Hey, it’s Molly from alcohol minimalist. What do you do in this October? I would love to have you join me in my more sober October challenge. What do I mean by more sober October, it simply means that we’re going to add in more alcohol free days than you currently been doing, whether that’s one or two or 31. It’s up to you, you get to set your own goal and that’s why it’s more sober October. You can check it out and learn more at get got sunnyside.co/molly It’s totally free. I’ve got prizes, I’m going to be going live every week to announce the prize winners. And it’s just going to be an awesome event. So I would love to have you join me. You can learn more at get.sunnyside.co/molly and you can get registered today. Welcome to the alcohol minimalist podcast. I’m your host Molly watts. If you want to change your drinking habits and create a peaceful relationship with alcohol, you’re in the right place. This podcast explores the strategies I use to overcome a lifetime of family alcohol abuse, more than 30 years of anxiety and worry about my own drinking, and what felt like an unbreakable daily drinking habit. Becoming an alcohol minimalist means removing excess alcohol from your life. So it doesn’t remove you from life. It means being able to take alcohol or leave it without feeling deprived. It means to live peacefully, being able to enjoy a glass of wine without feeling guilty and without needing to finish the bottle. With Science on our side will shatter your past patterns and eliminate your excuses. Changing your relationship with alcohol is possible. I’m here to help you do it. Let’s start now. Well, hello, and welcome or welcome back to the alcohol minimalist podcast with me your host Molly Watts coming to you from Yes, that’s right. We are still in this absolutely spectacular time here in Oregon. I don’t even know what to say folks, that’s like two weekends in a row that I’ve said it’s absolutely epic here, but it really is. So hurry if you’re coming because I’m guaranteed by the end of this month, it will not be quite so beautiful. And the rains will set in. But right now is the most wonderful time to be in the Pacific Northwest. In my humble opinion. This week on the show, I am joined by one of my good coaching friends and someone who I just have mad respect for in the in the science realm and that is Monica Rai Nagel. Monica is a licensed nutritionist. She has a Master’s of Science in Human Nutrition. She is a board certified nutrition specialist. So she has a lot of pedigree when it comes to things that have to do with nutrition. And while that may seem odd for this conversation, it’s actually very important too because I came across this recommendation for folic acid and immediately wanted to discuss it with Monica because I respect her her opinions and her due diligence on scientific research. She’s also the host of the nutrition diva podcast co hosts the change Academy podcast with Brock Armstrong. So you’ve heard her on the show before and I will link where you can find her. This week we are talking about folic acid and this recommendation should you be taking folic acid if you are drinking beyond that one drink per day, low risk limit that I talked about. And so there was actually like I said, I found a recommendation on that and I wanted to get this out there because I think it’s important for us to always be curious and questioning where this information is coming from. So before we get to that I do have a prize winner this week. If you are B A S B 113 bas B 113 You are the winner of some alcohol minimalist swag. So please email me Molly at Molly watts.com. And I will send that out to you if you want to be entered into a drawing for that alcohol, minimalist swag, then all you got to do is leave a review of the show either on our leave a review of the show or of my book breaking the bottle legacy and you will be entered to so please. And you know leaving a review of the podcast just helps people who might be searching for this type of content find us so I would really appreciate you taking the time to leave a review if this show has helped you in any way. All right, that is all I have. Here is my conversation with Monica, we go into a lot of different areas on just supplements. So I think you’re really gonna love it. I know I always enjoy talking with her, make it a great week and choose peace, my friends. Hey, Monica, thank you so much for joining me again on alcohol minimalist. I know I reached out to you because I got going down a rabbit hole of researching on a totally different topic that had nothing to do with this, which is kind of how things happen in my world when I’m looking at information on alcohol. I know you can relate because you and I both like to do research. And like the data like the science, right? And so I came across this this thing that basically there was an association between taking folic acid and reduced breast cancer risk for women who were drinking. I think the words were higher levels of alcohol. So say hello first. Sorry, hey. And hello, alcohol. minimalists? Yes. And it is easy to fall down those rabbit holes when we find an interesting little factoid and then start to look what the evidence is. It can frequently get pretty complex as you found when you started trying to unravel