Dorothy: [00:00:00] What can we do to feed ourselves better food so we can live our best lives? Dr. Dixie Melillo is here to answer that question and others. And these are the hard truths that we all need to hear. The conversation also shines a spotlight on the healthcare system’s biggest issues, plus the role of processed foods and the benefit of intermittent fasting.
Dr. Melillo encourages individuals to take responsibility for their health and make informed choices about their diet. Their lifestyle. As always, we encourage you to consult your own physician before making any changes in your diet or your exercise routine. Help us share the mission of The Rose by subscribing to Let’s Talk About Your Breast on your favorite podcast platform, and by sharing with your family and friends.
Let’s Talk About Your Breast, a different kind of podcast presented to you by The Rose. A breast center of excellence and a Texas [00:01:00] treasure. You’re gonna hear frank discussions about tough topics, and you’re gonna learn why knowing about your breast could save your life.
We are so pleased today to have Dr. Dixie Melillo with us here on Let’s Talk About Your Breast, and she’s gonna be talking to us about nutrition:
what we need to eat, what we don’t need to eat, and how we can be the healthiest person possible. By the end of this year, so Dixie, thank you so much for joining us today, and I know you have a wealth of information.
You’ve learned since the last time we talked about nutrition. So what’s the most important thing we can do for our health right now?
Dr. Dixie: Well, I think I’m going to get into that, but I think the first thing that we really need to do is realize the magnitude of the problem. Okay, our health care system is in trouble.
Out of the 37 [00:02:00] wealthiest nations in the world, okay, we have the best healthcare system. We have the best surgery, medicines, hospitals, everything. And yet we have the sickest population. Our per capita expenditure on each patient is, it’s crazy. It’s going to break the budget. It’s going to kill Medicare. So we really have got to decide that we are going to get to be a healthy nation because if not, we are going to be in bad shape out of the 37 wealthiest nations.
We are number one in, in diabetes. We have the most, the highest incidence of diabetes in, in all of, in the [00:03:00] world. We have the second highest incidence of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. We are spending a fortune treating these diseases, treating the symptoms of these diseases, without curing the disease and without communicating the fact that a large part of this is preventable.
Dorothy: It’s preventable. Now, talk to us about why, how.
Dr. Dixie: Okay. The thing that, I think, the road we started down, and everybody that knows me, I rail against sugar, okay?
Dorothy: Mm hmm.
Dr. Dixie: The road we started down during, World War I, World War II, the famine, all of this, uh, not the famine, the dust bowl thing, is we had to figure out a way to ship food.
I mean, we used to eat things that look like food, real food, but we can’t ship those overseas to feed the troops, and we couldn’t ship them down to the dust bowl. We had [00:04:00] to learn how to process them. So that they wouldn’t spoil. And, you can’t take an orange and freeze it. You’ve got to process it if you want to ship the juice.
So, processing, uh, at the time was necessary. It was a good idea. Uh, I think the food industry, though, realized that, man, you can make a lot of money. You know, uh, I mean, there’s stories of the 20 year old Twinkie that still hasn’t lost any of its freshness. Seriously, because I mean, it’s so processed. Uh, they also found that if you add sugar to this, it helps with the processing, but it also gets people to eat more.
Sugar is eight times more addictive than heroin. It hits the opioid center of the brain. It releases your dopamine. It makes you feel good. I mean, years ago in the nineties, I used to joke, I have no carbohydrate cutoff [00:05:00] mechanism. And I didn’t realize how true that was. Once you start eating sugar, you want more.
I promise you, you eat a big salad. You’re not going to want more, okay? You’re going to, uh, anything that you eat. Eat a pizza. I can remember when I haven’t had a pizza in years, and I wouldn’t dream of having one. But when you used to eat pizza, you’d be so full you couldn’t move, and yet you wanted to bite the point off that last one sitting in there, you know?
It called your name. It called your name. Well, um, Americans, I mean, you just have to look around to realize that we have a problem with all of these chronic diseases. Used to be what killed you was an infectious disease, okay? And then you got an antibiotic and you were fine. Now, it’s chronic inflammatory diseases.
