Dana Serrano: Good afternoon. I am here with Ellen Bloom. She is one of our fantastic physical therapists from Gate Mechanics. Ellen, thank you for being here today. Ellen, you are a certified geriatric specialist as well as a functional nutritionist and I think that you’re not only a phenomenal physical therapist, but you are a holistic clinician. And I think we all have a lot to learn from you. Thank you so much for being here and and for talking with us today.

Ellen Bloome: Thanks for having me and thanks for being an awesome work partner. We’ve had some uh great couple of years.

Dana Serrano: Absolutely. Absolutely. We’re we’re honored to have you as part of our team here at Gate Mechanics. And as we talk all the time, our our patients are a little bit different than just your run-of-the-mill. It’s it’s not going to be just your patients that have mobile issues, mobility issues, but we do serve a lot of people who are experiencing cognitive impairment. And through that journey, you have found a lot of use for your functional nutrition um background and I would love to hear your experiences of how metabolic health really can be integrated into improvement in cognition.

Ellen Bloome: Okay. Well, um that’s fantastic. Um, I it’s interesting because a lot of our knowledge and information that’s coming out, I think makes it sound like if you just take a couple of vitamins or you take your medication, your brain will get better. But what isn’t taken into account is our entire system. And all of these diseases that we face today, including cognitive loss, including Alzheimer’s, including dementia, are are internal. They start I would say downstream, right? I believe everything begins in the gut and the hormonal system. Um, we both have talked in the past about women that get old because we go through menopause and we don’t have hormones and because of the tainted I guess the World Health Initiative where they did that that um study on women’s hormones and found that these hormones caused cancer and it turned out actually not to be true because they were using synthetic hormones and it might have even been a 6% amount of women that develop breast cancer and the whole medical world went crazy and stopped women from having any hormones at all. And part of that aging process is Alzheimer’s because how many estrogen receptors are in the brain? There’s a tremendous amount. So, right, that’s one piece. And it’s actually been a very touchy and difficult subject to talk about with a lot of our clients who are older and are seeing physicians that are still also educated in older science and maybe aren’t keeping up with the newer science. So that’s one component. Another component is our gut health and when our intestines our small intestines become leaky and that’s a whole conversation about how that happens and it’s with food and we’ll talk about that as you ask me questions. Um the gut barrier is also the gut brain barrier. So, Hypocrates said, I think like 5,700 years ago, that everything begins in the gut and then you are really truly what you eat and you actually are are what your food ate and we can talk about that even a little bit more. So, it isn’t just what we’re eating and whether or not we’re avoiding ultrarocessed foods. It’s, you know, the chicken we buy and why that can be inflammatory. So, that’s sort of the beginning. And I had to figure all of this out for myself because I was sick at the age of 25. And no doctor could understand what was wrong with me. And it was before biohacking was uh that was 40 years ago that I first got sick. And what I had was mono four times in two years because my immune system was tanked from years of eating margarine and sweet and low and processed, you know, junk food. You’re a kid, right? you’re eating bags of Doritos and you used margarine because that’s what the the science was then and everybody went to the store and bought margarm that whole lowfat thing and the fake sugars which actually caused brain disease right and my immune system I have a gene for autoimmune and I had a gene for celiac so I was at risk for getting sick and never knew and then when I did get sick nobody even knew what to test me for and it wasn’t until I got sick at 25. I think I was 28 and I actually had an ovarian cyst that got irritated. My mother took me to a new female doctor she had found who was a an MDPhD and she asked questions that no one had ever asked me and did some blood work and 10 days later she looked at me and she said, “When did you have Epstein bar?” And the light bulb went off because that’s what it was. And every blood test to this day shows chronic reinfectious. So I live my life. I am walking the walk and talking the talk to make sure that I keep any trigger of illness away 90% of the time. You know, a good pizza once in a while and a piece of chocolate cake. I sometimes can’t say no. And I suffer. I’ll feel it in my knee or something else the next day. But um but I’m aware of what I have to do to stay healthy. And so when I meet our clients, the beautiful thing about how we do what we do is we get to spend as much time as we need in their home and we can talk about we look at their stress, their relationships, their lifestyle. I will go into the refrigerator in the pantry. I will take out the food labels. I will educate. Um, and I will have tons of questions and clients will be texting me after hours to ask me if this is okay and I’m happy to answer because when I get someone to be engaged, I don’t want to let that go.