this particular knot. So let’s see what we can clarify. Yeah, I know because it really like then it just kept getting, it seemed like it just kept getting more and more confusing to me, personally, and because I know you and I’ve talked about kind of your general view of taking supplements and nutritional, you know, things outside of pills, whatever, just, you know, the this idea that we can make ourselves better by taking pills. So tell me what your basic premise is, or your basic kind of foundational belief on what kind of supplements and things most people should be taking. Yeah, I do not see a huge role for every day in vitamin supplementation as a way to supplement the diet. Now, there are some exceptions to that rule. If you know that you have a deficiency or a difficulty absorbing a certain nutrient, it can make a lot of sense to do that kind of targeted supplementation or a condition that increases your need for a certain nutrient, then it can kind of make sense, but this sort of wholesale idea of let me just take a wide range of nutrients in the idea that nutrients are good, right. So more nutrients must be better. And maybe I’ll fill in any gaps, or, you know, compensate for any deficiencies in my diet just by taking a handful of vitamin supplements. And what we can see, though, is that although nutrients are good, especially when we get them from food, when we try to kind of replicate the effects of a healthy diet, with nutritional supplementation, it just doesn’t have the same effects. Yeah, and so there’s a lot of people wasting a lot of money on nutritional supplements that not only haven’t been shown to be beneficial, but have now been shown to not be beneficial, if that makes sense. You know, it’s Yeah, right, the jury is out the jury is in. And most of these nutritional supplements are really not providing any benefit. And we’re spending a lot of money on them. Yeah, and I mean, to take that even a step further, I think, at least from my perspective, some of the steps that people are taking could even be potentially toxic, potentially dangerous, potentially not good for like your liver pretent you know, which is a pretty important organ, it is always possible to get too much of a good thing and of course, that’s much more likely when you’re taking any substance or, or nutrient in highly concentrated form when it’s been extracted out of its original food source and potentized then of course the chances that you could get into trouble by taking too much are elevated and there’s also sort of a compounding effect where when people are taking a lot of different supplements you know, you go into those health food stores and you start scanning the shelves and everything looks like a good idea right? Like well immune says really hey yeah me some of that and give me the stuff that’s going to make my hair look better and manage my appetite and you know, you look down that list of benefits and there’s none you don’t want right? But when you start combining lots and lots of different supplements you may be you know getting yeah amounts of individual nutrients from several different formulations that are adding up to more than the recommended upper limit for that it can happen really easily with nutrients like vitamin A, or zinc. So do Two examples that come to mind. So it’s another danger with that kind of wholesale supplementation. If you’re not really paying attention to what all of that is adding up to Yeah, you could inadvertently be be really overdoing it. Yeah. And so before we leave this supplementation just in general conversation, another thing that I think people are curious about is like this idea of a dietary supplement or an herbal supplement. That seems natural, right? And so like, there’s, there’s liver support, right? And this whole idea, like, Okay, well, if I drink alcohol, I should, you know, take something to offset this. You know, drinking, right, because my, everybody thinks, Well, I, the liver, that’s what’s getting impacted by the alcohol. So this idea of a liver support supplement seems really logical, right. But it’s an herbal supplement. And by most accounts, none of that stuff is can be regulated, it’s not really tested. And we don’t even mean it’s possible that some of this stuff could not be good for the liver in general, I think probably, well, the herbal supplements are not regulated by the FDA the way drugs are, so they don’t have to go through that kind of regulatory procedure. They are regulated just under General, FTC regulations, when you sell things. They are supposed to be as described on the label they’re supposed to have in them what they say they have in them. So it’s not that manufacturers are under no obligation to provide safe and effective products as advertised. It’s just that the mechanisms to test and check are a lot thinner. They’re kind of on their honor. Now, if a problem comes up, and it is found that they don’t contain what they say they contain, of course, then they can be in a boatload of trouble. So there is some incentive. But yeah, it’s a little loosey goosey. But I can see why those liver support supplements seem like they make sense a because as you just mentioned, their natural right there, right herbs, and what could be better. And B, we all know that that over