Kathleentrotter.com

Learn True Health Home Kitchen Membership Course:

Learntruehealth.com/homekitchen

Check out IIN and get a free module: LearnTrueHealth.com/coach

How To Make Fitness Your Lifelong Habit 

https://www.learntruehealth.com/how-to-make-fitness-your-lifelong-habit

Highlights:

• Using data to set up systems
• Know what you’re putting in your body
• Guilt versus shame
• Polyvagal theory
• Motion is non-negotiable
• Four different fitness personalities

Is there something in your life that you need to improve? Do you want to be the best version of you? In this episode, Kathleen Trotter teaches us different ways to become a better version of ourselves. She talks about how journaling can help, listing out past data, and creating systems to help us become a better version of ourselves no matter what our goal is.

Intro:

Hello, true health seekers and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. Today, we have Kathleen Trotter on the show. I’m very excited for you to learn from her. She is giving away a spot in one of her upcoming courses, and it’s very exciting. So as you’re listening today and you think, I would love to learn from Kathleen, you could actually enter to win a free spot in her upcoming class. It’s an online, interactive group coaching class.

Please go to our Facebook group, Learn True Health Facebook group. There you will see a pin to the top. In the next few weeks, you’ll see a post to be able to be one of the winners. I ask that you share some unique insight that you really love learning today in the comments. I’ll have my 5 ½-year-old son pick at random a lucky listener from one of the comments. It would just be a wonderful opportunity. I just love it when guests give some of their work to us. Gift their books or gift a spot in their courses. I think that’s quite wonderful.

Now, as you’re listening to Kathleen today and you think, I would love to do the kind of work she’s doing. I’d love to do the kind of work Ashley James is doing. I’d love to be able to help people as a health coach. Help them gain more joy in their life, joy in their body, and joy with their food—consider becoming a holistic health coach. Consider becoming an integrative health coach. You can get a free module by going to learntruehealth.com/coach. That’s learntruehealth.com/coach and sign up for the free module to see if health coaching is right for you. Take the free module and you’ll know if it’s something that you’d love to do either for yourself or to improve the health of yourself, your friends, and your family. To add new tools to your tool belt, or to even start a new career.

What I love about IIN is that in the first half of the course, you are taught how to be a fantastic health coach. And then in the second half, in addition to learning how to be a fantastic health coach, you actually begin to already work with clients. So you’re still in the program, still able to be mentored while you’re working with clients, and they teach you how to build a successful coaching business. So if you’ve never even started a business before, and you don’t know if you’re confident enough to have those tools, know that their course teaches you how to do it. And it’s about coming from the heart and wanting to help people and getting such satisfaction from helping people.

So visit learntruehealth.com/coach or learntruehealth.com/coaching—either one—and you will get the fee module and check it out. If you have more questions, you can email me, ashley@learntruehealth.com, or just google IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and ask some questions. Most of the time, those who answer the phones there are health coaches themselves that have been through the program and are really great in answering questions and giving you all the right information you need. The course was designed for very busy people, especially busy moms. You know that no matter how busy you are, you’re able to finish their online program to become an integrative health coach.

As you talk to IIN know that you’re given fantastic savings by being a Learn True Health listener. That’s something I was really honored that they were able to offer my listeners. Make sure you mention my name, Ashley James, and the Learn True Health podcast for fantastic savings. Once in a while, they have great specials as well. It’s good to plug in if you’re interested in becoming a health coach. It’s good to communicate with them and get all your questions answered. 

And If you’re not interested in becoming a health coach but you are interested in gaining more tools for health, of course, Kathleen Trotter, our wonderful guest today, is going to teach you many things. You should absolutely follow her. She has some great information. But also, I recommend joining my membership, the Learn True Health Home Kitchen. 

I go into the kitchen with my dear friend Naomi, and we show you how to cook healing foods and beverages that are wonderful for the whole family. You don’t have to be completely vegan to eat this food, although we teach you how to eat more plants, and you can incorporate that into your life. You’re going to get more fiber, you’re going to get more vitamins, you’re going to get more nutrients into your life by joining Learn True Health Home Kitchen and following our delicious, wholesome, and healing recipes. So check that out. You can just go to learntruehealth.com and on the top, on the menu, you’ll see join the home kitchen. Check that out.

Also, there’s a discount for listeners. Use the coupon code LTH. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. I look forward to seeing you in the Facebook group. Come join us here. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day and enjoy today’s interview.

[00:05:36] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 446. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have Kathleen Trotter on the show. Her website is kathleentrotter.com, and of course, links to everything that Kathleen does is going to be on the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Kathleen has a master’s in exercise science, and she’s a life and nutrition coach, which is really exciting because you encompass behavior, change, and looking at the person’s whole life when it comes to helping them do the best exercise routines for them.

Now you also have interesting specialties in fascial work. I mean, I just love it. I look down on your bio, and I love all the different training that you’ve been through. You’ve been doing this for over 20 years, you’ve written two books.

[00:06:34] Kathleen Trotter: I love it, really, and it changed my life—health and wellness—so I want it to change other people’s. I have this thing about the health discourse, and it’s too much framed on making people feel about themselves. It’s about how you should be somebody else, and it’s like no, you should be yourself. Thrive in your lane, but just be the strongest, most energetic, and healthiest version of you that you can be. And I think that’s why I try to look and learn as much as possible because the body is super cool. But it’s really complex and there are so many variables that go into who we are and why we change, right?

It’s not enough to just know the information. I mean, most of us know it. It’s like drink more water, exercise more. It’s all these shoulds—well do this, do that. And too often, we should all over ourselves without actually being well, what do I want to do? What would make me happy? What’s realistic? It might not be realistic to run every day for you because of injuries or time. The benefits of the best workout or best nutrition program are moot if you can’t actually make yourself do it.

It’s about thriving in your own lane and figuring out what’s right for you. But in order to do that, you kind of have to know yourself enough to know do I like having a shake in the morning, or would I rather have eggs? Or is it too crazy in the morning to have eggs at all and should I be having little egg cups that I make on a Sunday? I mean, that sounds like a silly example, but that in itself can be the difference between making a sustainable change about your healthy breakfast or not. If you say, well, every morning I’m going to have eggs and then every morning you wake up and you’re like oh man. I got five kids to get to school and they need breakfast and they hate eggs. Well, it’s just not going to happen. You got to do you, know you, and just consistency and realistic expectations.

[00:08:22] Ashley James: Before we hit record, we were talking about how the motivation to make healthy changes or the motivation to create a new fitness program is short-lived. We oftentimes will come from a place of emotion, right? Feeling guilty, feeling like we should do this, then all of a sudden feeling inspired. We could maybe watch a TV show about health and all of a sudden feel inspired. I remember so many times watching the Biggest Loser or the finale of the Biggest Loser and seeing these really buff chicks. I’m like, okay, I’m getting to the gym tomorrow. When you look at the statistics of gym memberships, there’s a huge spike in January, and then by March they’re cut in half and the attendance goes down and down and down and down, and then it goes back up right after the holidays.

We see that there are difficulties in forming healthy habits as a society around fitness, but also the idea of what is fitness? Is it heavily sweating in the gym on a treadmill, and is that really right for everyone? You understand how the body works and what’s best for unique people, right? We all need different things, and so that’s one of the things you specialize in is teaching people how they can create a fitness routine that brings them joy, that makes them want to want to get up and do it every day, but also would be the healthiest thing for them.

I can’t tell you how many times I injured myself pushing myself in the gym because it wasn’t really the right training for my body.

[00:10:08] Kathleen Trotter: Absolutely. Well, let me go back to where you started because there are so many amazing concepts that you just threw out, which are awesome, but let’s unpack it a bit. Motivation has to be thought of as akin to an emotion, which means emotions come and go. You get angry, you get sad. The half-life of an emotion is a couple of seconds and then it’s gone. It’s very fast. So what you want to do is if you are in that motivated state, you watch the Biggest Loser or it’s January 1, that’s great. Use that, but use it to create systems for the future you that is going to be sad, that is going to be frustrated, and that is going to be angry. So then, when you have those moments of low motivation, you don’t fall off your horse.

I guess it’s a matter of going back to realistic expectations. You have to know that you are human. You’re not perfect, none of us are perfect. You’re not a robot. Thank God. We don’t want robots. We want human beings, and human beings are messy, we’re emotional, and that’s one of our best qualities, but it also means that it’s easy for us to fall off our horse. Okay, a couple of weeks down the road we’ve got the gym membership after January 1, and then we get angry at our spouse or our kids or our boss and we’re just like screw it. I’m not going to go to the gym. And then you end up going home, you binge on some food, you feel kind of crappy, and then that starts this negative downward spiral.

So you have to, on January 1, instead of just thinking oh my goodness, I feel amazing right now. And then assuming you’re always going to feel amazing, you have to say, oh I feel amazing right now. That’s great. Let’s harness that feeling of amazing motivation, and let’s use it to create some systems. I know for the last 10 years in a row, by the third week of January, I’m no longer going to the gym. Okay, great. That’s amazing data. Now, how do I use that data from past years to help future me?

I think that’s one really key thing is just using your past history of what you like, what you don’t like, what works, what doesn’t, and then you create some systems. If you know that in the past you’ve always been really successful when you’ve had a gym buddy, then maybe have one. And if you can’t go right now with somebody to a gym because of COVID, then maybe you have an accountability buddy that you do over email, or maybe you go for walk and talks with your buddy in your ear. If you know that you really love Pilates, then find an online Pilates class. If you know you hate yoga, so then maybe don’t do yoga. Use what you know about yourself when you’re successful to set up a plan, but you have to set up the system.

Why don’t I give you an example? I love fudge bars, and I use this example all the time because I think it’s really, really common. You’re in the grocery store, and I’ll be standing next to the frozen food aisle. I’ll just be thinking, I can buy the bars. You know Kathleen, you’re a personal trainer. You’re going to get home. You’ll be fine. You’re dedicated, you have willpower. You just won’t eat them. The problem is after years of doing this, what I know is the future me at 11:00 PM at night when I’m really tired, I’ve worked a full day, I can’t resist those fudge bars.

So what I have done is a system where I don’t allow them to come into my home because I just love them too much, but I buy them and I always leave a box at my mom’s. If I want one, I can walk over. We can have a visit, I can enjoy one bar but I don’t binge on six bars at a time and then feel frustrated with myself. The systems are what you set up in the future for the future you.

If you know you need to work out in the morning because that’s what works for your schedule but you hate working out in the morning, then maybe you have to set out your workout clothes the night before so they’re there. I actually sleep in my workout clothes often if I know that I have to work out really early. This morning, I had to do my workout about 5:000 AM in the morning, so I slept in my workout clothes because it’s one less thing between me and my workout. You take out as much friction as possible, you take it away. You make those healthy habits as convenient as possible. You make your unhealthy habits as inconvenient as possible.

Put your alarm clock across the room so you have to get out of bed and turn it off versus just hitting the snooze button. Take all the crap out of your house because if it’s in your house, you or somebody you love will eventually eat it. One of the things that work is understanding this idea of present bias. The brain has many cognitive distortions that normally trick us a little bit. They trick us unconsciously. It’s not that we think, oh, I’m going to trick myself. It’s that we don’t understand until we become mindful of it that the brain feels that however we feel at this moment is how we’re always going to feel. Meaning, January 1 you think, I feel really motivated, without having to consciously think, oh well therefore I will always feel motivated.

That’s what your brain thinks, but you have to say to the brain well, no, I’m not going to always feel motivated. What are the systems? But it also goes the other way that when you wake up in the morning, it’s 5:00 AM, and you’re tired, your brain thinks oh my God, I’m always going to be tired. Because you’re tired at that moment. Okay, well I always snooze my alarm too many times in the morning, so my system is to set the alarm across the room. And then, I also have to have the self-talk ready to say okay self, you feel tired at this moment but future you will feel better. That’s something I get my clients to work with all the time. It’s just this taking a pause and realizing that the moment that you’re in is not going to last.

Emotions, as we talked about earlier, they dissipate. You feel something else. That’s the key to the emotion and the emotional wave. How you surf that emotional wave is so important because we all have moments of low motivation. There are lots of times I don’t want to work out. There are lots of times I want to eat tons and tons of chocolate, but I don’t have chocolate in my house. I have systems set up that nudge me towards the healthier choices, and I’ve learned a lot. This has been 20 years that I’ve been in the fitness field. I use every experience as data to help my future self. It’s a slow process, right? It’s not just like a pass-fail thing. You don’t automatically become healthy and then it’s easy. It’s always a struggle, and I wasn’t born fit either.

I think that’s also really key is I know that for the first half of my life I lived, I felt really ashamed of my body I had a lot of body shame. I did anything to get out of gym class. I never moved. I was overweight. I had to learn these systems. It never came naturally to me. Everybody listening, if you’re thinking, oh my God, Kathleen sounds like she’s got this all figured out. Believe you me, it has taken a long time, and I still struggle. I struggle, struggle, struggle, but it gets a little bit easier every single day as you learn more skills and as you learn to just say future me is going to be happier if I work out. I never regret a workout, and the future me is going to be happier if I have some water and I just take a moment to take a pause and think. What’s going to serve me at this moment? I don’t know. Do you have a trick? Do you have a system? Do you have a favorite system?

[00:17:00] Ashley James: I love what you just said about I never regret a workout. I love that.

[00:17:06] Kathleen Trotter: That’s so true.

[00:17:07] Ashley James: I do the future you feel better. Actually, what I do is when I’m lying in bed, just waking up, I imagine myself an hour later. An hour later I’m going to feel so good. I imagine myself already awake. I have a very comfortable bed. My mattress is the best mattress in the world. I actually interviewed the founder of the company that created this mattress. It has space-age technology. It’s like NASA technology in it, and it makes it so there’s no pressure points—absolutely no pressure points. It doesn’t matter how much you weigh, it doesn’t matter what shape you are in. It actually is used to heal stage four bedsores—this technology—because it takes 100% of the pressure off and evenly distributes your body, so no matter what position you’re in, your spine is perfectly aligned. When I wake up, I’m floating on the cloud.

[00:18:02] Kathleen Trotter: You want to stay in bed. You’re like, I don’t want to move at all.

[00:18:03] Ashley James: If you’ve ever had a mattress where you wake up in the morning and you’re sore because you want to get out of that bed because it’s like, oh I’ve been lying in bed too long. I’m sore. That does not happen with my bed. You could stay in this bed for 24 hours. You’re not going to be sore from staying in this bed. When I wake up, every fiber of my being wants to continue to enjoy the comfort of this bed. I’m still a little tired. I’m groggy. I’m just waking up. But you know what, since I’ve done so many things for my health over the years, I have more and more and more energy in the morning, which really helps to get up.

So going to bed early, not eating late at night. Even doing a bit of intermittent fasting where I push supper back to 5:00 PM or 6:00 PM and then no snacking afterward. So you go to bed on an empty stomach. Drink enough water, so drink like 120 ounces of water a day, but finish that 120 ounces by about 6:00 PM so that you have enough time to pee before bed. But go to bed at 10:00 PM because the circadian rhythm gets totally thrown off and we have a huge cortisol spike. Therefore insulin is then affected. Then we have a blood sugar imbalance if we stay up past 10:00 PM. It doesn’t matter what time zone you’re in. Something magical about 10:00 PM has a cortisol spike if we continue to stay up past 10:00 PM.

So when I go to bed before 10:00 PM—falling asleep around 10:00 PM—I wake up in the morning with way more energy, way more vitality, no inflammation, and it’s easier to get out of bed. But there’s a little voice in my head that goes oh, this feels so good. Let’s just stay here. Or oh, I’m tired. Maybe I could fall back asleep, hit the snooze button. I have to imagine myself after I’ve gotten up, gone to the bathroom and put clothing on. That future me an hour from now is ready, pumped, and doing the day already. I’m like, yeah, I want to be my future self. Let’s get out of bed.

[00:20:09] Kathleen Trotter: I think you said a number of things that are really important, but I want to highlight the biggest thing is that you have got a lot of data about yourself. I think that with health, the problem is that we listen to people like you and me, and then you think oh my God, they have it all figured out. But we have it figured out because we’ve done a lot of trial and error. And this is really important. If anybody’s listening, if you get one thing from this, it’s that you don’t have to be great to start, but you do have to start to get great.

So all the things you just said like you know you need to be in bed by 10:00 PM. You know intermittent fasting works for you. You know how much waterworks at what time. Well, that’s all great, but that comes from years of figuring it out and what works for you, and everyone’s going to be slightly different.

So for me, I definitely do windows of intermittent fasting as well, but I also work out very early in the morning. So 5:00 PM would be too early a cut off for me because then for me, personally, I won’t feel strong in my workout the next morning. So I think the trick with people listening is there’s no right or wrong. I mean, there are definitely principles that are important, but we can really get in our own way when we think that things have to be perfect. When we’re listening to a podcast and we’re like, okay, I got to be done eating by 5:00 PM. I got to be asleep by 10:00 PM. I have to do this much. You have to figure out what works for you, but you can’t figure out what works for you until you actually try stuff.

Be okay with your messiness. Again, I go back to we’re human, but more than that, think of life as like this science experiment. Everything you do is data. So if you do a workout that you hate, that’s great. Now you know you don’t like that workout. If you end up staying up and eating a little bit too much food and then you feel kind of gross and you can’t sleep, great. Don’t do that again. That doesn’t work. If you decide to work out every single morning and then listen to your kids get you up and you can’t work out in the morning and you have to do it at lunchtime, great. That’s data.

The trick is to have this really fine line of having compassion for your compassion for yourself but also holding yourself accountable. So it’s not like oh, I ate at 11:00 PM at night. Oh, this made me feel crappy. Oh, well, I’ll do it again because Kathleen told me to love myself. No, I ate at 11:00 PM. Oh wow, I can’t sleep. Okay, so interesting. Kathleen told me to love myself. If I love myself, I really need a good night’s sleep. So how do I figure out how to eat a little bit earlier?

It’s this really tricky thing of you act, then you analyze the action, and then you implement that action. But you have to act in order to analyze. Don’t get caught up on all the things we’re talking about and then just basically be like oh, screw it. I’ll never be as good as them, or I’ll never get it all figured out. I’m just going to stay in bed. To create an evening routine takes some work.

I just started intermittent fasting. I do it more just like I call it the close the kitchen window after a certain time. I never eat after 8:00 PM. Normally, I don’t eat after about 6:30 PM, 7:00 PM. But the thing about it is I didn’t do that until a couple of years ago, and I didn’t realize how great it made me feel until I started doing it. So if I’d done this podcast three years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to say like yeah I completely agree. That feels amazing. But if I had tried it and I hadn’t liked it, guess what, I then wouldn’t do it. So you try something. You try a Zumba class. If it doesn’t work, hey, it’s not for you. Try going out for a jog. You don’t like it, you had a bad route, or bad running shoes—it’s data. And then you have to decide what stays and what you ditch. 

James Clear has this really lovely quote that you have to standardize before you can optimize, and that’s really key because we all get into optimization before we get the basics down. Just start drinking some water. It might not be “enough.” It might not be as much as I would drink or Ashley James would drink, but you know what, if it’s more than what you did yesterday, it’s trending positively. And then you can figure out maybe you need a little bit more or a little bit less. Yes, maybe over five servings of vegetables would be great. But if you’re eating zero right now, start with one.

Start, standardize, and figure out what works for you. Know that each of the choices that you make can change tomorrow. First of all, as you learn, not only can they change, but they should change as you get older, as your goals change, as you evolve. If I was still making the same choices as I did when I was 20, there’d be a problem. Every decade, things will change, the season that you’re in will change. COVID changed everything. Having kids will change everything. Any time there’s a life change there’s going to be a transition.

So you can’t be like Ashley James does this, Kathleen Trotter does that, or I did this last year. I did this five years ago so I have to stay with it. No, it’s about being curious, but also holding yourself accountable because you really care and you respect yourself, your life, and that data. Knowing that each thing that you choose is a vote for the future you that you want to be. Again, I’m quoting James Clear. I absolutely love him. I don’t know if you’ve read the book Atomic Habits, but if you haven’t, if anybody’s listening, such an awesome book.

He talks about all this stuff like how do you make habits small enough that they make it different. Small enough that you can do them, but big enough that they make a difference. That they compound, and that you’re creating the future you that you want. Because often, at the moment, things seem like not a big deal. Oh, it’s okay. I can have that hamburger, or I can skip a workout. But imagine if five years from now you skip everyday workouts, or you have hamburgers every single day and fries. That future you is not going to be the healthiest you that you want, but it goes the other way too.

You often think, oh well, what does it matter if I have a salad or not? But it’s like, well yeah, but if you have a salad every single day for the next five years, that will matter. The compound interest of everything really does make a difference. I encourage everybody to just listen to what we say and think oh interesting. This is all information that could work for me and maybe won’t work for me. I could try it. It could be part of my science experiment that is my health.

Most of the time, there’s really good principles that underlie all the actual information. What’s that Aristotle quote? It’s the mark of an educated man for the person who can entertain an idea without believing it or without taking it for certainty or something. You look it up. It’s a great quote, but basically, what it says is to listen to everything and decide what works for you. Try to figure out the underlying principles behind it.

Weight Watchers, for example, you count your points. You might say, well, I’m not somebody who wants to count points. I’d rather count calories, or I’d rather count macros or whatever. All of that is good, but it’s all just an example of doing the same thing, which is becoming aware of what you put in your mouth. So the principle of basically every single way of eating is to know what you’re putting in your body, and then how you do it will depend on what works for you.

If you’re somebody who’s really in love with having a community, then maybe you’re like oh, Weight Watchers is for me because that’s what I want. But if you’re somebody who’s not, maybe you do food delivery service, or maybe you’re more into vegan, vegetarianism, or whatever it is. But either way, no matter what you do, whatever food system you do, you have to be aware of what you put in your body. I’m a big believer in starting to just really see the principles behind actions and using everything as data for the recipe of success that will work for you.

[00:27:13] Ashley James: Yes. There’s a lot that I really like about Weight Watchers because they’re not telling you what to eat. You could be vegan, you could be whole food plant-based. You could do keto very well on Weight Watchers, but there are many healthy ways of eating that you could do. I love that there’s a system. I love that they really focus on more fiber.

We are not getting enough fiber as a society. On average, North Americans eat 15 grams of fiber. I don’t know about those in Mexico, but I know Canadians, the United States, and other countries that eat very similar sorts of American diets. You get about 15 grams of fiber a day, which is horrible. We want to aim towards closer to 50 grams of fiber. You have to be incredibly intentional to get to 50 grams of fiber. I love this advice—grab a variety of vegetables so you’re always doing different ones.

[00:28:07] Kathleen Trotter: Absolutely. Most colors.

[00:28:08] Ashley James: And as you’re prepping them, so you’re chopping them up, take a handful, put them aside, and eat whatever you’re chopping up. You’re going to eat a few handfuls of raw while you’re cooking, and then steam every day two pounds of vegetables and snack on them. Have them with your meals, have them as a snack while you’re cooking other stuff. Have it on the go. Do it al dente so it’s not like soggy vegetables, and then you can make all kinds of great healthy sauces you can make. I love spicy things so I can put spicy sauces on it. But there are all kinds. You can drizzle different balsamic, which can taste absolutely amazing, or mustard, or whatever.

If you can get two pounds of a variety of vegetables—both raw and cooked—into you, it doesn’t have to be a ton of raw, but just munch on some raw while you’re prepping it. Steaming is the easiest thing in the world. Boil water, throw it in the steamer. I have a bamboo steamer you get at the Asian market.

[00:29:05] Kathleen Trotter: Come to your house. You could cook for me.

[00:29:07] Ashley James: Yeah, I love those things. They stack, and I put it on top of a wok or a big pot that it fits on top of. Set a timer. I’ve forgotten that it was cooking something on the stove. Come back half an hour later. I’m like oh my gosh.

[00:29:21] Kathleen Trotter: Oh my gosh. I’ve done that so many times.

[00:29:22] Ashley James: So set a timer on the stove, or use the Instant Pot. You can steam stuff in the Instant Pot super quick as well. But basically, if you can steam, and always choose a variety. You want a nutrient profile that’s a variety, but also you don’t get bored.

[00:29:38] Kathleen Trotter: Each food has a different nutritional profile.

[00:29:41] Ashley James: Yeah, so today’s broccoli and cauliflower. Tomorrow’s a bunch of different colored green beans. The next day is different red peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini. But basically, it takes less than 10 minutes to do it in the kitchen and just carry it with you throughout the day and snack on it. Then maybe bring some hummus with you, some baba ghanoush, or some kind of dip. There are ways to make it really quick and you’re getting way more new nutrition into you. You’re getting nutrient-dense but lower-calorie food by eating two pounds of vegetables. Two pounds of non-starchy vegetables is about 200 calories, and it’s so much fiber that it really makes a difference.

Fiber helps the body to eliminate hormones we no longer need in the body, toxins. It helps to balance blood sugar levels, helps with weight loss. I mean, the list goes on and on. It feeds the microbiome.

[00:30:42] Kathleen Trotter: I think that’s a great tip, and I think that the word you used really early on, you said intentional. I remember once being at a talk with Rachel Hollis, and she said, the trick to health is being intentional AF, intentional as fork, right? And I think that’s really, really important. I love that system, and I think that would be, for me, an example of what I would say to a client is a system. 

Have a time where you’re prepping food. Prep a bunch of different things. Cut up vegetables, steam some vegetables, and have things ready and prepped because I think that’s a great system. Especially if you know at 3:00 PM you’re always feeling a little bit peckish for sugar. Then it’s like, oh, well but I have these vegetables already prepared. So it’s not like I “had to have this snack” or “it was just right there.” I think intentional is a keyword about your health because a lot of us get swept up by life, and we don’t design our habits. They sort of happen by default, and we often will say, well, I had to do this.

My clients would say this all the time. I was out and about and I got really hungry, so I had to have this chocolate bar. If they were taking your advice, they would be carrying some cut up vegetables with them, or they would have an apple and a couple of almonds. They would have a snack, right? So that goes with being intentional, and intentional is connected to having those systems ready. But it’s also connected to knowing yourself because if you know 3:00 PM is the time that you always have a sugary snack, then instead of just being like, oh well, I always have that sugary snack. Boy, I’m a bad person. And then feeling shame, guilt, and frustration. Then be like, oh, interesting. I always have a 3:00 PM sugary snack. What can I do about it?

Maybe you’re not having enough vegetables, healthy fats, and protein at lunch. So that’s maybe why you’re craving sugar. Maybe you’re frustrated always at your boss. Maybe you need to go for a walk. Maybe you need to have those vegetables ready and prepped. But if you use that as data, then you can create a system that works for you because you’re being intentional and mindful about your health. I have to use every opportunity as I can to bring in Brené Brown because I love her. I think what she would say at this moment is it’s really important to understand the difference between guilt and shame.

We’ll just go with this 3:00 PM snack. If you always have the sugary 3:00 PM snack, then if you go into a shame spiral about it, it’s more often going to lead to further negative habits for your health like skipping a workout, having more sugar at dinner. So shame is connected to you as a person. I have a 3:00 PM sugary snack every day, so I’m a bad person. Versus guilt is connected to the behavior. I have a 3:00 PM snack every day. That’s not a behavior I want to replicate. How can I learn from that? You see the difference between a behavior and thinking it’s you as a human.

When you connect behaviors to shame and feelings of lack of worth and that that you’re never going to be good enough, then it just makes your nervous system and your emotional brain want to continue with those negative habits, right? Because we often do those emotionally soothing habits. We’re trying to self-soothe, we’re emotionally distant, or whatever we’re doing is normally because we’re very anxious or we’re stressed. But the problem is then you have that sugary snack and that causes more of that feeling or emotion that made you want to have that sugary snack in the first place. It’s this terrible self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s a negative spiral.

So again, I go back to using it as data and understanding the guilt versus shame and being like, okay, so I don’t love that behavior. How do I change it? I circle back to that self-talk and the systems that we were talking about earlier because it’s about having self-talk that serves you because you respect yourself. Let’s say your kid came home and they got a bad math grade. You wouldn’t say to this child, you’re a loser. You might as well just quit math. That would be a shame-inducing response because that’s them of them as a person.

You would say to them, oh, interesting. You’ve got a bad math grade. Are you stressed right now? Do you need a tutor? How can I support you better? Are you being bullied at school? Are you not getting enough sleep? When you talk to yourself about your health, about your exercise, about your sugary snacks, about what time you’re finishing eating, if you’re having enough fiber. All of those things, you have to talk to yourself like you would talk to your kid who brought home a bad math grade. This is data to be analyzed and then think about the idea of cutting up the vegetables. That’s a great system because you want to make healthy choices as convenient as possible. And then you want to make unhealthy choices as inconvenient as possible.

Don’t have the crap in the house that you could snack on. So then you’re like, oh, well there’s nothing really to eat other than these vegetables and this lean protein. Okay, well, I’m going to go for it. I love that.

[00:35:46] Ashley James: But also, I think it’s very easy this day and age to order out. Oh, I don’t feel like cooking. There’s nothing in. Even go as far as to prep food and have meals already cooked in the fridge for sure.

[00:36:00] Kathleen Trotter: Or prep different ingredients. Have a bunch of quinoa, have a bunch of chicken breasts, have a bunch of veggies cut up, so then you can whip up—I call them hot-cold salads with greens on the bottom and then a bunch of hot stuff on the top. Or a quinoa bowl or whatever it is, but you want to make the healthy choices as fast as unhealthy choices or faster, and yummy too, right? You want to make it realistic and something that you find yummy. 

I did a BT segment this morning, and we were talking about sort of similar ideas and I was using my mom as an example. I love my mom. She’s amazing, but she hates chocolate. I love chocolate as I said earlier. I was saying, if she was going to make a shake in the morning—because we were talking about shakes being healthy things you could pre-assemble the night before or have things ready and just sort of grab and go. 

If I said to her that she had to have a shake with chocolate protein powder, avocado, and almond butter, she would be like that’s disgusting. I’m not going to do it. If I said to her she had to go for a run, she would be like I hate running. I’m not going to do it. Whereas she loves yoga, she loves walking the dog, and she loves vanilla things. If somebody said to me, well, your exercise routine is going to be yoga and vanilla protein shakes. I’d be like, oh gross. I’m not going to do it.

So part of it is like knowing what you love and what you will actually do. Or at least, it doesn’t have to be what you love but at least what you don’t despise so that you can do it on a consistent basis. It has to be convenient. What you do once in a while doesn’t matter. It’s what you do most of the time that’s much more important. So figure out what you do consistently.

[00:37:33] Ashley James: Yes, that’s a great point to bring up. In my intake form for my clients, I have a question. What percentage of food do you eat out, or what percentage of food is not home-cooked? What percentage of food is home-cooked, are not home-cooked? Either way. At first, my clients will say, oh 80% of my food is home-cooked or whatever. It’s a high number, and then about a week in they’ll say, you know what, I’ve spent the last week thinking about that question. I realized that it’s closer to 30% of my food is home-cooked. It’s so easy to forget. If you’re not keeping track of the last week, the last month, or the last year, it’s so easy to forget.

It’s so easy to eat out, so many food delivery services. It’s just so easy to eat this food. And the thing is, even if you think you ordered something somewhat healthy—some kind of delivery food—restaurants choose the lowest quality ingredients because it saves them money.

[00:38:36] Kathleen Trotter: And big portions too.

[00:38:38] Ashley James: You’re hard-pressed to find a locally-sourced, fresh, organic, no fried food, no oil. You’re hard-pressed to find this super healthy food if it’s takeout. One thing that I get my clients to do is we do these fun routines of stuff that they like so that they’re eating more and more and more food that’s home prepped. You instantly feel better when you’ve cut it out because there’s hidden sugar, there’s excess hidden salt, and there’s a ton of hidden oils that are really bad. They’re horrible. They’re polyunsaturated fatty acids that are absolutely horrible for us, and they disrupt our body’s ability to balance omegas healthfully.