And I think the problem is that we’re not communicating to the people what to do to fix it and, and that you don’t have to go there. I mean, you [00:06:00] remember the story when my, both of my folks about 20 years ago got Alzheimer’s disease. And here was two people that had traveled the world and, and they were smart.
And then all of a sudden, you know, they, they couldn’t remember each other’s names. And, and then they couldn’t walk and then they become incontinent and they had to wear diapers. And, And they lived in my house for three and a half years till they died. They died in my bed. So I got to see Alzheimer’s up close and personal.
And I just knew, I knew that I knew that I knew that something caused it. Because my grandparents on my mother’s side, they both died in their 90s at home. They both had, you know, heart attacks and they just died in bed. Never anything wrong with them. My dad’s mom died of tuberculosis when he was young, but his father got prostate cancer.
And I remember When he, he died at 65, but they used to joke [00:07:00] about him. His nickname was Cookie Unruh, because he wanted sweets all the time. He ate cookies, cookies, cookies. And um, so then I read a lot of Dr. Perlmutter, David Perlmutter’s work about grain brain, how really the sugar is what burns up the brain.
And, and for, they have spent a billion zillion dollars developing a medicine to slow down Alzheimer’s And they don’t go out and just tell the people. You don’t have to go there, you know? Alzheimer’s is just insulin resistance of the brain. It’s diabetes of the brain. It’s all it is. They have done, Bresnick has done wonderful studies, uh, taking institutionalized Alzheimer’s patients, okay?
Because once they get it, they want sugar and you can’t keep them from it. But institutionalized Alzheimer’s patients, putting them on a keto diet and doing scans of their brain, their brain starts to light up again and gains some function. I mean, We need to [00:08:00] be putting this headlines in every newspaper.
We need to, you know, come on.
Dorothy: So, it’s sugar, it’s processed foods.
Dr. Dixie: Processed foods and all added sugar.
Dorothy: Okay.
Dr. Dixie: Okay. There is a genetic component, but cancer largely is just a cell whose mitochondria does not function anymore. And. I have cancer cells, you have cancer cells, everybody’s got cancer cells. Because the mitochondria is the little powerhouse of the, of the cell.
He makes the energy. And when, when he dies, the cell reverts back to the primitive eukaryotic cell 2. 5 billion years ago, and all he can do is he’d sugar and divide, he’d sugar and divide, he’d sugar and divide, he’d sugar and divide. Well We’re feeding it a lot of sugar, number one. And number two, sugar paralyzes the immune system for several hours after every meal.
This is why diabetics have such a problem with infections, [00:09:00] because they’re constantly suppressing their immune system. Now, in the perfect world, we’re supposed to, you, you know, and the mitochondria dies of old age, the mitochondria dies of roundup, the mitochondria dies of radiation exposure, the mitochondria dies of a whole lot of things.
You know, chronic, chronic inflammation, chronic irritation. And they just get old and die. And that’s normal, that’s natural. If you don’t have these guys, the little pac man, he comes along and he’s got this damaged tail and he’s, oh, he’s bad. And he eats him. And he recycles the parts. I like that. You know, I like recycling.
But, you know, you make when he eats them, you make when he eats them, you make when he eats them, you make when he eats them. And it, you got a good balance here. But, I think what really, and slowly we have been, you know, putting this out of balance. We give, we put a lot of sugar in, this guy kind of, he grows faster, and then this guy can’t kill him, and so they kind of get away.
And that has, I think, slowly kind of increased our [00:10:00] cancer. But during the pandemic, when everybody was isolated, Processed food was about all they had to eat, you know, I mean and they ate a lot of it because they had nothing to do and I think that has really recently just fueled this crazy cancer epidemic we’re seeing and this Alzheimer’s epidemic.
Um, and I just, I feel like The people need to know. They need to know.
Dorothy: So just can, can, if you, you, if you did all that during covid, can it be reversed?
Dr. Dixie: Absolutely. Diabetes type two diabetes can be cured by the.
Dorothy: By just letting, by eliminating sugar.
