Why Your Legs and Ankles are Swollen And What To Do About It with Dr. Mindy Pelz

Dr. Mindy Pelz   On this episode of The Resetter Podcast, we are going to go through the foods to eat so that you can eliminate swollen legs and ankles. This is a real thing a lot of you are struggling with. So in this video, I want to give you some food ideas. I want to talk about how do you get these swollen ankles and and legs. They're uncomfortable, they're not fun to deal with. So I really wanted to bring this to you so you had some resources. Welcome to the resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again, if you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. So let's dive in, because some of these are really yummy and I'm excited to share them with you. Okay, first we got you, you all know me, like, the first thing we've got to do is we've got to go high level and say, Well, what are the reasons my legs are swelling? And the reason it's important to understand the why is because if I just sit here and say, Eat this, eat this, eat this, you'll go eat it. But, but if it didn't work, or it wasn't the end all be all for your swollen legs, you start to think that it's the food's fault, or you'll turn on me and be like, Oh my God, that YouTube lady is crazy. And I really want you to think for yourself. We have a healthcare system that has put us to sleep and has taken any ownership of our responsibility for our own health away. And so a large reason that I do these videos on YouTube is to give you your power back, because you can control the destiny of your health. And when we look at swollen legs and we look at swollen ankles, we've got about 123, bar, we've got about six or seven different things that it can be from. So here we go. The first for my menopausal women out there is hormone fluctuations, especially during menopause. This has to do with estrogen. Estrogen is what I call a diva. She does so much for us, and when she goes away. A lot of things start to change, and circulation can be one of them. I'll explain how we can. We can bring that back at the end of this video. So stick with me through this. Okay. Second is fatty liver disease, non alcoholic. Fatty Liver Disease is a huge problem, especially here in America. By 2050 they're they're saying, like 50% of Americans will have fatty liver disease because of the quality of our food. So we'll talk about that, nutrient deficiencies. This is a big one, and I'm going to dive in, specifically into magnesium and b6 on this video. So stick with me through that pregnancy. Of course, you know you're going to see a shift in circulation, in the legs being overweight and long periods of inactivity. So these are kind of how we get to this place where these legs are really swollen. And usually a leg and ankle swelling is due to a concept they called edema, or fluid buildup. The these are areas around your cells that fill up with water, and your lymphatic system has trouble clearing them. And so when that, when we can't clear something out of the body, things stay stagnant. You've heard me say this a lot with fat how fat cells are just places your body to know what, to do with this stuff, and so it put it in fat cells. Well, when we're seeing that swelling around the legs and the ankles, it's just an indication that the lymph system, your whole lymphatic system, is not working well. And we will leave links here in this, in the notes of this video, or if you're listening to this on my podcast, we'll leave we'll leave links there. I've done videos on how to improve your lymphatic system. So if you see, if you think it's that, make sure you dive into understanding lymph and what you eat can make a big difference when it comes to edema. So here are the three that I recommend, and my this is my favorite one. The first one, it's my favorite protein. Let's put it that way. It is wild salmon. So Wild Salmon is rich in vitamin b6 and it what by vitamins b6 can do is improve circulation. So it's especially helpful for circulation in your legs and your ankles, which is what we're talking about and specifically, research has found that it's really helpful for that swelling in the legs and ankle at the tail end of your menstrual cycle. So remember, it's this swelling can be estrogen dependent. So my perimenopausal my menopausal women, you're going to notice some. That swelling. And then my menstruating women, you're going to notice some of the swelling, but mostly at the tail end, which is the moment when progesterone comes in, you're going to notice some of that swelling as well. So there were two really interesting studies, a, 2012, studied in the Journal of caring sciences, found that taking vitamin b6 decreased fluid retention and swelling in women going through PMS. So this is oral take a supplement can really help. And that same journal, in a 2016 study, found that getting adequate amounts of vitamin b6 decreased fluid retention, and when you paired it, check this out, when you paired it with calcium, it was even more effective. So if you're looking for supplements, I don't I don't have one for you here, but if you're looking for supplements for retention, let's pair them with with both calcium and with b6 with calcium. Now, something interesting about wild salmon is it is really, really high in b6 so 170 gram piece of wild salmon, salmon contains 100% of your daily resource for vitamin b6 or your requirements. Now, 170 grams is about six ounces of wild salmon, and three ounces is about the size of a stack of cards, a deck of cards. So in order to get just 100% of your daily requirement of be six, you would need to have two