Grace's Go-To Tips for Fighting Free Radicals

Just last week, we had the pleasure to sit down with Grace, a renowned holistic nutritionist health coach and the founder of Graceful Wellness. She is an expert in gut and hormone health and provides one on one coaching for numerous clients to help them in their own personal wellness journeys. We’re big fans of Grace here Terra Health Essentials, because not only is she highly educated in this material - she truly walks when she talks. Her own personal story and first-hand experience is what really sparked her dedication to holistic nutrition and wellness. Grace has helped thousands of women restore their health and feel at home in their bodies and we were delighted when she joined us for a second live Q&A on Instagram.

We didn’t want anyone to miss out on this super insightful chat between Brittany and Grace, so we have a full recap of it for you right here! 

‍

B: For those who don’t have your expertise, what are free radicals, what is oxidative stress, what does that mean? 

G: I heard someone use this analogy and I thought it was pretty helpful. Imagine you’re going shopping at a show store and you have a pair of shoes in your hand and somebody comes and steals your shoes. Now you’re really agitated and you’re going to try and steal somebody else's shoes, and that person gets agitated and steals somebody else's shoes. So it causes this chain reaction of agitated people that go and try and steal shoes from other people. And that’s basically what happens within the molecules. So, a free radical again is just a molecule that’s basically lost an electron, so that molecule becomes very agitated and starts causing this chain reaction of issues in the body. And if your body doesn’t have enough antioxidants to go and try to neutralize that and clean up the mess that’s what causes oxidative stress which can lead to chronic health issues.

B: Okay, two things I got from that thus far: 1. Who knows where I’d be if my chemistry teacher had taught us shopping  analogies! And 2. When you say oxidative stress vs. free radicals: free radicals are the shoe stealers and then oxidative stress is the agitation or the result of what happens when those free radicals steal your shoes...

G: So when we think of health in general, there’s always the Goldilocks theory, you don’t want too much or too little, so free radicals aren’t necessarily bad it depends on the amount and the context. For example your body produces free radicals when you exercise. It just depends if you have enough resources in your body to kind of clean up that mess. And oxidative stress happens when we have too many free radicals and not enough antioxidants. So that’s basically what oxidative stress is; the free radicals are what cause oxidative stress so it kind of just depends on the ratio of antioxidants vs free radicals.

B: Okay. Interesting. So what you talk about free radicals and what those are, what do those look like and which are positive?

G: For example, nitric oxide, like when you exercise and when your blood vessels dilate -that’s a form of a free radical. Or just things that cause that oxidation in your body. For example, if you look at an apple, when a fruit rots that’s the fruit oxidizing. So it’s a natural process. Just like your body produces antioxidants naturally, it produces free radicals naturally. There’s a lot of things we don’t have to get into, but it's hormonal things in your thyroid as well, like the conversion of certain hormones to other hormones - free radicals are involved in that process as well, so it just depends on the context.

B: So I feel like that oxidative stress is something that's inevitable in a sense, and so it's about trying to control or mitigate the “too many free radicals” and making sure you're getting enough antioxidants to counterbalance the natural progression of oxidative stress. So with that, what other stressors outside in the modern day environment would be categorized as a free radical? ‍

G: Smoking is a huge one. Pollution in our environment from our water, and our air; pesticides that are sprayed on our produce is another huge one that's really common these days and kind of hard to avoid. But we can only change what we can change. And just general stress. If you eat a lot of processed carbs and processed sugar, that can cause more free radicals in the body. So just living an unhealthy lifestyle and the pollution in our modern environment.

B. When you talk about water pollution, do you mean tap water - like water we drink? Or is it water from when we swim in the lake, for example. What kind of water has free radicals?

G: Yes, so it's technically both because there's pollution in the ocean now too, but our tap water has heavy metals and there can be mold runoff from chemicals and factories. So yeah, tap water, definitely, that's why the big water filters that filter out a ton of stuff now are really popular because people realize that it's impacting our health. But I'm not going to say don't swim in the ocean, I swim in the ocean all the time, you know - you're not drinking the ocean water so that's fine.

B: And going back to smoking, someone in the comments asked about vaping which is like the “clean” smoking today.

G: Noo, I think vapes are horrible for you, I'm just going to be honest. I know people think that it's a healthier option and I suppose it is to an extent because you're not inhaling the smoke. But there's been so many studies… I think everyone can agree that we know vaping isn't good for you. 

B: Is there anything outside of the obvious that would be considered a free radical that's not so obvious?

G: I don't think so. I think it's also important to note that free radicals like I mentioned before aren't always damaging, it completely depends on the context. It just goes back to that thing with health. We demonize these things so much, but because free radicals are a natural process that happens in the body over time as we age - there are just things in our environment that accelerate that process and create that build up in the body. That's why it's helpful to make sure you're living a healthy lifestyle and then supplement with antioxidants to neutralize that imbalance that happens.