consuming alcohol can have deleterious effects on the liver. So yeah, why wouldn’t we give that Oregon a little bit extra support. Sometimes they’re called, they’re marketed as liver support. Sometimes it’s sort of under that banner of detox, support your body’s detoxification systems. And they have various things in them nutrients, milk thistle is one that is kind of wed to the liver in popular imagination. And those herbs come from folk medicine, centuries old 1000s of years old, in various traditional folk medicine systems, they are thought to support the liver. Now that we have the benefit of things like double blind, placebo controlled trials that we can put these things through, the benefits are not as easily recognized as we might have hoped, right? So the evidence to support that they actually do protect the liver or improve liver function is a little sketchy. And then ironically, when people do get in trouble with liver toxicity, one of the primary causes of liver toxicity, that kind of thing that would send somebody to the hospital are herbal supplements. So one of the one of the ways that we hurt our liver most frequently is actually with overuse of herbal supplements. So yeah, okay, so better idea to maybe just reduce the amount of alcohol you’re drinking friends? Well, by 100%. Yeah, I think that’s the obvious thing. And I think people feel like well, okay, that would be the ideal. I’m, I aspire to that I’m working towards that. But in the meantime, you know, maybe I should just give my liver a little support a little extra support. But look, it is true. If you want to help your liver, the best thing you can do for it is to give it less to detoxify, whether that’s alcohol, or other toxins that the liver has to deal with far more effective than taking some sort of nutritional supplement that’s supposed to improve detoxification, your number one line of support for your liver is just give it less to do because it is great at doing what it does. The liver is a detoxification machine. But obviously, we can overload it, we can stress it to the point where it just can’t keep up with the demand. You know, I guess it’s a supply chain issue, right? So, so really, if you’re worried about your liver, give it less to worry about give it less to do and it will take care of you. But loading herbal supplements in particular sometimes gives it more to do right kind of works in the opposite direction than we might hope and I think it gives people a false sense of security. 100% I mean, I think that’s the big one. message that we want to send is that there’s really, you know, these, these false hopes and popping a pill to try to solve problems. First is probably not unless it’s prescribed by your doctor. And really even then you need to be asking yourself, Is this really doing me what I need to be doing so? Well, right. And am I using this as an alternative to the steps that I could be taking in terms of lifestyle or my diet or, or exercise? You know, we we need to do the lifestyle stuff. First. We can’t compensate for that by taking by taking vitamin supplements or herbal supplements. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. I know, bad news. Right? Well, I mean, is it really bad news? I mean, this is really kind of the place where you and you and I agree wholeheartedly is that ultimately, to change our lives we have to and whether that’s your, your diet, or your exercise, or your relationship with alcohol, it’s, it’s going to be a behavior change, and it’s going to be a lifestyle change. And it’s going to be an attitude change that you do, right? It’s not, there’s no quick fix, there’s no instant result. And there’s nothing that you’re going to be able to take in the form of a pill that’s really going to change that for you. It’s got to be, that’d be the work you do in your, in your mindset right in your brain. Okay, talk to me about that. Do you say folate or folic acid? I pull it right? I’ve heard it said both ways. We usually say the natural form of the nutrient is folate, okay. And then folic acid is a synthetic form of that nutrient. That is what we often use in nutritional supplements or in food fortification. So they’re sometimes used interchangeably. They’re not exactly the same to two similar forms of the same nutrient. Okay, and these are B vitamins. Right? It is in the B vitamin family. Yes. Which is a big family. Right. Right. Right, sometimes kind of arbitrarily lumped together. Because I think there’s like nine or 11 B vitamins now and yeah, so but yeah, yes, it is in the B, vitamin family, folate, folic acid. And one of folic acids a big claims to fame is that it is extraordinarily effective in reducing the onset preventing neural tube defects in babies, right, which is, you know, a birth defect that can happen if the mom doesn’t have enough folate in her system while the baby is growing. And this used to be a much more common birth defect and devastating, you know, horrible thing. Folic Acid largely prevents this. And as a result, this is one of the big success stories for food fortification, public health initiative that said, hey, look, this is so important. We need to make sure that any woman who is of childbearing age is getting enough folic acid to prevent this, not just the ones who are planning