#40 What's the Difference Between Men and Women When Fasting with Dr Nadia Pateguana

Nadia Pateguana (0:00)

I think the biggest issue when it comes to obesity and metabolic syndrome is a hyperinsulinemic state. So it's our body over producing insulin. And this happens, I think, for two main reasons.

We're told to eat a whooping six to ten servings of grains a day or carbohydrates a day. It's quite ridiculous. I believe that probably the general population drinks more soda than they drink water, unfortunately. More butter, more coconut oil. It wasn't weird then, but it is weird now to tell people to not snack. People think that they're supposed to snack. I think that we have now learned that it's definitely not the best tool to help with metabolic syndrome. It's an adjunct to overall health. People that have metabolic syndrome focus exclusively on exercise as a healing mechanism. They're not gonna have great success.

Siim Land (0:46)

Body, mind, empowerment.

SPEAKER_3 (0:48)

Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

Siim Land (0:54)

Everything the body needs.

SPEAKER_3 (0:56)

Control your mind.

Siim Land (0:59)

Welcome to the Body, Mind Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land. And our guest today is Nadia Brito-Nateguana, who's a licensed naturopathic doctor from Ontario, Canada. Her interest is in the human body's ability to heal itself and use it for improved wellness. Nadia, I wanna welcome you to our show.

Nadia Pateguana (1:19)

Thank you. Thank you so much, Sam.

Siim Land (1:22)

Can you give us a little short overview of, you know, what got you into naturopathic medicine?

Nadia Pateguana (1:28)

Sure. So, my, as you correctly stated, my training is in naturopathic medicine. I've been in clinical practice for about 15 years. I did go to school here in Canada, in Toronto, in North York more specifically.

My background is in biology. That was my undergraduate degree. My initial goal was to go to medical school. And then I, you know, during university, I ran into some digestive concerns. I had IBS, and it was, it affected my quality of life quite a bit. And so I decided to look into alternative treatments and then decided to go into naturopathic medicine as my profession. So that was, I guess, 20 years ago now. And I started the naturopathic college.

And sort of in my journey, right after I finished the naturopathic college, I actually went to Southern Africa, which is where I'm originally from.

So I actually stayed in Mozambique for about 10 years. I worked a little bit with, I had a complimentary sort of setting in my clinic. So we had other medical doctors and myself, I was the naturopath. So people, the other doctors basically refer their patients to me for dietary counseling. So my focus has always been on diet and metabolic syndrome from the very beginning. So early on, I really had to navigate through this because I don't think, I think just like in the medical profession, the conventional medical profession, naturopath, we get a bit of nutrition training, but we don't really get very good specifics. So I sort of had to figure this out on my own about 15 years ago, trying to help people, even in Mozambique, people's main concern, at least the people that came to see me was weight, obesity, diabetes, sort of hypertension, all the metabolic syndrome expressions that we see today. This was already happening 15 years ago in Mozambique. And that's of course the group of people that I saw. I didn't get to go on and see and do other naturopathic sort of approaches. It was diet that was my focus and metabolic syndrome, specifically.

Eventually things got a lot more interesting. Throughout my journey, I started to see more specific groups of people. And eventually it actually got pretty focused for me about, I would say about eight years ago I went in, I had again my own concerns, health concerns. I was diagnosed PCOS, which is polycystic ovarian syndrome, and I was struggling with infertility myself. And so I realized that I myself had developed metabolic syndrome. And in my journey, of course, to help myself and to create a family, which I luckily did, I have two children right now. In my journey, I learned a few, I ended up stumbling upon this low carb diet and eventually intermittent fasting. So when I decided that it was time to leave Mozambique, I decided to return to Canada and I met Dr. Fung, Dr. Jason Fung at a conference.

I was lucky enough to be with some of the South African people that I knew, and they knew Dr. Fung and there was somewhat of an introduction. And upon our return to Toronto, Dr. Fung asked me to join him and Megan Ramos at their IDM clinic here in Toronto, specifically in Scarborough. So, for the last couple of years, that's what I've been doing. I work exclusively for the IDM program, and IDM stands for Intensive Dietary Management Program. So, we have an in-office program, but at this moment in time, the biggest part of our program is our online dietary management program. So, I'm one of the dietary coaches. We have grown. There's a few other dietary coaches besides myself.