Dana Serrano: Oh, that’s terrific. I I’m always curious because I do know that you go into the homes and you’re not just looking at home safety and are there cords on the floor, is there appropriate lighting? More importantly, you’re also looking at what’s in the refrigerator. So is there some examples of things that you would give common examples of foods or ingredients that are found in our patients homes that you would say get rid of this right now?

Ellen Bloome: Absolutely. Um so the the fake sweeteners that have and I have people start reading now the aculopane um and the all of the um aspartames that actually cause cognitive decline. They’re inflammatory. the fake sugars, the sorbital, the mat, the maltodextrin, all the hidden sugars that are in foods as additives, u you think they don’t make a difference, but they do. We had one client who I watched him, he looked like he had Parkinson’s and he was in his 90s and he was eating the same cereal every single day and had all of these extra additives in it. Um, and it broke my heart because he was already in his 90s and he couldn’t understand what I was trying to teach him that we had to find a different cereal for example, right? I also have a I also explain to patients that the wheat that we eat is no longer made the same way as it was when they were younger. And what I mean by that is, you know, everything’s about money and the wheat uh product is sprayed with glyphosate. Well, why do they do that? They want more. So the way it works is the wheat is growing, they spray it with weed killer and when the weed when the wheat, pardon me, perceives that it’s dying, it makes more babies. And these babies now increase the crop, but they are genetically modified and they are toxic from the agent orange glyphosate. It’s the same thing from the Roundup. And that is what is in the breads that we eat from the store, in the restaurant, and they’re inflammatory. And this inflammation, if you think about your small intestine, okay, it’s um a really God is cool, okay? A really fine gauze because what is supposed to happen is we break down the food with um from chewing all the way through the stomach, okay? The food breaks down by different enzymes and it’s small enough to be the healthy nutrients are reabsorbed through the beautiful gauze in the small intestine and the waste products that are too big pass on through and come out of the colon and they are actually called lipopolysaccharides. Those pieces of garbage and the funny thing is it’s little LIS is little pieces of Right. Right. When we eat inflammatory food, the that beautiful fine mesh starts to break down and make holes and those little holes become larger holes. And so, not only are we absorbing the good stuff, but some of the bad stuff is being absorbed as well. And this will cross through every cell in our body. And that is including the brain because there’s no barrier to say that what you’re absorbing obviously your nutrients want to go upstairs as well as everywhere else. Right? So this is really between hormones and food quality. This is why we’re seeing so much more disease in this country now. And all of this started like 1978ish on when they started to do all of the, you know, all of the all of the spraying and all of the changes to our our food.

Dana Serrano: Wow. That’s that’s so scary to think that even the knowledge that we have now, we’re we’re still learning and yet we’re still ingesting this and for years we find these these the consequences of this.

Ellen Bloome: Well, you know, that’s what when we hear please buy organic and people say, well, how do I know I’m getting it? My answer is If you don’t buy organic, you know, you’re not.

Dana Serrano: And it’s a good way to put it.

Ellen Bloome: Organic foods are being are being sprayed, right? I mean, you know, so maybe your organic foods are in the next field and they’re getting some, but they’re not getting all. So, it’s got to be a little bit better. And I try to eat organic vegetables, fruits, etc. And my health is good. So, I’m thinking it must work.

Dana Serrano: Absolutely. Absolutely. You are you are definitely the poster child. I always say no question. whatsoever. Very blessed. Very blessed but very proactive at the same time which is amazing. Amazing.