stacks of cards put together that would be a pretty big piece of salmon to get you 100% and it but it's worth a shot. I can tell you an eat like a girl. My cookbook that pairs with fast like a girl chef Jeff made one of the best salmon recipes on the planet. It's called salmon for a cocky you can go check that out. In my book, eat like a girl, and I make it all the time. It is so good. So I highly recommend that one Okay, second food that's gonna help with swelling is dark chocolate is also my favorite. A 2016 report found that 48% of Americans are low and or deficient in magnesium. And hopefully, you know, we need magnesium, for sleep, for stress, for brain function, for hormone hormonal production, every hormone in your body needs magnesium, and we got 48% of adults that are deficient in it. I'm gonna take a little segue here for a moment. When you think about the hormonal mess that we're in right now, when you think about the women that are suffering through menopause, where in the conversation is that you are magnesium deficient, because 48% of you are. So how do we bring magnesium back? Well, we can do it through supplementation, but we can also do it through dark chocolate. So but the fun thing about magnesium is it's not just brain function, it's not just hormone production, but it also plays a central role in lymphatic drainage. So remember, I just want to keep bringing you back to how this body, this miraculous body of yours, works. But the lymph is how we drain the bad stuff away from important organs. So like we have lymph in our a lot of lymph tissue in our neck so that our brain can detox. We've got lymph coming out of our liver that goes into our gut. We've got lymph all throughout our gut. Gut, we have lymph. You can often feel the lymph nodes going down to your lower extremities, so lymph cannot be forgotten, and you need magnesium to get that drainage going out of the lymph so these organs can detox. When we're talking about these swollen legs, so much circulation and lymph movement has to happen in the legs, and it's really difficult to do if you're low in magnesium. So, and I really think a lot of lymph as being a part of the immune system. It's not separate from it. I just wanna point that out. There's a 2023 review in The Journal of Health, population and nutrition, and it found that magnesium deficiency impairs lymph drainage and making it harder for your body to keep fluid moving. So I'm thinking as I'm as I'm as I'm, you know, bringing this to you all. You know, how many of you been on like a plane and all of a sudden, a long flight, and you feel like, like your legs get swollen. Sometimes mine do. And when you we see studies like this where a magnesium deficiency can impair. Share that circulation. What about taking some magnesium before you get on a flight? Or better yet, have some dark chocolate. And we when we eat, when we eat dark chocolate, I'm not talking about the sugary process chocolate. I'm talking about the dark like, 70 80% is gonna be a little bitter, like, like, you wouldn't be able to eat a whole bar of dark chocolate. So one single ounce of dark chocolate contains 65 milligrams of magnesium, which is a lot. This is why we are such fans of chocolate. You think we're fans of chocolate because how it tastes, but we're fans of chocolate because the magnesium punch it can give you. I also just want to point out that is not lost on me, that we as women crave chocolate before our periods, and you need magnesium to make progesterone. And I have often thought how miraculous that is of the human body, the female human body, to give us that craving so it can get that magnesium in. The other thing about dark chocolate, I'm just off on dark chocolate, because I like it is that you also get a lot of flavonoids and other antioxidants, which are really good for brain function, gut health, inflammation. This is why I'm always going to recommend to you all that you do food, first supplement second, when we look at this metabolic switch that I've been teaching you, and fast like a girl and eat like a girl, when we look at this metabolic switch going from sugar burner to fat burner, what I'm really saying to you in the most basic way, most simple way as I can is what you eat matters and when you eat matters. So if we're always putting it through the lens of eating foods that support health and tacking on these fasting windows so that we can tap into our own natural healing processes, you will find that year after year after year you're getting healthier and healthier and healthier. Okay, third food for your legs and your ankles, egg yolks. So remember, it was like this weird trend where we were supposed to, like, get egg whites that never made sense to me, because the yolk is where all the goodness is. And it turns out that the yolk is packed with vitamin D. So a lot of times we talk about vitamin D only being able to come from the sun or from fatty fish, which not everybody's a fatty fish fan, but there's a study here, a 2017 study that showed that from the foot and ankle international journal that found that 84% of patients who presented with foot and ankle swelling had low vitamin D. And the study goes on to talk about one of the ways of getting it back is through egg yolks. So we want to look and when you get egg yolks, I just want to say something about this. When I go to buy egg yolks at the supermarket and I get them home, I when I crack them open, I look for that deep orange color. They shouldn't be like a pale yellow. If they're pale yellow, they don't have as many nutrients in it. So look for that deep orange color and know that this vitamin