Rafael Guzman, nutritionist: “Eating five times a day is not normal” | Society

Rafael Guzman’s tanned skin and small, athletic appearance (Ciudad Real, 51) are key to what has made him an authority on preventative medicine and nutrition in Spain. From a corner of Cordoba, Guzmán cares for patients who come from very remote parts of Spain with multiple pathologies. His predicament involves returning to the most primitive version of being human: sunbathing again,…

Rafael Guzman’s tanned skin and small, athletic appearance (Ciudad Real, 51) are key to what has made him an authority on preventative medicine and nutrition in Spain. From a corner of Cordoba, Guzmán cares for patients who come from very remote parts of Spain with multiple pathologies. Their predicament suggests a return to the most primitive version of human beings: repeated sunbathing, fasting for most of the day, and eating only original foods from our ecosystem can save us many visits to the doctor. This expert in the field of psychoneuroimmunology, director of the Metodika clinic in Cordoba, has transferred his research on human behavior to Your body, your home (Espasa), a book that explains how the environment we live in and our simplest habits can compromise our health. Get EL PAÍS for your interview at nine in the morning.

Ask. I didn’t sleep much to go to Cordoba early and just drank some coffee. Are we off to a bad start?

Reply. You start off very badly because sleeping below seven hours, even occasionally, has very negative consequences. Just one hour less seriously threatens your cardiovascular system. Today, your likelihood of having a cardiovascular accident has increased by more than 24%.

Question: What about coffee?

A. Coffee is considered a drug that changes our behavior. If you have insomnia, this coffee breaking metabolic pathway and will affect your sleep, for example. Everything you do during the day has an impact at night. Under the best conditions, it takes the body 11 hours to eliminate caffeine. If you haven’t slept much and stressful situations happen, you can go to 20.

TO. He also doesn’t recommend juices or bread… What did you eat during this time?

A. I must say that I never have breakfast. Fasting is as natural as sleep; it is integrally present in a person’s life. What is not physiological is eating five times a day. Our genes were designed in an energy-starved environment, and our brain expects to get what it has been getting for hundreds of thousands of years: hours of fasting. People never went hunting with a full stomach. But in any case, a healthy breakfast should include proteins. Scientific research confirms that people who eat protein in the morning are better able to make better decisions throughout the day. Raw nuts and healthy fats too. As for carbohydrates, I only exclude refined foods. You can take pure buckwheat or rye cereals. Drink chicory, which is a prebiotic, in combination with coconut oil and butter, which is known as bullepprof.

TO. So we’re doing everything wrong?

A. The problem is that we live absolutely contrary to the laws that govern our lives, and this leads to illness. Our society is sick: Already today, February 19, 1,150,000 people have died from cancer in the world this year. More than 1.7 billion people are overweight, 900 million are obese, and more than 144,000 have committed suicide. As for Spain, about 62% of the population over 15 years of age have a chronic pathology and take medications. Many people get sick and it is because we break the laws that govern our lives.

TO. How did we get to this point?

A. Basically, we assess risks very poorly and believe that nothing will ever happen to us. But without a doubt one of man’s greatest problems is self-reference. We live in this time frame, driven by an agri-food and technology industry that has made the artificial world the norm, and the problem is that we have expanded its capabilities and no longer question whether what we are doing is right or wrong. We allow ourselves to get carried away by the pack’s solution. We are tribal creatures. We are not governed by the laws of nature, we are governed by the laws of industry.

TO. In this book, you are not here to make friends: you leave the agri-food industry, and the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries, in a very bad position.

A. Well… That is why I have included an extensive bibliography at the end of the book. We Europeans are exposed to 75,000 toxic substances every day from food, deodorants and creams. And drugs are needed in order to use them when they are really needed. Abuse of them harms us. Our society and our healthcare are pharmacocentric: people today live in an era yaism, we need a quick and simple solution that doesn’t require any energy. So, do I have a headache? I’m taking a pill. Am I not very fertile? I’m getting hormones. But we do not analyze our lifestyle, and this is where the explanation for almost everything lies.