Ellen Bloome: I almost feel like you know the the control lies with us. If we start to I you know going to the doctor in the olden days was to treat an illness and you didn’t make an appointment. It was like you called the the family doctor down the road and you came in in his cart. Right. Right. And they tried to give you some herbs or whatever to fight whatever horrible thing happened to you. But going to the doctor to make yourself healthy wasn’t necessary because we had animals roaming and we milked the cows and we ate fresh food and people where we didn’t maybe live as long because there were obviously infections that we didn’t have the treatment for. But people were basically healthier than they today.

Dana Serrano: I agree that the preservatives are very scary. Very scary. And I don’t think people accepted the fact that they were going to get old and sick back in the day. I mean, some people worked the field until they were gone. And actually, you’ll still find that in the blue zones where they’re in their hundreds and they’re still climbing the rocks, you know, in in Sardinia and hurting goats and eating goat and sheep cheese, by the way, not cow cheese. Um, and living a long time. No one’s ever said to them, “Well, you’re you’re 101. Can you sit down?” They look at you like you were out of your mind.

Ellen Bloome: Right. Right. here in and I will say here in South Florida there’s a certain certainly when I moved here it’s changed a little bit because we have pickle ball now but people really wanted to I moved to Florida to retire and die and go to happy well they used to call it early bird now it’s happy hour it’s a little classier right of course yes

Dana Serrano: that is so true no I I agree completely I think the mentality is definitely it’s definitely shifted and I think there’s a lot of confusion out there because oftentimes our patients go to the doctors, they are told, “Yes, you have a movement disorder or yes, you have a cognitive impairment.” They’re given a piece of paper and they say, “This is my favorite. Drink lots of water, get lots of exercise, and eat a Mediterranean diet.” And and so what does that mean? So, if you’re if you were to really break that down, what does that mean for for people who are wondering?

Ellen Bloome: Well, you know, the Mediterranean diet is more your more healthy diet, right? and they they emphasize your whole grains and which we need to talk about because I don’t totally agree with the whole grains thing but you know your fresh vegetables low glycemic fruits I mean berries before anything else people always I have a family member that lives on fruit because their perception is fruit is healthy right and fruit is fructose is fructose and putting on all kinds of weight and becoming metabolically unhealthy because that’s an it’s an adjunct to a meal it’s a small part to the meal, right? So, we want to have, let’s say, on a plate, a 9 in dinner plate, half the plate is going to be a starchy and non-starchy vegetables. Okay? Okay. So, these are going to be your your healthy broccoli, your lettucees, your I mean, there’s a there’s a whole list I can come up with of non-starchy vegetables. And then the word carb I think is very confusing for people. Yes. Okay. The carbs that are bad, and we’ll say a quarter of the plate are carbs. Uh the carbs that are bad that people confuse with the carbs that are good are the simple sugars, the grains, like the breads, like the crackers. Okay? Anything that’s really white and made from wheat. And that would be any kind of wheat. And I don’t believe that the whole whole wheat, we can’t break whole anything down. So when we buy food that they say is whole wheat, I think it’s coloring. I just can’t believe that it’s whole wheat because we can’t we can’t break it down. We don’t have the enzymes. I would rather see the starchy vegetables, yuka, okay, sweet potatoes, you know, turnipss, parsnips, tubers, things that are are high fiber, right? That are going to are going to allow us to have bulk. We could use psyllium husk. We could use artichokes. Um, something else that falls under carbs is going to be your salads and your fruit. And I would you limit that as well. And then the other quarter of the plate is your healthy protein. Healthy proteins would be regenerative farm uh meat and chicken and wild fish because and when I say regenerative farm that’s another issue that I have to teach our patients. When we get conventional meat the living conditions of these animals are are not healthy for us. They’re given even if it’s organic and if you buy organic meat in the store, it means they’re given organic corn and soy, but you’re still getting GMO or non GMO. It’s still corn. It’s still soy. These are This is not food, okay? They’re still They may not be getting antibiotics, but when you eat that meat, you’re getting their corn and soy. I can’t break corn down. It inflames my my gut and it aggravates my immune system. Chicken, the same thing. Everybody thought for years because it’s lowfat chicken is healthy. Yet there people are getting sick from eating organic chicken, non-organic chicken. You go in a restaurant, you’re not getting organic anything. So right, regenerative farming is, you know, I know I’m geeking out here, but that’s it’s it’s growing in the United States and people are trying to return to the old farming practices where animals were raised humanely to make healthy meat so that we can eat and be healthy, right? So those are those are things we could look into and share links at some point. And I have started eating meat again u because if I order it from regenerative farms because I need I need that protein. I I work out. I lift weights and sometimes I feel like you know the fish just might not be as exciting.

