my advice to moms. Like, mom, gut is really legit.

Hope: (30:15)
It’s a thing. Yeah.

Dr. Arti: (30:16)
Every time I didn’t listen to my mom gut and what my pediatrician said, that was against my mom gut. I was wrong. Yes. I mean, and I, I adore my pediatricians. I please love them. And they’re great. It’s not anything wrong with them, it’s just, you know your kids. Right. And so don’t disregard the mom gut.

Hope: (30:36)
Yeah, I agree with that one. . So I have one last question for you, but before we finish that, where can people find you?

Dr. Arti: (30:44)
Yeah, so I have an office in Stone Oak in San Antonio. I also do telemedicine. I usually do like to see my initial consults if they’re local in person, because I think there’s something nice about the, the feel in touch of seeing your physician. But otherwise we make it really convenient for patients. We can do phone follow up, video chat, follow ups, follow up via text, email, whatever’s convenient, try to get patients really engaged with their care. And then you can also visit my website at www.sacomplete.com that tells you all about me and my practice. And then follow me on Instagram at drartithangudu.

Hope: (31:23)
That’s awesome. And I did wanna mention something ’cause you were talking about your practice. So you mentioned before that you are the only clinic in Texas that focuses on diabetes reversal. Mm-Hmm. . So can you talk about that for a second?

Dr. Arti: (31:36)
Yeah. So the definition of diabetes reversal is normalization of blood sugar or hemoglobin A1C off of all diabetes medications. So in medicine you might have this experience, you go to the doctor and you get a prescription. That’s typically what happens, right? And my practice is focused on de prescription, so optimizing lifestyle to reduce the need for medication. And so what I’m seeing in my clinic is patients coming off of medications or getting their blood sugars improved without need for more medications. And so it’s kind of the opposite philosophy. Mm-Hmm. compared with the traditional clinic. Endocrinology and primary care in general, our, you know, it’s a really fast pace. When you see a doctor and you have five minutes to spend with them, the most they can do is really write a prescription. And that quite frankly is how medical training sort of is. Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Arti: (32:40)
. And so I just felt like patients weren’t getting better. We needed to do something different. And I looked at the statistics for our city and I was like, okay, despite all of the medical advances that we have made, despite all of the new medications for diabetes, our diabetes rates are exponentially getting worse. Our patients are getting sicker and sicker and sicker. We’re doing something wrong. Right? And so I stepped back and I realized, we don’t know enough about nutrition. We don’t know what to teach these people. We’re not doing enough to get into their homes to, to help them treat this at the root cause. And so that really spurred me to dig deeper and figure out how we could do this in an evidence-based systematic way to actually get people better. Mm-Hmm.

Hope: (33:29)
. That’s amazing. That’s awesome. So what do you think is the most important change people can make in themselves become the healthiest version of themselves?

Dr. Arti: (33:41)
So one is to set a goal, you know, whatever that goal is. And it could be eating a more healthful diet. It could be exercising, it could be being more mindful, mindful, it could be coping with your stress. But figure out something that you would like to improve about yourself and set a goal and write it down and write down a pathway of how you’re gonna get there and do the work. So the work is far more important than the outcome. And do the work and you’ll have the outcome. Because just wishing for an outcome, that’s not a goal, that’s just a wish, right? But when you do the work, you’ll have the outcome and you’ll see progressive improvement in whatever that facet of your life is. And so I would say focus on the work, focus on the journey, focus on the adventure, and the outcome will come, and the outcome may be different than you expected it and it may be better.

Hope: (34:41)
That’s awesome. I love that. Thank you Dr. Thangudu Thank you so much for all of your insight. And I know people are gonna be interested to know more about you. So thanks for sharing all of these goodies with everybody.

Dr. Arti: (34:52)
Of course. Thanks so much for having me.

Hope: (34:54)
Yeah!

Hope: (34:55)
Thanks for listening to Hopeful and Wholesome y’all. If you found value in this week’s episode, please subscribe on iTunes, wherever you get your podcast, and leave a review to let me know what you thought. I love to know what you find useful in these episodes, so I know how I can provide the most value I can to my listeners. And if you have topics that you wanna know more about, I’d love to hear those as well. So shoot me a message on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. It’s at the Hope Pedraza, or visit my website, hopefulandwholesome.com. Thanks y’all.

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