D get you can get you have your eggs out in the sun, grab, make some scrambled eggs and sit out in the sun. But what I want you to know is that vitamin D, when we get it specifically through food and supplementation, that it's it has over 1000 cellular processes across your body and brain, and it acts like a hormone. They do say vitamin D is a hormone. It regulates kidney flow, function and blood flow, and it supports your liver, which your liver, by the way, those of you are like, Why can't I get into ketosis? Why can't I thrive in the fasted state? It could be because the liver is congested, and so when we're eating, if we bring some of those egg yolks back in, we up our vitamin D. It makes this metabolic switch work a lot better. Now there are a couple of interesting, more interesting things on vitamin D. I just want to point out for you that 42% of Americans are clinically deficient in vitamin D, and nearly 80% of us have levels below the optimal range. So this is how important vitamin D is. I also want to take a little bit of a side turn, because vitamin D is what you need for to be bringing back into your life to help with circulation in the legs and and in your ankles. And a 2001 study in the. Journal of exposure science and epidemiology, found that the average American spends 92% of the day indoors or in the car. So you gotta make yourself go outside. I really want to point that out. Last thing I'll say on the egg yolk. I've bounced around a bit here, but egg yolks are a great source of vitamin D, especially when they come from the chickens, like I mentioned, that are raised on grass, and they eat alfalfa and bugs and other wild foods, so make sure that yolk is really dark, really dark orange. Okay, questions you all had somebody said, I've heard that magnesium and vitamin b6 reduce leg swelling. What are the best food sources for these nutrients? And I'm going to give you a couple of foods that are rich in both magnesium and b6 so I like raw nuts and seeds. I'm a big fan of legumes, like black beans, edamame, because you get the soy. Certain whole grains, like quinoa, rice, are really good. Are and our leafy greens, like Swiss chard, kale, spinach and collard greens, when we want to add in more b6 we go to look at our fruits a little more. We look at the bananas, avocados, papayas, oranges, cantaloupes, but you also can get a lot of b6 in protein sources like beef, liver, salmon. We've we've been talking about salmon, tuna, poultry and eggs. So back at food. A key thing, when you go to eat like a girl, if you go to purchase eat like a girl. In it. I have something called the key 24 which is the key nutrients that you need to be able to make hormones. I have links to foods of those who are of those 24 nutrients. So if you're looking to kind of to go deeper into understanding sources of food and their vitamin content and what they do for your for those of you that are women, for your female body, you can go check that book out. Okay. Second question, how does hormonal fluctuations during menopause contribute to my swelling in my legs and ankles, and what can I eat to minimize it? Here's Okay, I'm gonna make this one really simple. When we go through menopause, we have these massive swings of estrogen that are going up and down and up and down. When you get a big influx of estrogen, you need to get rid of that estrogen. And if you don't get rid of that estrogen, what ends up happening is that it can create swelling in the body. Lot of women will notice bloating. Some women will notice those swollen ankles. Those of you that are taking hormone replacement therapy, this specifically happens. And so I noticed, you know, I've known a lot of women, I know I tinkered with some bioidenticals, and you you end up with a lot of bloating. You end up with like you feel puffy. So here's the trick, fiber, fiber, fiber, lots of leaf green. Leafy greens will if you eat that on a consistent basis, every single meal. Fiber, fiber, fiber, you're gonna find that that swelling will go down. Okay? And then the last question is, Can fasting, my favorite topic, help relieve the inflammation from fluctuating menopausal hormones? And the answer is absolutely yes. Those of you who've been fasting fans with me, or fasting fanatics, put it in the notes if or in the comments, if you've noticed that fasting has really helped with inflammation, definitely the longer fasts are going to be more potent. But it really at about 12 to 13 hours, we start to see inflammation come down. Now the trick with any anytime you're fasting to help with a hormonal issue, please make sure that you get fast like a girl, because the whole purpose of fast like a girl was to teach you how to map fasting to your hormones. So there's a lot to say on that. Done a lot of videos on it. But more importantly, I've written in a whole book. So go check out fast like a girl. So there you go. I know that swollen ankles and legs is no fun. I also know you are in control of your health, and you have more power than you have been taught. So I really hope that videos like this give you the power back. I hope videos like this help you understand what you can do for yourself and that you're not at the mercy of your genetics, your life situation, your budget. This is why I love fasting, that you can be in control of your own health. You just gotta educate yourself. Okay, so I'm cheering you on, and as always, I hope that helped. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful. Discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it, so please leave us a review. Share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.