TO. Are we what we sleep or what we eat?

A. First of all, we are what we sleep, because sleep is life: the more you sleep, the more you live. And we are not what we eat, we are what we manage to absorb from food. I’ll give you an example: legumes, so popular and beloved, suppress the enzymes that our pancreas secretes and serve to absorb nutrients. This is why people who eat legumes in the afternoon feel heavy and gassy. The body protests. You will never see an insect bite or eat a legume because they know they are dying. Very few insects tolerate the chemicals contained in legumes. The foam that forms when we put chickpeas in water is called sapolina and causes many intestinal problems.

Q. What will we do then in Spain without spoons?

A. One thing that’s happening here is that legumes saved us from famine in the post-war period and are deeply ingrained in our culture. In our minds, legumes are a superfood and are difficult to get out of our minds and kitchens. Everything that is commonly used is normalized and reinforced, we don’t question it. But using common sense, we must understand that when everything in the body is working well, there are no symptoms or signs. But if we eat something and then we experience flatulence, gas or heaviness, this is a sign that the body is talking to us. This is common sense. Eating them every 10 days would be normal.

TO. You also mention in your book that the human body is not prepared to eat foods from other latitudes.

A. Basically, there is also a stable statement here: if I stop thinking about the energy required to bring a pineapple from Costa Rica to Spain, my conscience will not allow me to eat it. Although there is another explanation: the sun is what provides the energy for food, and when the sun washing my skin is the same thing that is ripening in the food I am about to eat, there is a vibrational coherence of electrons provided by the sun, which… Translated into biochemical language, this means that the foods I consume from my region, which are bathed in sun and which I receive without a layer of plastic between them, will give me more energy and more nutrients than those that come from outside.

TO. Why have we made the sun our enemy? The chapter of his book is called Where the sun enters, the doctor does not enter.

R. This is ignorance. We have treated the Sun as if it were only ultraviolet radiation, whereas it is an infinitesimal part. And we’ve removed the rest of the electromagnetic waves from that light spectrum. But when the skin is exposed to this full spectrum of sun wavelengths, it becomes our friend and our protector: it regulates more than 1,300 genes, most of which belong to the immune system. As I say in the book, the studies on the dangers of the sun were conducted on people who spent months indoors, in offices working, and who were suddenly exposed to the sun during the summer months, without taking into account diet and other factors. …possible factors for these people. We were extremely reductionist. There are studies that claim that people who work in the sun are least likely to suffer from skin cancer. The key is gradual sun exposure to build up the sunscreen: we eat well and have little sun exposure. This is the key.

TO. Is the night made only for sleeping?

A. All daytime activities that we perform at night cause us jet lag Social. Eating and exercising are daytime activities. Doing this after sunset violates the law of nature and therefore has health consequences.

TO. One of the pieces of advice you give to your patients is that if they are sleeping alone, they should take off their pajamas.

A. If you are accompanied, I advise you to leave your pajamas in the drawer, a person has a wonderful tissue, a source of secretion of hormones and neurotransmitters – skin. An organ with an area of ​​two square meters, capable of producing almost everything that a person needs for life. Skin-to-skin contact releases two substances: serotonin and oxytocin. The first is the hormone of happiness and mood balance, clarity and making the right decisions. It also protects us from skin pathologies and is a very cheap way to avoid having to see a dermatologist. And oxytocin is the hormone of empathy, affection and love connection. Interestingly, the higher our oxytocin, the less we crave sweets.

TO. Doctor, 45 minutes have passed before the interview. Isn’t it time to quit smoking or at least get up and exercise?

R. Definitely. I don’t do this during meetings because they last an hour, but the rest of the day I set an alarm. Every 40 minutes I get up and do two minutes of intense exercise: squats, push-ups… Any exercise that causes a sudden reduction in muscle mass.