to become pregnant because sometimes we don’t plan to become pregnant, right? Let’s make sure that everybody in this cohort is getting an A folic acid. And so there was a decision made to fortify foods in the food supply and they chose grain based foods. So breads and pastas and you know, things made with flour that because they they’re so ubiquitous, I eat them a lot. Like if we put it, you know, if we if we fortify sardines, like how many people are gonna get? What if we fortified breakfast cereal, and sliced bread? You know, we got a good chance of catching most of the population so full, I think back in the oh, now you’re gonna catch me out, because I can’t remember exactly what decade we started this. Oh, it was a long time ago, right? Yeah, yeah, neural tube defects are virtually unseen. Today. This is a huge success, largely due to this folic acid fortification program. And this is also why when you’re getting when you are pregnant, or if you’re planning to get pregnant, they throw you on those prenatal vitamins, which have all kinds of things in them. But one of the biggies is the folic acid to make sure that that we’re covering that getting enough, okay, the way that I got to this point was I was doing research for something else. And then all of a sudden, I see this recommendation, literally a recommendation. And that’s what was so weird, because I showed it to you. And I was like, How is this? How is this even out here that it’s a literal, you know, a guideline or a recommendation for women who are ingesting more heavier. I think that again, like I said, The words were higher level, higher levels of alcohol, which, if you take that at its base, meaning right when the the recommendations for moderate consumption by the CDC are is one alcohol, you know, one drink per day for women, right? So any if you look at it that way, then anything more than one would be higher, right? That’s right. I think this does apply to women who are consuming more than one unit of alcohol per day on average night. Right? So that’s a lot of people First of all, I mean, there’s people who are drinking more than one drink per day. And the recommendation was that they supplement with 400 micrograms of folic acid. And and as a preventative measure for breast cancer, when there was actual studies done that showed this positive, positive correlation between taking folic acid and reduced risk rates for breast cancer for women who were drinking, again, higher levels of alcohol, which if you drink more than one drink that’s considered higher. So yeah, let’s unravel this a little bit, because a lot of that’s a pretty big, there was a pretty big I said, I was, I was just shocked that it was a pretty, that was a pretty direct recommendation. And I didn’t, I was just surprised to even find it, quite honestly. So a lot of this data comes out of the Nurses Health Study, which is a decade’s long observational study that followed. I don’t know, it’s about 8080 90,000 1000 women through life. It’s been going on, as I say, for decades, and they’ve, and they’ve gathered a lot of data about what women eat and other lifestyle choices that they make, including alcohol consumption, and then they track them over the course of their lives to see what happens to them, what kind of illnesses or conditions do they develop? And it was noticed that women who are drinking more heavily have a markedly increased risk of breast cancer, right? I don’t know about you, but I feel like most of us women go through our entire lives, sort of fearing breast cancer, right? It’s one of the most scary things that can happen to us. And so this got everyone’s attention, right. So drinking, so there is a clear relationship between heavier Alcohol Alcohol consumption and increased risk of breast cancer. And I think when women are struggling with their alcohol consumption, this is one of their bugaboos is, oh, my gosh, you know, I’ve got to get this under control, because I’m increasing my risk of breast cancer. It’s not a very wise, right. Well, it’s a true it’s an actual I mean, that is one of those scientifically proven things. It is a known carcinogen. And for women who drink more than than the recommended, you know, allowances or the or that one drink per day, there is there is an increased risk of breast cancer, and not only breast cancer, there are other cancers that have been linked to alcohol consumption. But as I say, for women, breast cancer is just a particular bugaboo. It’s a particular fear that we have. So So I think, yeah, that’s why it gets our attention. So we see this relationship between alcohol consumption and breast cancer, and it is particularly pronounced in people with a family history of breast cancer, that’s always a big variable. And it’s due to those genetic mutations that get passed down through family. So if you have mom or sister grandmother who has had breast cancer, you may have been tested for those genes, you may know that you have an increased risk. And that relationship between alcohol and breast cancer is particularly pronounced in that population. So why, what what is driving this? Another observation that came out of the Nurses Health Study was like, huh, whip, a couple of related observations, one, women who are drinking more alcohol 10 are more