Dr. Dixie: Yes. Now, type one cannot ’cause it’s, it’s damaged to the pancreas, you know, and that’s, that’s not gonna work.
But cancer cells also. need insulin. Insulin is a growth factor. Every time you eat sugar, you release insulin. [00:11:00] Insulin causes things to grow. Usually it causes fat cells to grow. But breast cancer cells have six times more insulin receptors on them than a normal breast cell. They suck up sugar. They suck up sugar like crazy.
You’ve heard of a PET scan. Do you know what they inject you with for a PET scan to see the cancer outlined perfectly? Radioactive sugar. Because that cancer is going to take up about 200 times more sugar than the surrounding tissue and he’s going to light up like a Star.
Dorothy: Wow.
Dr. Dixie: You know, and yet nobody’s out here screaming this to the patients.
Dorothy: Well, I’m glad you are.
Dr. Dixie: They’re giving them chemotherapy and a can of Ensure. Come on, gang. You know, the last thing you need is sugar if you’re trying to treat cancer. Now, I, in all fairness, I have, Methodist has really gotten with the program, and they are [00:12:00] really pushing nutrition, which I like. You know, they, they have, uh, They’re, they’re really getting with it because I hear back from the patients.
I said, well, what did they tell you? You know, so Methodist is really trying to impart this information, but most of the hospitals aren’t, you know, they’re still telling them, oh, you know, but I think the people need to know. Now, true, there’s gonna be people who hear this and they aren’t gonna make a change no matter what and that’s okay.
I mean, I feel like my job is just to put it out there if they receive it and they want to make a change and they want to live healthy. When I talk to my patient, and I give this handout about sugar and cancer to every single patient I see, you’ve, you read it, and I tell them, you know, now read this, share it with your friends and family, put it on your social media.
I mean, wouldn’t that be nice if there was something besides what you ate for breakfast or something on your social media besides, I mean, something that would help people instead of, [00:13:00] oh gosh, you know. I travel to, you know, anyway, I don’t do social media, as you can probably tell, but um, come on, let’s get this word out, you know, and I tell these kids, don’t you want to be me when you’re elderly?
I’m 77, I take no medicines, I work 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, I don’t hurt anywhere, I mean, Don’t you want to be me when you’re elderly? But, okay, how to fix it. The greatest thing that has come along, if you are not diabetic on insulin, is intermittent fasting.
Dorothy: And explain that to us. First tell us what it is.
Dr. Dixie: And also called time restricted eating.
Now, During times of evolution, and the reason we’re addicted to sugar was because we were drawn to that so we could put on some fat so in times of starvation we would have a reserve. Unfortunately, there’s no times of starvation for [00:14:00] America anymore. Okay? So, we just, as long as your insulin levels are high, you’re never going to lose weight, you’re never going to get the fat out of your cells.
So, it’s really important to have a time of very low insulin. so that your body can use its fat stores so that it can repair itself to give your gut a rest. 80 percent of your immune system is in your gut. You don’t want to paralyze it. You want to give it some time to regenerate and heal. Now, during that time, usually, it’s at least, and we were meant to do that.
This is how, this is why you sleep. You know, there’s a time when you, and you break the fast. You know, it’s better to break the fast at noon. But, the, the person that invented breakfast and how it’s the most important meal of the day, was Mr. Kellogg. Okay? Do you think our hunter gatherer ancestors had a good warm breakfast before they went out to hunt?
No. Did [00:15:00] the farmers have, no, they just went out and worked, they were out there before the sun come up, they didn’t eat breakfast, you know, and so it’s really not a normal thing for us to be eating that much all the time, because your insulin levels are constantly being elevated, so you’re constantly storing food, so you’re constantly telling these bad cells to grow, so intermittent fasting.
Now, And, and when you go to start, you know, if you’re used to eating breakfast at 8 o’clock every day, it’s going to be very difficult to not eat anything till 12. So I always tell the patients, try to just move it back for a week or so to 9 o’clock. Then try to move it back, you know, till maybe 10 o’clock as you go down the line.