There are other kinds there. Just think of what they’re cooking. These restaurants use non-stick, so there are toxins. There are all kinds of toxins in that food. Yeah, it tastes good because it’s excitatory. It’s salt, sugar, and oil, and it’s not the kind of thing that you would have in your food if you cooked at home. It’s just looking at what percentage are you eating out every day as a habit and figuring out how to get most of your food cooked at home where you know exactly what’s going into your body.

[00:40:03] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah. I think all of your points are fantastic, but I think what I was laughing at is you said people say, well, only a little bit do I eat out. And then eventually, they think, oh no, actually it’s more. I think that’s across the board with so many habits. I often joke with my clients that we all underestimate our unhealthy habits and overestimate our healthy habits. I’ll say, how much junk food do you eat, or what do you like to eat? Oh, I like chips. Oh, how often do you have chips? Oh, not very often. It’s a treat, they’ll tell me. I’m like, okay, great. Why don’t you just start to become mindful of how often you have that treat.

What’s funny is what most of us learn to appreciate is that what we think are treats are actually much more norms. I’m all for having a treat once in a while. I think that savoring something that you love is really important. I call it my love it rule. You want to make sure that you have moderate amounts of things that you love, but you don’t mindlessly eat a bunch of crap that’s not good for you. But I think the problem is people end up thinking what they’re doing is a once in a while love it rule treat, and really it’s daily. It’s not a treat. It’s actually just a normal thing.

Again, it goes back to that understanding the principles of healthy eating. Basically, the key principle is just awareness. I love the quote, with awareness brings choice. You can’t choose healthier habits or to change anything if you don’t know what you’re doing at this moment. Keeping a food journal is great for a couple of weeks just to see what are the things that are actually treats versus what are the things I’m doing on a daily basis that aren’t serving me. And then you can decide.

Because as I said, I love these fudge bars. They’re terrible for me. They’re full of absolute crap. But twice a year, in the summer, if I want to go and sit with my mom outside on the porch and have one, I’m fine with that. But I’m not fine with having like six of them a week because they’re both bad for my body. And then when you overeat, they’re also then bad for your soul, your emotional being, or whatever. If you’re going to have something that’s not good for your body, at least you want to savor it and have it only a couple of times a year. It should be something that you absolutely love.

That’s something I really talk about with my clients. It’s just this choice value of taking a moment, pausing, and just deciding is this worth it? What nutrition is this getting for me? What is this doing for my body? To circle back to what we started with, how is my future self going to feel if I have this? Because often, at the moment, we want things. But often, the things that we want at the moment are not the things that serve us long term. So much of health is not letting our momentary desires and impulses dictate our behaviors. I think that, unfortunately, a lot of us have learned that skill with other things. We want to skip work, but we still go. You might get really angry with somebody, but you don’t punch them in the face.

We’ve learned, okay, well my desire is to not go to work, but I have to go anyway. My desire is to get violent right now, but I’m not going to do that. But for some reason, a lot of us with our health, we haven’t figured out how to not let our impulses and desires dictate our behaviors as much. Some of us have and listen, that’s hard. But I think that’s where the awareness comes in because you can say, oh interesting. Every time I get mad at somebody I want to eat a cookie. Is the cookie worth it? Is it going to make me happy? If I’m angry at that person, should I just have a conversation with the person that I’m angry with? Maybe they shouldn’t be my friend, or maybe we need to set better boundaries.

I like to tell my clients, all emotions are data, but they’re not directives. You can feel something. You can use it as data, but that doesn’t mean you have to do the thing that you want to do or act the way that you have always acted. Maybe when you’re sad, as opposed to binging on food that you’re going to feel really crappy about later, you have a bath, you phone a friend, or you meditate. But still honoring the emotion that you’re in and then going from there. I think it all comes back to awareness, being able to figure out what are my norms versus what are my treats, and knowing yourself.

I think that what you just said about not ordering in and cooking, part of why it’s so important to cook is that it actually takes a lot more intentionality and a lot more of awareness. It’s really easy in your not aware self to comb the internet and be like okay, well, Uber is going to deliver me this, this, and this. It’s in a haze of emotion. Whereas if you have to cook it at home, you have had to think about what am I going to buy? You have to plan your week. Am I going to cook this salad, or am I going to cook chicken? 

There’s a lot more thought that goes into what am I bringing into my house? Is it a good quality olive oil? Is it an avocado oil? What vegetables? Where did I buy it? Is it from a local farm? It’s slightly harder to be super emotional about it if you’re planning in advance all of your food.

[00:45:13] Ashley James: Right. Well, you can’t do some instant gratification too if you’re planning it out.

[00:45:17] Kathleen Trotter: Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. You’re taking away some of that desire. I mean, if you bring crap into the house, you can still at 11:00 PM at night binge on it. That’s where we go back to making as much tension between you and those habits as possible. I just don’t bring crap into the house that I don’t want to eat.

[00:45:40] Ashley James: Right. For me, this started a long time ago. I don’t bring alcohol into the house, and I don’t bring sugar into the house. I really love chocolate, but I find—and this is something I want to bring up—that my taste buds and my cravings have significantly changed in the last 10 years along my health journey. 

Ten years ago, I would have identified as a night owl, a chocoholic. You could not keep me away from chocolate. Now, I really can take it or leave it, but I have a brand. It’s called Lily, and I get the vegan dark chocolate sweetened with stevia two bars a month, and I don’t even eat the whole bar. Before, 10 years ago, whatever bar I’d get I’d have to finish. Now, I can have a few pieces, be like, that was yummy, and then I’m done. I’m satisfied.

I just noticed that my taste buds, even in the last three years since I’ve been whole food plant-based, eating more and more whole ingredients. A variety of fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, and gluten-free greens. I just noticed that my taste buds have changed.

[00:46:54] Kathleen Trotter: Absolutely. You trended differently. You’re just slowly changing into it. I know for sure.

[00:47:01] Ashley James: Recently, I ate something that I used to love 10 years ago. I’m like, this doesn’t even taste good anymore. I don’t know. I used to get all excited about it. Now, I’m like, you know what, I can get really excited about a huge salad with 20 different vegetables. I start salivating. If you say the word kale, I have a Pavlovian response.

[00:47:27] Kathleen Trotter: Like brussels sprouts, roasted, oh my God.

[00:47:30] Ashley James: Right, roasted brussels sprouts are amazing. Any kind of hummus, any kind of hummus and carrots, or anything crunchy. These foods are fantastic and delicious. The past me from 10 years ago is like what are you doing? This is disgusting. And the me now is I love this. I think even if you don’t love-love vegetables now, just try them on and find the ones you do love, and your taste buds will change. There’s evidence to show that your microbiome is what causes us to have cravings because the microbiome hijacks it. It actually makes like neurochemicals that hijack our brain.

So when we have an overgrowth of candida, for example, an overgrowth of bacteria that is more negative, that’s more harmful to the body, it will tell us to crave things that are really harmful. And if we choose to eat healthier foods for a long period of time, we end up culturing a microbiome that then tells us we love those foods.

[00:48:37] Kathleen Trotter: I have to tell you a funny story. I grew up, as I said earlier, really unhealthy and really unfit. Do you guys have East Side Mario’s in the states?

[00:48:45] Ashley James: No, they don’t.

[00:48:46] Kathleen Trotter: Okay, it doesn’t matter. But it’s like a pasta place. I grew up, as I said, I was overweight. I was unhealthy. I never exercised, and I used to love East Side Mario’s.

[00:48:55] Ashley James: Me too.

[00:48:56] Kathleen Trotter: Not only did I love East Side Mario’s, but I loved the three-cheese cappelletti. It was pasta with cheese on the inside and then covered in cheese. It was disgusting. Anyway, around 17 I started to get healthier. My life changed. That’s a whole story that we can get into if you want, but around 23, 24, I hadn’t had East Side Mario’s for like six years. I was running a half marathon. I was running with my friend, and I’ll never forget. We went through a hard time in the race, and I was like, oh my God. I’m going to die. She said, if you just get through this, you can have any meal you want. I was like, okay. We’re going to go to East Side Mario’s. She was like, fine, whatever.

So that got me through the race, this idea of I’m going to East Side Mario’s. It’s going to be amazing. So we get to East Side Mario’s, and I ordered my food. I’m so excited. The food came and it was so gross. Not only did it taste bad. I literally did not like them. This is just exactly what you’re saying in the taste buds. Not only did I not enjoy eating it, because I hadn’t had pasta or cheese. None of that crap was I eating, but it made me so physically ill. It was so gross. That was when I was about 24. I’m now almost 38, and I haven’t had East Side Mario’s since. But it’s exactly to your point. Our taste buds change, and that’s why it’s really important to be curious about different things because we will, hopefully, evolve.

I don’t want to be the same person in 10 years that I am now like. That’s the whole point of living. I know 10 years ago I wouldn’t have told you that I love sauerkraut, but oh boy do I love sauerkraut now. It’s so good.

[00:50:30] Ashley James: Oh yes. Fermented food.

[00:50:32] Kathleen Trotter: But you have to be curious. Yeah, so good, and so good for your gut and all this stuff. At the age of 15, I would have told you that what I liked was Orange Crush, East Side Mario’s, and as much chocolate and sugary penny candy as you could. We’d go to 7-Eleven and you’d get these big feet and all that kind of stuff. Now, if you try to make me do that, just thinking about that stuff makes me vomit. Do you know what I mean?

[00:50:59] Ashley James: Yes.

[00:51:00] Kathleen Trotter: Okay. One more example of this, and this is just to give everybody hope if they’re listening they’re like, what, are you guys crazy? I’m not going to like East Side Mario’s? I, again, love chocolate, but I used to eat a lot more of it. Now, it’s really only a couple times a year, and it’s very good quality chocolate. Well, except for the fudge bars. They’re not good quality, but anyway. That’s beside the point. When I did my first Ironman—I think I was 25—and my partner James, he was like what do you want when you’re done with Ironman. I was like, well, for 10 years, I haven’t had a Blizzard. I used to love Dairy Queen.

We’re in Lake Placid and there’s no Dairy Queen. I just say to him you have to make me a homemade Blizzard. He goes to the grocery store and he buys all these ingredients. I finished Ironman and he makes me this thing. It had brownie bits and all these different stuff. I had one bite, and I was like, I want to vomit. Not only did this make me feel sick because I just did an Ironman, but it was terrible quality ice cream, terrible quality chocolate, and it didn’t taste good. I didn’t want it. But again, if you told my 15-year-old self that one day I would turn down a homemade Blizzard, I would literally tell you that you were crazy.

I would do anything. I used to lie to get out of gym class. I would say I was sick because I didn’t want to change in front of anybody. I would walk home to school and I would time my walks so that I could stop, get fish and chips, and eat it while I was walking. And then I had mouthwash in my bag that I would wash my mouth out so my mom wouldn’t know that I was eating this type of food.

I would go to the grocery store. I would buy a bag of M&M’s. I’d eat the entire bag of M&M’s, and then I’d go back to the grocery store. I was so full of shame that I would lie to the teller and say that I dropped the bag of M&M’s on the floor and therefore I needed to buy another one. These are the types of games I played. I would go to Subway and I want a 12-inch sub. So I would buy a 12-inch sub and I would tell the person I was buying it for me and my friend that we were going to split it, but I just wanted the entire 12-inch sub.

I lied, I would say, three times a day at least about my food to my mom, to my dad, to everybody. It was just my taste buds, my self-esteem, and my self-worth. Everything changed, but it changed gradually. It’s not that I woke up one day and is all of a sudden this Kathleen that’s 37. The first time I went to the gym, I walked for 10 minutes. I got off the treadmill, and I thought I was going to vomit. You know when you’ve never been on a treadmill and you’re on that belt, and then you get off and the room is all spinny? That’s what happened to me after 10 minutes. I was like I can’t do this anymore.

But then I just kept going, and I went back. The next time I went was 15 minutes, and then 20 minutes. You got to embrace the little wins especially when you’re first starting. Those little wins, that’s what accumulates and eventually makes those big changes.

[00:53:50] Ashley James: I like that you said trending positive. I think that’s going to be my new motto.

[00:53:55] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah, it’s great. It’s not a linear journey. Also, that’s another thing that’s really important to understand is it’s a hill and you want a trend, but you’re going to have paradigm shifts. But within each paradigm, you’re going to go up and down. It’s not that every single day is better than the day that was before, but I can definitely tell you that in my 30s, I have healthier habits than in my 20s, and in my 20s I had healthier habits than in my teens. 

On a whole, my demons have kind of softened, and on a whole, my habits are much healthier. On a whole, if I fall off my horse, the fall is much less severe. I get back on much faster, and I learn. I love the idea of everyone’s going to fall off the horse, but it’s how quickly do you course correct and how much do you learn from that experience?

My falling off the horse now might just be snoozing my alarm five times and missing half of my workout. But 10 years ago, what might have happened is if I’d snoozed my alarm five times, I might have been like, oh well, who cares. I’ll just skip the entire workout. Now I’m like, no. Even if I can only do 20 minutes, 20 minutes is better than nothing. The slips are different. I learn better, and I’m better at not berating myself and being so unbelievably mean to myself about the slips. It’s much more of a growth process.

I love the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. I don’t know if you know that book, but it’s all about growth mindset, and it’s so unbelievably important with everything. But particularly, I think about our health because I think we expect perfection and then I think perfection is not possible. And then when we can’t be perfect, most of us just quit. I think it’s so much, much, much, more important to have a growth mindset and to just trend in the right direction. 

Know that you’re human and know you’re going to make mistakes. But can you make mistakes at a different level? Can you make mistakes on your jog versus on your walk? Or can you make mistakes on your workout versus making mistakes sitting and not doing anything? As you said, trend in the right direction and know there’s always going to be a struggle. What’s that phrase? It’s like a new level, new devil. Every level you get to, every paradigm shift about your health, there’s always going to be a devil that you’re fighting, but it’s just going to be a different devil.

[00:56:09] Ashley James: That’s really interesting. I don’t know if it’s the Kabbalah, but there’s a belief in the archetypes that the devil archetype is us standing behind ourselves with a pitchfork poking ourselves in the back. So it’s actually like a duplicate of you standing behind you testing your resolve. 

Let’s say you’re a smoker and you’re like, today’s the day I’m going to quit. Five minutes from now you see people smoking outside, and there’s that little devil which is actually you. Little voice in your head poking you with the pitchfork in the back going, are you sure? Are you sure? How about this? Here, I’m going to give you people smoking in front of you. Are you sure? Now I’m going to give you a stressful situation because that was your go-to to handle it? Are you sure? Are you sure?

I’m not saying that the devil does or doesn’t exist. What I’m saying is that the archetype of any time we put out to the universe, we say this is my new norm now. This is my new goal. This is my new me. There’s an archetype of the devil testing our resolve. We just have to know that’s like, okay, I will not back down. Yes, I’m going to be tested and I’m going to prove to myself, I’m going to prove to that devil hitting me with the pitchfork, yes, I do have resolve. This is the new norm I’m working towards.

I wanted to touch on the guilt versus shame again because I think it’s really important. You talked about doing these little habits. Let’s say the person goes for a 10-minute walk and the shame might be there. Guilt is regretting actions or inactions.

[00:58:00] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah, so guilt is the behavior. You can feel like, oh, I wish I’d done 20 minutes versus 10. I wish I didn’t go faster. It’s on the behavior. But as soon as you put it to, well, I’m the type of person who’s lazy, or I’m a failure. That’s what’s problematic. It’s one thing to acknowledge behaviors. I’m huge into growth and being—as I said, that balance between compassion and striving. I definitely believe in goals and striving. But you want to make sure that you have compassion, and compassion and shame do not go hand in hand.

[00:58:36] Ashley James: Yes. So shame, which is really interesting. I’ve had this woman on the show a few times. She’s an expert in magnesium. She’s led this group of women through a course. A big group of women through a course on healing their bodies and especially healing adrenal fatigue. What she noticed is every single woman except for about six of them got 100% results. She was like, what’s going on? She said, okay. She took the six women or this handful of women that didn’t. It was like maybe 100 women that did this and maybe six of them didn’t get results. It was a big number of people that got results. So she sat with them and said, we’re going to work through. We’re going to figure out why is it that so many of the women in this group got such great results, but you guys didn’t.

She saw it over and over again because she teaches this course often. She finally figured it out that when women have shame present as an almost daily thing, it stops them. No matter how much nutritional supplements, exercise, sleep, and rest, all those things, none of the positive things would allow their adrenals to heal because the shame was keeping them in that fight-or-flight mode. Keeping them and stopping their healing. 

I think it’s just really, really important to identify if we do have shame, if we do have that self-talk that’s saying, I’m stupid, I’m fat, I’m ugly, or no one’s going to love me. That negative self-talk is shame. To identify that and to then know that we have to work on that. Is there anything that you can give us to help identify? First, like you said, becoming aware is the first step. Do you have any advice or guidance for healing shame?

[01:00:32] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah. There are a couple of things. So I think often our biggest villain in our health is the voice in our own heads, and we have this evil roommate so often. If it was another human being who lived with us, who talked to us like that, we would say get the freaking out of here. You are not welcome. You can’t be my roommate. But yet it’s okay for us to talk to ourselves like that? I think part of it is just really recognizing that if you had a child that you talked to like that, if you had a parent that you talked to like that, they wouldn’t be your friend. Why do you think that you can talk to yourself like that, right?

So I often really just encourage myself that health is really a re-parenting process. It’s learning how to talk to yourself in the way that you would talk to your child or in the way that you would talk to your aging parent. In a way that shows that you love and respect yourself, but again, that awareness piece is really key. Maybe you have to keep a journal about your internal thoughts. Write down some of the loops that you have in your head and work on those.

Maybe every night you just take five minutes and just say, okay, what are three things that I did really well today—three positive thought loops, three actions, and how do I reproduce those? What was the emotional space that I was in when I had that thought? Or I went for a walk, what helped me do that? And then what are three things that I would like to eliminate from my thought process, and how can I do that? Step back and just take a little bit more of an objective view of it.

Okay, well if this was my child who was having this action like staying up until 11:00 PM at night and not being able to go to bed. Okay, how would I help her have a better evening routine? That can be really helpful. I call that the reproduce versus eliminate journal. It’s again using it all as growth. And even just taking a moment like just having an alarm that goes off once an hour and just take 10 seconds and just think, okay, what was the most recent self-talk that I used on myself? Was it useful? Because often these things are so unconscious we’re not even aware that we are using them.

Sometimes just free flow journaling is really useful, again, because we’re not even aware of how we’re talking to ourselves or how we feel. So just getting it out there and then you can look at it and be like, okay, interesting. Is this my critic? Is this like a parent? When you read this is it like, oh interesting. That’s how my dad used to talk to me when I was five. Well, that wasn’t helpful then. It’s not helpful now.

I think some type of objective view, however, you’re going to get that whether that is through morning pages journaling, reproduce versus eliminating, or whether that’s going to therapy, and just really, really trying to produce a relationship in your head with somebody like it’s a roommate or somebody that you care about. When those negative thoughts come up, the more you’re aware of the thought loops that you get into, the more you’re able to say, nope, I’m not going there. But the first step is to become aware of the thought loops.

Honestly, most people when I start to train them, they will say things and they don’t even realize that they’re shaming themselves or shoulding themselves. I should have done this and I didn’t. They’d go for a walk and instead of being like I’m so proud of myself, I went for a walk. They’ll be like, oh, I only went for a walk. Well, that’s great. It’s better than doing nothing. So now use that walk as a jumping-off point for more positive health habits.

Noting the little wins I think is really key. Noting the little wins of when you speak to yourself nicely as well as when you go for a walk, as well as when you have a glass of water. And also just realizing that none of us are perfect. In the example that you gave earlier when you said about the shame about when you did something stupid. I forget the examples that you gave. I think part of it is just recognizing that you are sometimes going to say stupid. I say stupid stuff. In this interview, I probably said some stupid stuff, and that’s okay because guess what, I’m human. 

Within the realm of normal, you have to just allow yourself to be human. You’re not always going to speak to yourself perfectly because perfect doesn’t exist. You’re not always going to be the smartest. You’re not always going to have the best run. You’re not always going to be having the healthiest dinner. It’s about the trends, and it’s about when you make a decision and be like, okay, so am I proud of this decision? Am I not? Okay, well, let’s learn from it. You can’t be perfect all the time. 

I remember listening to this podcast once. It was actually about parenting and the interviewer was saying, well, I just tell my kids just always do your best. The woman who was being interviewed, her name is Kristin Neff, and she writes a lot about self-compassion. She said I just want to hold you there. She said, I actually think that it’s not about teaching your kids to always do your best because that’s just going to put them in the hospital. They can’t always do their best. It’s about teaching your kids when it’s important to do their best and when it’s important to just go to bed, or when it’s important to just read a book and chill.

It sounds like a weird connection to the question about shame and guilt, but I actually think it’s really important. You can’t always do your best because then you will get adrenal fatigue. That’s what causes it. It’s like oh my God. If I’m not perfect I’m going to die. Oh my God. But that’s a thought loop that so many of us women get into. Listen, you can do anything but not everything. You have to choose what are the things, what are the battles that are worth battling, what are the hills that are worth dying on, what are the things you’re going to do your best on, and what are the things that you’re just going to say you know what that’s not that important to me. Goodbye. I’m setting my boundary. I’m going to say no to this because a no to that is a yes to something that I do care about.

I think a lot of getting rid of shame is just getting rid of this idea that you have to be perfect and you have to do it all. You can’t do it all. You can’t be perfect, and nobody is perfect. They might pretend to be perfect on social media, but let me tell you, nobody’s perfect because we’re all human. We’re messy humans, and that’s what’s great about being human. We’re just this hot mess.

[01:06:43] Ashley James: I totally celebrate being a hot mess. I’m like, no one has it all together.

[01:06:49] Kathleen Trotter: No, and they would be freaking boring if they did. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t grow and learn. What’s a great example? About a month ago, I did my first Skype media segment for CTV, and I’d never done a Skype one before. I’ve done lots of podcasts, but never a video. Honestly, it wasn’t that great. It wasn’t terrible, but 10 years ago, oh my God, would I have berated myself. Kathleen, you were frenetic. I was a little bit too far away from the camera, so I was yelling. I would have just been so mean to myself. And instead, what I said to myself was you know what, I did do the best I could, but anytime you do anything new, you are never going to be great at it because that’s the nature of doing new things. They’re hard, and now, what can you learn from this?

I watched it a number of times. I learned. I realized I needed to be sitting in a chair so I could be closer to Skype and I could get a better camera angle and all this stuff. And then I did the next one a week later and it was 10 million times better. But it wouldn’t have been better if I had berated myself about that first segment and be like oh, Kathleen, you’re a loser. You’re never going to be really good. The second segment would have probably been twice as bad because I would have been so nervous, I would have been shaking in my boots. I would have felt like a loser. And instead, the second one was way better because I learned and I grew.

I think the net is just the first time you do anything—and this is circling back to you don’t have to be great to start but you do have to start to get great, standardizing before you can optimize. People listening, Brené Brown has a podcast Unlocking Us, and her first episode ever was on FFTs, Forking First Times. The point of the podcast is that any time you’ve never done anything, you’re going to be bad at it. It’s going to be messy and just embrace it. That’s the only way you get better.

If you’ve never gone for a run, the first time you go for a run it’s going to suck. Embrace the suck. If you’ve never cooked a dish, it’s probably going to not be that great. Who cares? Try it. Learn. I’m trying to think of workouts. The first time I went to a CrossFit gym, oh my God, I was scared. I was like, I’ve never been here, but it was kind of fun and everyone was nice to me. I sucked at a bunch of things, but it didn’t matter. The first time I went for a run I was terrible. The first race I ever did was terrible. But now I’m way better, and I’m a better runner. CrossFit’s not really my jam, but I go every once in a while, and when I go, I’m way better than the first time. I don’t know. Persevere, learn, grow, and be kind to yourself.

But that doesn’t mean let yourself off the hook. I think people take this advice and they think, oh, well, Kathleen says being nice to myself. That means eating 17 cookies, watching 14 hours of Netflix, and never working out because I love myself. No, if you love yourself, you respect yourself enough to go for a walk, drink some water, and get some sleep. It’s a really fine balance of striving but with compassion.

[01:09:41] Ashley James: What I got from what you just said is when we stay in shame we’re stuck and we can’t grow.

[01:09:50] Kathleen Trotter: Oh, I love that. Oh my God. I need to quote that’s. Okay, I’m going to quote you. When you stay in shame you’re stuck and you can’t grow. Yes because shame keeps you in—I don’t know if you know the polyvagal theory, but it’s a nervous system theory basically. They would say that when you stay in shame you don’t get to go in the ventral vagal system, so you’re not in that creative place where you can be their best self. That you’re stuck in your sympathetic nervous system. Your nervous system is basically teaching your body to stay stuck because it’s that paralyzed, it’s messing with your hormones, and it doesn’t put you in the mental space where you can grow.

[01:10:32] Ashley James: Once you’re in sympathetic nervous system response, you lose access to your frontal cortex. We actually shunt blood away from the logic centers of our brain so we can’t think critically, like you said, create creatively. We can’t do three-dimensional problem solving, and also, it harms our digestion because we shunt blood away from our core.

[01:10:58] Kathleen Trotter: Absolutely. It’s a whole bunch of bad stuff.

[01:10:59] Ashley James: Right. Identifying when there’s a shame. So here’s the thing, I’ve had clients who I’ll say okay. Every week I’ll give them homework to decrease stress. I want to get them out of fight-or-flight mode, or I want to get them out of that sympathetic mode. They won’t do the homework. They’ll eat what I tell them to eat. They’ll do all these health habits, but when it comes to like, okay, I want you to do 15 minutes of watching a comedy that makes you laugh.

[01:11:27] Kathleen Trotter: I love that homework.

[01:11:30] Ashley James: Go find a comedian on YouTube. I love the stuff out of Canada. Just for Laughs is the best. I want you laughing like you’re almost going to pee yourself for 15 minutes a day on your lunch break or whatever. I want you to walk out of the office building and walking around the block out in nature trying to find a park. Those kinds of things. Those are the hardest, so any de-stressor any habit. I’ve told several clients, okay, when you get home the first thing I want you to do is put on amazing music and have a dance party with your kids.

What are fun activities that are going to like take you out of stress mode and bring back the feel-good hormones? I want you to hug your husband. Oxytocin. Hug your husband for three minutes straight. Just get into cuddle mode. And the funny thing is, these have been the hardest habits to get people to do. I’m like what’s going on? It’s easier to get someone to eat kale than it is to hug their husband or laugh. What’s going on?

You’d think it’d be easy, but then the feedback I’d get is that well, I don’t know why I have to do this. I don’t feel stress. I don’t feel stressed out. I’m like okay, great. Stress is not an emotion. I think that shame, for some people, people are so disconnected that they don’t actually know they’re in shame. That they don’t feel it. How we can identify it is the self-talk. If you’re beating yourself up, if your self-talk is abusive, and your self-talk is akin to I’m not good enough. No one loves me. I’m stupid. That was so dumb of me, wtf. If your self-talk is abrasive and tearing you down like an abusive spouse basically, like an abusive partner, you are in shame.

[01:13:20] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah. It’s interesting, you were talking about the sympathetic nervous system. I think that’s very interesting. But if you look at what the polyvagal theory would say, and I’m not saying this is right or wrong. I just think it’s interesting to noodle on. They said there are three ways that you can be. You can be ventral vagal, so that’s in that creative mode where you make the best choices. You feel very content. Then there’s that sympathetic, which you were talking about. And then they would also say there’s what’s called dorsal vagal, which is almost like comatose, unable to make decisions.

I think what they would say is it’s important to understand or start to note the self-talk, but they would also say it’s really important to start noting your somatic experiences. When you are in that dorsal vagal space, and I’m just learning about polyvagal. If anybody’s interested in this, don’t take my word. Go research it yourself. I’m using it for myself. I’ve been in therapy for 20 years. I’ve done a lot of talk therapy, and I’m just starting to look into more of the somatic therapy of starting to understand how different states feel in my tissues. And the idea of that dorsal vagal system is that you actually feel almost like paralyzed. You can’t get that ignition energy to start doing anything. You feel sort of a lack, and you almost feel like a disconnect or disassociation from what you’re doing and your life.

Again, all of your suggestions would still be very helpful no matter which of those two systems you’re in, but that’s just another route to get to this idea if you’re feeling shame, if you’re feeling blocked, or if you’re feeling stuck. Start to feel how your body feels. Are you feeling almost away from your body, disconnected? Like that ostrich with the head in the sand. Because that could be showing you that you’re almost so in shame, you’re so in a fear mode that you’ve actually like left your body almost, and that makes it even harder to do any of those things. Because sometimes, when you’re in this sympathetic state—that stressful state—you actually have a lot of energy because you’re like nervous energy. That could be the time where you actually do things. You go for a walk, you go for a run. It’s not necessarily good for your adrenals, because you feel sort of more like I have to do something. Oh my God, if I don’t do something… It’s like that anxious state versus that dorsal vagal, which is almost like comatose. I need to go to bed state.

Anyway, I just find that really interesting. There’s a Derek Sivers quote. It’s like, if knowledge was enough, we’d all have six-pack abs and be billionaires. The truth is that everybody listening just needs to get on board with the knowledge of what to do with everything in life but particularly to do with your health. That knowledge is not enough. We know to drink more water, eat less processed foods, and go to bed earlier. But if that was enough, we’d all be healthy and health wouldn’t be this million-dollar, billion-dollar industry. 

It’s a billion-dollar industry because it’s really freaking hard to do what we know how to do because our emotions get in the way. Our nervous system gets in the way. Our history with our self-talk gets in the way. Our history of how our parents talk to us gets in the way. How we were bullied in school. If you were bullied over your body, or if you were laughed at playing sports, of course, you don’t want to go out and go for a run. You might not consciously be thinking like, oh my God. I’m going to get bullied, but your nervous system has these memories of like people are not nice to me when I go. I have a shame feeling when I go exercise.

Part of exercising is retraining your nervous system. The reason why I hated it for so many years was I was overweight. People teased me. I would try to do things, I’d try to do sports, and I sucked at them. And then I got so embarrassed, and talk about shame— so filled with shame that I then didn’t want to do any of those things. I’ve been exercising for 20 years, but mostly I’ve been doing a lot of independent stuff like biking and running. It’s only been in the last five years that I’ve had enough confidence to go play basketball with my partner James. We play tennis, we play basketball, but for years he played all these different sports. I would go watch him, but I didn’t want to play team sports because even though I was fit and even though I loved exercising, I had such a nervous system memory of the shame that went along with not being able to hit the baseball very well and people teasing me. That I was like, hell no. I’m not doing that.

Like what we talked about with food, gradually my palate has changed to do with exercise, and I’m slowly learning to enjoy more team sports. But that goes along with letting go of the shame and realizing if I suck at a sport, who cares. It doesn’t matter. I’m not being paid. I’m not a professional basketball player. I don’t need to be good at it. I just need to be getting some exercise, moving around, and getting slightly better each time. That shame response, it’s not useful, it’s not helpful, it doesn’t make me happy, it doesn’t make me the best version of myself, it keeps me stuck, it keeps me basically on the sidelines, and I don’t want to be on the sidelines.

I want to be strong. I want to be empowered. I want to be energized. But it takes a lot of retraining growth mindset for the nervous system, right? A growth mindset for my brain to know that even if somebody does laugh at me, I don’t care. Somebody can go and laugh all they want. The doctors use the quote, those that mind don’t matter and those that matter won’t mind. So, people who love you, they’re not going to mind if you suck at basketball. People who care that you suck at basketball, they don’t matter. They can go jump on a river. But in order to think that way, you have to let go of shame. If you’re filled with shame, you care what everybody thinks.