B: And when you talk about exposure to free radicals, we talked about consumption -  like water or things you eat and digest - but what other exposures are there? Are some free radicals worse than others, like is it anything you put on your skin like shampoos and conditioners? I feel like when I’m shopping now, I'm reading the back of the labels and I'm not sure what is safe to buy or not buy. Such as the stuff that we buy today that maybe we didn’t have 10 or even 50 years ago.

Are free radicals more prevalent now? Are we exposed even more to free radicals just with how much stuff we have now, like makeup or face washes? Or do we need to be concerned not just with what we consume, but anything that we are physically exposed to - by touch or whatever.

G: I mean generally natural is typically better, but I don't want to overwhelm people and say like you know you have to go for all natural products, all natural makeup, all natural cleaning supplies, detergents, and I would be lying if I said I did that -  I don't. We do want to control the controllables by making small changes here and there like with our diet and that.

I mean, generally speaking, if you flip over a product and the ingredient label is extremely long and there's all these things that you can't pronounce, and maybe it smells like bleach and a ton of chemicals, it's not great to be ingesting and breathing in all day long. So if you can switch to more natural products that's definitely a lot more helpful. Because we didn't have any of these chemicals like 100 years ago. And I think we'd be naive to say that it's not impacting our health in some way.

"We do want to control the controllables by making small changes here and there, like with our diet."

B: Okay so for I mean for the people that are you know like over-worriers like myself at times, is the stuff most likely on the shelves at target and that containing free radicals? And that's shampoos, conditioners, face products? Just to really kind of find the bottom of the pit here, it's that free radicals are everywhere and we're exposing ourselves to them everyday in some capacity and suscepting ourselves to what will be oxidative stress on our bodies. 

And now we're already dark so let's get a little darker. What are the negative health effects of these free radicals and this oxidative stress, what is the impact on our health? Like, why are they bad?

G: Well it basically causes accelerated aging so that invovles everything that comes with the aging process. It's damaging to our mitochondria which is the powerhouse of the cell. So if you think about your energy, your metabolism, the regeneration of our skin, our bones, our muscles, our brain, and all of our organs - if that energy system deteriorates then we're going to be unhealthy earlier in life. This can lead to chronic health conditions down the line like heart disease, diabetes, all of these things. And in the short term it can cause brain fog, aches and pains, digestive issues, extreme fatigue, it can weaken your immune system -  tiny insidious things that we don't really chalk up to oxidative stress. It causes problems.

B: Okay so that was going to be my next question: how do we know we're suffering from oxidative stress? So, the ultimate kind of “end all” is that your aging process is completely expedited if we just neglect the oxidative stress that were exposed to from free radicals.

One of the signs to look for is if you're not operating 10 out of 10 and you're feeling more like a 7, it’s pretty likely to be connected to oxidative stress, it's just displayed in different ways. Does that increase the frequency of headaches for example? If you're getting sick more often than the average person, or getting a cold more than 3-5 times a year, then would you say that could be something linked to oxidative stress?

G: For sure, I mean we are definitely all suffering from some level of oxidative stress. I think it's just kind of inevitable at this point, and it's not this horrible scary thing but like I think we've all gotten used to operating at a lower baseline.

"We are definitely all suffering from some level of oxidative stress...we've all gotten used to operating at a lower baseline."

B: Like we just accepted it, we all had Red40 we all ate Lucky Charms, it's a done deal.

G: Exactly yeah, but there's a lot of things that we can do to improve that. So things like headaches, brain fog, fatigue, just generally feeling not good - maybe even noticing you're getting more wrinkles or your hair grays early, like all those early signs of aging probably have a component of oxidative stress.

B: Okay, well yeah, I feel a little bit better about not being the most tan in high school knowing that I'm not going to age as much as those other girls! So now that we've terrified everybody and I'm pretty sure we got as dark as we're going to get today. We can do something about all this oxidative stress and free radical exposure, so can you talk more about what combats oxidative stress and how we can fight back against these free radicals? 

‍G: Yeah, so back to the shoes and the shopping analogy. You have all the people running around stealing shoes from each other - those are the free radicals. Think of an antioxidant as the person that comes in and calms one of them down and says “hey relax you don't need to steal everybody's shoes, everything's fine”. So they stop that chain reaction of the free radicals from keeping on doing their thing. That's the job of an antioxidant. It basically neutralizes the situation, calms it down, and restores the balance. So we want to eat foods that are rich in antioxidants and we want to support our own system to produce antioxidants. Because just like we produce free radicals, we also produce antioxidants like glutathione. 