likely to be deficient in folic acid, and folate. And that’s interesting. And because alcohol kind of can impair the absorption and metabolism of folic acid, so you’re not getting the benefit of what’s in your food. Because the alcohol is preventing you from absorbing it or metabolizing or converting it into its usable forms. There’s also the fact that people who drink more alcohol often just have poor quality diets. And so there’s, there’s less coming in, so. So people who are drinking more are more likely to be deficient in folic acid. Yeah, and that could definitely be part of the explanation for why the breast cancer risk goes up. And then they saw that of those women, they had enough women, they could really slice and dice this data a lot of ways. Then they noticed that the women who a were drinking more than the recommended of alcohol, but also who had high intakes of dietary folate because they’re collecting a lot of information on these women’s diet history too. And those women who were taking in a lot of folate, they did not seem to be at that increased risk. So those higher intakes of folate were protective against breast cancer in those women who were drinking a lot of alcohol and again, especially in those women with a genetic predisposition. So all of that is true. And out of that grows this seemingly logical conclusion like hey, if I’m going to be drinking more than seven drinks a week, I better be taking a folic acid supplement to to mitigate right that increased risk Ask. And that’s where that recommendation comes from. I don’t think that it’s entirely without cons, though. And we can talk a little bit about Yeah. So before we do that, it’s really interesting because in recovery programs in for people who are misusing alcohol to the point where they would be considered to have severe alcohol use disorder, often when they go into a treatment type program, and they are experiencing withdrawal, one of the things that nutritional things that they give them is folic acid, there is some some question as to whether or not it’s because their diets suffer when they are misusing alcohol so highly, that they just stop basically eating good foods and are consuming, you know, just focused on consuming alcohol, right? Or whether or not as you mentioned, the alcohol has just compromised for the liver to create folate, folic acid in their bodies. So I think it’s just it’s I mean, so there’s definitely something here with folic acid and alcohol. And so but this is really I love this, so but now we want to hear it. Yes, I definitely want to hear about the con side. Hey, all just a quick break in the show to talk with you for a minute about sunny side. It’s fall. And it’s time for tailgaters and holiday parties on the horizon. There is never a better time than right now, to put a mindful plan into place. And Sunnyside is my recommendation for how you can really use a tool that provides a way to track your drinks, measure your progress, and really uses proven behavior change techniques to create lasting habit change. The thing is, you can reduce your drinking by 30% in the first 30 days with Sunny Side, and you can save over $50 a month, cut out 2500 calories out of your diet. And these are just based on average results. I know that people that I talk to and people that I work with are using sunny side and getting great results. If you’d like to find out if it will work for you go to www.sunnyside.co/minimalist to get started on a free 15 day trial today. My thought process was well. Even if I drink seven standard drinks or less during a week, which is typically what I do. How could this be hurtful if I was just going to take 400 micrograms? Right? So and of course, it’s not the only thing folate does for us, right? It’s involved in heart health and brain health and healthy aging. So like, yeah, why wouldn’t we just go ahead and do that? Well, there is one caveat that it’s just more of the behavioral thing, like let’s not use this as a reason to continue over drinking. Right? I’m safe, I’ve got this covered. So I don’t need to worry about this, you know, I don’t want it to give people a false sense of security because this is only one of many adverse effects of over consuming alcohol. And and so we don’t want to just put a bandaid on that behavior and say like, yeah, I got this. I’ve got my vitamin here. Right. So I’ve cleared the deck so so there’s just that sort of obvious observation that this shouldn’t be, instead of changing your behavior, which as you and I both believe begins, of course, with changing your mindset, your thoughts, your beliefs. So we still need to be working towards that behavior change. But there’s, there’s even something a little bit more nefarious. So folic acid is involved in processes where cells divide very quickly. And one of the times that happens is when you are gestating a baby, the cells are dividing very, very quickly, and that an a deficiency of folate can impair that process. And that is why we see the birth defects come right with insufficient folate, okay. But there are some other processes in the body that happened that also involve quickly dividing cells. And I bet you can think of one I’m sitting here right now my brain is going, where she going where she going, Hey, tell me Well, cancer is