As soon as you let go of shame you can be like, oh right, you don’t think I’m a very good tennis player? Guess what, I don’t care what you think. You are not part of my core five. I care what my partner James thinks. I care what my mom thinks. I care what my dad thinks. My best friend Emily, I care what she thinks. But if you’re not part of the people that I respect, and you don’t like what I’m doing, how I play a sport, or what I’m eating, I don’t care. But that comes with letting go of shame.

[01:19:39] Ashley James: I love it. There was this really interesting quote that changed my husband’s life. It’s none of your business what other people think of you.

[01:19:52] Kathleen Trotter: I love, love, love that quote, and it’s just so true.

[01:19:56] Ashley James: it’s none of your business what other people think of you. My husband almost fell off his chair. This was about 12 years ago, we were listening to this really cool dude. He would just spew Buddhisms and very Zen sayings. We’ve been into listening to alternative media. We shut off our cable TV 12 years ago, and we just streamed stuff on the internet—all kinds of amazing podcasts and stuff. This is a guy we followed like 12 years ago.

But my husband really struggled his whole life by worrying about what other people thought. He wouldn’t hold my hand in public. It was just weird stuff. I’m like what’s going on? He’s like I don’t know. I just can’t. I don’t know what I can do.

[01:20:39] Kathleen Trotter: It’s very common.

[01:20:40] Ashley James: We talked a lot about it. Ever since I met him, he’s always been super into personal growth, growing spiritually, and growing as a person. He loves really doing deep dives, he’s a man that wants to talk about his feelings. But he wants to grow. We’re like, okay, what’s going on. He’s like I’m stuck in this area. What’s going on? And then when he heard that, it gave him so much freedom because he really got that he was so worried about what everyone else thought, but it’s none of his business.

Just like you walk down the street, let’s say you see someone running funny and you judge them. You’re like haha, that person looks silly. It’s none of their business that you’re thinking that about them.

[01:21:19] Kathleen Trotter: No, it’s all on me. It’s my problem.

[01:21:23] Ashley James: That’s your thoughts. I see someone running down the street, and I have really great thoughts for them. I’m like, good for them, really good. You know what, whatever your thoughts are, they’re your private thoughts. Other people’s private thoughts are none of your business.

[01:21:40] Kathleen Trotter: It says much more about them than it says anything about you. I agree, but I would make a caveat on that though. I do love that quote, and I’ve heard that quote, but I actually do think you need a little asterisk beside it. Because it’s none of your business what other people think, but here’s the thing. I think that it is your business what your core five think. It is my business what my partner James thinks about me.

[01:22:07] Ashley James: Oh, sure.

[01:22:08] Kathleen Trotter: Now that doesn’t mean I have to agree with what he thinks about me. The thing about quotes and the thing about social media, we like these really broad generalizations. There is so much nuance in it. It’s just like the idea of like well, you shouldn’t care about… That book the Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. The whole premise of that book is we as human beings are programmed to care, we’re programmed to problem solve. But the idea is that if you’re going to care and you’re going to problem solve, you have to decide what problems are worth your time.

That’s I think the same thing about that quote. We as human beings are programmed. We’re meaning-making genes. We’re tribal. We’re bred for connection. We’re wired for connection as Brené Brown would say. I think you have to appreciate that you are going to care what people think, and the trick is that you should care. You can’t be in a good relationship with somebody if you don’t care what they think about you. But the trick is you need to care about what people think that you respect.

I decide on five or ten people in my life, and those are the people that I’m like, I wonder what James will think about this. And again, it’s not that I necessarily think that what he thinks I’m going to be like oh, well he says I shouldn’t wear red. Well, I’m not going to wear red. That’s not what I mean. What I mean is if he says something, because I respect him, I’m going to at least entertain the thought. And then I can say, well, no, you’re wrong. But it’s a very important thing.

I think it’s really easy to be, oh well, no one else’s opinion of me matters. I don’t think we live in a vacuum. I don’t actually think that that’s true. I don’t think the key is to care about nothing. I don’t know. I just think it’s trickier, and I think that life is a little bit more complicated than any of that. But then it’s about being intentional. Who am I going to care what they think about me? Who am I going to interact with? And who gets my attention?

[01:24:10] Ashley James: So it’s coming back to shame. One of my teachers, Tad James, of no relation. He’s a master trainer of neurolinguistic programming, and he says if you lived on an on a planet where there’s no one else, that you were the only person in the world ever, you would never experience shame. Shame exists because we live in a society with other people and because it’s our judgments of ourselves in relationship to other people. That quote, it’s none of your business what other people think of you, is directly about shameful thoughts and decisions that you’ve made about yourself. That’s what I mean.

If you’re so worried about strangers observing you while you’re exercising, it’s none of your business what they’re thinking. You do you. Go do your exercise. But if you catch yourself worrying what about other people think and that’s part of your shame spiral, then that’s stuff to work on.

[01:25:10] Kathleen Trotter: Oh, absolutely. And I’m not disagreeing with any of that. I completely agree with that. My point only was I just think these things are a little bit nuanced, and I think that part of the intentionality of all this is deciding who do you care what they think about you, and who do you care about? When I’m thinking about life and how to make my decisions in my day and what’s important, what do I say no to, and what do I say yes to? It matters the idea of you do you.

Okay. Well, again, that’s great, and I love that quote. But I think that yes, I do me, but I live in a world where I really care about James. I care about my mom. I also have to take those. I don’t have to do anything, but I decide that taking those people’s feelings and emotions into account is really important. I’m never going to do me at the expense of that, or at least I’m going to have a conversation with James. 

Again, I just think it’s all about awareness and intention. Nothing that I’m saying is discrediting. I think you’re completely right. Shame is an internalization of the criticism we’ve had as kids from our peers, from our parents. All of that stuff is correct. I just think part of getting to be an adult is taking an inventory of what you care about? What do you want to say yes to? What do you want to say no to? Who do you care about? Who do you care what they think about you? What conversations do you want to have? What do you want to say hell yes to? What do you want to say hell no to?

If it’s really important that you get to bed by 10:00 PM, for example going back to you, okay, that means saying no to a bunch of things. That’s great. But every yes is a no. But in order to know what to say yes to, you have to know what to say no to.

[01:26:58] Ashley James: It sounds like really healthy boundaries and figuring it out. And then, like you said, not the expense of others. You use the example of doing team sports or doing exercise and other people are seeing you. You sound like you have very healthy relationships with your partner, with your mom, and your best friend, for example.

[01:27:19] Kathleen Trotter: It took years of therapy.

[01:27:23] Ashley James: Other people don’t have that yet, and they would never exercise in front of their partner, in front of their mom, or have their mom come to see them do team sports because they still have things to work through. That’s where I say, okay, figure out how you can get physically fit in an environment that fills you with joy and not shame or fear. Maybe it’s putting on a Zumba. Amazon Prime, free Zumba classes. There are so many great on Amazon Prime. Just as an example, so many great free fitness classes. Put it on the TV, do it in your bedroom, or do it in the living room when no one’s around.

But when you go out to do any kind of fitness and you notice that there are shameful judgments that you’re having about yourself, is it because you’re around people—those are toxic friends or toxic relationships? Is it because of the people you’re around, or is it because it’s you and you’re just worried about what everyone thinks of you? It’s stuff to work through. Like you said, awareness is the first step.

[01:28:36] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah. I just lost my train of thought. Look at me being messily human. My first book was called Finding Your Fit, and I think this is an excellent segue to that. It’s about meeting yourself where you are. Maybe, right now, you need to be what I would call a home bunny. That’s you’re working out at home, and then maybe in 10, 20 years, then maybe you go to Zumba class. If right now you can’t work out in front of other people, that’s fine. Exercise has to be non-negotiable, but the way you move your body is completely your fit.

[01:29:13] Ashley James: And where you move your body.

[01:29:15] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah. Where, how, what you do. I’m going to use my mom because she is an amazing woman, and she’s the one who helped me figure out this concept. Basically, in a nutshell, unhealthy child, unhealthy teenager. I hated my body, was super full of shame. My mom said to me, “Listen, I know you hate gym class. I know you hate team sports, but we have to find a way that you can move.”

We lived in a small town, and my mom said, “You’ve always felt better around grown-ups versus peers, so why don’t we go to the YMCA because the Y, the demographic is over 40, under 5. No one in the teen years will be there.” I was like, “Okay, cool.” And she said, “Listen, Kathleen. All you have to do is walk on the treadmill for 10 minutes. You can totally do that.” So she made the win so small that I could do it, and I think that’s the key because then I went once. It wasn’t like you have to go do an hour aerobics class. And in fact, before I even went to the gym, we did Jane Fonda workouts at home in our kitchen.

The trick was I started with stuff at home. We did Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons. And then Richard Simmons and Jane Fonda then turned with me going to the Y walking for 10 minutes, and that slowly spiraled—upward spiral. Then I was doing more walking, then weights, then I started taking aerobics classes, and then I started teaching aerobics classes. That’s what made me decide to go to school for kinesiology.

But what my mom did for me was she said meet yourself where you are and figure out your fit. You thrive in your own lane. Don’t compare yourself. It doesn’t matter what works for your best friend, your father, your mother, or your favorite celebrity. You figure out what you can do, and what you can do can change in six months, in a year. Again, we go back to the idea that you have to standardize before you can optimize. Just standardize that you move your body every day, and then you can optimize with whatever you want.

My mom was really the one. I wrote the book 15 years after that experience, but she was the one who said to me, “You just have to make the motion a non-negotiable, and you figure out what works for you.” In the book, I talk about the four fitness different personalities. You have the gym bunny, you have the home bunny, you have the competitive bunny, and then you have the busy multitasker. You don’t have to be just one of those. You could decide that normally, you are the gym bunny, but when you get really busy at work, you become the competitive multitasker, which is the person who takes a conference call while they walk right. Or they exercise while they’re watching their kids play soccer on the sideline—they’re doing lunges and squats.

The idea is that you can mix and match the different personalities depending on the season you are in your life. Maybe in 10 years, you go from doing Zumba at home to doing Zumba at a gym. But no matter what season you’re in and whatever you’re feeling, you always know that some type of motion is non-negotiable.

[01:32:07] Ashley James: I love it. Can you give more examples? I love the example of doing lunges on the sidelines while watching your kids do soccer. Can you give more examples of how we can incorporate movement into our life instead of being sedentary?

[01:32:21] Kathleen Trotter: Oh, yeah. A lot of it is you have to set an alarm to make sure you don’t just what I call tunnel into work. Sometimes I sit down and it’s like eight hours later. I’m like, what just happened? Conference calls as you walk is a great idea. Gamify your fitness. Have a challenge with your family for getting a number of steps per day. Setting an alarm goes off in between Zoom meetings and doing three minutes of a dance class in your living room. If you’re commuting to and from work, walking to and from work, taking your bike. In Toronto, the city bikes are a really big thing now that people don’t really want to take the subway because of COVID. People are doing the city bike rental where you can get a bike at one end and then get a different bike after work.

If your kids are going out for a bike ride, you can jog beside them. You could skip outside in the backyard as they’re playing. You can do planks and lunges and stuff as they’re indoors. They’re playing, you can get them involved in a push-up challenge or plank challenge. You could, instead of sitting in your car and doing iPhone stuff while they’re doing their sport, you could go for a jog and then meet them when they’re done practice. You can say, instead of watching television tonight, we’re all going to go to the park and we’re going to play some soccer together as a family. Making sure you get out of your car a couple of blocks away from wherever you’re going to walk there. It’s just peppering exercise into your daily life is that idea of the multitasker. 

I’m a really big believer in what I call the plug and play solution. What that is is a list you create in advance of things that you can do in 5 minutes, things you can do in 10 minutes, things you can do in 15 minutes. If you “found time,” you can just look at the list and then know what to do. Because part of the problem is we often will find 5 minutes or 10 minutes in our day. And by the time you realize you have 10 minutes and you think, should I do this, or should I do that? The 10 minutes is gone, and you’ve wasted your opportunity to do some motion. But if you have a list and you just like look at the list, you’re like oh, okay. Well, I know in 10 minutes I can do a set of lunges and jumping jacks or 10 minutes of—I love Yoga by Adriene. It’s free. You know those things in advance, and then you just sort of like blah blah blah just do it. You don’t have to waste cognitive energy thinking I should do this or I should do that.

That’s a great plug-and-play solution. That’s like “fitness snacking” with the idea that it all adds up, right? I really want people to ditch this idea of perfection because perfection is tied to shame, and it’s just not helpful. If you think, well, if I can’t do an hour-long workout, then it’s not even worth it, or if I can’t do 10 kilometers… You just end up doing nothing. Whereas if you “snack” on 10 minutes of exercise here and 10 minutes of exercise there, by the end of the day you’ve done an hour, and that’s great.

[01:35:04] Ashley James: I love it. Snack on exercise.

[01:35:08] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah, snack on exercise.

[01:35:09] Ashley James: Because sometimes it’s daunting to think about an hour-long workout, 45-minute workout, 90-minute workout. Totally daunting. I get into the dorsal vagal. It’s just too big, can’t do it. Where you’re like, oh, I could snack.

[01:35:23] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah, I can snack. It’s doable. And so much of health feels so overwhelming. Listen, life is freaking hard. Life’s hard at the best of times, but it’s particularly hard right now with the pandemic and everything. So much of health is just learning how to struggle well. You have to appreciate that the struggle is not a bug in the system. It’s part of the system. It is there.

[01:35:45] Ashley James: That’s beautiful.

[01:35:46] Kathleen Trotter: It is there. It’s part of the operating system, so you got to just be like okay, I’m going to struggle. I expect it, and how do I struggle well? How do I ride the wave of this? How do I surf really well—surf the wave of this struggle, just do the best I can, and learn from the experience. But you got to go in with realistic expectations. You don’t just find the perfect miracle workout or diet, lose a bunch of weight, then it’s easy peasy, and you never have anything go wrong. It doesn’t work that way. 

There’s no perfect day to work out. No perfect week to start the program. You just got to do it. You seize the moment because the moment is the only time you have any direct control over. And if you take advantage of the moment and then the next moment and the next moment, five years from now you’ll be like damn, I feel fit. I feel strong. I’m no longer loving East Side Mario’s. It takes time. It really, really does. It takes finding your version of fit to know your version of fit will change and really being okay, thriving in your own lane.

I’ll tell you one more story about my mom. I love my mom. She came with me once when I was teaching a spin class, and she got off the bike. She’s a super supportive woman. I’m sure you can feel that from the podcast. She got off the bike, she looked at me, and she’s like white as a sheet. She goes, “Kathleen, I love you more than anything but if you ever try to make me do a spin class again I will disown you.” I just laugh at that because I have a peloton and I die for Cody classes on the Peloton. Literally, if I’m in bed and I don’t want to get out of bed, I just say, Kathleen, you can do a Peloton. You can do a Cody, and that is motivational for me.

If I said to my mom you could do a Cody class, she’d be like, well, that’s terrible. I don’t want to do a Cody class. My point only being is if I said to her the only way that she could be fit is if she did Cody Peloton classes every day, she’d be like well I’d rather be fat and never be fit. That does not interest me. But if she said to me, well, every day, you have to garden and walk the dogs, which is what she does, I’d be like well that doesn’t really interest me. You have to find what works for you.

My dad’s another example. He plays hockey four days a week. He loves hockey. If you told me, well, Kathleen, to be fit you have to play hockey four days a week. I’d be like, oh no. But that’s his bliss. The great thing about it is because he loves hockey so much, that inspires him to do the stretching and the strength workout that he needs without falling over and without rolling over an ankle in his skate. It’s similar for me. I love running. I don’t love stretching and strength stuff as much, but I make myself do it because I know that that’s the way that I can do the thing that I love. Part of fitness is finding what you love, and then it’s also using what you love as self-talk to make yourself do the things that you might not necessarily love but that’s really important.

[01:38:26] Ashley James: Fantastic. That’s so great. For those that don’t know what a Peloton is, I know it’s a really cool bike that has a screen on it so you’re like watching these spin classes from home, right?

[01:38:39] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah, pretty much. The reason why I love it is because it has so much. Classes go live. There’s a bunch of classes every day and then they get archived. Speaking earlier, we’re talking about finding the ignition energy to get going. I’ve always found an hour long spin feels really daunting, but what’s great about the Peloton is you can filter things. So you can filter by the instructor you like, the type of music you like. I like pop music or country music. There are two or three people I like, but I really like Cody, but you can also filter by time.

You can say 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 1 hour, and I often find that in order to get myself on the bike, I actually just start with the 20-minute class, and then as soon as I’m done the 20-minute, I’m warmed up and then I’ll do a half an hour. So then it ends up being 50 minutes or I’ll do 45 minutes. It’s easier for me to put together a couple of smaller classes. The thing that I like the most about the Peloton is that first of all, you don’t have to leave your house to go do a class somewhere else. If a class you’re doing 45 minutes of spin, you’re actually doing 45 minutes of spin. But mostly, what I really like is that you can trick yourself into exercising.

I often end up doing a full hour, but I start with just saying, you know what Kathleen, 20 minutes is better than nothing. Just get your ass on that bike do the 20 minutes. And then I enjoy myself. I’m smiling and laughing and I just keep going. This morning, I started with a 30-minute class, and then I finished the 30 and I was like I’ll do 10 more minutes. I ended up doing 40 minutes.

The lesson for everybody out there if they’re like, well, I don’t have a Peloton. Why is that useful? What I would just say is it’s all about the mind games. It’s about self-talk. If you can’t bring yourself to do an hour-long workout, you just say to yourself, Kathleen would say do 10 minutes. Because once you’ve done 10 minutes, most likely you’ll just keep going. It’s easier to find the ignition energy to do 10 minutes, but if you do stop after 10 minutes, at least you’ve done 10 minutes. And 10 minutes a day is 70 minutes over the week. It’s better than nothing. But honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever done 10 minutes and just stopped at 10 minutes. By the time you’ve done 10 minutes, you’re like, oh well. I’ve already started. I might as well do at least 15. And then you do 15, you’re like, I might as well do at least 20. It’s all about mind games.

[01:40:49] Ashley James: That’s what I do with hikes. There are wonderful trails near our house. I’m like, okay, I’m just going to make it down to where the trail forks. By the time the trail forks, I’m like I’m doing the long trail. The thing is you’re lost in the woods and then you have to come all the way back. The last hike I did was like two hours long, and it’s up and down and through the woods. It’s beautiful. I am always surprised when two hours goes because I’m like it feels like 15 minutes. I mean, my body definitely got a great workout, but it’s fun so time really flies. The getting going it’s like, okay, I’m just going to make it down to that one point where the trail forks and then I’ll totally turn around. And then by the time I’m there I’m like, okay, blood flowing. I can keep going.

[01:41:36] Kathleen Trotter: Exactly. I think with the people who are listening, if they get anything from this story, it’s just like blah blah blah go work out. Just start. The hardest part is starting, and you just have to realize that your future self is going to be happier. Remember what we talked about before, the present bias, and knowing that just because you feel crappy at this moment doesn’t mean that you’re going to always feel crappy. Your future self is going to be so happy that you moved.

[01:42:00] Ashley James: Do you have any techniques for getting us out of that dorsal vagal mode where we are stuck, disassociated, unable to start? What ways can we break through and switch so we’re no longer in that dorsal vagal?

[01:42:15] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah. I think part of it is this idea of changing your state requires a physiological change. Even just some deep breathing, some meditation, or just talking to yourself nicely or phoning a friend that helps you bring into that ventral vagal state. Those are all things that can be really, really helpful. Journaling, any of those things would be great. Even just going for a 10-minute walk, which can feel very hard to do when you’re feeling very unmotivated. But just really being kind to yourself and just saying I will be happier if I even do two minutes. Even playing music and not dancing around but just having that energy out there in the universe. It really is that sort of first 30 seconds of anything that you can do.

I think the key is just understanding that that dorsal vagal is a nervous system response based on feeling unsafe, insecure, unhappy, and it could be based on childhood unsafe, insecure, unhappy. If I go play baseball, my first instinct would be to go dorsal vagal because of being bullied as a kid, so I have to realize that I’m dorsal vagal. I feel it in my system and then I just say to myself, okay Kathleen, it’s okay. You’re okay. That’s a triggered state. At this moment, you’re actually okay.

I think the most important thing is to take a pause and say is this real in this moment? Because it could be that you are unsafe. If you’re in an unsafe relationship or if somebody is bullying you, sometimes retreating is actually a really good coping mechanism. First, say, is this serving me? And if it is serving you, then it’s telling you something about the environment that you’re in, and then you can use that as data. Maybe you’re with friends that are really, really evil and then they should no longer be your friends because they’re putting you in that. But most of the time for us, the idea is that it’s actually not serving us. It is somehow triggered by childhood.

Maybe your boss triggered a sense of shame in the way that your mother or father used to talk to you or the shame in the way that a teacher used to talk to you. Part of it is just sort of saying to yourself, I’m an adult, and I was treated purely as a child, but I’m not a child anymore. I have the resources in my current me to deal with this.

Once you figure out that it’s not a current lack of safety, then you can proceed with the meditation, with the breathing, the walking, or phoning a friend. You just have to make yourself feel safe basically when they’re in that space and realize that a lot of procrastination is a feeling of shame or lack of safety. Because you’re worried, well, if I exercise and I don’t exercise perfectly, I’m going to be shamed. If you just say to me, it’s okay to not be perfect. I’m a human mess. I’m a messy mess, and that is okay. Talk nicely to yourself, basically. As long as you are actually safe. If you’re in an unsafe environment, get rid of that. Then you have to use that differently, but once you’ve figured out that you’re safe, then you just have to be kind to yourself.

[01:45:36] Ashley James: Yeah, and a lot of procrastination is focusing on what you don’t want to have happened instead of focusing on what you do want to have happened. When we’re visualizing all the things that could go wrong when we’re exercising—people laughing at us or whatever. Just these thoughts come into our heads. Oh, it’s going to be so difficult. I’m going to get an injury. I’m going to have a leg cramp. We just are imagining all these bad things are happening. We’re putting ourselves in a state of stress, and then that triggers our procrastination because we’re feeling unsafe. But if we focus on and visualize the successful completion of that workout and how great it was, just like you said, your future self, imagine yourself after the workout. You’re like, okay, I want to get there. Let’s go.

[01:46:17] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah, but also say to yourself, those bad things, they might happen. But guess what, that’s okay too because I’m an adult and I can handle it. Part of it is that we procrastinate because let’s say you tried a sport when you were a kid and then you were bullied, then you felt like a failure, and then you stopped. But you were a child. You didn’t have the resources you have now. Part of it is also saying to yourself like, probably I will succeed. The data shows I’m very successful. I’m very perseverant. I’m probably going to get through this workout. But guess what, if I don’t, I will be able to deal with it because I’m an adult.

Life isn’t perfect. There will be times that I go out, my run sucks. It’s terrible. There are probably times where I’m going to go out and somebody might snicker at me when I throw the basket and I’m bad. But guess what, I can handle it because I’m almost 40. My 10-year-old self couldn’t handle it, but I can handle it. That’s also part of it.

[01:47:10] Ashley James: Yeah. I love Tim Ferriss’s method for dealing with this.

[01:47:16] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah, the fear setting.

[01:47:18] Ashley James: The fear, right? At first, when I was listening to him, oh this isn’t good. And then I was like whoa, this is really good. You write down everything you’re afraid will happen, but then you write down what’ll actually realistically happen? Because our mind is making up these big monsters, and they’re probably not going to happen. The entire gym is not going to turn and laugh at us, right? Or if we fall off of equipment, it’s not like everyone’s going to turn and laugh. A lot of people will actually be concerned and come up and help us.

[01:47:41] Kathleen Trotter: Yes, are you okay?

[01:47:43] Ashley James: Are you okay, and genuinely want to help. But he has us write down. Everything you’re worried about will happen and then what’ll actually happen? Realistically, what would happen? And then how would you handle it? When you do that you realize that it’s just a paper tiger that you’ve been worried about. That you, as an adult, have resources and you would be able to handle real situations as they arose. So instead of obsessing and fixating on all the perceived threats that you’ve made up, fixate on the solutions and how you would best handle those situations and then you feel a bit of confidence.

But we’re starting out. We’re newbies. Like you said, 10 minutes on the treadmill. We’re complete newbies. I love, for example, I think it’s Hulu. I have all these different Hulu, Netflix, those kinds of things. But I think Hulu has this subscription where you can subscribe to exercise videos. My favorite is the kickboxing ones, and they have a total beginner—like beginner-beginner-beginner 10-minute kickboxing, and you don’t even have to use weights. They have that option. They usually have three different levels, three different people standing there. 

It’s like, okay, follow this guy if you’re the beginner-beginner-beginner. This is your first-ever time exercising, or if you have mobility issues. After 10 minutes, I feel amazing and then I go and do another one, and I pick another one, another one, but I love that you can find beginner-beginner-beginner stuff. I can’t believe how just punching and kicking in the air while listening to some music is so soothing and so confidence building.

[01:49:24] Kathleen Trotter: It’s very empowering. I actually did boxing when I was in high school, and it was the best feeling. That’s what I love about health and wellness—when it can be empowering and energizing versus discouraging and oppressive. It can just make you feel like I can do anything. I’m powerful. The data shows that I’m strong, and then you take that data from your exercise and you go off your daily life. You’re like I can do this and it becomes a model. When your exercise becomes a model for how you just interface with the world, right? It’s like, oh yeah, this is scary.

My bike ride today was hard, but guess what, I did it anyway. Work today is going to be hard, but guess what, I’m going to do it anyway. I felt a little bit of niggly shame, but guess what, I persevered and now I showed my shame to take this backseat that I don’t need it anymore. I really love this idea of exercise just being a model for how you can live your life and build your relationships intentionally, purposefully, and with mindfulness and attention.

[01:50:26] Ashley James: Beautiful. I love that you talked about how to find things that you love, find things that are fun. Of course, try new things.

[01:50:32] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah, you never know what you’re going to love.

[01:50:35] Ashley James: You never know what you’re going to like, but try new things. Exercise does not have to look like sweating in the gym. It doesn’t have to look like what Hollywood shows us or what Jillian Michaels does. It doesn’t have to look like any TV show. It can be cleaning your house like vacuuming. Dude, you can work up a sweat. You can work up a sweat cleaning your house. Your mom does gardening. Dude, I do squats when I garden, and the next day I feel it. You can really get a workout doing anything. It’s about moving the body in a way that brings you joy.

Then one thing I wanted to say is about your fudge bars. Something that’s really, really, really helped me the last 10 years on my health journey is figuring out the healthiest versions of something. I’m sure you’ve done this where you’re like what could I eat that’s like a fudge bar but more like an avocado and a sweet potato? What can you eat?

[01:51:27] Kathleen Trotter: I agree with that, and I think for most people and most times and 97% of my things in my life I have replaced with healthier versions. But guess what, I don’t want to replace my fudge bars with something healthy. I think that is okay too. Again it goes back to sometimes—

[01:51:42] Ashley James: Not being perfect.

[01:51:43] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah, it’s not perfect. And it’s living the life I want to live. I don’t want to be on my deathbed and be like I loved these fudge bars and yet I didn’t ever have them. I don’t want to have them every day, but I buy one box a summer, and so over a four-month period, my mom has a beautiful backyard. We sit. That’s fine with me. There are tons of things I’m happy to do a healthier replacement, but if that’s my one sin, I’m okay with that. Part of being an adult is just deciding what you’re okay with and not living by anybody else’s rules, right? That’s what I’ve decided so I’m cool with that. But I do think you’re right in a lot of other things.

I make lots and lots of wonderful frozen things that are avocado and fruit. I put them into bars. I do lots of other things as well to complement the fudge bars, but we got to live the life that we’re going to be happy with on our deathbed as well, right?

[01:52:42] Ashley James: You know what, looking at my life, I’m not going to regret the junk food I didn’t eat. Me 10 years ago wouldn’t have agreed with that. If I died right now, I’d regret all the living I didn’t get to live. I want to live the healthiest. I would regret letting my shame hold me back from new experiences.

[01:53:08] Kathleen Trotter: Yes. A beautiful, beautiful way to put it. Yes, I agree.

[01:53:13] Ashley James: Thank you so much. This has been such a wonderful conversation.

[01:53:16] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah, you’re amazing.

[01:53:17] Ashley James: Thank you, you too. I’m going to make sure the links to everything that Kathleen Trotter does are in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com including the links to her two books. Your website, kathleentrotter.com. Pretty easy to remember. And of course, we could follow you on social media. Can people work with you around the world? You’re located in Toronto, you have a studio in Toronto, but can people telecommute with you? Can they work with you over Skype around the world? How does that work?

[01:53:44] Kathleen Trotter: I don’t have any open spots for one-on-one spots. I have clients who’ve been with me for basically 20 years, and they have my one-on-one spots. But I do group coaching. It’s a five-week group coaching course. It’s called Kick Your Ass with Compassion, and you can find out about that on my website. That is group coaching. It’s usually between 8 and 12 people for five weeks. We do once a week on Zoom, and there’s a lecture group coaching, and then you get unlimited emailing with me over the five-week period about your goal.

Everybody has different goals. Some people quitting smoking, some people are trying to eat more vegetables, and some people are trying to do more exercise. The course is really about how you set goals and the principles of goal setting and having a growth mindset. A lot of the stuff we talked about today, but we break it down. I give you resources. We use my two books as textbooks. That would be the way that people from all over the world work with me. You can find information about that on my website.

[01:54:45] Ashley James: Awesome, very cool. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Is there anything you’d like to say or homework you’d like to give to wrap up today’s interview?

[01:54:51] Kathleen Trotter: The piece of homework I would give that ties everything we’ve done together is try some type of journaling, and it doesn’t have to be the way that you think. Journaling about your time spent, for example. If you are trying to find time to exercise and you’re like, I don’t have enough time. I bet if you journaled how much time you spent on TV or social media you’d be surprised at the frittering away of time that you do. Either journaling your time, journaling your food, journaling your exercise, or journaling your mood.

One of the things my therapist got me to do many, many years ago is do a journal of pre- and post-exercise what my mood was on a scale of 1-10. That data just showed me that I was always in a better mood post-exercise. You could also journal your emotions connected to food. I call it the X versus O journal. You put three circles on the page, and if you eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, eat unprocessed foods, then you just put an X through the circle. You don’t have to write anything. But if you eat, overeat, eat when you’re not hungry, or eat a lot of sugar processed foods, then you would write down what you ate. But you then write down the emotions that were connected to why you ate those things with the idea of trying to learn to connect emotions to your food.

If you look on my website or you google Kathleen Trotter journaling, I have done lots of articles on different types of journals. But they all just come back to building your awareness of the type of choices you make, why you make those choices, and how they’re connected to your emotions. You could journal sleep, you could journal anything. I think homework would just be work on knowing yourself.

[01:56:28] Ashley James: Yes, I love it. Michael Weinberger, I’ve had him on the show several times. He is bipolar—very severe. He’s got himself under control now, but he’s been suicidal many times and has been out of control many times. Been in manic mode many times, and he’s been in therapy his whole life. He’s a motivational personal growth speaker now because he shares his experience about mental health, spreading awareness, and how we can become healthier with wherever we are, whatever state we are in our mental health.

He created an app actually based on all the habits that he used to go from wanting to kill himself to leading a healthy life. It’s like a journaling app. It’s very quick. You wake up first thing in the morning and it asks you on a scale of 1-10, where are you at? Happy, sad—where are you at basically, 1-10. He might say three. Three is like I don’t want to get out of bed. I’m depressed. I don’t want to get out of bed. And then it has you journal in the app three things you’re grateful for.

[01:57:39] Kathleen Trotter: I love that. This is great.

[01:57:40] Ashley James: And it’s very quick. What does that take, a minute? And then after that, it immediately asks the same question, on a scale of 1-10, how are you doing? He doesn’t see individual people’s information. It’s all private. He can’t go see what you said, but he collects the data. Statistically, everyone feels better after one minute of focusing on gratitude. Many of the people that have this app have mental health issues they’re working through. Just imagine, regardless of where you are in your mental health, whether you consider yourself incredibly mentally healthy or you’re working on some challenges, one minute of focusing on what you’re grateful for makes us so that some people go from not wanting to get out of bed—that’s how depressed they are—to being able to get out of bed.