Dana Serrano: Oh absolutely. I think I can relate. And if I come off a 60 mile bike ride I really think I want a burger.

Ellen Bloome: Right. You’ve earned it. You’ve earned it. Absolutely. wrap by the way in lettuce or a cassava wrap which is very low glycemic and doesn’t spike it doesn’t spike your blood sugar.

Dana Serrano: Okay.

Ellen Bloome: So you can have a sandwich with a cassava ciete brand sie. They make almond flour wraps that you can get at Costco but they make a cassava that you can get at the grocery store or sprouts. And the cassava is actually even healthier than the almond as far as especially if you’re pre-diabetic or diabetic.

Dana Serrano: That’s great to know. Okay.

Ellen Bloome: Yeah. So, that’s that’s just a fun thing. And I’ll have an almond butter and cassava wrap sandwich if I want to.

Dana Serrano: That sounds great. Berries on it. Right. Because sometimes you need a sandwich and it’s not going to be on. That would be disgusting, right? No. No. I think that’s a and actually that’s a nice easy way to think about it because most people don’t know where to begin.

Ellen Bloome: Exactly. in terms of you know yeah keep it simple and that’s one of the things I do teach when I go into the pantries is we’ll come up with alternatives like what do you like to eat because you can’t make it so strict that people are feeling that they’re being restricted and it becomes a negative because then it becomes an eating disorder so this is really more about education and choices and not restricting yourself to the point of another sickness

Dana Serrano: right and I think you put it very well that going into your own pantry and eliminating you know, margarine, eliminating any sort of preservative, sweet and low, those sort of things are very low hanging fruit to start with.

Ellen Bloome: Yes. It’s amazing how that affects you. It’s amazing. And there’s really great alternatives to the sugar that have been proven to be healthier for being using monk fruit as a sugar substitute, but there’s great studies on alulose. And alulose is uh more healthy even because it seems to have a lowering effect on blood sugar.

Dana Serrano: Really? Okay.

Ellen Bloome: So now that’s the only thing you find in my refrigerator. And I never used to put anything in my cup of coffee except MCT oil. But because coffee can cause a sugar spike, I’ll put a teaspoon of alulus in in the morning now. And I don’t get the coffee sugar spike in the morning. The morning is when we sometimes see, especially with our diabetic clients, they have that syndrome where their sugar spikes, right? So little teeny tricks like this really

Dana Serrano: Oh, that’s so helpful.

Ellen Bloome: Yes. down to a nice baseline.