Ideally, it would, you know, I eat between one, between noon and 7. That’s why I restrict mine. Um, but that’s the healthiest thing. Let your gut get into a little ketosis, so the insulin goes down, and the damaged cells are [00:16:00] repaired, what they call phagocytosis, which means that they go in and eat the damaged cells.
They eat them up when you don’t have all this sugar paralyzing these cells. So they get rid of the old damaged cells. They boost the mitochondria. And they, it really is a very healthy thing to do. Okay? And, uh, then between the time you choose to eat, you know, 11 to 7 or 11 to 6 or 12 to Choose things that look like food.
I mean, don’t get things that are ultra processed, in a bag, in a box, at the fast food stores. All of that stuff is not even real food. It’s just junk that they’ve put together and they sell to you. And if you think, when you go get a burger, they’re not going to use grass fed, expensive beef. They’re going to use feedlot beef.
And the beef that is grown in [00:17:00] feedlots are, they stand their whole life, six months, they stand in this little cage. Standing in their own poop, eating corn, getting a lot of antibiotics, and we get the antibiotics when we eat that meat, and that kills the good bacteria. These are your best friends. These three trillion guys here are doing everything.
They prevent autoimmune disease, they prevent heart disease, they prevent cancer, they prevent all of this stuff. So you want to, you don’t want to put a lot of antibiotics down there. And, and America has been awfully careless about using antibiotics. And to the children, to the adults, to everybody. You know, and we really don’t need to do that.
If you go into your doctor and have a sniffle, you’re going to get an antibiotic. You don’t need that. You really don’t. You know, you’ve got to keep your immune system tight. And unfortunately, in medical school, I mean, when I went to medical school in 1970 something, uh, nobody, you know, [00:18:00] the diabetes rate was less than 2%.
And children never had diabetes. It was called adult onset diabetes. Now it’s just, everybody’s got it, diabetes, okay? The only people that had Alzheimer’s back then was the old drunk that fell and hit his head, you know? There was a lot of them. These people in their 40s and 50s weren’t getting Alzheimer’s?
Come on, you know?
Dorothy: Right.
Dr. Dixie: And, but in, in medical school you are not taught to prevent anything. You are taught to fix things. That has always been the fix, you know, the focus is to fix something. You give it a drug, you cut it out, you burn it with radiation, you, you know, just fix it. I never, and, and still to this day, they don’t teach much nutrition in medical schools, really.
I talked to a young doctor, um, she’d only been out about three or four [00:19:00] years, you know, and I was asking her about visceral fat, you know, which is that dangerous beer belly thing that everybody has now. And that’s mainly caused from processed food and sugar. And she, and she told one of my friends, Oh, well, that’s just, uh, that’s genetic.
That’s the way, you know, that’s the way some, that runs in families. And I thought, she just got out of medical school and she doesn’t know what visceral fat is? But they’re not taught that anymore. They’re not taught, they’re not taught how to prevent it. How to reverse it.
Dorothy: So, Dixie, what you’re saying is, if we had a diet like what you’re describing, that we are actually preventing cancer.
Dr. Dixie: Preventing diabetes. Preventing cancer. Preventing heart disease. Heart disease. Triglycerides are just, when they get to be too much sugar in the blood, the liver, Gets nervous because it increases the osmolarity and it sucks that sugar in and it wraps it in fat and [00:20:00] it throws it back out And it’s called a triglyceride, you know, I mean and and God love them.
The doctors today are business people. They are you’ll never find solo practitioners anymore Unless it’s somebody ancient like me, but they’re in a business practice. They have a business manager They have to produce, they have to see so many patients, they get a salary, but if they don’t see so many patients, then they’ll cut their salary.
So they have to. And they only see the patient usually the first time, and then the nurse practitioner sees them after that. And many times I have to say the nurse practitioner’s probably better than the That was ugly, wasn’t it? But I’m old, I can be ugly. Anyway, it’s a business. They don’t have time. They, they are not allowed by their practice manager to sit there and, and talk and tell people, you know, about the dangers of the diet.
Just, you know, eat things that look like food. Not, [00:21:00] you know, if it’s got a barcode and 20 ingredients, don’t eat it. If it looks like a plant, eat it. If you can tell that was a plant, that was kale, that was spinach, that was broccoli, that was, that was a banana, that was, you know, that was something that looks like food.