[01:58:26] Kathleen Trotter: That’s fantastic.

[01:58:27] Ashley James: And that’s one minute of journaling. So I love your idea of journaling because not only does it give you awareness, but sometimes if your focus can be on positive things like things you’re grateful for, that can make a big difference.

[01:58:40] Kathleen Trotter: Yeah. Well, I think that’s a great place to end and just have gratitude that we can move our body and eat healthy food. It is a hugely positive thing that we are able to do for ourselves, and I think often we think about health as something that we have to do, something that’s forced upon us. I love closing on this idea of gratitude. It’s something that we get to do. It’s a privilege.

[01:59:02] Ashley James: Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much, Kathleen. It was a pleasure having you on the show today.

[01:59:06] Kathleen Trotter: My pleasure.

[01:59:07] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Kathleen Trotter. Please join the Learn True Health Facebook group so you can enter to win a spot in Kathleen’s upcoming live and interactive group health coach program. It’s very exciting. Please visit learntruehealth.com/coach to get a free module from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition if you’re considering becoming a health coach. And join the Learn True Health Home Kitchen. Go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen and check it out. Use the coupon code LTH and learn how to make delicious, nutritious, and healing recipes. We also have some wonderful recipes for Thanksgiving and the holidays as well. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day.

Get Connected with Kathleen Trotter!

Website

Kick Your Ass With Compassion (Online Course)

Learn To Spot ‘Unhealthy Healthy Foods’

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

Twitter

Books by Kathleen Trotter

Finding Your Fit

Your Fittest Future Self

BOOK: Invisible Rainbow https://amzn.to/300Sn23

Cellular Phone Task Force, www.cellphonetaskforce.org
International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space, www.5gSpaceAppeal.org

Check out IIN and get a free module: LearnTrueHealth.com/coach

The Invisible Rainbow

https://www.learntruehealth.com/the-invisible-rainbow

Highlights:

• What is electrical pollution
• Illnesses caused by exposure to electrical pollution
• Ways to lessen exposure to electrical pollution

5G is here, and while many people are excited about this technology, Arthur Firstenberg describes it as the most urgent threat on earth today. In this episode, he explains why 5G is bad for us. He also enumerates different sources of electrical pollution and how we can lessen exposure to electrical pollution.

[00:00:00] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 445. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have the author of The Invisible Rainbow, Arthur Firstenberg. Arthur, one of my best friends was freaking out when she read your book. Her husband read your book, and he just was blown away. And then I started getting requests from a few listeners saying that your book has been mind-blowing, and it’s the most important book people have read in the last 10 years or more. It really caught my attention, and I thought I have to have this man on the show. We have to let more people know about your work.

So I recently got your book, and I cannot put it down. I’m holding it right now. I could probably use it as an exercise device because of how thick it is. Based on the picture on Amazon, I was expecting a little paperback I could finish on the weekend, and it’s almost 400 pages. And then there’s what seems like about 75 to 100 pages of references. I mean, you really did your homework.

[00:01:23] Arthur Firstenberg: There’s actually 150 pages of footnotes and bibliography.

[00:01:30] Ashley James: Yes, I was guessing. I’m holding it. I showed my husband. I’m like, “Do you see the scientific references?” I’m quite impressed. But reading your book, it’s very, very interesting. The first thing that came to mind is that I would love to see your book become a documentary or some kind of movie because of how—

[00:01:50] Arthur Firstenberg: Somebody called me yesterday that wants to do exactly that.

[00:01:55] Ashley James: Yes, please do. I mean, as long as you have control of how it goes, but it is phenomenally well-written. Well-researched. If everyone knew what you lay out so well in this book it would change the world. I want to dive into understanding—for those who’ve never heard of you or your work—I want to dive into it a bit. But first, I’d like to know a bit about you. What happened in your life that made you want to write this book?

[00:02:31] Arthur Firstenberg: I went to medical school, and midway through school—at the end of my second year—I had some dental work and a whole lot of dental x-rays in the course of a summer. The last series of x-rays did something to my head, and I felt something give way in the back of my skull. I felt an electric current travel from head to toes and out into the floor. The next morning, when I went around in the hospital, I could feel electric currents emanating from every piece of electrical equipment in the hospital. My life has not been the same since then.

I found out that I couldn’t finish school, essentially. I attempted to stick it out and get my MD. One day, on the inpatient pediatrics, I collapsed with all the symptoms of a heart attack. I had a year to go for my MD, and I left school. Before I had done that, I did a trade with my plastic surgery professor because being in the operating room was no longer possible. Every time I assisted a surgery I would have crippling pains in my hips so that I couldn’t walk for three days. He excused me from the OR in exchange for writing a research paper on a topic of my choice. I chose the effects of radiant energy on living organisms.

[00:04:33] Ashley James: Wow.

[00:04:33] Arthur Firstenberg: This was in December of 1981. In doing research for the chapter, I went to the medical school’s library—this was the  University of California Irvine—and lo and behold, there were many shelves full of books on the effects of electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic fields on biology and on health. We were not being taught this in medical school, and this seemed very strange to me. So I started doing research. That’s been my life, partially, since 1981, and full time since 1996 is researching being an advocate, being a support person, and being an activist. Trying to educate the world to this biological and environmental factor that nobody’s aware of.

[00:05:43] Ashley James: Did your professors believe you when you explained that being near electronics gave you excruciating pain?

[00:05:52] Arthur Firstenberg: I never asked him that question that way.

[00:06:00] Ashley James: Do you feel like they treated you as if they believed you? If they believed you, wouldn’t they have wanted to help?

[00:06:12] Arthur Firstenberg: I didn’t get any feedback because I submitted the paper in December, and I collapsed at the end of February. So it was only a couple of months before I quit school, and I never got any feedback from him.

[00:06:26] Ashley James: Do you still experience pain when you’re near electronics?

[00:06:32] Arthur Firstenberg: Not to the degree that I did then, but yes. A lot of people do. In fact, I would venture to say that most everybody does, but they’re not educated as to what the cause is. So a lot of people are on various pain medications. It causes sleep disorders, and the people are on sleeping medications. It causes anxiety, so people are on anxiety medications and antidepressants. They keep their cell phone in their hip pocket, and that causes excruciating pain, but they don’t connect the cause. So they end up going to the doctor, and the doctor tells them their hips are worn out. Let’s give you a hip replacement, and the nerves are cut, so it doesn’t hurt anymore. This is not confined to a few people. This is affecting the entire population of the globe.

[00:07:36] Ashley James: My husband and I both noticed—he has an iPhone, I have an android—our hands hurt when we hold our cell phones. That we can feel something. There’s something there. I mean, if you weren’t really paying attention, you could ignore it, but we’re very in tune with our bodies, and we can feel it. His hurts his hand more than mine does, I noticed.

[00:08:00] Arthur Firstenberg: Right. And that is the sign that you should stop using it because you can get cancer of your hand.

[00:08:10] Ashley James: Jeez. I was going to say, what damage is being done by being exposed to—and there are so many different forms of electricity like you say in your book. The cell phone is like the microwave, right? But we have electricity going throughout our house, our laptops, the Wi-Fi, the cell signals, and the radio waves.

The Dangers of 5G and How To Reduce Exposure to Electrical Pollution

[00:08:32] Arthur Firstenberg: Okay, so now you’re talking about two different types of electrical pollution. The electricity going through your wires creates an electric field. That electric field is not intentional. That’s not part of the product, and it can be shielded with proper engineering. You can twist the wires. You can put it in a conduit. You can eliminate the electric fields to a great extent. They’re not necessary. The difference with wireless technology is that radiation is the product. That cell phone and Wi-Fi will not work unless you’re getting irradiated, so it’s a different idea.

It’s actually the first form of pollutant in history that is intentionally being spread over every square inch of the planet. In other words, pesticides are designed to kill pests. They escape into the general environment, but that’s not deliberate. With wireless technology, the pollutant is the product, and that’s a big difference.

[00:09:57] Ashley James: You know what scares me is hearing that Elon Musk is launching satellites so that he can bathe every square mile in the entire earth with 5G waves, basically. There’ll be no escaping this electric pollution, as you put it.

[00:10:19] Arthur Firstenberg: That scares me more than anything else that’s going on right now on the planet. I am scared of climate change, pesticides, deforestation, and everything else that’s destroying our beautiful earth. But he’s putting thousands, in fact, he plans to put tens of thousands of satellites in low orbit around the earth. And I am less concerned about the direct radiation reaching the earth from a few hundred miles up than I am how they’re going to alter the electromagnetic environment of the earth itself in which we evolved and which we are dependent on for life and health.

In other words, atmospheric physicists study what they call the global electrical circuit, and people are not aware of our electrical environment. We’re not taught this in school. Electricity is thought of as something useful that can accomplish things for us. That can turn on our lights, power motors, and so forth. But we actually live in an electric field—a natural electric field of 130 volts per meter on average in fair weather. And it’s a complex electric field. 

In thunderstorms, the direction of the field reverses, and lightning actually completes the circuit. So you actually have a complete circuit traveling horizontally through the ionosphere, then vertically down to the earth in fair weather, beneath our feet horizontally through the earth, and then back up to the sky during thunderstorms. This circulates all the time, and it goes through the bodies of every living thing. It actually goes through our bodies, circulates through our acupuncture meridians. Doctors of oriental medicine study a little piece of this science, but basically, it’s little specializations and nobody’s looking at the whole picture.

If you put 12,000 or more or 42,0000 or 100,000 satellites, there are a lot of players in this game. Space-X is the first entrant, but there are others waiting in the wings and starting to launch satellites. If you put tens of thousands of satellites up there, each one emitting thousands of different frequencies because you’re serving thousands of different users from each satellite, you’re going to pollute this circuit that travels through our bodies, keeps us healthy, and gives us life. This is what I’m frightened of, and this is imminent. This is much more imminent and life-threatening than any of these other environmental threats.

[00:13:50] Ashley James: I love studying astronomy. Why is it that earth has a perfect environment than any other planet in our solar system for life? And we have this beautiful electromagnetic field that you just described that allows us to have life. That allows the earth to prevent solar radiation from fully hitting us. It’s a shield. It protects us, but it also is what we’ve evolved from. Something you brought up in the book that we evolved from wherever we came from. Whether you believe we came from Adam and Eve, or whether you believe we came from single cells in a swamp, we have been here—for as long as we’ve been here—living with this natural electricity that is moving, that we are part of.

[00:14:51] Arthur Firstenberg: And in the 18th century, when people were beginning to study electricity in depth and when they were beginning to find ways of storing it and using it, it was initially used in medicine before it was used for any other technologies as kind of a panacea for a lot of illnesses. Isaac Newton also believed that electricity was the life force. That this is what gave us life. And my conclusion after studying this field for the last 40 years is that probably that’s right. 

Electricity is either closely related to or identical with the life force, with this substance that travels, that acupuncturists work on, and travels through our acupuncture meridians. It’s modulated in complex ways. There’s what a lot of people have heard of, the Schumann resonances, which are the resonant frequencies of the biosphere—8, 14, 20, 26, and 32 hertz. That’s part of what circulates to our bodies. But it’s all controlled by the ionosphere. The ionosphere is a source of high voltage. It’s the earth’s source of high voltage. It’s charged to an average of 300,000 volts, and this is what powers and regulates the electricity that circulates in the biosphere and goes through every living thing.

[00:16:33] Ashley James: So what are the dangers of our modern electricity, of our modern devices? I love that in your book, you show very clearly that at each point in our history when we had a new introduction to the widespread use of electricity, that there was an uptick in disease. Could you go over some of that?

[00:17:05] Arthur Firstenberg: Yeah. The first major use of electricity was for telegraphy. Millions of miles of telegraph wires were strung all around the earth, and there was a new disease described during the 1860s called neurasthenia. And nobody knew where it came from. Its sufferers were tired all the time and couldn’t sleep. Had aches and pains all over their bodies. A lot of things that people who call themselves electrically sensitive complain about today. I don’t use that term by the way—electrical sensitivity—because it gives the wrong impression that people who realize what’s making them sick are not normal. We’re just like everybody else. We just have figured it out. This is what’s making us sick.

Like every other toxin in the environment, there’s a range of vulnerability in the population. If you poison the population with anything—with arsenic, not everybody will get sick at the same time. But if you expose people to high enough levels of electromagnetic fields, as we are doing today, eventually, everybody gets sick. Everybody gets affected. But in the 1860s, there was this epidemic, actually pandemic, of what they called neurasthenia. And for 40 years, it was in the literature. Nobody could figure it out, and along came Sigmund Freud in about 1895. He said this is a psychological disorder, and he called it anxiety neurosis, and that has stuck.

So today, we have this thing called anxiety disorder, and 1/6 or 1/5 of the population is being diagnosed with it. And everybody’s being put on anti-anxiety meds, but still, the cause is not being realized. Telegraph operators suffered from it to a large degree. In the coming decades, in the 19th century, telephone operators suffered from it to a large degree. And then in 1889, when AC current essentially spread all over the world, and it spread extraordinarily rapidly. Basically, 1889 was in the space of a year the earth became wrapped in electric wires with alternating currents in them. And that was the year when the first modern influenza epidemic broke out all over the world. 

Following that, the Spanish influenza of 1918—according to my research—was triggered by the United States’ entry into World War I with the latest in radio technology. The most powerful radio stations in the world. The first radio stations in the world that broadcast voices that could be heard over most of the earth. These were extraordinarily low frequency, enormously powerful radio stations that were turned on in September of 1918. The one in New Brunswick, New Jersey. And that month was when Spanish influenza became deadly all over the world. I traced the epidemics of influenza throughout the 20th century. 1957, the advent of radar for civil defense especially by the United States 1968. The Hong Kong flu coincided with the launch of the first fleet of military satellites into space. 

That’s a brief summary. The advent of the wireless revolution in 1996 in this country a couple of years earlier in Europe and some of the rest of the world, the illness that was caused by that was also caused influenza, but it was not simultaneous all over the world because antennas and cell towers were not coordinated quite as well throughout the world as some of these earlier technologies. For example, where I was living in New York City, the first digital cell towers were turned on citywide commercially on November 14, 1996. A so-called influenza epidemic locally to New York City began essentially on that date and lasted officially until the following May. As a previously injured person living in New York City, I escaped one week later. It felt like I barely survived, I barely escaped with my life.

That’s when I started the Cellular Phone Task Force and put an ad in the New York City newspaper saying if you have been sick since November 15, 1996 with the following symptoms, please contact us. And we heard from people all over the city who thought they were having a heart attack, a stroke, or a nervous breakdown on approximately that date. And that was the foundation for my nonprofit, which I have been running ever since then, since 24 years ago. And I got mortality rates. I downloaded mortality rates from the CDC’s website.

[00:24:07] Ashley James: Really?

[00:24:09] Arthur Firstenberg: Yeah. I called up the doctor—what was his name in Israel? His name escapes me. Anyway, he directed me to the CDC’s website and said there’s where you can find mortality statistics. Indeed, there was a spike in mortality in New York City that lasted two to three months. I think it was three to four months in New York City. It was particularly devastating. I did this later. There was an increase in mortality between 10% and 25% lasting on average two to three months in every city that deployed what we now call 2G technology that began on the date in that city when the first 2G system went commercial. And I documented this for dozens of cities.

[00:25:11] Ashley James: Going back in the late 1800s when they had the major influenza outbreak after the modern world basically had electricity, had the wires everywhere, and the homes had access to electricity for the first time ever. Had there ever been a documented case of influenza to that extent, or was this the largest we’d ever seen?

[00:25:45] Arthur Firstenberg: Sure. Influenza is an ancient disease. It’s been known forever, but it was never an annual disease. When the worldwide influenza hit in 1889, a lot of doctors had never seen a case of it before. The previous influenza epidemic in the United Kingdom, I believe, had happened in 1854 or 1856.

[00:26:20] Ashley James: That skipped like 20 years?

[00:26:24] Arthur Firstenberg: Forty, forty-five years.

[00:26:25] Ashley James: Oh, huge difference.

[00:26:26] Arthur Firstenberg: Forty, forty-five years previously. And the last influenza epidemic in the United States had been in the 1870s, more than 20 years previously. Suddenly, in 1889, there was influenza throughout the world, and it returned every single year worldwide after that. In 1890, there was in the winter—every year.

[00:26:54] Ashley James: Every year until now.

[00:26:56] Arthur Firstenberg: Yeah. It was never an annual disease before. It was never a seasonal disease before. It had something to do with solar radiation. There has been any number of studies correlating historical influenza epidemics with sunspots. So it seemed to come with the maximum solar activity until modern times.

[00:27:22] Ashley James: It would disrupt our electromagnetic field or disrupt our cells in a negative way, and that would leave us susceptible or weakened?

[00:27:32] Arthur Firstenberg: Something like that. And I also explored the Maunder Minimum in the 16th and 17th centuries when there were no sunspots for a period of 75 years, something like that. And during that time, there were no influenza pandemics. That’s consistent with influenza being—as I propose—an electrical disease, and not a viral disease, although it is associated with a virus.

[00:28:10] Ashley James: Well, the viruses live dormant in our body and are opportunistic, many of them, right? Chickenpox becomes shingles when someone’s immune system is compromised, and warts—herpes outbreaks. I mean, that’s one thing that could be hypothesized is that we have the influenza virus dormant in our body, and then when we are in a weakened state, it comes out as opposed to being caught by people.

[00:28:37] Arthur Firstenberg: That is what a number of influenza specialists have proposed in the past.

[00:28:43] Ashley James: And that’s radical.

[00:28:45] Arthur Firstenberg: Exactly what they proposed.

[00:28:46] Ashley James: I mean, what a radical concept because the pharmaceutical companies would not want us to believe this because they want us to take a flu shot every year. And now they’re saying we should take two flu shots because of COVID. I just thought it was really funny. I saw this video yesterday that Dr. Oz was saying that those who get flu shots have, I think he said, 36% more chance of developing COVID and they cut him off. I don’t know if it was CNN, but it was some interview and they cut him off.

[00:29:16] Arthur Firstenberg: That is actually based on a peer-reviewed published study that says that. Back in 1918 actually, doctors attempted to prove the infectious nature of influenza. These were doctors in Boston, and they published their research in public health reports in The New England Journal of Medicine and prestigious publications. They failed.

This was during the height of Spanish influenza. They tried to infect 100 healthy individuals with secretions from sick influenza patients by having sick influenza patients cough several times into their faces, by injecting blood from sick influenza patients into healthy people. Not one of the 100 healthy people got sick, and they ended up saying we don’t know how influenza is spread. There were veterinarians because horses got influenza. They caught the epidemic about a month before people did. They tried to transfer influenza via secretions from horses into healthy horses, and the healthy horses didn’t get sick. So there was a resounding failure to infect healthy people with sick people by influenza.

[00:30:46] Ashley James: I don’t want to call it a conspiracy theory, but there’s been a chatter that areas in the world where COVID has taken off are the same areas where they’ve been introducing 5G or testing 5G technology. Have you heard of this? Is there any basis for it? It sounds like it’d be up your alley.

[00:31:11] Arthur Firstenberg: I have investigated it personally. There is a basis for it. My hypothesis is that the COVID-19 virus causes hypoxia by preventing oxygen from binding to hemoglobin. That the radiation from 5G causes hypoxia by interfering with electron transport in your mitochondria. So the COVID-19 virus starves your blood vessels of oxygen. The 5G starves your cells of oxygen. And when you put the two together, they are deadly. At first, I didn’t believe this, but when I investigated it, 5G officially got turned on in Wuhan, China two weeks before the first known cases of COVID-19 broke out there. 5G officially was turned on in New York City about two weeks before a very bad COVID-19 epidemic broke out in New York City. 5G was on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

There seems to be a pattern here. Here where I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico—at least when I checked a week or two ago—there had been zero COVID-19 deaths in Santa Fe county to date. We don’t have 5G. Albuquerque does. They’ve got a bunch of COVID-19 deaths. As to why COVID-19 is rampant on the Navajo reservation could be due to other forms of pollution. It could be due to the fact that Native Americans have high rates of diabetes. There’s a lot of factors here. It’s not black and white simple, but there is a correlation with 5G.

I did a search last week because I was curious. The Gaza Strip has one of the highest densities of population in the world. I wanted to know if they have a problem with the coronavirus, and it turns out to date, out of 1.8 million people, they’ve had 10 deaths from COVID-19. Essentially, they don’t have the disease there even though they are more crowded than any place in the world. 

So there seems to be a correlation, and as I said, I have a hypothesis as to why there is a virus. It is deadly. My opinion is that there was—for the first few months—a pretty bad pandemic, and that has more or less passed. People adjust to it, people have immune systems, and the world is pretending that nobody has an immune system. We have to continue locking down the world, wearing masks, and social distancing. From my research, it doesn’t make sense that the places that have the highest number of deaths and the highest rate of illnesses are the places that have the most radiation.

[00:35:14] Ashley James: Why is it that ever since we have electricity and radio waves—we have all this electric pollution. Why is it that influenza comes back every year in the winter? Is it because we’re indoors more? Because I think people are indoors and are exposed to this all the time, so why winter when a few hundred years ago, it was like once every 40 years?

[00:35:42] Arthur Firstenberg: We don’t know. It has something to do with either the amount of solar radiation, which goes down in the winter, or the amount of artificial electromagnetic fields, which goes way up in the winter because we’re indoors. But that’s just speculation. I certainly don’t know all the answers.

[00:36:04] Ashley James: Like you said, there are other factors. Perhaps vitamin D levels, which are already dangerously low. Many people don’t have their vitamin D tested. To a naturopathic physician, if you’re below 60, it’s unhealthy. You want your vitamin D levels to be between 60 and 100. I’ve had a doctor come on the show—very experienced doctors—say that he has never seen toxic vitamin D levels and he prescribes incredibly high amounts of vitamin D, and he’s never seen someone above 100. But he does see chronically low vitamin D, and chronically low vitamin D leads to and there’s a correlation to cancer and to lowered immune health—lowered immune function. And of course, the more we spend time indoors, the less vitamin D we have and the more exposure to electric pollution, right?

[00:36:57] Arthur Firstenberg: It could well be.

[00:37:00] Ashley James: Right. Very fascinating. What other illnesses are commonly seen with exposure to electric pollution? You yourself had it when you had that x-ray. Can you give us some more examples?

[00:37:20] Arthur Firstenberg: Well, the chronic diseases that we are all living within the 21st century, and I show this in my book. Not only I explained the mechanism, but I showed historically when it began the trend, I graphed it out, and I published all the data—cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. These three diseases were rare or virtually non-existent before electrification, which means before telegraphy began in the 1840s, was well underway by the 1860s. And there’s a good reason for it because electromagnetic fields interfere with the movement of electrons. So this means that it interferes with electron transport in your mitochondria. In the mitochondria of every cell of every living organism.

Electron transport is the last stage of metabolizing your food and utilizing the oxygen that you breathe. So when you metabolize your food, you’re producing electrons, which get transferred to the oxygen you breathe. It generates ATP, and this is how we live. If you interfere with electron transport, you are not efficiently metabolizing sugars, fats, and proteins. You don’t efficiently metabolize sugars at the rate at which you should be able to. Sugars back up into your bloodstream and excreted by your kidneys and you have diabetes.

You don’t efficiently metabolize, fats they back into your bloodstream, get deposited in your coronary arteries, and you get heart disease. Cancer thrives in anaerobic environments. That’s actually how it’s diagnosed. So you’re effectively starving your cells of oxygen forcing them into anaerobic metabolism and cancer cells love it. So these three diseases, in my opinion, are predominantly caused by the escalation of what in some parts of the world is called the electrosmog. It hasn’t caught on in this country, but electromagnetic pollution.

[00:40:01] Ashley James: The rates of those diseases back in 1870, for example, before the widespread use of electricity in our homes. What were the rates of those diseases then?

[00:40:18] Arthur Firstenberg: Cancer, before it started to rise, was the 25th most common cause of death. About as many people died of accidental drowning as died of cancer. Diabetes was almost non-existent. The first book in English that was ever written about diabetes in the 1780s, the doctor who wrote it had only ever seen two cases of diabetes in his life. Heart disease was a disease of old people and infants—people with heart defects. People in the prime of their life between infancy and old age never got heart disease. This started to change in the 1840s and 1850s with all those three diseases.

[00:41:21] Ashley James: But that was before electricity was in the homes though. Was there electric smog or electric pollution being developed back then?

[00:41:31] Arthur Firstenberg: It was not in the homes but there were telegraph wires in most populated places.

[00:41:40] Ashley James: That’s right.

[00:41:41] Arthur Firstenberg: And not only most populated places, but running around alongside railroad tracks and elsewhere in rural environments.

[00:41:48] Ashley James: Yeah. It’s absolutely fascinating that you go through in your book all of the electric pollution that we’ve experienced in the last few hundred years, and then the rates of these diseases going through the roof.

[00:42:01] Arthur Firstenberg: And back in those days, the return current for telegraphy did not go through a wire. The return was through the earth itself, and that meant that there were ground currents from—well, nowadays it’s the power grid. But then those days, it was the telegraph grid. All of the return currents went through the earth, and so people were exposed to it just by walking around.

[00:42:32] Ashley James: I have a friend who has fibromyalgia, and there was a thunderstorm. It was so violent that when I woke up in the middle of the night, I could see the lightning—the light of the lightning. There’s so much lightning that I could walk down the hallway in my house and I could see everything. After that, I think it was August 1996 in Muskoka, Canada. And after that day, she was in the hospital for six months unable to walk in excruciating pain. 

That just stuck in the back of my mind that she had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Back then, it was really hard to get diagnosed with it, and doctors really don’t know what to do about it. But that anytime there were electrical storms, she was put out for days or weeks. And this one was so bad she was in excruciating pain for six months. That’s a natural phenomenon, right? So imagine what is happening to our bodies when we’re around this electric pollution. 

I love to point out in the show that we really don’t focus enough on the fact that our body is energy. When you go to a hospital, if you’re having weird symptoms, they’ll put electrodes on you and they’ll read the energy coming from your heart, coming from your brain. They’re reading the energy our body is putting out there in order to diagnose. That every part of our body is using electricity in some way. So when we’re exposed to this electric smog, of course, it would have an effect on us. Why do we think that we’re immune? Why do we think we’re immune to microwaves, Wi-Fi, and 5G? Why do we think we’re immune? Is it all through marketing? I mean, why is it that we think we’re totally immune and then we get sick and we take meds. Why are so many people blind to the fact that our body is energy, and our body is disrupted by the artificial energy we have surrounded ourselves by?

[00:44:54] Arthur Firstenberg: I do discuss this in my book. We have been in denial since the year 1800 as a culture. That was the year that the electric battery was invented. There started to be uses invented for electricity stored in batteries, and then in the 1840s telegraphy was used with essentially electric generating technology which had been invented in the meantime. The fact that it can make our lives easier and take over the work, the animals—industrial society has grown up completely dependent on electricity since about the year 1800. It has to do not so much with marketing, It’s a societal addiction. It has to do with our self-concept of who we are as human beings.

It’s like if you took away electricity from us, who would we be? How would we live? People don’t want to think about it. There was a medical controversy in the year 1800 as to even the existence of what in the 18th century, the 1700s had been called animal electricity. As I said, people believed that electricity was a life force.

Along came Alessandro Volta with the electric battery, and he demonstrated that you could generate electricity without the use of animals. He said there’s no such thing as animal electricity. There were a big controversy and a debate between Volta and Galvani in the 1790s as to the source of electricity, and Volta’s pronouncement that electricity had nothing to do with biology was widely believed and became the standard teaching in medicine and in society and people forgot. But they didn’t totally forget because electricity was still used very widely for electrotherapy to cure a lot of different diseases basically until the end of the 19th century when it started to be used for lights and power.

Once it started to be used for lights and power, electrotherapy died out. People couldn’t continue to think that it was the life force if it could do all these wonderful things and be so powerful.

[00:48:21] Ashley James: I love the chapter where you gave the history of how they used electricity and medicine. That’s what made me really want this to be a movie, like a documentary or something. It’s so fascinating. That electricity can be harmful, but you also documented the thousands and thousands of cases where they saw healings from it. Many people who were deaf gained their hearing after using a specific electrode in and around their ear that physicians used, or back then, they called them electricians I think you said in the book.

[00:48:58] Arthur Firstenberg: They were called electricians, yes, in the 18th century.

[00:49:02] Ashley James: Quite fascinating.

[00:49:04] Arthur Firstenberg: Yeah, it cured quite a number of documented cases of deafness. It cured some cases of blindness. It was reputed to make the lame walk but at really low power levels and brief exposures. They would expose somebody’s ear to a few pulses of electricity for a few minutes and that was it. When they tried to use higher powers of electricity, it didn’t work. It just injured them.

[00:49:41] Ashley James: There are medical devices that I’ve used and that show great results. Ionic foot detox spas that use a platinum energy system, it’s called, that uses almost a rife frequency. The BEMER, which is a mat out of Europe and used as a medical device in the hospitals there, is documented to increase blood flow right at the capillary and also make red blood cells function in a better way, not stick together, and it stimulates mitochondria to function even better. So there are lots of devices out there that use very, very, very low frequencies—gentle, and they see that it stimulates health and healing.

[00:50:32] Arthur Firstenberg: Gentle and brief, it has to be.

[00:50:35] Ashley James: Right. Gentle and brief.

[00:50:36] Arthur Firstenberg: Not chronic, not for long periods of time. And in today’s world, when we’re all immersed in a sea of electromagnetic radiation, I tell people to exercise extreme caution before using any of these devices because it has some therapeutic effects, but you don’t know what else it’s doing to you.

[00:50:58] Ashley James: Exactly. And wouldn’t it be even healthier to take a break? I mean, I daydream now about going to a cabin in the mountains or somewhere far away from all of this and living like a pioneer by candlelight and just having a break, having a detox from electric pollution.

[00:51:20] Arthur Firstenberg: But you can’t do that anymore because it’s everywhere. It’s coming down from satellites. It’s going through the earth. It’s being broadcast from very powerful radar stations. For example, the entire Amazon Rainforest is being blasted by 28 super powerful radar stations so they can track anybody that moves through the forest. It’s unbelievable what’s going on on the planet.

[00:51:56] Ashley James: This episode wasn’t designed to be doom and gloom. I do want to wake people up, but we also want to give people tools. You do talk in your book about what we can do to protect ourselves given that there’s nowhere to run. Electric pollution is everywhere. I mean, I have friends that live out in the Okanagan Valley in a very remote area of Washington, and there’s no cell service. There are almost no radio waves, and they live off the grid, so they have solar. They heat the house with firewood.

You can lessen. You can decrease the amount of electric pollution. I mean, you have to really go out of your way. You can’t live in a city.

[00:52:42] Arthur Firstenberg: The most important thing that people have to do is get rid of their cell phones. That is the single most powerful source of radiation that everybody’s exposed to nowadays.

[00:52:52] Ashley James: Fascinating.

[00:52:54] Arthur Firstenberg: You’re getting more radiation from your phone than from all the cell towers and from the satellites, and people do not realize this because you’re holding it in your hand, holding it next to your head. The exposure level goes up exponentially with the proximity to the body.

[00:53:15] Ashley James: You had outlined that when 2G went live back in—I believe you said 1996.

[00:53:23] Arthur Firstenberg: Six and seven.

[00:53:24] Ashley James: 1996, 1997, which was right around that time my friend got sick for six months in the hospital after the electric storm. That’d be interesting to see when 2G went live in that part of Canada. So when it went live, you could document, you could pinpoint in the different cities the death rate going up and strange influenza outbreaks only in these specific cities during that time. Well, since then, we’ve had 3G and 4G. Have you been able to repeat this? Have you been able to see that once 3G and 4G went live that you could again see a spike in deaths and a spike in illnesses?