Dana Serrano: So, in these sugar spikes that you find, I know that we’ve had a couple of patients in particular, of course, you know, not not to mention names, but I do remember one in particular that was having some insulin resistance and some sugar spikes that were directly affecting not only her cognition and everyday function, but actually neurosychological testing. Changed over the course of time. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Ellen Bloome: Yes, absolutely. So when I met that client, they actually had her on Cerakquil, which is that nursing home um drug that you give to the clients that are sitting in the wheelchairs with their tongues hanging out when you walk in the door of a nursing home because she was having sleep difficulties and anxiety and uh and back pain. So even though she was our cognitive patient, I got to see her for her back pain. And it turned out she used to I don’t if I can go into her her former vocation, but she was a musician and the way she held her instrument created a functional scoliosis. So Oh, that’s part of the beautiful story that you get. You know, one of the the best part of my my first session is I want to hear what you have to tell me. One thing I learned in PT school in 1980, gosh, uh was I think the only wonderful thing I learned in PT school actually was listen to your patient. They’ll tell you what’s wrong with them and they’ll tell you how to fix them. And so here’s the story. Absolutely. You know, you can ask questions, but don’t go in with a with a bias or any concept that you know what’s wrong with them because there’s something about them that you don’t know till they tell you, right? When I heard about her career and how many years she played this instrument and you know I knew she had a good brain. You’re a musician and you’re playing this. I mean it was the harp. It is not a common simple instrument but she had this tremendous rotation. So we, you know, we worked on things that she needed to do and this made her feel better and this created trust. And then I was able to work with her psychologist who was able to work with her psychiatrist to get her off of this horrible drug um that was really impairing her ability to function. And she lives alone in an apartment that she rents and her three children, her sons, do not live here, right? So she’s a woman without a daughter living alone. And her what was her goal? not to wind up in a nursing home. Right. Right. And being frightened because she’s got an insulin pump that she doesn’t understand and a continuous glucose monitor linked to that which are given to our clients and they go and they see a a glucose or diabetes education specialist but it’s in the office and that person may not really understand the whole person sitting in front of them. So over the years I’ve gotten to know her. I mean, she had been morbidly obese and she had a gastric bypass. And so, there are things that people have as their as their norm, right? The things that they’ve held on to, behaviors that they’ve held on to that has helped them survive, but are now no longer helpful for them. And so, these were some of the other things we have to break through, right, to allow her to trust eating properly.

Dana Serrano: Oh, so so well said. And that’s a big deal right there. I mean, and I think what we see with especially type two, not type one so much is, you know, we see a lot of food addiction and misunderstanding and then no one’s they again it’s putting the horse after the cart. So here’s your here’s your insulin and here’s your monitor and here’s your you know go home, right? Have a nice day. And so what I was seeing was and she not not just her but now I have a monitor telling me when to take the insulin so I can eat what I want. Right. Right. And I can self-medicate instead of saying what can I do to avoid those spikes which might actually affect my cognition. So I think it’s three or four years just still living home.

Dana Serrano: Yeah. No, that’s amazing. What a what a huge success story. You made it such a huge difference and it’s it goes so much further than just exercise and drink lots of water.

Ellen Bloome: And she asked and she asks me questions all the time and I’m still educating about food because it’s almost like it’s a personal project, you know? We just have to make sure that because I want to keep with that goal that she told me from day one. The back is fine. Right. Right. Right. The brain has to be fine because at the end of the day, it’s not that’s not acceptable to her to wind up in memory care.

Dana Serrano: No. Absolutely. Or you or anyone else. Absolutely right. I mean, even speaking of the gentleman that that they that had Parkinson’s like symptoms and was not able, you know, just over changing something as simple as your breakfast food really really hit home.

Ellen Bloome: Sometimes it’s picking one, you know, one thing and then having the client understand that everything’s not going to be better. And also today, and I don’t know how much you’ve been seeing and hearing, but there’s such a huge amount of science and doctors are working toward, and I was just listening to a podcast the other day about Parkinson’s disease, right, which causes so much not only movement, but cognition that they’re finding, you know, so much of the epigenetic toxic exposures. And I remember my very worst Parkinson’s patient in the 90s used to be a dry cleaner and he was exposed to whatever horrible cleaning agent that they used in their shop. But that Parkinson’s is is all initiating from the gut that brain barrier, right? And you know, treating treating the symptoms is great, but we need to work downstream back into the gut and see what we can do to change because there could be reversal.

Dana Serrano: Absolutely.