a process where, right? Very quickly, right and in a way that we aren’t that we don’t want to happen. So here’s the thing, folate, and you know, in a lot of different nutrients is protective against cancer, unless you have cancer, in which case, it can actually fuel the growth of cancer. And the way we figured this out, was actually not having to do with breast cancer but having to do with colon cancer. And so, when people were diagnosed with or prior to being diagnosed with colon cancer, we’re taking high dose folate supplements for their heart for their brain for one whatever reason they thought it was good for them, it was good for them. And sometimes you can have colon cancer in your body for a while before you know about it right. And they found that those higher intakes of folic acid, and I want to distinguish here between folate, which is the naturally occurring food source, and folic acid, and this is specifically people taking 400 800 1200 micrograms of folic acid as a supplement, they actually had increased progression of their colon cancer, traced to that, that higher intake of folic acid. So there’s the big caveat. And, and it really is a double edged sword, right? This is one nutrient that can be both protective against cancer, but also cancer promoting under different conditions. And it’s just a good reminder that we can’t just fix everything that’s wrong with our diets and our lifestyle by just piling on a bunch of nutrients. And it’s also a good reminder that, okay, if 400 micrograms is good, that doesn’t mean that 1200 micrograms is better, because it was those really high doses of folic acid supplementation that were found to have this effect. So I guess my take home from that is, first of all, we don’t want to be indiscriminately using high doses of folic acid for any purpose. I again, this was these were mostly people who were concerned about heart health and brain health, but we’re taking these higher levels. And especially if we are at an increased risk of colon cancer. And it also just gives me another excuse to make my standardized plug to not delay, avoid, neglect your colon cancer screenings. And for those of you who may not be following the news, they have now moved to the recommendation up it used to be we got to wait till you’re 50 Before we had our first colonoscopy, and now they are moving that back into your 40s because they’re seeing so many more cases of colon cancer being diagnosed in their 40s. So I don’t need to be bringing the whole room down here. But no, it’s not. It shouldn’t be it shouldn’t be one of those things where we just you know, my friends, this is what we do, we take care of our bodies of our minds. And some of it’s not that much fun, but it’s so valuable. So I’ve had a colonoscopy, I’m sure you’ve had a colonoscopy. And having the first one was kind of this like, mind over matter situation where I was really stressed out about it, because I just had all this ideas in my head, and then I did it. And then I was like, oh, okay, well, that’s no big deal. Don’t need to, you know, check that off the box and just sign up for the next one. You know what I mean? Well, I’ll offer a counterpoint to that story. And if the episodes running too long, you can just edit this out because it’s a little bit off topic. But I went into my first screening colonoscopy without a care in the world because I thought I miss health Yeah, because Miss healthy over there, you help diet I, you know, mostly plant based, I eat a lot of vegetables and fiber, and I got nothing to worry about. So I didn’t give it a second thought I woke up from my very first screening colonoscopy at age 50. And the doctor came in and said, You are why no one should put off their screening colonoscopy because they found a big ol precancerous polyp in my colon, which it took several more procedures to fully remove and, and now I monitored very closely, and I’m in no danger, because I took that seriously. And so, you know, I always want to encourage people if they’re thinking like, ah, 5055, what difference can it make? In my case, and I was at very low risk in terms of family history and lifestyle indicators and things in my case that five years might have led to a very, very different outcome. So So yes, we’re cancer screenings. And while we go ahead and get your mammograms, but here’s where I feel like this all shakes out in terms of folic acid, because like you, that finding got my attention to like, Hmm, anybody who is drinking more than drink a day, women should probably go ahead and take some folic acid to offset that risk. And it just seemed like such a no brainer. I do think that it is a good idea to make sure that you are getting the recommended amount of folic acid, which is 400 micrograms per day. I don’t think you necessarily need to take a supplement to get there, though. And I’d prefer that you didn’t. I know, I know that part. But how do we like how do we know I mean, that’s the part I guess. I mean, you just have to really tell me some of the foods obviously, you just said there’s a whole bunch everything’s there. It’s it’s actually fortified into a lot of the foods that we eat anyway. But what else? Well, and I also want to say that none of the scary things that were found with people taking high doses of folic