[00:54:04] Arthur Firstenberg: I have not tracked it in as much detail as I tracked it from zero radiation to 2G. That was very dramatic. Locally, I collected anecdotal reports here in Santa Fe when AT&T upgraded all its towers from 3G to 4G, there were lots of reports of illnesses around Santa Fe. I don’t have statistics to back that up. Those are only anecdotal reports, but it’s very consistent.

[00:54:42] Ashley James: It would be interesting to go back and look at because, of course, the biggest leap would be from zero to something. But then 2G to 3G to 4G, I mean, those just ramp up incredibly more powerful and more pervasive.

[00:54:59] Arthur Firstenberg: There are also so many more providers. There’s AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile. Each one does a different thing at a different time, and it’s just a kind of a gradual increase. Then you added Wi-Fi in about 2001. Yeah, it’s a gradual increase. 5G is no longer gradual. 5G is very dramatically different.

[00:55:29] Ashley James: Why is 5G so different than 4G?

[00:55:32] Arthur Firstenberg: Because it uses millimeter waves instead of centimeter waves—a very short wave, high frequency. It uses phased array technology, which is focused pencil-like beams where the cell tower tracks your user device and vice versa, or the satellite tracks you in a narrowly focused beam. And the power levels are very much greater. They’re 10 to 100 times greater than with 4G, 3G.

[00:56:08] Ashley James: If 5G comes in my area, I’m going to get rid of my cell phone. I mean, that is just it. What you just described was the final straw. I have a friend who doesn’t have a cell phone, and she’s a dear friend. I’m kind of just perplexed at how she survives in life, but she does. She gets around, and she has a home line, has a landline, and a computer and does just fine. I know it would definitely be an interesting experience.

[00:56:36] Arthur Firstenberg: There are a few of us that still live like that.

[00:56:41] Ashley James: It would definitely be an interesting experience, but I’m not willing to sacrifice my health to that extent. Either that or I’ll have to move to an area where 5G doesn’t exist anymore.

[00:56:52] Arthur Firstenberg: Well, I want people to wake up to the fact that they should not sacrifice their planet.

[00:56:57] Ashley James: I know.

[00:56:58] Arthur Firstenberg: For the convenience.

[00:57:01] Ashley James: I think there’s so much more to discuss about 5G, and I’ve had a few people come on the show and talk about it a little bit. It is so fascinating, and if there’s more for you to share, I’d love to do that. I also want to talk about Wi-Fi because we haven’t touched on it. Dr. Klinghardt, who I’ve had on the show, is an MD from Germany who is actually local to me, but people come from all around the world to see him at the Sophia Health Institute. He regularly helps children who are on the spectrum no longer be on the spectrum. Now, were they ever truly autistic in the first place? That’s debatable.

He says the first thing he does when the parents come, from all around the world, with their autistic child or autistic-like symptoms I should say—non-verbal, beating their head against the wall, looking like they’re in incredible agony, these children. He says to remove them from Wi-Fi. Zero Wi-Fi in the house. Have them be nowhere near Wi-Fi. In his clinic, there are no cell phones allowed. There’s no Wi-Fi allowed. Every computer is hardwired. And he says that heavy metals, which have accumulated in the brain, the Wi-Fi vibrates those heavy metals at 60 hertz, and it’s heating up the brain and causing the autism-like symptoms. And then he does a natural detox, a natural chelation of heavy metals. And these children become verbal, stop hitting their head, are able to communicate, are able to look their parents in the eye and say they love them, and give them hugs. It is miraculous what we see come out of his clinic, but he says the first thing is to stop with the Wi-Fi. It is basically cooking their brain.

[00:58:53] Arthur Firstenberg: I agree with him. People have to stop with the Wi-Fi, and schools have to stop with the Wi-Fi. Children have to start living in a non-irradiated environment. They’re growing up much more unhealthy than previous generations of children. Why? Because they go to school with Wi-Fi and they grew up with cell phones. If we want to have a healthy future and a healthy planet to live on, that’s the direction in which we have to go.

[00:59:27] Ashley James: Do you see any correlation between the use of cell phones, Wi-Fi, or electric pollution, and mental health issues? You did mention that anxiety, which was never previously documented, was widespread after we used the telegraph. We’re now seeing that the second leading cause of death in the ages between 10 and 24 is suicide or the second leading cause of death of suicide, and that is new. As of the last few years, suicide has now jumped up to the second leading cause of death in our youth right now, and all these children have cell phones in their hands and are constantly exposed to Wi-Fi. Now, of course, social media bullying is all a factor. Do you see that there is a direct correlation between the amount of electric pollution that our youth is exposed to and mental health issues?

[01:00:23] Arthur Firstenberg: I would say it’s a big factor. It’s not the only factor, but it’s a big factor.

[01:00:29] Ashley James: So, what can we do to protect ourselves? Okay, so we get rid of our cell phone, that’s one thing. If someone can’t because of work, they completely limit their exposure at all costs to the cell phone. What else can we do in our home?

[01:00:48] Arthur Firstenberg: Well, I’m on a campaign to save this planet, not just to have people individually be healthier because it’s becoming impossible. If you own a cell phone, if you’re dependent on your cell phone, which means you expect it to work wherever you go, then you are dependent on the wireless infrastructure. Your cell phone cannot work wherever you go unless the entire infrastructure of the planet is there. All the cell towers have to be there. People more and more, even when they go on an ocean cruise, they want their cell phone to work so all the satellites have to be there. 

The demand has to stop. It’s an insatiable demand for connectivity that is driving a lot of this. Yes, there’s a desire to make money, but at the base, it’s an insatiable demand for connectivity. We’ve gotten so used to—as alive human beings—having the right to connect to anyone, anywhere, anytime, wherever we happen to be. That’s killing our planet. It’s got to stop.

[01:01:59] Ashley James: So my friend Sean, who loved your book has some questions, and I think these are fantastic for everyone. He says that it’s a logistical question that in your book, you talk about aluminum or copper mesh to block EMF. How would you do that? Line your roof, cover your walls? How can we live in a city with, for example, 5G? Or how can we live in a city with electric pollution and best protect ourselves within the walls of our house?

[01:02:30] Arthur Firstenberg: I live in the Southwest where a lot of the houses are made of adobe, which is mud, it’s earth. Earth blocks the radiation, and that’s partly how I survive in Santa Fe. If you do not live in that kind of a house, there’s a big problem with smart meters.

[01:02:55] Ashley James: Yes.

[01:02:56] Arthur Firstenberg: That is increasingly everywhere, and they put a meter that emits radiation on the outside of your wall, and there’s basically nothing you can do about it. But a lot of places have an opt-out. If you opt-out and your neighbors got it, you can line your wall. You can actually paint that wall with paint that contains metallic fibers that are usually silver fibers that you can buy from places like Less EMF and paint the wall. It’ll block radiation from that side of the house. If your neighbor’s Wi-Fi is bothering you, again you can block that. You can even do it cheaply. You can put a sheet of aluminum foil over your wall and it’ll do the same thing. The thicker the sheet or the more layers, the better the blockage.

The problem comes if the shielding material, if it’s metallic, becomes too large then it starts acting like an antenna. And it actually draws in and amplifies electromagnetic radiation from your environment. Then it depends on the size of it and what its resonant frequency is. But basically, I tell people that they do not want to live in a house with a metal roof because a metal roof is a huge antenna. Unless you want to live in a Faraday cage in complete metal structure. Not terribly healthy.

A lot of people sleep on their sleeping canopies, which shield them from everything in their environment, and it’s not terribly healthy, but it does block the radiation. The reason it’s not terribly healthy is it distorts your own body’s electromagnetic field, it reflects it back at you, it blocks (to some degree) some of the earth’s natural frequencies, which you depend on for health but unblock all of them. It’s not a terribly healthy thing to do. But sometimes it’s a tradeoff. If you want to survive, sometimes you’ve got to do it.

[01:05:22] Ashley James: How effective is it to turn the circuits off in the house, or at least to your bedroom when you sleep?

[01:05:29] Arthur Firstenberg: Somewhat effective. The problem is when you turn off the circuit breaker, it only disconnects the hotwires and not the neutral wire. The neutral wire is at the same potential as the earth, supposedly, and it’s the return current to the power plant. So when you turn off the circuit breaker, it disconnects the hotwire, leaves the neutral wire connected, and when there’s dirty electricity in the power grid it still gets into your house. So it’s somewhat effective and not completely effective.

What I’ve done in my house is I’ve installed a three-pole switch on the outside of my house, which allows me to disconnect all three wires at the same time.

[01:06:16] Ashley James: Oh, yes. I had a Ph.D. electrician—a really interesting guy. His whole life work is about helping people to get clean electricity and minimize electricity in the house. People will call him up with weird symptoms. He comes into their house, he tests, and he either sees that their entire neighborhood is dirty electricity from the transformer, or they’re sometimes an entire town has dirty electricity and the whole town is experiencing weird symptoms.

[01:06:53] Arthur Firstenberg: I’ll tell you a secret. Every wire in the world now has dirty electricity because there are computers connected to them. There are billions of computers connected to the power grid.

[01:07:08] Ashley James: Fascinating.

[01:07:09] Arthur Firstenberg: And that did to use to be the case 30 years ago

[01:07:13] Ashley James: Yes. This man, Sal La Duca, when I interviewed him, he talked about how after he helped people stop having dirty electricity, all of a sudden everyone in the house could sleep. The insomnia the whole house had, even the baby had it. The father who is an MD didn’t believe any of this. Everyone had insomnia. All of a sudden, the insomnia went away overnight. And I’ve said this many times. I live in a rural area 45 minutes outside of Seattle, and when we have storms in the winter, our power will go out—sometimes for two weeks because of the wind storms. And it’s the best sleep I ever have when the power is out because there’s no Wi-Fi, no electricity.

[01:08:04] Arthur Firstenberg: It used to be that when I would tell people when you go home tonight, turn off your cell phone, take the battery out of it—which mostly is not possible, but it used to be. Either that or put it in a metal pot is just as good. Unplug your computer, unplug your modem, unplug your television, and see how you feel in the morning.

[01:08:34] Ashley James: And leave the electricity on in the house?

[01:08:37] Arthur Firstenberg: Yes. Turn off your cell phone and all the wireless. Unplug your TV, computer, and modem, and they suddenly can sleep and feel better in the morning. It used to be. Nowadays, when everybody’s got a smart meter on their house, it might not make so much difference.

[01:09:00] Ashley James: When I was pregnant with my first pregnancy, I had a blanket that had lead in it. It was quite heavy. It was a lead blanket. And I would wear it over my belly when I was at the computer. I experimented with my cell phone to see that my cell phone lost all signals when it was in this blanket. There are videos of people using these meters to show that the blanket really does block. I’m just wondering, should we be wearing these blankets when we’re sitting at work or wearing clothing that has this lead or some kind of copper or aluminum mesh?

[01:09:38] Arthur Firstenberg: Copper is the best shield.

[01:09:39] Ashley James: Copper is the best shield, okay. We should be wearing synthetic clothing?

[01:09:43] Arthur Firstenberg: Copper and silver are the best. Well, there are companies that sell clothing like that. To some extent they work. To some extent it depends. They don’t surround you completely. They’re not complete barriers. If you’re wearing a shielding hat, for example, and radiation bounces off the floor ad up into your hear onto the hat, it can get amplified from the inside. It’s a two-edged sword shielding.

[01:10:18] Ashley James: Oh my God. I never thought of that. You’re right. Oh my gosh. For those who have to use computers to work—I mean, now, think about the education of these children.

[01:10:32] Arthur Firstenberg: If you have to use a computer, turn off the Wi-Fi. Use it wired only.

[01:10:38] Ashley James: Hardwire your computer. That’s what we do at our house. We hardwire everything.

[01:10:42] Arthur Firstenberg: Hardwire everything. Hardwire your computer. Hardwire your phones—simple answer.

[01:10:46] Ashley James: Yeah, that’s right. You can get an adapter to plug into your phone to hardwire it. And then keep it on airplane mode if you need to.

[01:10:55] Arthur Firstenberg: I do not recommend using the cell phone even that way because it still got the resonant circuit in it.

[01:11:00] Ashley James: Okay. So get a landline.

[01:11:04] Arthur Firstenberg: Get a landline. Use it only hardwired, not cordless, and use a wired computer.

[01:11:10] Ashley James: Got it.

[01:11:11] Arthur Firstenberg: And disable the Wi-Fi on your computer. Disable the Wi-Fi in your modem or your router.

[01:11:18] Ashley James: What about earthing or grounding as a way of helping the body with exposure to electric pollution? Have you looked into earthing and grounding as a form of mitigation?

[01:11:35] Arthur Firstenberg: It’s very popular. It used to be very effective. Nowadays, when the earth is polluted with dirty electricity, most places on the earth, when you plug yourself into the earth, you actually can draw up the dirty electricity into your body. So it no longer is as effective as it used to be.

[01:11:56] Ashley James: What do you do on a daily basis to clean yourself of electric pollution or mitigate electric pollution?

[01:12:08] Arthur Firstenberg: I feel well in my house in Santa Fe. Mostly, there’s nothing that I have to do. If I am overcharged, I fill up a bathtub full of water and put some sea salt in it, and that will draw out the electricity from your body, or a handful of clay.

[01:12:30] Ashley James: I love it. As we wrap up our interview, I’d love to talk about how we can help your movement. I think we’re all on board. We all want a healthier planet. You have laid out very well that there is a definite problem that we have, and we are rapidly getting worse and worse. I mean, I don’t want to be doomsday about it, but if we just run with this technology, we’re just going to get to the point where we kill ourselves and the planet. There needs to be checks and balances. We need to slow down and really take the precaution seriously. What can we do to prevent 5G, for example? What can we do to tell these companies that we don’t want this electric pollution anymore?

[01:13:26] Arthur Firstenberg: I think the single most powerful thing that anybody can do is get rid of their cell phone. Stop being part of the demand for it. That’s the single most important thing to do. They can also monitor my websites, which are cell phonetaskforce.org. I send out newsletters, and there are posted on the website—a number of languages. And my other website is 5gspaceappeal.org. That’s the international appeal to stop 5G on earth and in space. It’s got about 300,000 signatures to date. And they can make donations on either of those websites to support my work and to support legal action that we’re taking. We have a case before the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals right now to declare laws that facilitate 5G unconstitutional.

[01:14:42] Ashley James: Yes. Arthur, that’s wonderful. I’m going to make sure the links to everything that Arthur Firstenberg does is in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. And the link to your book, which I want everyone to read. It’s a fascinating book. I really can’t put it down. I’m very excited to finish it. I’m in the middle of it.

 [01:15:08] Arthur Firstenberg: Our third website, which is not so popular yet, is echoearth.org, and it stands for End Cellphones Here on Earth.

[01:15:20] Ashley James: Okay, echoearth.org. I’m going to make sure that that and all the other links are on the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehalth.com, and a link to your book, The Invisible Rainbow, which is fantastic. I think everyone should read it. Arthur, is there anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?

[01:15:39] Arthur Firstenberg: We live in dangerous times. Our earth is under threat from many directions. Electromagnetic radiation is just one of them. We have the burning of fossil fuels, which has got to stop. We have deforestation. We have pesticides. We have a lot of threats, and to me, the single most urgent one—and the one that I have become an expert in—is the electromagnetic radiation. It’s more urgent because it’s escalating faster than the other, and society is in total denial that it even exists. This is what I’m working on.

[01:16:34] Ashley James: Arthur, thank you so much for your work. I really appreciate you coming on the show today and sharing this information. I can’t wait to see The Invisible Rainbow as a documentary. It’s going to be such a great movie. Please, feel free to come back to the show anytime you have more to share. We’d love to have you back.

[01:16:51] Arthur Firstenberg: Thank you, Ashley.

Get Connected With Arthur Firstenberg!

Website

Echo Earth.Org

International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space Website

Book by Arthur Firstenberg

The Invisible Rainbow

Recommended Reading by Arthur Firstenberg

The Body Electric by Robert O. Becker

Check out IIN and get a free module: LearnTrueHealth.com/coach

http://jennyfenig.com

How To Co-Create With The Cosmos And Re-Align Self With Nature

https://www.learntruehealth.com/how-to-co-create-with-the-cosmos-and-re-align-self-with-nature

Highlights:

• Lunar cycle in a nutshell
• Yoga’s purpose is to achieve mastery over the mind
• Ayurveda body types: vata, pitta, kapha
• Eliminate toxic elements
• Importance of breathing

How does the moon affect our lives? In this episode, Jenny Fenig explains the lunar cycle and how we can incorporate it into our lives. Jenny shares how we can manage our time better daily. She also explains the importance of breathing, grounding, and listening to the body.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. Today we have entrepreneur, coach, and homeschooling mom, Jenny Fenig. What I love about her message is she is a very successful, busy entrepreneur, busy mom, busy homeschooling mom, and also a fantastic coach. She figured out how to pack in all these activities while working from home, while taking care of her kids in homeschooling. She figured out how to do it, and she loves teaching others how to make this transition. I thought it’d be great to get some wonderful guidance from her.

As you’re listening to Jenny, if you think to yourself, I would love to be a coach. I would love to help others mentally, emotionally, and physically become healthier, become more fulfilled in their lives, and be able to gain more joy. I’d love to work with clients to help them achieve their life and health goals; then I highly recommend checking out IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I took IIN’s program. It’s a year-long health coach training program. It’s 100% done online. They also have an accelerated 6-month program for those that want to be full-time students.

The year-long program is designed for busy people, and you can fit it in about 20 minutes a day. I’d like to do it in the evenings or sometimes I’d listen and do the coursework while I was driving, exercising, folding laundry, or cooking dinner, but I was able to get it in with my busy schedule. It’s absolutely fantastic. IIN’s program is life-changing. About half the students that do it do it for personal growth, which is pretty phenomenal. You could do it for your own personal growth, but of course, I did it because I also wanted to help my clients. I want to gain new tools to help them as a health coach, and they even train you on how to start your own business and become a successful health coach, which is really exciting. So not only do they teach you how to help your clients with mental, emotional, and physical health; gaining life goals; and increasing joy and fulfillment in every aspect of their lives. You’re also taught how to find clients that would resonate with your coaching style, and that clients you would just feel incredibly fulfilled and happy to work with. It’s a wonderful program. 

I partnered up with IIN and they give a huge discount to the listeners of the Learn True Health podcast. So you can just google IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and when you give them a call, most of their staff have actually gone through the program and become integrative health coaches. What you can do is you can talk to them. They’ll help you work out your goals in terms of becoming a health coach and joining their program and then when you mention my name, Ashley James with the Learn True Health podcast, you will be given a huge discount. A few times a year, they do have some great specials as well, so always be on the lookout for that.

If you’d like to try their program for free, there’s a module that they give you for free. Go to learntruehealth.com/coach. That’s learntruehealth.com/coach. Sign up, put your name and email, and then you’ll be given a module for free. You can just put your toe in the water, try it out, and see if it’s something that resonates with you. See if it’s something that’s right for you. It was absolutely incredible when I did it. I highly recommend it. There have been over 100 of the listeners that I know of that have reached out to me that have told me that they’ve been through the program. A lot of them, because they heard about it through me through the podcast, so I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me and share that they’ve absolutely loved their experience with IIN. It’s a wonderful stepping stone because you can go and specialize in other things. You can specialize in gut health or mental health. There are just so many ways so that you can specialize as a health coach, which is really exciting.

You become a health coach, but there are so many tools that they teach you around life coaching because health encompasses every aspect of our life. IIN is not about counting calories or teaching you how many grams of protein are in something. That’s not what IIN is about. It’s about giving you the real tools to help make huge differences in people’s lives, in working with clients to help them become more fulfilled in every aspect of their life. Check it out. Go to learntruehealth.com/coach. Get your free module. And when you call IIN, make sure you mention my name Ashley James and Learn True Health podcast so you can get access to the great special that they give all the listeners.

Thank you so much for being a listener of the Learn True Health podcast. Please come join our Facebook group. It’s a wonderfully supportive community for holistic-minded people. Just search Learn True Health on Facebook. Thank you for sharing these episodes with those you care about so we can help everyone to Learn True Health.

[00:05:26] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 444. I’m so excited for today’s guest. We have Jenny Fenig. Her website is jennyfenig.com. All the links that Jenny has are going to be the show notes with today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Jenny’s going to teach us today how to co-create with the cosmos and align ourselves with the energy of nature to help us achieve what we want to achieve in life. Also, there’s a bit of—from what I understand—tapping into your human potential, tapping into your life purpose. It’s going to be a really fun and light-hearted episode. I’m looking forward to it. Welcome to the show.

[00:06:15] Jenny Fenig: Thanks so much. I’m excited to be here, Ashley.

[00:06:18] Ashley James: Yeah, absolutely. What led you down the path to becoming an expert at co-creating with the cosmos?

[00:06:26] Jenny Fenig: Well, that’s a good question. I think the larger conversation is looking at how I’ve experienced so much loss in my life and so much death. We’re just going to go there. I mean life is death is life is death is life. We go through so many deaths in a lifetime. Death of an identity, a particular career path, a place that you used to live that isn’t working for you anymore, or what have you. For me, when I was 16 years old, I experienced the death of a significant person in my life. That person was my sister Julie—still is my sister Julie. Energy is energy. I absolutely have a strong connection with her still to this day. It’s been over 25 years since she died. But that experience of wow, life is so mysterious and it’s not “fair.” It’s not what you thought it was going to be, yet it all is lining up for your biggest opportunities to grow, to learn, to be who you came here to be, and do what you came here to do.

With that death of my sister when she was 12 and I was 16—she died of cancer—I just skyrocketed into this experience of grief, loss, and what just happened? This isn’t supposed to happen. This goes against the natural order. And then six months later, my best friend’s brother died. That was just another example of what? These things aren’t supposed to be happening. At that point, we were seniors in high school. You’ve been looking forward to this moment your whole life. I grew up in the south in Georgia and Florida. At that point, I was living in Florida. This friend and I had just gotten onto homecoming court, which is this dream that we had. It felt like such a big deal.

My sister had died earlier that year and then her brother dies that fall, and it was just this bizarre experience of this feeling that I hadn’t ever felt before ever, and then no one can prepare you for it. It allowed me to go really deep into my own process, my own faith, and my own questioning of all of it, really all of it. My sister was quite connected to God, and that was not anything that I really knew much about, to be honest with you. That was her thing. It was my dad’s thing, but it just was something I witnessed from afar like what’s that all about? I don’t really understand what you all are talking about. And then once my sister died and I had this huge pain and then my best friend’s brother died, you go deeper into this hole. That’s what it felt like just sitting with this and trying to understand something that can’t really be understood in a logical rational way.

As I journey forward going on to college and just doing my best to keep showing up—keep showing up for the work, keep showing up for my talent, keep showing up for my ambition—I kept being led to the places I was supposed to be, the people I was supposed to meet, the experiences I was supposed to have so that I could do what I’m here to do. What was fascinating was early on in my sophomore year—that best friend whose brother had died our senior year of high school—that best friend died. 

I basically had three deaths in three years from the time I was 16 to 19. I wouldn’t wish that on people. It’s very, very challenging as you can imagine, but it cracked me wide open and it allowed me to really come to this place of I am still here because my work is not done. I am going to really feel the energy of these people who meant so much to me. I know that they’re guiding me on because this work that I’m here to do, you’re here to do, and we’re all here to do, it requires all of us. It requires all of us to be awake. It requires all of us to be courageous. It requires all of us to approach each day like it is a gift because it is, and to go after the things that you’re most meant to do.

Once I moved on into my career, I moved to New York City after I graduated from the University of Florida. I found my way into the career of public relations. I thought I had struck gold. This was a thing I was here to do. I’m working at this major agency, on these big clients, and eventually traveling globally on these big projects. Although it was exciting and I felt like I was at a good place and working on interesting projects and with interesting people, I had this feeling inside, which was really me connecting with that small still voice within to come face to face with the truth. The truth was this isn’t what I was supposed to be doing.

It was such a tough pill to swallow because it looked good on paper. It looked really good on paper. You try to ignore it. You try to just push it away, push it down, and question yourself. I thought there was something wrong with me. I wondered why I couldn’t be satisfied or I couldn’t be happy when other people might think this was fine or awesome. But that small still voice within just kept nudging me along, nudging me along to say, Jenny, this isn’t it. You got to keep going. You got to keep looking. And most importantly, you’ve got to take care of yourself. 

That environment that I was in, I graduated from college in 1999. You can go back to that point in time. The internet was very new, so there were no social media. That wasn’t taking our time, but when you worked on these big projects, I had to be at work a lot and I worked a lot. I was under a tremendous amount of pressure and stress. It’s not something that I found to be healthy, sustainable, or desirable.

A big breakthrough for me was that I realized I had to start taking better care of myself. I really needed to learn how to mother myself, nurture myself, take a pause, take time, and not feel like I was racing all the time. You asked the question of how did I really find this work. I found the work by diving headfirst into the work that I felt I was here for and was talented at but then realizing that it didn’t quite hit the mark. 

The way that I had to like deconstruct it and figure out what was a better path for me was to choose health, to choose vitality, and to choose to trust that small still voice within, which has continuously guided me on. It guided me to eventually quit that job, move into a different job, which is a thing I didn’t even know was a thing until I found it. I moved out of public relations and into conference producing, which again it just kind of fell in my lap when I was in sheer desperation to get me out of here, I can’t do this anymore. 

That opened me up to interesting thinkers, thinking like an entrepreneur, acting like an entrepreneur, putting on these big events, solving problems in the market, and just understanding that I really can do anything that I want to do. I just have to decide what that is. I believe that’s true for your listeners as well. We are in a choice. We can come into this place of I have these distinct skills. I have these gifts. I have these talents. When we can really blend everything up and understand what problems we solve in the market and then communicate with an audience that is excited for us to help them solve that problem, then amazing things happen.

A big pathway for me—I know your show is really a lot about health, vitality, and all the different ways—was I dove headfirst into yoga those first few years in New York. Once I could afford to belong to a gym, I started taking yoga classes. I took my first one in college. I thought it was the weirdest thing ever, and I wasn’t ready for it. But then once I was ready for it, in those New York City days, I realized it was a source of comfort and a source of peace. It made my body feel so good. I allowed myself to just feel that and to come to this place of oh my goodness. When you’re in a yoga class, you’re not competing at all. I thought so much of my life I had been competing. That was the game, you competed. When you’re in yoga, it’s not about competition. It’s really about being present with yourself, what’s going on that particular day, and honoring that.

By following that path to yoga, eventually, I got this download to train to become a yoga teacher. I didn’t know where that was going to take me, but I trusted it. Again, that small still voice within, I trusted it. I said, okay, let’s see. Let’s see what happens when I commit myself to 200 hours of training on anatomy, on yoga philosophy, on the different asanas on meditation on just that whole realm. Once I did that, the next level of my career opened up, and I discovered the field of coaching. That has just taken me on this incredible path, this incredible journey. I realized that serving women was my passion. 

As I got deeper into my study and work with women, I remembered how connected we are to the moon and the way our bodies are designed. They’re so intelligently designed. The way the lunar cycle is designed, the way nature is designed, there’s such intelligence and such wisdom in that. When we can tap into that wisdom, we come into that place of alignment. That is something I practice. That is something I teach. And that is something I want to remind everyone of. It’s very much been taken away. We live in such a society with technology and go, go, go, you’re falling behind, and all of it. Nature’s never behind, you know what I’m saying? It’s not behind. When I look outside, my trees aren’t like oh my gosh, I don’t have enough leaves yet. Or this tree is bigger than me and I must be less than. Nature is just so sure of who it is, and it’s always right on time. I find there’s such wisdom in that. It’s something I love talking about.

[00:18:27] Ashley James: Can you take us back to the moment when you realize that there was an energy of the moon to tap into? And explain how you figured it out and how it helped you.

[00:18:41] Jenny Fenig: Well, it’s interesting because my mom, growing up, would often say to me, look up at the moon. Since the time I was in college, I have lived away from where she was living and then beyond. She often would plant that seed with me and sometimes I thought she was a little wacky for going all right. But that has stuck with me. What’s so fascinating, no matter where you are located on this planet, every single one of us is looking at the same moon. It’s not different in the Philippines, in the United States, in Canada, in Spain, and in Antarctica. It’s the same moon. It’s the exact same moon. I just think that’s so cool. We live on such a giant planet, we’re all looking up at that same ball of light.

When it really became clearer for me was when I just started reading various books about women, history, energy, and our creative process. Women are natural creators or creatrixes. A creatrix is the female term of a creator. We just naturally do it. We naturally create. Some of us are called for motherhood where we create a child inside, or we adopt a child. However that comes to be, or somehow a child comes into our life. I think I got deeper into it when I became a mother. My oldest child is 11 years old now, my youngest is 6. I also have a 9-year-old. When I became pregnant for that first time, which was so interesting because for a lot of years I didn’t want to become pregnant. That wasn’t something I was ready for. And then once I became ready for that and wanting that, I saw my body in a whole new way.

As women cycle, a lot of us have had a menstrual cycle. We know what that is. Menstrual cycles are the same as the lunar cycle. It’s around 29 and ½ days. Think about that. Those are the things I wish I would have been taught in school. When I was growing up, it was very much like when you’re on your period, that’s dirty. That’s dirty. It’s something you want to hide. Maybe you were made fun of, especially if the boys knew you’re on your period somehow in school because you took your purse to the bathroom. It was something that almost felt shameful. There wasn’t a real big rite of passage around it when I was growing up.

I will tell you, when my daughter moves into that phase of her life, I will do it differently with her. I will give her something that I didn’t have that I’ve had to learn for myself. When you really tune into the fact that we cycle, our body cycles the same as the moon, that’s something to take note of. With the moon—what I’ve come to learn through practice, study, and just applying this in my own personal life, in my business, and helping my clients do this—is that if you really want to understand how to work with the energy of the moon. When you are menstruating, there is energy. You might have read the book The Red Tent. I read that many, many years ago. It’s a fantastic book. It’s really that energy of being still, resting, renewing, and not go go go. You’re just receiving it. Your body is doing the work, your body’s cleansing, and that’s the energy of the new moon. That’s the energy of that new moon.

If you were to start tracking the lunar cycle—and most calendars have this represented on the calendar. If you have a wall calendar, if you have a printed calendar. I still use those. I mean, I have a business. We have a lot of digital things going on, but I have a printed calendar that I keep on my desk and often in my purse. I’m not going as many places these days as I once did pre-COVID, but I’ve got my printed calendar, and I’ve got my calendar in my kitchen that I keep up on the wall. The moon phases are represented there. Take note of those. Some people have no idea where the moon is right now in terms of the phase of the cycle, and I suggest that you start paying attention—if you haven’t already—and just tracking your own energy around what’s going on in the moon.

Sometimes, as women, our bodies might be in that same phase. If you’re still in your bleeding years, you might bleed at the same time as the new moon. If so, the energy is really synced up. If not, there’s still a lot that you can glean from the moon. And you really want to understand what’s happening out there so you can better take care of yourself. That’s the whole thing. Isn’t that what true health is all about is you know how to take care of yourself, and you know how to have others help take care of you if you have other people in your life—really helping to nourish you and support you?

So that new moon is all about rest, renewal, and ultra-vision. And then about a week later, we move into the first quarter moon. That’s when you look up in the sky, and just last night it was the first quarter moon. I looked up and it was just like magic. It was so captivating, and it looks like a half-moon where that right side is glowing. And you don’t see the light on the left side. It’s just that right side of the moon. That is the energy of growth, action, and commitment. What you can do at the new moon, as well as resting and renewing, is that you get the vision for what you want to focus on in this upcoming cycle.

With moons, there are 13 moons in a year. There are 12 months in a year, but there are 13 moons in a year. You have an opportunity 13 times in a year to really set your intention, and it doesn’t always happen at the first of the month. That’s not how it works. It happens when it happens based on that lunar cycle, and the lunar cycle is set. You could go look ahead a few years and you’ll go see the lunar cycle like when the new moon of 2025 will be. Scientists have this down. It’s really extraordinary what can be tracked and looked at as you move forward.