But if that system is not working properly then the balance gets thrown off and we have too many free radicals and not enough antioxidants. So eating a diet that's rich in antioxidants, exercising, not smoking, reducing pollution and chemicals as much as we can, and then taking more antioxidants with supplementation can restore that balance.

‍B: Okay well it's relieving to hear that we produce antioxidants on our own. I’m going to call the antioxidants the store manager, now we've really got our whole analogy mapped out. So is our store managing antioxidant, glutathione, something we produce ourselves? Or do you have to supplement with it? And can you explain exactly what glutathione is? Is it a chemical that's produced and how do we produce it?

G: Yeah, so it's a molecule. It’s the master antioxidant of the human body and it's basically your body's own built-in cleanup system. Your body recognizes that there are free radicals and so your body then produces antioxidants to neutralize the situation. It’s just a natural mechanism that happens. But because we live in this world that has so many toxins, it’s overwhelmed and so sometimes our natural body systems don't operate as well and we're not producing enough antioxidants. That's when supplementation can be helpful and just taking care of the body as a whole, so you're supporting that system but then you're also adding in more so it really helps your body to balance it out.

B: So by supplementing with glutathione, you’re kind of offsetting or helping out what your body is naturally doing to combat and balance out all of these modern day environmental toxins and things that weren't there 100 years ago. So glutathione is a daily supplement that’s totally safe and clean and good to take also. Is it better to consume naturally in foods with antioxidants that carry glutathione, or is supplementing better? Like how much food would I have to eat to match the same as I get a glutathione supplement?

G: You would have to eat a lot of food, and it's hard because I'm someone who wishes I didn't have to take any supplements. But because of the way that the world is, and also how the nutrition in our produce has drastically decreased because of our soil quality, you would be totally stuffing yourself with fruits and vegetables to get as many antioxidants as you would get in a glutathione supplement.

B: Wow, so free radicals are even attacking the source of our antioxidants in the soil, that's crazy. So glutathione sounds pretty necessary, are there different types of supplementation and how to take it or where can we get glutathione?  I know Terra Health has glutathione but I want to make sure everybody has all the information, so can you give us some more detail on it. Is this an every day over the counter supplement anybody can get ?

G: Yeah you guys have a great one. So there's a lot of different ways people can take glutathione but I think the best way is the way that you guys have it which is in the liposomal form. What that basically means is the glutathione molecule is protected in a lipid and why that's helpful is because it surpasses the digestive process and gets released in your large intestine. It then gets absorbed into your gut lining and it's so much more bioavailable. Your body can use it much better than if you were to just take a capsule because that gets diluted in the digestive process.

B: If anybody else needs the previous analogy; it's when they put the shoes in the box so when you take it home it doesn't get dirty or scuffed, it's all protected so then when you go to wear it for the first time it's perfect. So you get the most out of it!

We’ve kind of covered it, but just to sum it all up with glutathione supplementation, there's a ton you can do to fight free radicals naturally with lifestyle changes with eating clean and avoiding pollutants. But, you know, we can't really put ourselves in a bubble, so supplementing with glutathione really helps in the modern day environment that we live in with how much exposure we have to free radicals. It’s like giving the body this master antioxidant superpower to actually fight these free radicals and oxidative stress to slow that aging process down and prevent chronic inflammation which is something we talked about also.

‍

Rapid Fire Question Time: Let's Have Some Fun!

B: Okay, so I have a fun game I wanted to play with you if you're interested and open to it to bring us home! I thought we could do a fun rapid fire with some quick questions to get to know you a little bit more.

‍On your own personal health journey, what's a health trend or just something you've heard about that you're probably most embarrassed to admit you tried?

G: Oh my God, I feel like there's ones I can't even really say on here! I feel like I tried a lot of fasting cleanses, there was one point where I think I didn't eat for about four days because my digestive system was so bad. I was reading all of this juice and celery cleanse stuff and I was like “perfect I'm gonna give my digestive system a rest and I'm not going to eat for four days” and that probably wasn't great! 

B: That was actually one of the questions on here because I knew you'd done every diet in the book or tried them, so that was going to be my hot take question on what’s a diet fad that is just the worst, it's like phony, not real, doesn't work - and I was wondering if you were going say keto. But fasting is just not it?

G: Yeah, fasting is not it. Another one - the raw vegan diet - is not it. And liver king, liver king is a nightmare I cannot believe that. Have you seen liver king?

B: Yeah, it's hard to watch. It is so crazy. Okay, well follow up to the health trend, what's one that you think is the most underrated health trend that no one's talking enough about and everybody should hop on?

G: You know, I feel like it's not a trend, there aren’t any trends I’m gung-ho on, but I think hot and cold therapy is a really good one that's pretty trendy right now.