acid as a supplement were observed in people who had higher intake of folate and folic acid from their diet, so that dietary sources did not seem to pose a problem. It really was those higher you know, supplemental doses. But yeah, if you want to make sure that you’ve got your folic acid covered with and folate covered, which I think is a great idea for all kinds of reasons. There are three categories of foods that you want to think about. One are the leafy greens all have I mean, some are higher than others, you don’t need to worry about it, just all the leafy greens. Everything from spinach to my personal favorite broccoli, Rob, or chard, or kale, or all of those types of mustard greens, beet greens, those are all the dark, the dark leafy greens sounds like better than the greens, right? Yeah. Okay. And if you don’t know how to make them, so you like them, drop me an email, I will teach you because once you figure once you crack that code, you know, they’re there, they’ll be one of your favorite foods. So the the dark leafy greens, and then legumes, all the different kinds of dried beans and peas if you can incorporate those into your diet on a semi regular basis. And those of you who work with me on nutrition programs, you’ve heard my Yes, yeah. endorsement for the for the mighty legume before but they’re also like great sources of folate. So so far, we have the dark leafy greens, we have all the different kinds of dried beans, which include things like black bean soup and hummus and you know, it doesn’t have to be that exotic. And then the third category are those fortified foods. So most breakfast cereals are going to be fortified with folic acid and other grain based products. You don’t need to go out of your way to eat more of them. But exactly, we don’t Yeah, right. But know that that’s also like another supplemental source. And when you combine those three foods into your diet, when you incorporate those kinds of foods into your diet on a regular basis, it is not hard to get to that to that benchmark. All right. Oh, well, this has been super, super informative and super beneficial. Of course, I knew it would be because talking with you about this always is so much more clarifying. I mean, I think that’s one of the things that frustrates me so much is there. And you know, on that small note, before we get off, one thing that you and I also want to make sure people notice when they get finds information on the internet, you want to check like where you’re getting that information where that information is coming from? Is it actually a study and the date, right, because sometimes you’ll pull up something, and it’s actually pretty old information, and there’s been newer information come out. Right, and you did great research for today’s episode and shared a lot of you were looking at very, very reputable sources, you know, peer reviewed medical journals. But even in our conversations, before we got on, there was some fine distinctions there. Like the difference between folic acid and folate, the difference between dietary intake of a nutrient and circulating levels, you know, and so all of that information has to actually be filtered with those things in mind. So yeah, it’s, you can know just enough to be dangerous. Right. Right. Right. Right. And then and you and I spent a lot of time and, you know, looking at studies and things like that. So it’s I mean, I that’s why I wanted to have this conversation, because hopefully we have, you know, given people more of a clearer picture, at least if this is something they’ve heard, or like I said, I hadn’t even heard it. I was very surprised. shared it with you. You were surprised, just at the the sickness of the recommendation. And should we actually be just doing that? So yeah, yeah, I was surprised that there was no kind of context around it. Right. But But I want to make sure that people listening feel like they got a sad satisfying kind of resolution to this question, which is, there is this clear relationship between alcohol and breast cancer risk, it is definitely modified by folate and folic acid intake. And the best source of that nutrient in your diet are going to be foods because then you reduce any of the unintended consequences of supplementation with folic acid. Well, that was well said my friend, that was perfect. That was the way that we that’s the way we wrap things up around here. I will link all of this in my show notes where you can find Monica. Nutrition over easy.com is one space and way less dot life is another anyplace else. Just come find me. The nutrition diva podcast, the change Academy podcast, all of these things, my friends, you will find like I said links in the show notes. Monica right Nicole, thank you so much for coming back on the alcohol minimalist podcast. Appreciate as Always a pleasure, Molly. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to the alcohol minimalist podcast. This podcast is dedicated to helping you change your drinking habits and to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol. Use something you learned in today’s episode and apply it to your life this week. Transformation is possible Do you have the power to change your relationship with alcohol now for more information please visit me at www dot Molly watts.com