What I like to do at each new moon is set my intention. What is my intention? What do I want my energy and my focus to go to for this lunar cycle so that as I take my steps forward? As I put my energy out there, my actions out there, and my words out there, I can see the seeds that I’m planting blossom. 

I’m setting my intention. I’m establishing some goals to support that intention at the new moon, so when I get to that first-quarter moon I’m really quickening my steps. I’m like okay, let’s go. Have I sent out that email? Have I talked to that person? Have I gone to get that thing? Have I planted my seeds, and if not, what seeds do I really want to be planting now or in the next few days? Because then, about a week later, we’re going to get to that full moon. And that’s when you look up in the sky. Everybody knows what a full moon looks like.

There tends to be a pretty powerful energy at the full moon. There’s just such powerful sensations that are happening right there, and we’re all feeling it. We’re all feeling it. There’s a lot of data to support that hospitals and emergency rooms in particular have a lot more action around the full moon. There’s just this heightened intensity that’s going on. And when we can understand that, we don’t have to be blindsided by it and going like why do I feel all this? You understand. You understand it intuitively, and you can really make space for it. 

What I know at full moon is that’s when I’m in my fullest power. That’s when I’m going for it. As women, that’s when we would be ovulating. That’s when we could conceive a child. You think about that, and there are only a few days in a woman’s cycle that that could happen okay. When you then understand your own energy at that point, the energy of the full moon at that point, you can harness some things. 

In my business, I might have some big activity going on at the full moon where I am putting something out there. I have hosted lots of retreats all around the world and tied that into the full moon. Where I will look ahead and go, all right, I’m going to have this event in November. I’d like to bring the women together around the full moon. When’s that full moon going to be? Okay, it’s this point. Let me check with my retreat center and see if they have space available at that time. You see, that’s how you can really line it up. Some people might decide that they’re going to have some special thing there, they’re going to put this thing out there, they’re going to whatever. You just know. That is maybe you want to go camping, like there’s just something that you want to do around the full moon.

And I do a lot of this with my kids, especially my daughter. She’s super into it. We really talk about the moon together. If I take my dog for a walk around the property at night, I’m always looking for the moon. What’s interesting is you don’t know where she’s going to be. The moon is a feminine energy, p.s. So you don’t know where the moon is going to be. I can’t always look up over this particular tree and see her. It’s not how she works. She’s very mysterious, and I love that. I just love that energy. I love that idea that she’s always there, I just don’t know where she is all the time. I know what’s up. I know if she’s at this phase or that phase, but I can’t always find her in the sky. It’s just an interesting thing to play with, and it also helps you deepen into your faith. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Get it? And that we have to trust. We have to trust. And we have to trust planting these seeds. I’ll give you an example and I’ll tell you about the last phase of the moon.

A few months back, as we were really in the throes of COVID here in Massachusetts. I know that you have listeners all over. Everyone is being impacted in different places, and it’s just horrible. It’s this horrible thing. A few months back, we really weren’t leaving our house. Except I was able to go to the garden store and be outside, and I eventually got these seeds—these sunflower seeds. Now I have never planted seeds. I just recently have gotten into gardening. A few years back, I kind of just all right. Let me try this, let me try that. But I’d always buy plants that were already formed. They were in the pots, and I could transfer them into my land into the earth.

Well, I decided to just see what happens when I would plant seeds, and sunflower seeds in particular, which is really interesting because that was my favorite flower in high school. I campaigned for it to become our senior class flower, and it did, which is very exciting because we had had the rose for 20 years straight. My whole thing was okay, rose is a great flower, but can we just have a different flower? Let’s be creative. So we got the sunflower. 

I decided to get these seeds, and I put them on the earth. I remember thinking to myself is this going to work? These things are really small. Is this really going to work? I’m going to follow the directions. I’m going to space them the number of inches they’re supposed to be spaced apart. I’ll water them. Okay. But I had that doubt in my head like really, could something as big as sunflowers grow out of these little things?

Oh my gosh, Ashley, if you could look outside my window right now, these things are so huge. These stalks are taller than me, and I’ve been checking on them. There’s one in particular that I can see the yellow starting to peek through. I’m like oh my goodness, I think this week the flowers are going to come out. Because at this point, it’s been the giant stalks. Then I still know, within the stalks, the flowers in there. It’s just not ready. It’s not ripe yet. It’s not time yet, but can I still believe? Can I still believe? For everyone, can you still believe? Even if you can’t see it, you have to believe it to see it. Some people have it backward like I’ll see it when I believe it, or I believe it when I see it. Okay, I’ll believe it when I see it. No, you will see it when you believe it.

That’s really how I feel what the moon allows us to do. She’s so consistent. As I’ve used her energy and really worked with her energy and co-created it, I’ve been able to come into deeper communion with my own body, with my own wellness, with my own groundedness and connection to the earth, and to my place on this earth. Then I’ve helped my people really tap into this wisdom as well. 

So the last phase of the cycle is called the last quarter moon, and that is when you look up and you see the light on the left side. So you don’t see the light on the right side, and that’s how you can always know. When you look up, if it’s on the right side, the moon is waxing. It’s getting bigger in the sky. And if the light is on the left side, it’s called waning. The energy is waning and it’s getting smaller. Eventually going back to that new moon and then starting the cycle again.

So with the last quarter moon, that is the energy of letting go. Letting go to rise higher. That is when you have seen what has started growing. What has become real? You’ve put in the effort, you’ve put in actions, you set that intention back at the new moon, you set those goals, and you work towards them. And some of them were meant to happen the way that you hoped they would or the way that you semi-envisioned that they would. Others you realize you know what, that wasn’t aligned, maybe not yet, maybe I need to simply be more patient, or maybe I need to let that go because this other thing is freaking growing and it looks really exciting. I want to align my energy with that. I know that I can’t do all the things all the time, so I’m going to double down on that, and I’m going to let go of these other things that can’t come with me into the next cycle.

That is the lunar cycle in a nutshell. I’m actually looking up at this gorgeous lunar calendar. In addition to the ones that I mentioned that come printed in a lot of these calendars you might buy, I had my designer on my team—we collaborated on this really cool one sheet and it just says Lunar Calendar 2020. What was so interesting is that I had her put all the names of the months at the top of the paper, so going across horizontally, and then the numbers go down vertically. 

January there’s 1 to 31, February 1 to 29, and they’re just these long rows of numbers going down the page. And then she would go in and plot out each phase of the cycle and go across the page. What is the full moon in January, February, December? And it looks like—if you ever had or ever saw those really cool beads that you could hang in a doorway, they’re kind of like circa the 1970s, but they’re cool. You could hang these beads in a doorway and then open the beads and move into another room. They kind of look like those beads. They’re so pretty when you look at it. To me, it’s just exquisite art the way that nature was designed. And the more that we understand that, the more that we understand ourselves.

[00:34:57] Ashley James: Beautiful. It’s amazing how there’s so much in nature that really affects us, and we often just don’t think about it. I mean the moon is powerful. If you think about it, the moon is strong enough to change the tides and pull the water, the ocean in one direction and then in another and create the tide. We’re made of water. Why wouldn’t the moon have some kind of pull if it can pull the water in the ocean? Why wouldn’t it have some kind of effect on us? I mean, it’s not a huge effect, but it can be felt, and we can see it. You can see it when we go to the ocean, and we see the tide come in and out. What other instances in nature do you keep your awareness of and tap into?

[00:35:51] Jenny Fenig: Well, I look at where I am each season. Really honoring seasonal shifts and planning around that. I didn’t realize how important honestly nature was to me until I did. I grew up in the south, as I mentioned. When I lived in Florida, I lived near the beach, and that was really nice having that ocean near me—speaking of tides and oceans. And then once I lived in New York, you’re in a concrete jungle. We had Central Park. We had some trees there, but typically you had a tree carved out in a little plot on the sidewalk and cement. I did have the Hudson River, thank goodness. I lived on West End Avenue, which was overlooking the Hudson River. Oh, that brought me such a sense of calm.

But once I moved to the country 10 years ago. I left New York City. I now live in the country, Western Massachusetts. I felt like I could exhale. It was something I really needed but didn’t know that I needed it. New York was so wonderful for my career. I met my husband there. I had my first child there. I got pregnant with my second child when we lived there, but it didn’t provide me with enough nature. Now I have it. I look around these windows and the office that I’m speaking to you from and all I see are trees. That’s it. I see the trees. I live in a forest. I consider the trees my friends, which may sound funny but it’s true, and I take such cues from these trees. We have nature here, and we have four seasons here. Not every place has four seasons, but we have that here.

I’ve learned to really be seasonal in my approach. My energy in the summer is different than my energy in the fall is different than my energy in winter is different than my energy in spring. And I encourage you all to really tap into that for yourselves as well. How are you in summer versus winter? And what changes do you need to make or modifications do you need to make so that your body stays in a natural state? I enjoy being warm. Cold is hard for me so winter here is hard. It’s really, really challenging. And I learned to layer. I learned that clothing really matters. Wool matters. I wear lots of layers of wool pretty much since it gets cold until it’s not cold anymore, I have a layer of wool on my skin. And that makes a massive, massive difference. What I’m eating during wintertime, in particular, are warm foods because my body is cold. And my body gets anxious when I’m cold.

There’s something that I studied, which is pretty cool. It’s an ancient science and an ancient practice really. I went to India a few years ago, and I went through my yoga teacher training back in 2007. When I did that and I was reading all these books around yoga philosophy and really understanding the mind. The purpose of yoga is to achieve mastery over the mind. It’s not to contort yourself into these shapes, although the shapes help you achieve the mastery of the mind. So when I went through all that, I just had this pact I made with myself that I would go to India. I didn’t know when I would go to India or how that trip would come into being. It was like a seed. I planted the seed, and about 10 years later, the wish came true. The opportunity presented itself, and I walked through the door and I said I’m going to go on that trip.

I had the opportunity to study something called Ayurveda. There are ayurvedic doctors. This is a form of medicine, and it’s a very natural form of medicine with the usage of herbs, being intelligent about what you eat, and understanding your body constitution. In Ayurveda, there are three body types: vata, pitta, and kapha. You can just dig into this if anyone’s interested. You can look around and see what you find here. There are these assessments you can take. You can answer questions and get a better read on what your constitution is. We all are a mix of all three, but you’ll have one that’s dominant and one that’s a clear secondary. 

For me, I’m vata pitta. Vata is very airy. We are predisposed to being cold. My husband’s pitta so he’s predisposed to being hot. So you can imagine that we battle over the thermostat. He wants it to be on the colder side and I’m making it warmer. If you know that your body is predisposed to certain things, then you need to be prepared. 

If my body gets too cold and I’m not prepared through the foods that I’m eating, through being mindful of me waking up first thing, I shouldn’t drink an ice-cold glass of water ever first thing. It’s going to throw me out of alignment. I’m going to just head into a place I don’t need to be, which is anxiety which is just too cold. I start just getting too amped up, and I’m not grounded. I’m kind of floating, and not in a way that’s super peaceful blissful. I’m just too out there. And I need to come back to this place of groundedness. So for me, understanding this, me going to India, studying with an ayurvedic teacher, working with ayurvedic doctors there, and staying at this really amazing Ayurveda retreat center in a town called Gokarna, which is just out of this world. I’ll never forget it. It was one of those incredible experiences. I understand now what I need to do.

So when I wake up, my go-to ritual is I fill my kettle with water, turn on the stove, and then I pour myself two cups. One, warm water. It’s hot water when it goes into the cup. I wait so it cools off a little bit and I put lemon in there. And then I have my second cup and I fill that with my favorite jasmine green tea. And then of course with my lemon. One of my clients makes this really cool chai concoction. She’s just this herbalist and she gives me these batches of what she makes. So I stir a little bit of that in there and it just is this magical blend, and it gets me going on the right foot. My body starts really waking up. I’m moving. Things are really good, and I feel connected. I feel grounded because I haven’t gone to that ice-cold thing.

You all can study that. You can really look at how your body is designed. Our body wants to feel good. We want to feel healthy, but things are set up right now that you forget all that. And if you’re on your computer all day, your cortisol levels get jacked up. You’re looking at this screen, your eyes are getting fatigued, and you’re out of touch with nature because you’re just looking at these machines. 

I’m grateful for all my technology, but I’m not living my life in technology because that’s not where I want to live my life. I want to live my life out there, and then I come to tech to connect with people. Like connecting with you today, Ashley, knowing this podcast is going to go out and serve people. I will connect on social media with my people, but I’m doing that from a place of wellness. I’m doing that from a place of understanding how I need to take care of myself every day with the moves I need to make with what I’m drinking, what I’m eating, and then how I move through nature.

You all can really look around and check on your own energy levels that each season you might decide that in the wintertime, in particular, you want to bring more fire into your life to warm you up. Maybe in the fall, you’re looking around—where I live, the leaves change colors. You might tap in at that point, what kind of transformation are you undergoing at that point? What are you shedding? What leaves are dropping for you? 

And can you come into that place of faith knowing that winter is coming, but you’re strong enough to handle winter? Not just handle it, but really enjoy it. What do you need to do to prepare for each season? And then can you take a page from the playbook of trees, if you will, and say yeah, I know. And then my leaves are going to grow again. And then they’ll be green again. And then eventually they’ll fall again. The leaves will drop or they’ll change colors. I just think it’s so interesting. The whole thing is so interesting.

This pandemic has given me an opportunity, as I mentioned, I never thought I’d be a gardener ever. You have no idea. Before this interview, Ashley, I went to my local hardware store and made the first-ever purchase. Do you want to know what I bought?

[00:45:08] Ashley James: What’d you buy?

[00:45:09] Jenny Fenig: A chainsaw.

[00:45:13] Ashley James: Electric or gas?

[00:45:17] Jenny Fenig: I went with the gas. I have an electric lawnmower, weed whacker, leaf blower, but they explained to me that I really need the gas to do the work that needs to be done. I think it looks like we’re going to be cutting our own firewood. I never thought ever. But as I was building out this one particular place of my land with this garden, the tools that I had weren’t adequate enough to get through this particular—it’s like this vine thing. We have these vines on the property that kind of wrap around trees and hurt the trees. There’s this one spot, this has to go and my tools aren’t enough. They’re not adequate. Sure, I could go hire someone to do it, but it’s really cool.

You come into your power, I do anyway. When I say I can do that. I can do that. I felt a sense of pride. There are all guys helping me in that section of the store, but I’m like yep, first-ever chainsaw purchase. They were so excited for me, and I’m so excited for myself to come in and say we can do that. We can do that. When the temperature, when the weather is nice to be able to do this, I feel like such a responsibility to the land, and something I want to teach my kids how to take care of that. How to take care of things. How to really work with this land. 

Even before the pandemic, we were homeschooling, and we’ll continue on that path. This is something I want us all to learn together, how do we do this? Once you know how to do a lot of these things, I know for me, I feel proud. I feel like, hey, I could get some help with this, and there’s nothing wrong with getting help. But gosh, what a wonderful feeling to know the things that you can do.

[00:47:05] Ashley James: Brilliant. Now one of your claims to fame is your ability to homeschool, manage your business, manage your household, and just be so busy juggling everything. Many people are overwhelmed right now. It’s a new experience for them homeschooling in the light of the COVID lockdown. Many parents have chosen not to send their kids back to school because of the restrictions and requirements. But instead of choosing to homeschool, many people work from home now like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. They’re keeping a lot of their staff at home. So it’s a new dynamic for many Americans, Canadians, and people around the world. 

A new dynamic where many families are working from home and homeschooling at the same time. And they’re not used to juggling all these things, or they’re planning on it because it’s still the summertime. They’re planning on it. And even for those who are going back to school, many districts are only doing two days a week. So for public school, they’re still going to be home for three school days. And if parents are home with them, potentially working from home, then it’s just a whole new dynamic. Can you walk us through and teach us how we can be more effective at getting all this done? I think you talk about how you can get more done by doing less. What are some ways that you can really prepare the listeners who are stepping into a whole new routine, a whole new reality?

[00:49:04] Jenny Fenig: Yeah. I really like talking about this. Thank you. Well what we talked about obviously understanding the moon in particular and just what’s happening out in nature, that’s tremendously helpful. That just becomes your way of living. The more that you practice that, the more you’ll understand. You’ll understand, and it makes your life so much simpler. It really, really does. All right. So there’s that.

The other things that I practice are what I call time chunking and task batching. So you become so intelligent and efficient with your moves and your time. I’ve always been pretty strong with time. It was interesting. Even in those first New York City jobs I had, I was like 22. My managers must have seen my ability to do this because myself and this other colleague of mine, she was also about 22, 23, I’d say. We were tapped to lead a time management training for the entire organization. I looked back at that, we were young, but we had something going on. 

I think some of that is probably connected to the deaths that I experienced at such a young age because I knew right away—time is not guaranteed. It’s not. It’s not. Every day is an absolute gift, so don’t squander it. Don’t squander it. This is going to require you to be super disciplined to have very strong boundaries to know how to say no, not now, or let’s look to do that in a different way. You really want to understand, if someone’s asking you to do something, what that looks like. Because I think too many people just give their time away, and it’s often because they’re afraid of being perceived as mean or rude if they say no, ask for things to be a bit different, can we do it next week, or whatever. I think some people really like that word busy. I actually don’t consider myself busy. I don’t use that word. I don’t believe that is something that we have to subscribe to. I think being busy makes a lot of people sick, really.

[00:51:18] Ashley James: Well, absolutely. If we’re just talking about the stress response, the idea of busy is creating the autonomic nervous system fight or flight. Being in the sympathetic nervous system response of fight or flight, which turns off the healing mode in the body. If the story you tell yourself is I’m busy, I’m busy, I’m busy, then you’re triggering fight or flight. And that is a very unhealthy state to be in chronically.

[00:51:47] Jenny Fenig: Chronically, absolutely. I think it’s so interesting, especially for people who are trying to figure out if they’re in a reinvention right now. Which I know many people are that COVID has given people the opportunity to go is this what I really want? When my regular life is stripped away, all the things that I typically did, is my work—is this good? Is this what I want? Is this framework for this working? What’s interesting is you can look back at your life and go wait, I’ve always been fascinated by this particular thing. What was that through line? What’s the through-line?

So for me, I was always stressed growing up. I remember feeling this immense pressure. In college, I took a stress management class. A whole semester, I took a stress management class because I wanted to understand. I mean, no one had taught me that in high school. There was no class that was like okay kids, let’s help you all be less stressed. It was like be stressed. Join the club, everyone’s stressed. No. So I took a class in college. I wanted to understand what stress really is and how to work with it. It’s the number one cause of death. I mean, it really is. It leads to so many issues. We don’t have to subscribe to it. It’s not just something that is a given because we’re human. We can reclaim being versus doing, and then when we do things, that those can be intelligent actions.

What you can look at is how you can organize your day, your week, again, working with the lunar cycle if you’re going to play with that, so that you’re getting the maximum results from your efforts. And that you don’t do it maybe in the way that you used to do it. So I had to really retrain myself when I left my last corporate job. Once I set out on my own and became an entrepreneur without even knowing that that was what I was going to do when I quit that last job, I applied for other jobs and nothing was exciting. I was like I don’t want to do any of these things. Oh no. 

And then I just discovered coaching and just kept okay, I’m going to stay on this path. And then before I knew it, I had a business, and here we are all these years later. I had to train myself to do it differently. It was not required. There was no rule that said I had to sit at a desk Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM or beyond. There was no rule that said that, but at first, I thought I would be in trouble. I mean it sounds silly to say it, but I really was like who’s going to come? Who’s going to knock on my door to see that I’m not here. That I’m at a yoga class at 11:00 AM on a Wednesday. 

You know what was so interesting, there were other people at the yoga class at 11:00 AM on a Wednesday. And I’m going, oh my gosh. It’s not just me. Well, okay. What do they do for work? And I just saw that I wanted to have a different kind of existence where I could know my natural creation times or my mind was really sharp when my body had a lot of energy. And I could provide a tremendous amount of value in terms of writing, speaking, working with clients, and strategizing. It didn’t need to be all day because my body really isn’t designed for that. My mind isn’t designed for that, and I have a family. I have three kids. I can’t do all the things I need to do with that old framework, with that old dynamic.

Listen, I know a lot of people are still in that space where that’s the rule, that’s the protocol. You are responsible for being on the computer or being at this physical location from this time to this time. I would simply challenge you or encourage you to be willing to shake things up a bit and look at how you can look at productivity and see. Okay, if I were to batch all my meetings on one particular day, batch my writing on my mornings on these days, or my client work on these days. 

Now, this might be really provocative to some people and make you nervous to even consider doing this or having a conversation with someone who might be more senior to you that you need to get this through, but there’s plenty of organizations that have done this with extraordinary results. There are places especially abroad, I’ve seen studies where they just decided that people would work Monday through Thursday, not Monday through Friday. And productivity went up through the roof. Efficiency went through the roof because you weren’t just wasting your time going, well, I can’t leave before this time. So I might as well just shoot the breeze, you know what I’m saying?

This is about reclaiming our time and reclaiming that energy. This is how I homeschool. I’m very fortunate my husband and I both work from home. We have relatively flexible schedules. I get to decide when my client calls are, when these group calls are, when I’m going to do a podcast interview, and then when I’m focused on the children, and when I might be working with my daughter on something. My boys are at an age where we’ve been working with tutors in the last few years. Pre-COVID we’d have tutors coming into the home. Right now, we’re going to have a pause on that and we’re going to do online classes and tutors. 

We’ll just schedule things in a way that everyone gets what they need, but even within their schooling, it’s not 9:00 AM to blah blah they’re in classes back to back to back. I don’t believe in that. We need space. We need space to creatively come up with ideas to go outside and work in the garden. To go on a hike, bring your art supplies, and create something that you see. To be bored. The best ideas come through boredom. We try so hard to avoid boredom like it’s this horrible thing. That we’re a bad parent if our kids are bored. That’s really going to come up with a great idea. We don’t need to over-schedule them to the point where they don’t even know how to think.

As you all are considering how you’re going to move forward, keep that all into account. Again, it goes against the systems that we thought were unbreakable, but they’ve all broken.

[00:58:18] Ashley James: No kidding.

[00:58:20] Jenny Fenig: They’ve all broken. And I say that with love but with all certainty because I know for many people, you’re still in this state of it’s hard and you might be grieving. I’ve been homeschooling for a few years now so I’m not freaked out. I’m sad that we are where we are. It’s horrible, it makes me mad, and all the things. I think we should feel our feelings. I feel for educators, I feel for schools, and I feel for administrators. I mean this is not fun, and there’s no playbook really. 

The last time we had a global pandemic was more than 100 years ago, and the world looked very different at that point. So here we are, luckily we have more technology that can support us. But I would suggest—especially for those of you who are looking into homeschooling, how distance learning is going to look, or what you want to do—to be really mindful of what system you want to be a part of. Because whatever system you’re choosing, you’re choosing for your child as well. They are experiencing the energy of that system.

I’m very grateful for homeschooling because we get to design our own system, really. We have the blessing of our local school district. We submit end of year reports. We submit a plan at the beginning of the school year to say here’s where we’re going, and we have very supportive public school principals and superintendents who have our back every year because they know that we have our heart in the right place with what we’re doing, with what’s best for our kids, and the way that we see it. And they’re learning the things that they need to learn.

I actually just did a workshop on this a few days ago called charting your path as a homeschooler. I just want to make sure everyone knows too, distance learning is not homeschooling. It’s not. It’s not, okay. You are still in that system. If you like distance learning and it’s working well, then do it. But that’s not homeschooling. Homeschooling is when you unenroll your child from that school and you really set out on a different path. You have a lot more flexibility, a lot more freedom. Your kids aren’t going to be absent if you decide to go on a trip. And they’re not going to be logging in at a certain time. It’s a whole different deal. I’m very grateful for it. It’s not for everybody, but it’s for more people than people might think. I could talk about it all day. 

I feel like where we are now as a society is one where, again, you have an opportunity to choose the system that you’re going to be operating in. And make sure that you can be healthy within the system. For me, Ashley, in that corporate existence—and this again was in the late ‘90s almost all the way through the 2000s. I quit that last corporate job in November 2007. I realized that system was making me sick, and I remember being so afraid to leave because well, I get health care. My husband and I got health insurance through my job because, at that point, he was freelance in his work. 

We got health insurance through my job, but I remember that small still voice within was saying, but Jenny, you’re getting sick so you can keep your health insurance. And it was just this whole thing of this is backward. This is so twisted. So I had to get that courage up to quit my job. I went on COBRA for 18 months as long as we could, then we found private insurance. We were so blessed and grateful. My husband ended up getting a full-time position, and so we do have health insurance through his company now. The way his company is designed, he’s not getting sick by working there. I’m not getting sick doing the work I’m doing. My work keeps me healthy because my work keeps me honest.

[01:02:17] Ashley James: Beautiful. Do you have any other lessons, homework, or techniques that you’d like to teach those who are stepping into this new world?

[01:02:34] Jenny Fenig: Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. I’ve loved having this conversation. It’s been really special. As much as you can, remember that you’re breathing. This is another thing that we take for granted and we forget. Breathing, it’s the first thing we do when we’re born. We take that breath, and ah, rejoice. And then the last thing we’re going to do as we exit the body is we will take that final breath. So it’s a profound process—breathing. 

For many people, and I know for me too before I discovered conscious breathing. In the yogic realm, it’s called pranayama. Prana is that life force energy. All right, so prana. We have this life force energy moving through our body, moving through our veins, our blood. It just keeps everything just beautifully connected. Oh my goodness. We often move through life—if you’re unconscious of it—and you’re in that whole busy trap, you’re just eating fast food on the go, you’re constantly out of touch with nature and really with your truth, and you’ve said yes to lots of things that you’re like, ugh, I don’t even want to do this but I have to do it. You’re in the shoulds and the obligatory stuff. That we’ve come out of connection with our own breath, and then you’re often breathing shallow. So it’s just from that upper lung capacity. You’re just breathing to the heart and up, but the lungs and the body can hold so much more.

If you were to take some time and really sit with yourself, and we could do it right now. We could just breathe very deeply together, and you can count your breaths. You can count just the beats of the breath. We could play right now and simply come into this breathing exercise where we are mindfully inhaling, and just breathing as full as you can on the inhale. And then going as high up as you can in the body. Then as you exhale, slow methodical trusting that exhale. And then as you inhale the next time, feel that you’re pulling the inhale up from the core of the earth just bringing it all the way up the body, all the way up to the body, and can you come to the top of your head, the crown of your head. And as you exhale down from the crown of your head, putting that breath back into the earth.

You’re recycling the breath over and over again, remembering that the earth gives us so much. I mean so much. It gives us food, it gives us sustenance, it gives us air to breathe, oxygen. So bring yourself into that place of just conscious breathing, especially if you find yourself getting stressed or anxious. Can you come to that place of breathwork, and it’s breathwork like there’s actual work involved in the breath, instead of that just unconscious, I don’t even know. I’m shallow breathing. You’ll find yourself feeling a lot of pressure and a lot of tension, which let’s be real, even the most experienced those of us are with breathing, with exercise, or mindfulness techniques—coronavirus COVID will test us all. This is the work. This is really the thing that we’re meant to see how deep our practices are, and where we still have work to do, blind spots, or where we might be falling in certain holes.

Practice isn’t something that we’re here to become perfect at. It’s something that we just show up for every day. So whether it’s you when you go for your run, you get on your yoga mat, you just sit outside and look at nature, or you do this deep breathwork. They’re all the other things that you do. You play tennis, you’re into baseball, or you’re into all the wonderful things that we can do with our bodies. It’s knowing that we can come into this place of that quiet, and you can access that small still voice within, and just breathe. That’s it. 

If it’s newer to you, there are apps you can get into. There’s that Insight Timer app. I use that for years. I have that on my phone. I’m a Peloton owner and user. I have the Peloton app on my phone. And often, if I’m preparing for—let’s say I’m going to lead a training for clients, I’m going to give a presentation, I will turn on meditation, even though I know how to meditate. I lead meditations, but it’s really nice for someone to tell me what to do. I like to be told what to do sometimes and to be guided through an experience. 

So I’ll just open up the app, whatever app you want. There are so many that are available to you these days, and you can just pick one. If you have three minutes, it’ll be 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or 30 minutes and beyond, and you can tune in and receive. Just tune in and receive. Allow yourself to be in that moment. Don’t worry about what just happened or what you’ve got next. Just come into that place of, I’m taking five minutes. I am not going to feel guilty for taking these five minutes, and I’m going to breathe. That’s it. 

And if it’s a guided meditation, you’ll listen to the words that are being spoken. You’ll listen to maybe the music or the sounds of nature that might be on that meditation track, and you’ll go where you go. You’ll go where you go. And you might find that you’ll get the answer to something that you’ve been struggling with. Some kind of feeling will come over your body. You’ll get what I call an intuitive hit, and you’ll realize, oh my goodness. That’s it. I’m going to go call that person later, I’m going to go sign up for that thing, or I’m going to go make that decision.

It comes to you in those moments of stillness, and then your job is to then respond. To do something with it. That’s something that I know that you all will get so much from just that conscious breath and that coming back to that thing that is so special. Talk to anybody who is having trouble breathing, or has some kind of illness where their breathing is affected. They will tell you how they wish it could be different. So when we have this gift, use it. Really use it. And take note of how it allows you to show up differently for the important people in your life. I think this is an opportunity for all of us to really honor the relationships that we have.

We are living in a very hard time. There are lots of challenges now, and I know that many people are experiencing hard things at home, in their work, or with people in their lives. Maybe you can’t see the important people in your life right now, which is heartbreaking. Totally, totally heartbreaking. But can you come into this place of stillness so that as you show up for the relationships, you can show up from a place of groundedness, kindness, and compassion? Even though you might see some craziness happening on social media. Anytime you go there it’s loaded. You’re like, okay. Am I ready for this?

So we’ve got to come back. We have to do our own work. And then if you have kids, can you teach them how to do this stuff? Can you model it? But the way you teach is to do it. It’s to be it. Can you show it to your partner? Can you embody this with the important people in your life? It’s such a simple tool, but so few people actually use it. And if you were to use it, it would change your life.

[01:11:06] Ashley James: Beautiful. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your insights. Another website of yours is magicmakerscoach.com, and you have a Magic Maker’s Coach Certification. What’s that all about?

[01:11:27] Jenny Fenig: Yeah. I’m really passionate about serving women, coaches, therapists, wellness professionals, fitness professionals, and those who might have come from that corporate background like I am. Women who know that they’re here to guide their people to their greatest potential. They do that through transformative coaching and really working with a lot of the concepts that we talked about today. It’s listening skills, it’s understanding energy, it’s understanding how to work with the lunar cycle, understanding how to help your clients move through energetic blocks, and just old patterns that aren’t healthy or sustainable. Really look for old stories that they’ve outgrown and aren’t serving them and aren’t serving this beautiful life that they’ve been blessed with.

Once I became a coach all those years ago and then set out on my path to create this business and help people, I then realized there was a huge gap in the market for a coach certification that blended up how to honor the craft of coaching in this particular style of coaching. Which is very much about working with your intuition, your body, and energy, and then how to have a great business doing this? How to have an online business doing this? And that’s what our coach certification is dedicated to. 

I feel so grateful that especially in these days, often women were in careers that were really important and valuable, but often they might get to a point where they have to choose. If they decided to become mothers or have families, that it became a real sense of tension and stress because that old system meant okay well you’re in this office, then your kids are over here, and then you’re dealing with who’s with them after school. If you really want to go far in your career, it can come at odds with the desire you might have to spend time with your family. Or you might be in a career that is so valuable, but for some silly reason, it’s not valuable from a financial compensation perspective. So that has also held women back.