Ellen Bloome: And uh so important the other biggie that I have to talk about which is vitamin D. Okay. And um so with my research um Epstein bar people with chronic reinfectious Epstein bar have tendencies to develop two diseases lymphoma and MS and the conventional and even the functional knowledge of your blood vitamin D levels are very different. Conventional medicine will tell you 30 to 60 80 and functional can go 80 to 150 depending upon each person because we are all N of one, right? And so I’ve always worked with keeping my vitamin D levels and I I check them every six months. Okay. And then I found some studies recently and I just did a a fundraiser for MS back in April and I remember at the turnaround on a 65 mile ride which was my first time back on the bike since 2013. I know. I just figured I don’t have MS and if I suffer a little bit, too bad for me, right? Because I have to suffer a little bit. And I’m speaking to the Southeast Regional um chair and she says to me where I’m having whatever snack and she says, “So, what brings you to this ride?” And I said, ‘Well, I’ve been a PT for 44 years, so I’ve had a lot of clients with MS and I have my boyfriend’s brother’s wife has MS and my sister’s husband’s brother has MS. And I said, and I have Epstein bar and there’s that tremendous link. And then we started talking and I said, and my blood levels of D are about 117 to 120. And she said, I can’t believe you know that science. It’s so not out there yet. But it’s like the higher your D’s, the less chance you have. And maybe even if you have MS, you need to look into more of a functional approach about your vitamin D levels. Like if they’re at 40, you better bring them up a little bit because you might not relapses, right? And then look your diet and see what we can’t do to keep down the inflammation in the gut so that maybe the brain can take a break.

Dana Serrano: Right. Absolutely. Yeah.

Ellen Bloome: So that’s sort of how I perceive the world. what’s going on on your fork.

Dana Serrano: Yeah. No, it it makes such a big difference and you hit the nail on the head that a lot of times what we do is we’re symptom managing. So, we’re managing the outcome where I’m managing the results. We’re not backing up and saying what why is this happening to begin with? What what can we do to change that the root cause? Well, that’s the difference between conventional and functional. And I think happily there are more MDs that are starting to look for answers because they’re not happy with the outcomes. And these are the MDs that can’t aren’t working in corporations because they have to, right? These are guys that aren’t afraid to guys and girls that aren’t afraid to go a little deeper because it bothers them to just go to work every day and go home and write prescriptions and not see anything improve just like us with what we do. It’s like what what can we do to teach you to make help us make you better with us, right? Collaborative effort. I’m not coming in to show you exercises and then because you don’t want to go on the on your p piece of paper, I’m going to come in once a week and lift your knees five times with you. Right. Really, I’m coming because I want to see how we can make you better. Right. And it does take a village. I mean, to your point, everybody’s got their role in this. I think that one of the things that we have forgotten is that medicine, there’s a place for it. I, you know, we’re we’re all alive today because of medicine, but there is a place for that. And it is important for our people, our community to be aware that there are other things we can do that do yield results and do, you know, have positive changes in mobility and cognition and we’re not left to the devices of just medication or just wait, you know, as you as you said, like coming to Florida and just waiting to retire and die. That’s not what we’re waiting for. We can do better.

Ellen Bloome: Exactly. I have to say too, we have clients now in their late 90s and early 100s. And I have one lady whom I adore. She’s as sharp as attack. She is a spitfire. She lives on the second floor of a walk up building. Oh gosh. There’s no elevator and no special. When she was in her 80s, her children wanted to put in one of those electric chairlifts, right? And I’m going to die soon. I don’t want to spend that kind of money. It’s been 22 years. Oh my goodness. Wow. That’s amazing. It just doesn’t hilarious. So, mobility. Here’s here’s a perfect example of somebody who didn’t say, “I can’t do stairs because I’m 75,” right? Who has to do stairs and I have to say that I think that’s played a tremendous part in why she’s still with us at almost 102.

Dana Serrano: That’s incredible. That’s incredible.

Ellen Bloome: We don’t hike in Florida, but if you have stairs to climb, please do.

Dana Serrano: Right. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Ellen, this is fantastic. I I thank you so much for for being with us today. I’m hoping to do more talks. There’s so much we can learn from you. Um this is just if anybody knows Ellen, this is just a drop in the bucket of her knowledge and I am very excited to continue to have the conversation going.

Ellen Bloome: Absolutely. Thanks, Dana. We will definitely be back.

Dana Serrano: All right. Have a great day. Thank you. Take care.

Ellen Bloome: Thanks. Bye. Bye.