Nuts are a wonderful source of, of food, you know? I mean, eggs, they, they, The poor egg has been, you know, so railed against for so many years. Egg yolk is one of the best things for your, for your system. The proteins.
Dorothy: So, Dixie, what you’re saying is we need to take control. We need to be responsible because, uh, like you pointed out, it’s really not the responsibility of anybody else.
We need to educate ourselves on how all this works.
Dr. Dixie: Yes, ma’am.
Dorothy: We need to eliminate the sugar, eliminate the processed food. What else do we need to eliminate?
Dr. Dixie: Well, I’ll tell you what we n You know, and, and, and I don’t [00:22:00] want, I don’t want to ever anybody get the impression that don’t you ever eat a piece of pie, oh my god.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: No. Once in a while you can eat anything you want. If you’re metabolically healthy, You want to go out and eat something really bad? It’s, it’s not going to hurt you. Because you have that reserve. Okay? And I have so many patients also. Exercise is so important. Because I have patients tell me, Oh, I just, oh, I just don’t have any energy.
I, I, I can’t do anything. You don’t have energy because you don’t use energy. The mitochondria, the little energy guys in the cell that makes energy, They’re very thrifty, and they’re very smart. And if you’re not using any, like most people sit at desk jobs, eight hours a day, they’re not using any energy.
So the mitochondria says, well, I’m not making any, if they’re not using it, you know. And so, the less you use, the less you move, the less energy [00:23:00] you’re gonna have. If you get out there and, and, you know, I mean, I try to, I, I get up at 3:30 in the morning, try to do an hour on the elliptical every morning, and you would think, because I fast till noon, that I would just be exhausted.
No, I feel like, I feel like a million bucks after I get off it, because it makes energy. It makes energy. It restores brain cells. It’s so important that you move. I mean, even at my desk upstairs, I, I, I almost never sit down. My desk is elevated to a standing position so that I don’t sit, you know, and Your mitochondria are your best friend.
You don’t want them to die early, you know? And sleep. Sleep is so important. And I think we don’t value sleep enough. Sleep restores your brain. It cleans out the toxins, you know? And, and Americans are very, you know, they stay up half the night and, and You know, sleep half the day it ruins your circadian rhythm.
Your body doesn’t know what to do with this because that’s not what you were meant to [00:24:00] do. You know, and so we’re just, you know, the body is the carrying case for the soul. You don’t want it to poop out before you’re ready to leave. You know, you got to take care of the carrying case.
Dorothy: That’s true. That is so true.
So, what else? You’ve given us so many things to think about and challenges to, to try.
Dr. Dixie: My rock, okay, my most important thing is my spirituality. I mean, God put me where I’m at. God put his faith in me. What are the chances that a stupid little old 16 year old girl who gets kicked out of high school for being pregnant and unmarried becomes a doctor?
That’s the hand of God. There’s nothing else. I look back and I say, Dang, I’m glad you liked me, you know? I mean, and I made it through a surgery residency when they hated women and they made me wear high heels. I could have quit a thousand times, but he always kept me going. And look what he’s done with The Rose.
Oh my gosh. I [00:25:00] mean, this is like, I, I wake up every morning and I’m just amazed that it’s not a dream, you know?
Dorothy: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: And so, I think it’s really, really important to acknowledge the one what brung you. You know, and that, um, you’ve got to keep your mind right. You can’t focus on, you know, oh, I’ve got a hundred pounds to lose.
No. You know? I’m going, I want to feel good and be healthy, and I’m going to take care of this temple that God gave me, you know, and And I do, I mean there’s times when I get down, I don’t, you know, I’m not lying, I’m gonna lie to you. There’s times when I go, oh my God, what is this world coming to? What are we gonna do?
And then I think, no, you know what? One day at a time, I’m gonna help who I can. I’m gonna keep my mind right. Depression. Depression is largely a factor of our food, too. This mental illness that you’re seeing has so much to do with food. Sugar irritates the brain. I mean, it, it, it aggravates. It has, it has to do with [00:26:00] Parkinson’s and with all of these things, okay?