We’re in a new era now. Online has very much put us on different terrain. Women have an opportunity to earn really well, and to do incredible things with these gifts and talents that they might have used again in that corporate space. What was so interesting, Ashley, I didn’t even know what coaching was really. I had sports coaches growing up, but once I discovered it after my yoga teacher training, it was like a huge light bulb went on. I said I’ve been doing this my whole life. I didn’t know this was a job. This is the part that I liked most about all my jobs. The other things I had to do I didn’t enjoy, but I just thought that’s how it was.

So once I discovered that coaching was this wonderful way to use these gifts and talents that I have, and so many women are naturally blessed with this. And then once they really are given the tools, the guidance, the training, and the community to really honor the craft and come forward with confidence as they work with their clients, and then understand how to create an incredible business. Mostly have it online, if that’s their desire. That’s the way I do it in my business. They don’t have to choose between motherhood and a lucrative career. It can be something that they can really integrate, and it can evolve with them. It can evolve with their family. It can evolve with the seasons as we talked about.

That’s why we’ve created Magic Makers Coach Certification. I’m really proud of the work that we do. And if this calls out to anyone tuning in, I’d love for you to check it out and submit an application if you feel called.

[01:15:29] Ashley James: Wonderful. In closing, I’d like you to give us some homework. I know you told us before to breathe, pay attention to the lunar cycles. What kind of homework can you give us? Perhaps homework that would help people to better tap into their life purpose, tap into why they’re here and feel purposeful. Some people are feeling a little untethered right now. So what kind of homework can help to empower us?

[01:16:02] Jenny Fenig: Yeah, oh my goodness. That’s such a great question. Really to come into that place of purpose. If possible, and it should be because we’re in summer. It’s warm, in most places. If you’re in the southern hemisphere, I know you’re in a different season, but play with me on this. Go walk outside barefoot.

[01:16:26] Ashley James: Yes.

[01:16:30] Jenny Fenig: So simple, but goodness, it gets you back into that place of, oh, this is how my feet feel on grass, on the sand, or even on concrete. Just the warmth from the sun that’s being pulled up. Or maybe if you can, go jump in some water. Get in a pool. Go to a lake. Go to an ocean. As much as you can connect and with nature—the natural elements: fire, water, air, and earth—the more you are going to feel good in your body. And it feels good to feel good. You are allowed to feel good. That right there could be this monumental breakthrough for some of you. Oh, I’m allowed to feel good more often than not, right? What would happen if you felt good more than you do right now? What would happen?

I also encourage you to get honest with yourself about what you’re putting in your body—when it comes to your thoughts, when it comes to what you’re looking at. Your digital diet. Do you need to unfollow some people on social media? Do you need to scroll less? Do you need to be more intentional about the information that you’re taking in? Again, not to go into a bubble. I believe in being informed. And I think now, more than ever, we need to keep our eyes open about what’s happening in the world, but be really mindful of what you’re subjecting yourself to. Just know maybe reading things is better than watching videos for you because you’re way too impacted by some of the scenes. I have subscriptions to certain publications that keep me informed.

Also, look at what your body is telling you about what is good for you and what’s not. Is there something that you are consuming right now that really is toxic for you? A few years ago, I received a strong message from that small still voice within, that it was time for me to let go of alcohol and not drink anymore. If you would have known me as a teenager, Ashley, or during my collegiate career, you would have not believed that I would one day not drink because that was just so part of my identity. That’s what I thought you did to have a good time. 

My body made it very clear as I had been those years of practicing yoga, having my children, and I wanted a natural birth with them. I did that with two out of the three. My middle child was breech, and so I had a c-section with him. So I’ve had all these different experiences with my body. I’ve come to appreciate her in ways that I never did before. I look back and I know I was horrible to her for many years with how I treated her, what I said to her, and what I put inside of her. I don’t do that anymore. I’m not perfect, but each day, I commit to being more in tune with what she needs in terms of fuel sources. So we need this fuel to go all the places we’re meant to go in this life, help the people we’re meant to help, and be there for our family. Be here as long as we can in vitality with our people.

In my case, I realized that alcohol just didn’t have a role for me anymore. It couldn’t be a character in my movie any longer. I was ready to move into a new chapter, so I let it go. For other people, they can have it. But there are others who can’t eat gluten, they can’t have sugar, or they can’t have whatever. The certain people in your life, they’re just holding you back. This requires a lot of discipline, a tremendous amount of honesty, and some grief of oh my goodness, this thing that I’ve known for so long—or this person I’ve known for so long—we just can’t do this thing anymore. 

I encourage you to have those honest conversations with yourself and just get curious about what might be on the other side. Just be curious. Sometimes you can make a decision, and it might be well let me just try this for a month or a lunar cycle. We play with that, or a season, and just see. Run experiments. Run more experiments. Be curious. When you find, you know what, my life is better. My body feels better without this or with this, then run with that until it doesn’t make sense anymore. And then you’ll redesign something from there.

[01:21:24] Ashley James: Alcohol, it’s an interesting thing. We go to alcohol, sugar. There are over-the-counter things like sugar and dairy. The very stereotypical woman sitting with a pint of ice cream crying or something like that. When COVID first came about—and I saw this in our grocery stores—were completely sold out of baking goods, materials for baking. All the baker’s yeast was gone. All the flour and the sugar. People just sat at home, baked, and ate their feelings. I get it. I only stock healthy food in the house, but I definitely caught myself eating my feelings in the first few months of this crazy year. Alcohol is something that I cut out of my life really young.

I was a bartender when I was 19 because, in Canada, the drinking age could be 18 or 19, depending on what province. As a bartender, I was great as a bartender. I’m such an extrovert. I love people, and I love talking to people. It was fun. I didn’t think I’m serving people poison. At 19, I’m having fun. After a season of babysitting drunk people, it just turned me off so much. I just stopped drinking. I just didn’t like it. I don’t like feeling out of control. It didn’t give me any pleasure, but I watched my parents growing up. My mom would come home and take the vodka out of the freezer and have a shot just to calm her nerves. And then a few hours later, my dad would come home and they’d split a bottle of wine. They’d sit together at the dinner table, and they’d drink their wine.

Sometimes, on special occasions, they’d put a little wine in a glass and fill it with water. They thought it was fun, they’re sharing it with me. It became their way of de-stressing, just grounding or unwinding from the day. In looking at physiology, we know that the moment you drink even one serving of alcohol, your body goes into a state of stress for 24 hours. You can actually measure your heart rate variability, which is the most accurate indicator of stress. And that your heart rate variability becomes very poor for 24 hours after drinking even just one serving of alcohol. 

If it’s doing that to us, then it is affecting the depth of sleep, the depth of being able to regenerate your body through sleep. And then the next day, psychologically, it changes the brain chemistry so we’re more narcissistic. We’re less able to be empathetic. We actually have a harder time with emotional quotient or emotional intelligence being able to delay gratification. So we become people who need more instant gratification. This is all from one glass of wine.

[01:24:42] Jenny Fenig: One glass, yeah.

[01:24:43] Ashley James: Because now we are less likely to delay gratification, we would tend to then have another one. And we would tend to have another the next night, and the next night. It becomes a habit, and then we live a story. The story is I need this to unwind, or I deserve this to just have a break. This is going to make me feel good. Well, I can say that about sugar. I can say that about ice cream, right? We can say that about a lot of things that are over the counter, right? This is going to make me feel good. 

Now you can say that about street drugs too, but most people who are listening are not currently choosing street drugs to relax at the end of a stressful day. But most people who are even very health-conscious do find that they have their—I don’t want to call them vices, but they have—self-medication. We have to look at it, not from a point of guilt and shame because that then just perpetuates the vicious cycle, but to break out of the vicious cycle and go, what? So what are my deeper needs? If I’m trying to fulfill a need with alcohol, with sugar, with flour, or with dairy, if there’s something that is ultimately not healthy for me, but I’m using it to kind of band-aid a need, what’s that deeper need and how can I serve it in a healthier way? How can I get to the root cause? 

I used to work with a woman who was into personal growth and development and yet she couldn’t quit smoking until she finally realized why she couldn’t quit smoking. When she ever did quit smoking for periods of time, she would never take a break. She would work at her desk. She owned her own business, and she’d work out her desk from morning until night, never once getting up to stretch. Just never eating. Just really never taking care of herself. And then she would go downhill very quickly. But smoking, she caught herself and realized that it made her get off her desk, go to the balcony, take between 5 and 15 minutes and just relax, and breathe. Even though it’s breathing in a cigarette it’s still breathing

[01:27:05] Jenny Fenig: Breathing in nicotine, yeah.

[01:27:07] Ashley James: And then she would maybe grab a drink and grab a bite. And then she’d go back to the desk, and she was just as effective at her work because there comes a point when you push yourself so hard that you don’t have efficiency, as you talked about. But she used cigarettes as a way of mandating breaks. In order to successfully quit—and she did eventually—she implemented mandatory breaks without cigarettes. So she’d go outside and just breathe air without the cigarettes. She’d go for a walk, or she’d just do something else to stand up, stretch, walk around, get a glass of water, and take mandatory breaks. And then the deeper need that was being met by the cigarettes as a Band-Aid was no longer there.

I just think that if we can choose to, like you said, do a lunar cycle with no alcohol in the house, with no alcohol in your life. And instead, ask yourself what’s this deeper need? If what you really need is something to relax and de-stress, knowing that alcohol temporarily makes you kind of feel out of it and disconnected, we think it’s relaxing us, but it’s actually stressing our body more for 24 hours. And if we can get outside, like you said, and do grounding or earthing—and I have some great—I was about to say great documentaries. 

I do have a great documentary actually on that linked in the Learn True Health Facebook group under announcements. There’s an amazing documentary that we have uploaded into our Facebook group that we got permission to upload. But I have a few episodes on earthing and grounding. The importance of it, and that there are 26 studies that prove that by getting out in nature and putting your feet on the ground, or using a grounding mat if you live in a condo and you have no access to grass. By releasing those excess electrons, it decreases stress in the body, and it decreases inflammation in the body. Even people with MS and other autoimmune disorders that are triggered by inflammation see great success.

I love your very powerful and doable advice of breathing, of tuning into yourself, and of walking as much as you can out in nature—barefoot so that you can earth and ground. And then try cutting out alcohol, or try taking what’s in your diet that that little voice that you talked about, that wise but quiet voice inside you that knows that it really is time to stop drinking the coffee and switch to green tea. Switch to nut-based milk instead of cow milk because it’s affecting your immune system. Or give up the alcohol for some kombucha. Or some herbal tea.

[01:30:06] Jenny Fenig: Oh my gosh, I love kombucha.

[01:30:07] Ashley James: Right, so good. It’s so good

[01:30:09] Jenny Fenig: Oh, yeah. I have one on my desk right now. Jalapeño-kiwi-cucumber blend.

[01:30:14] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

[01:30:14] Jenny Fenig: I just recently discovered that one. It’s that Health-Ade kombucha brand and they have a jalapeño-kiwi-cucumber. Those of you who might experiment with no alcohol or you love kombucha, I highly recommend that variety.

[01:30:27] Ashley James: Yeah, switch to kombucha.

[01:30:30] Jenny Fenig: That jalapeño has that little kick. You still want the kick in your life, that’s the thing. You thought alcohol gave you the kick, but you can get kicks in other ways.

[01:30:37] Ashley James: Absolutely. I go to the farmer’s market and there’s a local company. They fill up my big glass bottle with it. They have the most delicious strawberry one. They also have a pineapple one, and a ginger one. I love it. My husband’s addicted to the cayenne.

[01:30:56] Jenny Fenig: Cayenne pepper? Cayenne cleanse?

[01:30:58] Ashley James: Yeah. I think it’s the cayenne and ginger or something. There are so many out there. There are just fun things to swap out. But at the root of it, I want us to just ask ourselves, is this serving me? Is this really serving me on a deeper level? Or is this masking something? Is this really fulfilling a need? Or is this just masking some symptoms? If you had a headache and you just take Advil, you’re not really serving yourself in the long run because that headache is your body trying to say something.

[01:31:35] Jenny Fenig: Exactly.

[01:31:36] Ashley James: I think your life is going to express in different ways to show you that there’s some deep healing you can do, but you have to stop masking things. I don’t think we can truly do deep healing if we’re drinking alcohol every day.

[01:31:50] Jenny Fenig: Totally. That’s the thing is we’ve been fed a narrative that we aren’t strong enough to feel things. So the way through that is through drugs, through some kind of numbing technique, or some kind of numbing substance. Alcohol numbs you. I experimented with plenty of drugs growing up. I numbed out from feeling things, from feeling stuff that felt very, very hard to feel. 

The same thing when I went through childbirth, and I did so much study. I actually want to feel it. It’s okay, every woman can decide what’s right for her, but I wanted to feel the contractions. I wanted to feel the birth happening. I trusted my body. I didn’t need to numb out on that. You reclaim your power when you know that you can feel things. There are people who can help you feel things. I’ve worked with plenty of healers, therapists, and all the things. But gosh, there is liberation on the other side of feeling that stuff and knowing that it won’t kill you. It’s just going to make you stronger. You’re going to be reminded about who you are, and it will prepare you for all the other journeys you’re going to take in your life.

[01:33:12] Ashley James: Beautiful. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. It has been such a pleasure to have this conversation with you, Jenny. I look forward to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re all seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but I look forward to implementing everything that we learned here today and possibly having you back on the show to see how things are progressing and have you come to share more with us.

[01:33:41] Jenny Fenig: That would be lovely. Thank you so much. It’s been a really, really powerful conversation. I send so much love and courage to everyone. We’re really creating the future today. We’re living it, and we’re living in a really fascinating time. I know it’s hard, but I also keep reminding myself when I say it to others, what a fascinating time to be alive. We could have chosen different times, you know what I mean? And we’re here now. Okay. Let’s show up, and let’s just do our best. Let’s keep choosing health. Let’s keep choosing the healthy path as best we can.

[01:34:24] Ashley James: An ancient Chinese proverb, “May you live in interesting times.” And that can be taken many ways. I love that. Let’s just keep choosing health and keep choosing the healthy path no matter what. Thank you so much, Jenny. It’s been a pleasure having you on the show.

[01:34:40] Jenny Fenig: Thank you.

[01:34:42] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Jenny Fenig. Please check out IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition by going to learntruehealth.com/coach. That’s learnturehealth.com/coach, sign up for a free module, and see if it’s right for you. See if taking the Institute for Integrative Nutrition’s health coach training program is the path that you want to take either for your own personal growth to help yourself, your family, or your friends, or adding tools to your tool belt, or having a career. This is the career that you can do from home. Now is the time to invest in our own education and experience. Now is the time to dive into personal growth.

I don’t want to say we could turn these lemons into lemonade, but sugar-free lemonade. We can take the hand we’ve been dealt right now, and we can turn it around and figure out how we can gain the most benefit. If you have to be at home right now, then find ways of enriching your life, enriching your experiences. Things like doing online school. It’s a fantastic way to spend your time to grow and to learn. If your kids are doing school from home, why not you as well?

So check out IIN. And you know what, I’ve heard a lot of parents have shared the IIN course with their whole family. My husband watched some of the videos and some of the training modules with me and really enjoyed it. I know that older kids often love learning from it as well. It’s something that you can share with your children and maybe make it part of your homeschooling. So go to iin.com, check it out, and give them a call. Make sure you mention Ashley James and Learn True Health podcast for the listener discount.

Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing these episodes. Come join the Learn True Health Facebook group, and have yourself a fantastic rest of your day.

Get Connected With Jenny Fenig!

Website

Facebook 

Instagram

Book by Jenny Fenig

Get Gutsy: A Sacred, Fearless Guide for Finding Your Soul’s Calling and Living Your Dream

Recommended Reading by Jenny Fenig

Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The Healthy Bones Nutrition Plan and Cookbook: How to Prepare and Combine Whole Foods to Prevent and Treat Osteoporosis Naturally: https://amzn.to/2EFVR2r

Magnesium Soak: Use coupon code LTH at Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com

Dr. Laura Kelly's website: https://medicinethroughfood.com

Treat Osteoporosis and Osteopenia Naturally

https://www.learntruehealth.com/treat-osteoporosis-and-osteopenia-naturally

Highlights:

• Benefits of eating mushrooms
• Isolates versus complex herb cocktail as medicine
• Importance of self-care
• What contributes to bone loss and fractures
• Nutrition is foundational medicine
• Medicine is part of life

What is self-care? How do you practice self-care? Dr. Laura Kelly shares what self-care is, and it may be different for everybody. She explains that self-care includes everything about us from the food we eat down to our thoughts. We need to listen and know our bodies really well so we can practice self-care daily. She also shares how her patients, including her mom, were able to heal their bone diseases through her protocol.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I’m so excited for you to learn from Dr. Laura Kelly today. She wrote a book using food, nutrition, and herbs to support the body in growing healthy, strong, flexible bones at any age. You can be a grandma. You can be in your 90s. You could be a 100-year-old marathon runner. You could be a 20-year-old. Whatever age you are, now is the time to start growing a healthy skeletal system. And what’s so cool is she’s even seen some of her patients and some of her readers reverse other diseases as well. Even her mom reversed calcification in the arteries of her heart after following this protocol because by following this protocol, you’re supporting the body’s ability to lay down healthy mineralization and create flexible bones so that they don’t fracture, so that they’re stronger, and that also supports the body in balancing minerals even in the soft tissue as well. So it’s very exciting.

We also get into talking so much about the contrast between natural medicine and drug-based medicine, and just new ways of looking at it, which I think are really exciting especially because I know, I know you’re going to be sharing this episode with someone you care about. For all the new listeners that this is their first episode, welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I am so excited to have you here. Dr. Laura Kelly is going to be giving away a copy of her book to a lucky listener, so please come join the Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook group. It’s free. It’s a wonderful community, very supportive. If you’re into holistic health and you want to be part of a community that’s all into holistic health, you’ve come to the right place. Join the Learn True Health Facebook group. 

Now, as we talk about different minerals, supplements, herbs, and foods, one thing that I have to let you know about is my favorite magnesium soak. Magnesium is the most important mineral for the body. Now there are over 60 minerals. The body needs at least 60 essential minerals to fully function, but there are elements and there are so many nutrients in the soil that the body needs that plants then digest, and that’s when we eat the plants, we get them. Sometimes we need to take them as a supplement, but the most important is magnesium, and magnesium is used so quickly and so readily by the body, we’re chronically deficient in it. And this is why I love this particular magnesium soak. I’ve had the founder of this company on the show several times. Her name is Kristen Bowen. So you can go to my website learntruehealth.com, and type in Kristen Bowen, and listen to the past episodes.

At her worst, she was I believe 97 pounds, having 30 seizures a day, and in a wheelchair unable to communicate. And that was at her lowest. She was able to, with the help of her family, get her life back, and her health back. She found that the thing that made the biggest difference for her recovery was soaking in magnesium. It’s a special concentration from nature. It’s from the Zechstein Sea. It also has other co-factors in it. And when we soak in it, we absorb an average of 20 grams of magnesium. You can’t get that much if you take oral because oral magnesium reacts very poorly with the digestive system, and it’s just not economical for us to get IV magnesium—going to a doctor and getting IV magnesium. So it’s very economical to be able to soak in magnesium at home. It’s safe for children, it’s safe for pregnancy, it’s safe for everyone. So please check out the links in today’s episode.

Also, for Dr. Kelly’s book, for Dr. Kelly’s website, and for the magnesium soak that I recommend, you can get it from the website livingthegoodlifenaturally.com and use coupon code LTH for the listener discount. That’s livingthegoodlifenaturally.com. Grab the big jug. It says undiluted magnesium soak. You buy that big jug, and then use the coupon code at checkout LTH, as in Learn True Health, LTH for the listener discount. And check out those episodes that I did with Kristen Bowen. It’s quite fascinating.

I’m so excited for you to learn from Dr. Laura Kelly, and she’s promised to come back on the show because she has invented software that helps us to decipher and understand our genetic expressions. How cool is that? So she’s going to come back on the show and continue this wonderful discussion about how we can uncover what our body needs, our unique needs to support our optimal health.

Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this episode with those you care about. All those friends and family that want to have strong healthy bones. I even know some marathon runners that I’ll be sharing this episode with because they suffer from chronic fractures. So this is not just an episode for those who are senior citizens. This is an episode for everyone. Everyone deserves to have strong flexible bones at any age, and if it takes just doing a few tweaks to your lifestyle, to your diet, to your supplement routine to make such a huge health difference, why not. You’re worth it. It’s such a worthwhile investment.

I highly recommend getting Dr. Kelly’s book after listening to this episode. I already bought a few copies for my friends and family. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day and enjoy today’s interview.

[00:05:59] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 443. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have Dr. Laura Kelly on the show. What a fascinating book. You have published The Healthy Bones, how we can, through food, nourish our skeletal system so we can reverse and prevent osteopenia, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis. Fantastic. I’m so excited to have you on the show today. Welcome.

[00:06:38] Dr. Laura Kelly: Thank you, Ashley. It’s good to be here.

[00:06:40] Ashley James: Absolutely. This is such an important topic, especially when we look at demographics and we see that our wonderful baby boomer parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles—that generation has moved into that era where their MDs are pushing them to be on drugs like Boniva or Fosamax, right? I don’t even know if those are still available. Drugs like that have caused so much harm to people in the past. I see it. I see people, especially seniors, being pushed to have drug after drug after drug. The body doesn’t have a drug deficiency. The body has a mineral deficiency.

[00:07:25] Dr. Laura Kelly: Right. That’s a good way to put it.

[00:07:28] Ashley James: Right, right.

[00:07:29] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yeah. I mean it’s certainly a deficiency issue, for sure.

[00:07:33] Ashley James: Right. It just makes sense, but unfortunately for the MD, the only tool they have is drugs. They were never taught in medical school about nutrition, and of course, you were. Before we dive into how we can use food to heal our body and prevent and reverse disease, I’d love for you to tell us what happened in your life that made you want to become a doctor of oriental medicine, and made you want to practice medicine the way that you do?

[00:08:06] Dr. Laura Kelly: I always wanted to study medicine from when I was a little kid. It runs in my family. My uncle was head of neurosurgery, at George Washington University for 20 years. My other uncle is a physicist, my brother is a surgeon. So there’s a lot of medicine and a lot of medical thought in my family. And when it came time to get serious about life and start thinking about what I actually wanted to do as an adult, which happened quite late for me, which was around age 35, I started on the medical path. I started going back to school pre-med at UCLA, that sort of thing and intended on going to medical school. And then, as I approached that, it started to become apparent that path was not satisfying what I was looking for.

[00:09:06] Ashley James: What happened? So were you a teenager? Were you in pre-med?

[00:09:12] Dr. Laura Kelly: No, no, no. This was when I was older. This was when I was 35.

[00:09:15] Ashley James: Really? So what happened though? What happened that made you see that drug-based medicine wasn’t fulfilling?

[00:09:24] Dr. Laura Kelly: It wasn’t anything external, and it wasn’t an issue with me. It wasn’t a health issue with me or anything like that. It was really an internal drive. I had always felt close to nature, and that seemed to me to be the source of all things in this regard. That there were patterns here that were easy, natural, and harmonious. And it didn’t make sense to me in the larger picture to step very far away from that if I was talking about healing and working with a body, which came out of nature. So there was a very strong internal instinctual drive towards that, which I’d never heard about alternative medicine very much before. It wasn’t something that happened in my family, but it just was there, that drive, and I sort of re-examined the medical path. I thought there must be another way into medicine.

So I started looking around and I found that Chinese medicine was very rigorous, and there were thousands, literally thousands of years of documentation, and thousands and thousands of years of case reports. There was enough science available in medicine for me to feel satisfied because I have a strong drive for knowledge. This medicine just appealed to me. It fit with the natural paradigm in an incredibly beautiful way. I mean Chinese medicine, again, the current literature that we still use today started 5000 years ago. There’s a book 5000 years ago that we still read.

[00:11:14] Ashley James: Wow.

[00:11:16] Dr. Laura Kelly: That came out of philosophy. It didn’t come out of let’s make a drug. It came out of natural philosophy. Natural philosophy evolved into medicine, and then it became medicine officially 5000 years ago. That kind of progression made a lot of sense to me intellectually.

[00:11:41] Ashley James: What is the philosophy? How is the philosophy of oriental medicine, as a doctor, differ from seeing an MD and their philosophy that governs how they practice medicine?

[00:11:57] Dr. Laura Kelly: Well the philosophy of the Taoist-based, which is sort of a philosophy of oneness with nature, essentially if you can boil it down to something. And the fact that we are part of nature and we are completely not extricable from that process. The things that make the amino acids and the things that makeup and the structures around us, we are made of the same things. We’re all made of the same things. So that harmony is inherent in Chinese medicine, and I think is inherent in all-natural medicines and all traditional natural medicines that are originating out of cultures that are connected to cultural traditions. Which is very different from the current western medical paradigm, which it’s an analysis. That’s an analysis-based, and that comes around from something like having a microscope and trying to see smaller and smaller pieces, and smaller and smaller parts and isolate understanding. That’s very different. It’s just a different way of looking at the world, and it’s a different way of looking at medicine and the body. They’re both, obviously, entirely valid. They’re just different.

[00:13:23] Ashley James: What’s been described to me is that we need to know when to which doctor, not witch doctors. We need to know when to go to the MD. When to go to the emergency room, essentially. When to go to your Naturopath. When to go to your doctor of oriental medicine. When you go to your chiropractor, right? There are several different forms of medicine and they’re all valid. And if we look at the history of modern medicine in the last 115 years or so, what then became the AMA, the AMA, for so many years, has done huge slander campaigns against all other forms of medicine. And they actually coined it as alternative medicine. And that is almost like it’s Orwellian in a sense that if they can label everything else, everything that isn’t drug-based medicine alternative medicine, then what they’ve done is they made it sound less than.

A Naturopath that I’ve worked with said that if you said a German shepherd was the only actual dog, and every other dog was an alternative dog—the German shepherd is the one dog everyone should have, but a greyhound is an alternative dog, a little Weiner dog is an alternative dog, and the Australian shepherd is an alternative dog. That is absolutely silly, right? It’s completely silly. There is no such thing as alternative medicine. That term was used to discredit valid forms of medicine.

As a doctor of oriental medicine, you’re saying that it’s quite science-based for the last 5000 years. Now there is an appeal to novelty. I was recently sharing a study with someone. In the ‘70s, they were able to reverse gestational diabetes. It was an amazing study, but it was done in the ‘70s. This woman then said, “That’s not valid, it was done in the ‘70s.” I’m thinking, did our genes all of a sudden change? Are we no longer the same humans as the ‘70s? Why isn’t a study that was done 50 years ago valid? I think that’s really funny.

Perhaps there are some listeners who think that oriental medicine, yes, it may have been practiced for 5000 years, but at some point, we practiced bloodletting. We realized that’s not a valid form of medicine, but at the time it was science. What could you share with us that proves that oriental medicine is quite valid now? What kinds of recent studies are showing how it can very much help us?

[00:16:30] Dr. Laura Kelly: I mean there are two parts to that answer, and the first part is like you said, our bodies are still the same as they were. Until we have different bodies, then the things that worked 5000 years ago will still work, and the things that work in the ‘70s will still work. What’s happening now, for example, let’s take malaria. So malaria, obviously, one of the problems is that the bugs get used to the drugs. The World Health Organization is in charge of defining what malaria drugs are being used. 

It was not that long ago, maybe it was 10 years ago, that it was realized that there’s a traditional Chinese medical formula for malaria. I think it’s probably 8 or 12—I’m sorry, I don’t remember exactly. But you learn it, and what you learn is that you can take this prophylactically. You can take this before you are exposed, and you can take it as a treatment, and it works. Malaria is not a big deal if you know how to treat it with this. That’s what you learn in school, that’s what the books say, and that’s what everything says. 

So in 2005, maybe, I’m sorry, I don’t remember the date. There was a Chinese medical researcher who brought forward the isolate from one of the main herbs in this formula and said we can cure malaria with this and won the Nobel prize. She won the Nobel prize in medicine for this isolate from a Chinese medical herb that had been used for thousands of years, and the WHO adopted this herb and said, yes, this is absolutely correct. This herb works. So what they did is they created a drug cocktail for malaria with this as the key component because the other drugs that they had been using against malaria were starting to fall off. They weren’t working anymore. So they added this constituent, which is an isolate, and it worked for a number of years. It is, as far as, I know starting to fall off now. The bugs are starting to become accustomed to this isolate as well. So they’re going to have to keep looking and look for more things.

There are two issues with this. One of them is that this was a malaria formula that we all know that is useful, functional, and does what it says it’s going to do, so much so that the WHO said this is a drug. The problem comes when you pull isolates, and this goes back to the concept of different medicines. If you pull an isolate out of a complex formula, if you have 8 herbs or 12 herbs, you’re going to have hundreds and hundreds of active ingredients, and they’re all going to be working against each other and with each other. And that combination, that’s a massive numerical combination of effect, which is not possible to replicate. 

So if you pull out one isolate from the thousands and thousands or millions of reactions that are occurring within your system with all of those herbs, you’re exposing the effect to exactly what happened, which is the bugs—because it’s an isolate—can now overcome this single substance. Where it was when it was part of a much larger combination, it was harder for the body of the bug to overcome. There’s a danger a little bit when you’re moving between medicines that way if you don’t understand the complexity of the synergy of the effect of the medicinal herbs that you’re working with. You use an isolate because that’s the medicine you work in, the medical paradigm is isolationist. That is a little bit off the subject.

[00:20:34] Ashley James: No, that’s brilliant. That’s right on point. Do the Chinese herbs that they’ve used for thousands of years for malaria still work today? Or has malaria adapted?

[00:20:49] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yes. It still works in combination, as far as I know. The bug hasn’t completely overcome this isolate, but it’s starting to. I think it’s in Cambodia that it started to become non-effective or less effective.

[00:21:06] Ashley James: The isolate was turned into a drug, but I mean the original cocktail of Chinese herbs? The original, not the isolate, but the original cocktail of herbs, are they still used, and are they still valid?

[00:21:21] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yes. Until I hear otherwise, they are still valid, and that’s because of the complexity that you encounter when you combine 8 or 10 herbs with, let’s just say, 40 active constituents that are going to all playoff against each other. You’re creating a complex, complex response in the system. So, yeah.

[00:21:45] Ashley James: I interviewed a doctor who’s been an MD for 40 years, although he studied in a part of Germany that very interesting—while he was becoming a surgeon, while all these doctors become surgeons, they’re also taught acupuncture and homeopathy at the same time at the university level. He came to the United States 40 years ago thinking that all doctors knew homeopathy and acupuncture.

[00:22:09] Dr. Laura Kelly: Oh, that’s wonderful.

[00:22:10] Ashley James: And then he was like, what’s going on here? Why are we giving drugs to people? His name is Dr. Klinghardt, and he has an amazing, amazing ability to help children who are on the spectrum no longer be on the spectrum, also people who have Lyme disease, and just these very strange and hard to get over illnesses. He says his favorite thing to do is to find—someone that needs a drug, let’s say, and then—the herbal alternative that works better than the drug. 

So he doesn’t ever use drugs unless he absolutely, absolutely, absolutely needs to. But he says that herbs always work better than the drug that would be prescribed to that symptom because most drugs are an isolate, like you said, of an herb. Like a compound of an herb, but they throw away all the other medicinal benefits from the herb when they just isolate one component. And this is the problem because drugs are for-profit—I know I’m singing to the choir—they end up looking to make a profit and protect patents instead of looking out for the greater good of humanity, in which case we would still be using and promoting the herbal complex that has worked to prevent and cure malaria.

[00:23:45] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yes. I think that there are quite a lot of people—to defend some of them—who are well-meaning. There was a symposium yesterday, and the discussion was about certain vaccine development. The concept around vaccine development is to find something that can help the world, right? To cure whatever disease is going to be, but the paradigm with which that is in is the paradigm of what’s the disease, and what’s the treatment. And the human body and the environment in which that disease is occurring is left out of that equation.