B: I was worried you were going to say cold plunging as we talked. I do it, I don't enjoy it, but I was hoping you’d tell me “cold plunging is overrated, you don't need to do it”.

G: It depends on the person. For a lot of women, if you're already stressed out - don't cold plunge. It's too much and it's not good for your hormones as it spikes cortisol. But in small amounts, obviously depending on context as everything depends on context, I personally love cold plunging.

‍B: Do you? I'm getting to love it and I'm learning to love it. Do you have a cold plunge song? That's how I time it! I pick a song and I just need to make it through the song and then I'm done. And I pick a song that's no more than like 2-3 minutes, something with a really good bridge at the end, you know, to get through the tingling. So try a cold plunge song and then you just focus on the lyrics and sing it out and it helps. 

‍‍B: All right, so what's your favorite cheat meal? If you had to eat a free radical what form would you pick? 

G: If I had to eat a free radical? Haha, I love coconut cake or carrot cake, or macaroons… girl you’re getting me going, I gotta stop!

B: Well let's stay in the kitchen: what's your most unusual ingredient you have currently in your kitchen or something you cook with?

G: Unusual.. um… I wouldn’t say it’s unusual but I I love herbs. Like I put cilantro on everything.

‍B: How do you keep it alive?!

G: You gotta put it in water in your fridge. 

B: But it has to stay in the fridge, right? I'm trying a couple different ways. I just wish they would trim the bottom a little bit more so that there's stems on “cause if the leaves get in the water then it's game over. It’s high maintenance. This is my longest stint of keeping Basil alive, I'm pretty impressed, I don't know why. I think my husband and I are both watering it. He was like “are you watering it?” I’m like “don't tell me, it's alive whatever you're doing, just keep doing it and I'm going to do what I'm doing”. So I'll keep you posted on my basil lifespan but this is the longest we kept it alive.

B: I've got two more for you. What's your No.1 go-to stress relief?

G: My No.1? Honestly I oscillate between meditating and just laying and then working out and getting it out of my body, “cause I feel like it depends on what I'm stressed about. Sometimes I need to just sit and think about it, and then other times I just need to go box and punch something. It depends on what it is.

B: When you meditate, are you trying to think of nothing, or are you playing it over and over and really trying to understand what you’re stressed about?

G: It depends, I think I try not to think about anything, but then naturally it kind of just comes up in my brain. And then sometimes I can work through it, but other times it's helpful to just pause. Because meditation is just like watching your thoughts. So you have a thought come up and then you're trying not to attach anything emotionally to the thought, you're just observing it I guess, and being curious about it. So that's helpful and in both ways to 1. not attach an emotion to the thought and then 2. to clear the mind.

B. Interesting. I feel like my meditation then is either 1. over analyzing things or napping! If I have a clear mind, I'm probably asleep.

G: Yeah, no, I totally get that. That rarely happens but that those are the best naps.

‍B: Alright, last one for you. I know you have a lot of clients and you hear a lot, you talk to a lot of people about their wellness. What's the most common misconception about nutrition you hear from your clients?

G: Most women think that they just need to keep eating less for all of eternity and that's like the answer to everything. I think in the fitness and nutrition industry it's been shoved down our throats so much - calories out and calories in - like calories are the only thing that matter. But I think now it's also good that the quality is coming into the conversation and how that impacts our hormones, which also impacts our weight and our thyroid and so many other things about our health. Honestly, probably 80% of the people I've worked with have been through that cycle of thinking that “you know calories are the only thing that matters” and they're stuck at this point where they're eating 1,000 calories and they're like “what's going on why do I feel horrible?” and I'm saying “well because you're eating 1,000 calories”. 

B: It’s relieving to know that 1. a lot of women are experiencing that same kind of thought process, and 2. that it’s something we all need to talk more about because everyone still believes that restrictive diets are the key to wellness or health.

‍Well that brings us to a close here Grace, it's always such a pleasure we can't thank you enough for all of your wisdom, all your expertise and for being such a resource to all of our customers and people who follow us on Instagram. We really appreciate it and please let us know where people can find you! Our new partnership with Grace’s Kit is also now on our website for anyone listening, so you too can hopefully have as great of hair and look as great as Grace does! But anything else you want to share with our listeners here with what you've got going on?

G: Not really I mean, just follow me here [Instagram] obviously, hopefully most of you guys follow me already and yeah check out the kit it's my favorite collection of supplements!

And That’s a Wrap!

If you enjoyed this chat, keep an eye on our socials for our next live with Grace! And if you have any questions about what we talked about here or Graces Kit, just send us a private message on Facebook for a free 1:1 consultation! If you’ve already purchased the kit, check out this post fo help with timing tips for when to take each supplement to optimize your results.

‍