I mean, it’s a, a neuro, um, it really irritates the brain. So, a lot of this anger that you’re seeing is, is by the food that these folks are eating plus the fact that. The primitive brain gets disassociated from the frontal cortex, which is the reasoning part, by all of this screen time. I really think that putting all these children on computers in schools, I really personally think this is going to be a disaster.
Because the amygdala, the primitive brain, okay, like if someone cuts you off in traffic. You go, uh, kill it, uh, and then your frontal cortex, which only humans really have, a functioning frontal cortex, says, now wait a minute, think this through, what if he’s got a gun, you may not want to do that. Well, the children are getting separated, their amygdala from their frontal cortex by these [00:27:00] screens.
And that, and the children just react, you know, they’re angry.
You know.
Dorothy: What just happens when you look at a screen too long? I’m, I’m not following.
Dr. Dixie: Well, you spend, when, especially young people, they spend a lot of time, my, I have to laugh, my father, when TV first, yes, I was around when there wasn’t any TV, but when TV first came out, my dad said, oh, this is bad, this is the boob tube, don’t ever let children watch the boob tube, you know, because you process things differently.
Well now, you know. And we have to for our work, and you know, you’ve got computers everywhere. They’re teaching the children on computers now. You know, they don’t use books. I mean, they’re disassociating. The brain has a hard time knowing what’s real and what’s not when it’s on a screen. It has a hard time really interpreting people’s facial features and things like that.
If it’s not in real time, three dimension. And, um, [00:28:00] I think it’s a dangerous pathway. I know that’s inevitable and it’s gonna happen, but. There’s so many things. You know, I mean, I don’t have a computer in my house. My phone I have. I mean, that’s kind of a little computer, but you know, I just don’t, I don’t do social media.
I don’t care whether people like me or not.
Dorothy: All right, so we’re gonna go through all these steps one, one last time about what we could do.
Dr. Dixie: Intermittent fasting. Give your gut a rest.
Dorothy: Give your gut a rest.
Dr. Dixie: In the time that you choose to eat, 7 hours, preferably, 8 hours, choose things that look like food.
Dorothy: Eat things that look like food.
Dr. Dixie: Yes. Not things that have a list of 20 things and don’t ever eat. If it says added sugar, don’t touch it. Because they’re trying to hook you on it. Okay? Exercise. Move. Do not sit. Sitting for an eight hour period every day increases your all cause mortality greater than smoking. Okay, [00:29:00] so don’t. If you have to sit at a desk job, about every 30 minutes, get up and walk around.
Just get up and walk around and get your blood circulating, okay? Sleep. Have a designated time for sleep. Everybody knows it. Nobody bothers me between 8. 30 and 3. 30. Don’t bother Grandma, you know. Sleep in a cold room. You know, have your, don’t eat close to the time you sleep because that will keep you awake and keep, these guys need to rest.
They don’t need to be digesting a big ol meal every, all night long when they’re trying to rest. And have faith in God. Whatever you perceive him to be, he’s there for you. You know, for anybody to say that there is not some superior intelligence governing this stuff is lying to themselves.
Dorothy: Right.
Dr. Dixie: And you want to be nice to them.
To him, wherever you choose to call him, because he can whack you, he can thump you. But, you know, I mean that’s, it’s so basic. It’s not hard. [00:30:00] It’s not hard. And if you want to do a keto or you want to do a vegetarian, but don’t be a vegetarian that eats Fritos and, you know, pizza.
Dorothy: Because sugar’s in just about everything.
Dr. Dixie: Added sugar is in almost everything you buy.
Dorothy: All right, dear. What a wonderful list for us to start the year on and stick with it. And I know you’re going to be back for other enlightening and, and encouraging things because you do encourage folks to be their best. Thank you again, Dr. Melillo for being with us.
Dr. Dixie: Oh, Thank YOU. Always trying to save the world from something.
Dorothy: Something. Alright, that’s it for today’s episode of Let’s Talk About Your Breasts.
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