There’s a whole other side of medicine, which is the side of medicine that I chose to practice, which is primarily concerned with the human body, the environment of that human body, and the environment into which the disease comes. It’s like two different approaches to the same median, which is the human body interacting with the world. The human body interacting with the disease. And they have one angle, which is the disease treatment, and we have one angle, which is the environment of the body itself. Bringing them together is what everybody really needs, right?

When the problem that you’re speaking about before about the AMA trashing all of us is really unfortunate to me. It’s not classy, you know what I mean? It’s just not classy. When you start mixing dogma and medicine, I think you have a recipe for a real problem.

[00:25:32] Ashley James: That’s why I believe that people should know more about each kind of doctor, each kind of medicine. Instead of having a dogma about it, they can go to the right practitioner. You wouldn’t take your car to see a plumber. Don’t take your body to always the same kind of doctor because you’re just going to get their one philosophy of medicine. So just know which one to go to when, and I’ve had several episodes about this. So let’s learn more about you, how you practice medicine, and as a doctor of oriental medicine. Especially because you’re so excited about the science behind it, the philosophy that we are part of nature, and let’s use nature to bolster the environment of our body so our body can really do the heavy lifting when it comes to fighting off disease, right?

Let’s bolster our own amazing God-given ability. If you’re a spiritual person, you believe in God, and you start studying how the immune system works, it is amazing. When I started studying and really getting into it, we are so complex. Our immune system is so brilliant. Our body functions are so beautiful, so harmonious. There are thousands of things all going on together in harmony. There’s nothing like it. There’s absolutely nothing like it. And even if you look some at simpler organisms, they’re still incredibly complex and beautiful, and there’s this balance. Homeostasis is amazing.

If you’re someone that doesn’t believe in God, look into the science and just see how complex, beautiful, and intelligent it is. We have to really appreciate that our body has an innate intelligence to come back into balance, and it’s our job to help it. You as a doctor look to facilitate bringing the body back into balance so the body’s intelligence can do all the work, right?

[00:27:44] Dr. Laura Kelly: That’s beautifully said. Absolutely. That’s exactly what I do because there isn’t any reason to try and throw it off. I mean certainly, there are circumstances, like Dr. Klinghardt, if you’ve gotten to the end, you’ve tried everything, and if the problem is just too entrenched or it’s a genetic problem, then you may not have success. But even then, you can somewhat. The last resort, of course, is to really hit it hard with the heavy hammer of a western pharmaceutical. Up until that point, there’s incredible knowledge within the body that if you give it the right pieces, it knows what to do with them. That’s for sure.

[00:28:31] Ashley James: Your book is about supporting the skeletal system. What led you to want to publish this book?

[00:28:40] Dr. Laura Kelly: My mother. She had a progressive bone loss for about 18 years, and she finally hit the point where her doctor said to her, if you don’t take this reclass shot, then I can’t treat you any further because you will break your hip, and then you might die. My mother called me, and I was in school at that time. She said, “What am I supposed to do?” And I said, “Well, you know what, there are a number of herbs that I know fix fractures. Let me look into this. I’ll get back to you in a couple of months.”

So I took a fracture map of the world, I looked at high and low fracture rates in the elderly over time, pulled apart the diets of the people with the high and low fractures, and figured out what was missing and what needed to happen. I called her back in two months and I said, “Here’s a list of the reasons why I believe this is happening. So pick three of them and start there.” So she did that, and then we did another DEXA scan early. You’re supposed to do them every two years. We did it in 15 months, and for the first time in 18 years, she had no bone loss. So her doctor said, “Well, that’s a complete fluke. You still have to take medicine.” And my mother said, “Well, you know what, let’s just wait just a minute.”

So in the meantime, she had a scan and her cardiologist called me and she said, “What did you do? Because the plaque is clearing out of her carotid arteries.” So I said, “It’s all nutritionally-based. What I’m doing is activating the mechanisms that she already has in her body that weren’t activated to guide the calcium where it needs to go. And I guess, as a byproduct of that, it happens to be clearing the calcified plaque out of her arteries.” So she said, “Well, you need to write a book for doctors. You need to write a book for doctors because you’re sort of sciencey. You bridge the gap.” So I started that, and then I realized that this wasn’t for doctors. That this was medicine that people can do themselves.

Of course, MDs, medically trained doctors, do need to understand these principles and practices because they can help their patients. But it felt more important to me, at the time, and it probably still is more important to me to write it for my mother and for other mothers because there isn’t a reason to fear this diagnosis in 99% of cases or 99.9%, and you can actually take care of it yourself. So it made much more sense to write the book, again, for mothers.

So I called my mother and I said, “Hey, listen.” And by this time, she had had a second DEXA scan, again, not in four years, but still within another year maybe, and she still had no bone loss. So we realized that this wasn’t a fluke. Her doctor said, “Okay, well maybe it’s not a fluke.” So I called my mother and I said, “You know what, let’s write this together because this is for you. Let’s do it.” So we did that. We called a publisher and said, “Do you want to publish this?” And Chelsea Green, a wonderful publisher, said yes. So we sat down and wrote it.

[00:32:14] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. I love it. I’m so excited.

[00:32:20] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yeah. It was a wonderful process.

[00:32:21] Ashley James: Okay. So what I want to know is why was she reluctant to get the shots? Most people are super wanting to do whatever their doctor says. I know a lot of people who just go in. They go in because they’re sick and the doctor says, while you’re here, let’s give you a flu shot. Well, they’re sick. Well, their well their immune system is compromised. Oh, it’s time for these other vaccines. Oh, we need to give you the… So anyway, most people go in and get whatever shot, whatever medication, blindly follow without question whatever their doctor says. You said it was a reclass shot? What was it about that had your mother go wait a second, I want to think about this. Why was she not super eager to do exactly what her doctor said without question?

[00:33:20] Dr. Laura Kelly: Because I had started going to alternative medicine school. I think I was in year six at that point out of seven, or maybe I was actually in year seven. I’m sorry, I was in year seven. I had already been speaking to her and taking care of her from this more natural perspective for six years. So over that six-year period, gone from not really knowing or having any interest to buy now at year seven, she was sort of saying okay, well wait a minute, this is actually serious. This is actually real. This is actually right. When that came up, then she could turn to me instead of her doctor.

[00:34:13] Ashley James: You had been in school for oriental medicine for a while, so you had a few years to have her see some results. What kind of results was she getting to open her eyes to natural medicine? Did you help her through any other health problems before this?

[00:34:37] Dr. Laura Kelly: No. She was fairly healthy. She was very healthy really, to begin with. She has a natural instinct as well, which I think had never been allowed to live. Do you know what I mean? I think that was a latent belief or a latent tendency in her to connect with nature and all that sort of thing. But she grew up in the ‘50s, and life was a little different then. She didn’t participate in the ‘60s revolution, so she was outside of any of that mind-expanding situation that occurred. That was latent in her, and I think that when I took the step, it allowed her to let that out a little bit, and let her think about exploring other things other than the things that she’d been told. So I think it was a gradual process, but again, it was inherent in her already.

[00:35:41] Ashley James: I love it. We have to foster that quiet voice inside of us that is the first voice, that little voice that comes in first, and then we usually override it. It’s like the voice that says bring an umbrella when it’s sunny outside. That’s the voice, right? Or bring a sweater when it’s hot outside. That little voice, that first voice. So when a doctor says, You have to take this medicine, and that little voice says, no, I don’t think so. Something feels wrong here. We just need to listen. Just take a step back.

[00:36:18] Dr. Laura Kelly: That’s really wonderful. That’s a wonderful thing to say. But that’s not taught, Ashley. We don’t learn to do that in our culture. We don’t learn to sit with ourselves quietly and listen. It’s something that definitely happens. I mean meditation, these moving meditations, tai chi, and things like this. For example, part of the tradition of medicine that I learned, all of this is part of medicine. All of this is part of caring for the body. You don’t come with an instruction manual. You don’t come with all of the things that you need in order to take care of yourself, but you come with, in that tradition, medical practices. Medical practices that you carry with you throughout your life in order to keep yourself healthy, in order to treat yourself, in order to listen to your body. And you learn how to do that within that culture.

We don’t learn that here. It’s not part of our cultural upbringing. It’s not part of our cultural heritage. Everything should function great, and then when it stops functioning great we go, oh, what am I supposed to do now? Okay, here’s somebody that knows what I’m supposed to do. I’m going to listen to them. Part of the holistic medical road is you learn to care for yourself from the beginning, and you learn to help the people that you live with. You learn to care for the people who are around you, and this is part of the medical structure.

So this is an inherently different way of approaching life. It’s saying part of my life is self-care. That’s a very powerful thing to learn when you’re young, right? I didn’t learn that until I was well into my 30s. But I can imagine what it would have felt like to learn that from when I was very young.

[00:38:24] Ashley James: Yes. Can you imagine if we raised an entire generation to practice self-care?

[00:38:30] Dr. Laura Kelly: I can’t, I cannot, but it would be wonderful.

[00:38:34] Ashley James: Okay, one thing I’m deeply saddened by but I want to shed light on is that the rate of suicide for ages 10 to 26 has gone up so much. I believe it’s the second cause of death in that generation right now. That it is so high. There’s a huge disconnect, and with holistic medicine, we know that emotional, mental, and physical health because MDs mostly focus on the physical. They see a symptom they attack it with a drug, or they manage, they suppress symptoms. They manage things with drugs. There are enlightened MDs out there. I know sometimes I sound like I’m bashing them. I want us to just broaden our perspective and really see the whole forest. Just get a 30,000-foot view.

We have been taught that there’s a physical body and it’s separate. It’s separate from mental, emotional health, and that in our culture, when you have the mental and emotional issues, there’s something wrong with you. We’re either normal or abnormal. That’s a philosophy that says we’re broken. And that is just such an incomplete version of what it is. The experience of what it is to be human.

[00:40:02] Dr. Laura Kelly: It’s inhuman.

[00:40:04] Ashley James: Right. It’s inhuman to think that when someone has mental and emotional unhealth, that we’re broken. When in fact, it is part of being human. That we have an emotional body. We have mental health things to work out, and it’s not you’re normal or abnormal, you’re human, right? 

What we’re seeing is suicide rates going up is a symptom of a problem that our medical system is broken, which we already knew that. But also, our philosophy—as parents, as aunts and uncles, and as cousins—of how we’re raising this generation is incomplete. And what we need to do is come back to what you’re saying. Maybe this is your next book. Just like you looked at cultures that have the lowest rate of osteoporosis and the lowest rate of fractures, and then you looked at what was different in their diet versus the ones with the highest. What about cultures that have the lowest rate of suicide and what they’re doing differently? What philosophy are they doing differently? 

I really feel that self-care taught at an early age also increases self-worth, and if we can practice things like becoming quiet, doing breathing—I mean meditation kind of is a trigger word for some people because it seems too daunting. But simply going into oneself and just turn off the cell phone. Turn off the outside stimulus, and go into oneself—journal, breathe, get out in nature, do some self-reflection, share your thoughts and feelings with someone who’s supportive, and disconnect from negative energy, negative social media, that kind of thing, and practice self-care. There would also be a component of self-love and self-respect. 

We really need to look at what’s going on because if we have a generation that has huge mental and emotional health issues, they’re not practicing self-care, self-love. And these are the things that also, as you say, are done in cultures that have less disease.

[00:42:35] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yes. I mean it is a philosophical issue back to that. There isn’t a cultural philosophy that I can pinpoint in America that’s effective in that sort of way. I didn’t grow up with one. So it’s hard, at any point, to say okay, now we have to find a philosophy because that’s not how it works. And that’s why everybody gets sort of tripped up with this concept. Can I meditate? Like you said, it’s really daunting because there is no philosophical base for the concept. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re meditating. It doesn’t matter if you call it that. It doesn’t matter if you do it right. None of that matters. What matters is that you are listening to yourself, and you’re saying I am making space for you. I am making time for you. That’s it. That’s all that actually matters about it. Because when you start to recognize that you just want to make space for yourself, whatever that means for you, then you are respecting yourself. Then you’re respecting your body, and you’re respecting your mind. The response that you get from that will be enormous.

To me, it’s about separating it from the concepts because we don’t have a philosophy in which to place the concepts. So let’s just get rid of them and say well, what am I actually doing? What I’m actually doing is respecting and loving myself, and that’s all I have to do. And if you start there, then you will grow your own philosophy out of that seed. That’s how I help people in a mental and philosophical way. It’s really just about do I love myself enough to sit and say, I’m going to give myself some space and time. If you find that you don’t, then you have to do some examination. Find ways into being good with sitting with yourself and giving yourself respect. But this takes us back to the mental-physical conjunction. The lack of separation of these things.

We’ll pull it back down to reality. When you start to examine things like nutrition and brain function, the mechanisms in the brain, every single neurotransmitter turning into another neurotransmitter, every single function of the neurotransmitters, and the neurotransmitters themselves, all require different nutrients. The neurotransmitters need amino acids to be built. The translation of GABA to glutamate needs vitamin B6 and magnesium. If you don’t have these things, your brain isn’t going to work very well, and of course, you’re going to not feel good in a mental space. These are fundamental pieces. These are key important pieces.

And then the other part of that is, for example, with B6, if you’re looking, if you’re speaking with autistic kids or people with ADHD and focus problems, again, vitamin B6 is one of the key factors for transforming glutamate into GABA. And that’s the inhibition of the stimulation. So if you don’t have enough magnesium, which a majority of Americans apparently don’t according to all sources including the US government, but also a lot of issues can come around the B vitamins in terms of the transformation of the B vitamins within your body. Because the form that you eat a vitamin in is not the form your body uses it in. It has to go through transformational steps, and every single one of those transformational steps is regulated by a gene. All genes have the ability to be mutated or have polymorphisms.

So quite a lot of times, what you find is that even though this child is eating B vitamins, the pathway of transformation for some of the B vitamins isn’t working. So the form that he needs the B6 in order to transform the excitatory neurotransmitter into the inhibitory neurotransmitter his body doesn’t make. So he could eat B6 forever, and he still would not be able to efficiently make that transformation. So the glutamate will stay high, the inhibition of the GABA won’t happen, and he’s excited. 

But when you understand this process that the body has to go through these genetic transformations to make these things actually available, and that every single step is an opportunity for it to go wrong. When you start to understand those pathways you can say okay, now I need to give him the pre-transformed version of B6 because his body’s not doing it. And then the neurotransmitters start to function properly in that mechanism.

[00:48:20] Ashley James: Can that be derived from food? Or would that need to be a methylated B vitamin supplement?

[00:48:25] Dr. Laura Kelly: It would need to be a methylated supplement. So these are the pieces that are really key to understanding anything that you want. The entire system is built from nutrients, right? There’s no way around that. All nutrients and everything that comes into your body is information, essentially. How is that body set up to receive that information, and can it use the information? Does it understand the language? Or does it need help understanding that language information? That’s the base in my having looked at this and worked with lots and lots of patients, and thought about all different types of disease and all different types of mental states and things like this.

The bottom of the foundation of all this just simply is understanding. All of the nutrients are necessary—minerals, vitamins, everything is necessary. There’s nothing that’s not supposed to be there. It all has to be there. How does this particular person’s body respond and use that information—those nutrients? Let’s optimize that function as much as possible so that they can get the most out of everything that they’re taking because everybody’s taking supplements, and everybody’s trying to figure out what the right diet is. But without knowing this information, there is no optimization possible. Sometimes, it’s not possible to get happier, better brain function if you’re not transforming your B vitamins.

So these are things that just have to be known, and to me, this is fundamental medicine. From my perspective, the real foundational medicine of this body is nutrition because it’s the only way that it functions. As scientists, as doctors, we have to say, okay, this is the fundamental medicine. Let’s dig into it. Let’s pull it apart and figure out everything we need to understand how to make this work for us. And that wasn’t done by western medicine. Luckily now, it’s being done by a lot of people. And there’s a lot of nutritional medicine and research going on, are really coming to understand how these things function and why they’re so important.

Let me step back all the way to the very bottom of our bodies, which is our DNA. Not even speaking about it from the place of what it does, but speaking about the fact that what it is. DNA is made of something, and it’s made of nucleic acids. Nucleic acids, guess where we get them? We eat them, right? We have a pathway within us which is called a de novo synthesis pathway which can recycle what we have, but human breast milk is full of nucleic acid because that baby needs a huge supply of nucleic acids to build DNA because that baby is just pumping out cells rapidly.

Coming back again, the nucleic acids, we get them from what we eat, but we also need to structure them into DNA. Our body does that in the liver, but it does not do that without folate, without the vitamins, and without the nutrients. These are co-factors that our body uses to build our DNA. To take those nucleic acids, put them together, and make the strands. Without the co-factors of B vitamins, for example, it won’t happen. We won’t build DNA.

So when you’re looking at a system, for example, the immune system which is a rapid turnover—you’re going to get a turnover of cells every day, three to six days you’re going to get a full turnover of cells. The digestive tract, six days turnover of cells. These are rapidly turning over systems. Your body is constantly having to replenish cells, building cells all the time in these two systems. So these two systems need a lot of nucleic acids because you’re building a lot of DNA because there’s DNA in every cell.

You can pull nutrition back to this extremely base level and really see that this is really important because your immune system will not function if you don’t have enough nutritional co-factors, If you don’t have enough nucleic acids, which you get from mushrooms, for example.

[00:53:21] Ashley James: Ohh.

[00:53:22] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yes, nice link, right?

[00:53:26] Ashley James: I love mushrooms so much.

[00:53:28] Dr. Laura Kelly: Mushrooms are amazing, and they’re the only real substantial source of nucleic acids in the plant kingdom.

[00:53:35] Ashley James: Wow, really?

[00:53:37] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yeah. This is why they have been used traditionally for thousands and thousands of years as a longevity food.

[00:53:42] Ashley James: Any mushroom? Or are there certain kinds of mushrooms that have more co-factors than others?

[00:53:48] Dr. Laura Kelly: They have different factors meaning there are multiple levels of function with mushrooms. So you have the source of nucleic acids within the mushrooms, which are the building blocks for the DNA, but then you also have specific factors within each of the different types of mushrooms that trigger different immune system cell type growth. So some of the immune some of the mushrooms will trigger early phase immune response like natural killer cells and macrophages, and some of the mushrooms will trigger later stage cells—T cells, B cells, and things like this. There are multiple layers to the mushrooms in terms of the immune system and longevity.

[00:54:31] Ashley James: What kind of mushrooms do you eat on a regular basis?

[00:54:34] Dr. Laura Kelly: I eat chaga. I fluctuate depending on whatever is around. But reishi daily staple, chaga tea once a month, lion’s mane sometimes, and sort of geared towards brain health neuroplasticity, things like that.

[00:55:00] Ashley James: So those are supplements you can drink as teas or take as extracts. What about eating? Are there certain types of mushrooms that are better than others?

[00:55:13] Dr. Laura Kelly: I’m not a massive expert on mushrooms, even though I’d like to be. I think that shiitakes are particularly good. They seem to be very complex. That’s what I would suggest.

[00:55:29] Ashley James: I’ve had Dr. Joel Fuhrman on the show, and he says that everyone should eat a half a cup of mushrooms a day for some of the same reasons you’re expressing. In addition, at least a half a cup of onion, and you can mix them together. You can eat it raw or cooked. For this one particular nutrient he was talking about, and there are so many nutrients in the mushrooms. I always thought they were just water. I didn’t think that there was anything nutritionally beneficial in them, but they’re actually completely superfoods. 

Obviously buy all mushrooms should be organic because you don’t want to buy pesticide-filled mushrooms. But he said the white button cap ones, the ones that are usually void of flavor, shiitake is so flavorful. So these are very mild in flavor, and they’re the least expensive ones. He said that it actually has this one nutrient. I forget what nutrient it was, but one nutrient he was talking about that helps the immune system that they were quite high in it. You could save money and buy—it’s usually $4 a pound organic—and get these little white button cap ones.

I love cooking with mushrooms. Aren’t the building blocks as well for vitamin D? It’s like D1 or something is in mushrooms.

[00:57:00] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yes, that’s right. Maitake mushrooms are the only ones that actually have inherently vitamin D in them. Well, they have a significant amount of vitamin D compared to the rest of the mushrooms, but if you flip them up and put them in the sun gills up until they’re a little bit dry, they absorb vitamin D just like your skin does from the sun and they’ll store that.

[00:57:31] Ashley James: Yes. Then you eat it and then it’s like a vitamin D supplement.

[00:57:35] Dr. Laura Kelly: Exactly. It’s just way cheaper and more delicious.

[00:57:38] Ashley James: Oh, it’s so cool. That’s so neat. So besides mushrooms though, you’re saying that’s really the best source for the raw building blocks for nucleic acid. Would we have to then eat animals at that point if someone, for whatever reason, had adversity to mushrooms? Or is there anything else in the plant kingdom that we could eat?

[00:57:57] Dr. Laura Kelly: As far as I know, that’s the richest source is mushrooms. Other than that, you’re looking at organ meats, basically.

[00:58:08] Ashley James: Got it. Wow. I mean, that’s amazing. Let’s say someone eats the standard American diet but doesn’t eat mushrooms, doesn’t eat organ meats, they might be really low in nucleic acid.

[00:58:25] Dr. Laura Kelly: Well, this is a question. I mean, we do have a de novo synthesis pathway, which is we can recycle these pieces and make what we need to make, but again, when you’re dealing with a system with a high turnover like the immune system, the reproductive system, or the gastrointestinal system, you may not actually. This hasn’t really been researched, actually, which I find pretty interesting. It’s been researched more in Japan than it has here, by far. But there was one study that looked at if you’re an elite athlete and you’re pushing your body quite hard, one of the things that suffer post-exercise is immunity. So your immune system, the regulation goes down.

So there was research where they decided that they would supplement these elite athletes with nucleic acids post-exercise and see, and it stopped the immune fall-off.

[00:59:27] Ashley James: How did they supplement? With the actual supplement, or they ate mushrooms?

[00:59:31] Dr. Laura Kelly: No, nucleic acids. I don’t know if it was a synthesized nucleic acid. I’m not sure where they got them, but there was a nucleic acid supplement. It provokes an interesting idea, which is if you’re immune-compromised, you can generally say that if you’re suffering from a chronic condition, you can guess that you’re having low natural killer cell function, which is the first phase of the immune response. So it begs the question, what happens with people who are having faltering immune responses if we supplement them with nucleic acids? So they’re actually able to produce more DNA and more cells. I don’t know the answer to that, but I think it’s an interesting question from a supplementation standpoint, for sure.

[01:00:22] Ashley James: Oh my gosh, absolutely. So we’re looking at the body with a different philosophy. You mentioned that the body can recycle. So let’s say someone’s not eating foods that are rich in nucleic acid. The body’s recycling old cells as they die and reusing the nucleic acid. What co-factors are needed in order to do this recycling?

[01:00:55] Dr. Laura Kelly: You know what, Ashley, I don’t know because I have really just started digging into this in the past week because I’m writing a book on the immune system and longevity.

[01:01:05] Ashley James: Fantastic. Well, there’s my question for you. When you have completed that book, come back to the show and I want to know the answer.

[01:01:12] Dr. Laura Kelly: Definitely.

[01:01:14] Ashley James: Looking at each function of the body, for example, in recycling the body’s own glutathione, so glutathione is very expensive for the body to make. I believe the liver produces it. It’s our master antioxidant, so it’s obviously incredibly important, but it’s very expensive for the body to make. However, when selenium is present, which is a micronutrient—it’s like a mineral—then the body can recycle it. So that’s one of the co-factors the body needs to recycle glutathione.

If we make sure we supplement with selenium, you don’t need to overdo it. 200 micrograms a day or between 200 and 600, depending on your weight, is great. But that’s supporting the liver in recycling glutathione, which helps us to fight off cancer and other diseases. If we knew the factors needed in recycling other things in the body like nucleic acid, then we can make sure that we have them.

[01:02:21] Dr. Laura Kelly: Exactly. That’s my goal is to put together the list. Maybe someone has done this already. If anybody knows, definitely let us know, but I haven’t found any sort of supplementation in terms of exactly what you’re speaking of—providing nucleic acid bases, but also providing some co-factors along with that to really help the body produce the cells that it needs to produce. I think it’s a really interesting project.

[01:02:48] Ashley James: As you research, had you come across the effects of fasting, especially after 30 hours of fasting when the body’s ability to break down pathological tissue skyrockets?

[01:03:02] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[01:03:06] Ashley James: Is that part of your system, or do you recommend that for people looking to speed up their healing?

[01:03:12] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yes. Well, it depends. It depends on how weak you are. It depends on if you’re diabetic. If you’re diabetic, it’s not a good idea. That’s going to be a mess. You need to do that with serious supervision. But in general, yeah. The upregulation of all sorts of longevity factors on top of all of that, there isn’t really another way to kick the body into that sort of behavior, except by fasting. And again, looking back at—I’m sure many of your other guests have taken this road and spoke about this—how we evolved, it’s again like looking back to nature.

You look back to how we evolved and you say, how did this organism function? What does that mean for us in the environment we’re in, where food is completely plentiful? We can get whatever we want even if it doesn’t grow around here. All of these things are all questions to ask because there is a perfect harmony that comes out of evolution. The farther we get from those and the small choices that we make that distance us from that perfect harmony eventually are going to have an effect.

Coming back to look at how we evolved, which is if we went out and we killed this animal or whatever we ate for a while, and then we didn’t eat meat for three months or whatever. Giving the body the natural patterns, looking at those natural patterns, and saying how we evolved is with those patterns. So that’s probably going to be what our body is going to respond to.

[01:04:51] Ashley James: Right, right. In the west, we’re so afraid of even missing a meal let alone fasting, but there’s so much evidence to show that it’s incredibly healthy. And yes, I have done interviews about it, and there’s lots of science now proving that you can do fasting in a very healthy and restorative way.

I want to talk more about your book. Before I do, I want to bring up one more thing. I have a friend. It’s a friend’s mother, and she has had her gallbladder removed. She has basically had every part of your body you can have removed and still survive. This is exactly what she said to me, “I’ve had everything removed that you can without dying.” Gallbladder, she’s had her parathyroid removed, she’s had her appendix removed, so you go down the list.

She’s 60 years old, relatively healthy, and all of a sudden, a few weeks ago, began having huge dizziness, can’t walk, her legs won’t work, and people have to just support her weight. She was so dizzy she was vomiting. It took several hospitals to finally diagnose her with—first they said it was peripheral vertigo, which is not accurate. Then they said, okay, it’s central vertigo. And then a neurologist, after doing a lot of blood work said, she has virtually no copper in her system. So she’s being supplemented with 2mg of copper a day for a year, which I think is incredible.

[01:06:27] Dr. Laura Kelly: It’s high.

[01:06:29] Ashley James: Yeah, very high. But given that, the neurologist is not recommending any co-factors—not calcium, not magnesium, nothing. No co-factors at all. This woman has not had parathyroid for years, so her body has not regulated any of the minerals correctly. I’m kind of just taken aback. And she’s never done a bone density scan. I’m thinking, what’s going on…? Because you mentioned about the brain and how there are certain nutrients like if B6 is missing, you can actually—and I’ve heard of people having dementia, being put in nursing homes, and then a Naturopath is called by a family member. They get them on a B supplement and all of a sudden the lights come back on. They didn’t have dementia. They had a B-vitamin deficiency.

If you have a B6 deficiency, the brain is not going to function. But if you’re incredibly deficient in trace elements and minerals like copper, for example, or major ones like magnesium or calcium, the nervous system doesn’t function correctly. I’d love for you to share. For some people who let’s say they don’t have a thyroid or parathyroid. Their body really cannot regulate healthfully on its own, what steps do you recommend? Do you recommend that they definitely read your book and do this diet? What steps do you recommend, especially for this woman, my friend’s mother?

[01:07:56] Dr. Laura Kelly: Again, my book isn’t a diet. I’m not really a proponent of that because everybody has different needs, everybody has different things that they want to do, and the ways that they want to eat. So I’m not prescribing a diet, just to clarify.

[01:08:13] Ashley James: Love it.

[01:08:15] Dr. Laura Kelly: I’m saying here are the mechanisms in terms of how your bones work and your body works around those bones, and here are the things you need in order to activate those mechanisms. I’m not dictating how you need to get them. So if you want to get your calcium from dairy, you can. If you want to get your calcium from leafy greens, you can. It doesn’t matter to me. Within that context, she’s not going to be regulating calcium. She’s not going to be regulating the bone density aspect. Then there’s a mechanism called osteocalcin. This mechanism is really key to regulating all of that and making sure that the calcium is going the right place.

So understanding how to activate those mechanisms nutritionally sound really important to me for this person, and making sure that all of the factors are in place to make sure that those mechanisms are functioning without the oversight is really the situation that she wants to be in. If I were her doctor, I would run for her a nutrition evaluation first, and that’s going to look at basically all nutrients and say where are we with all of those things.

I may also run genetics for those nutritional pathways because it’s really important for her, especially this person with lack of regulation over this issue, to understand where we may be running into trouble. For example, this all started with me because my vitamin D levels were chronically low. I didn’t understand why for so long, and I took the standard dose of vitamin D, and I never erased them. I finally said this is ridiculous. So I ran my genetics, and I have terrible vitamin G receptor genetics. There are four different transformations that are going to make, three of mine are in the toilet.

So I tripled my dose of vitamin D, and I finally got where I needed to be. I would never have done that, and I spent years vitamin D deficient taking vitamin D. Especially for somebody who doesn’t have a lot of leeway, coming to understand if there are any things in the way from her body and saying, okay, let’s understand all of that, and then just make sure she has the proper doses of all of those nutrients, then you don’t need to overdose on any of the other ones. You don’t need to overdose on things because the body itself, like you were saying before, is so efficient that if you give it the right amounts of things, you’re not going to need to over supplement on anything and throw off because you’re going to throw something else off if you over supplement with copper.

[01:11:07] Ashley James: Absolutely.

[01:11:10] Dr. Laura Kelly: So you want to avoid doing that, of course, because you shouldn’t. You don’t need to, but what you do need to do is exactly like you said. You have to provide all of the co-factors that the copper needs to function, which is exactly the same situation that I encountered with my mother when her doctor had initially said, here take these calcium pills—1200 milligrams of calcium a day. Well, if you look at the research, 1200 milligrams of calcium a day doesn’t fix osteoporosis, and it also ups your chances of cardiovascular problems quite significantly.

[01:11:47] Ashley James: Especially because there are no other co-factors. Magnesium is needed to help place calcium correctly, and there are other nutrients as well, right? So if you’re only taking one, and they have to be in a great ratio, then you’re right. It’s not going to be placed correctly in the body. But just overdoing copper—and you’re much more of an expert than I am, but I know for example—throws vitamin C off, and it throws selenium off. Those three things have to be in the right ratios together. Because some people will overdose vitamin C, and that’s good in certain circumstances. But if you overdose vitamin C, it leeches copper from the body.

Copper deficiency leads to aneurysms because it’s needed in the production. It’s a co-factor in elastin, and it’s also needed for making pigment. So people who lose the ability to make pigment or have gray hair have a copper deficiency. Everything has to be done together in balance, but I love that you talk about this genetic component of epigenetics—looking at how the genes are expressing. I have the MTHFR SNP mutation—however, it’s said—and so I have to take a methylated B-vitamins in order to support my liver to do both phases of detox.

I haven’t even gone deeper into the genetics like looking at how my body—the four different genes that help the body make the D-vitamin, that’s incredibly interesting. So you do telemedicine. You see patients locally in LA, but you also work with people around the world. Can you order these tests and can you decipher them, these gene tests?

[01:13:43] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yes. I have actually. I’m in the process, and I’m almost finished building a piece of software that does this because it’s so important. If you want to stay healthy for as long as possible, you have to understand this. If you want to fix your type 2 diabetes, you have to do this. If you want to fix your heart disease, 90% of people who have these problems can reverse them. I don’t want to be too bold about it, but it can prevent, reverse, or mitigate the problems here.

[01:14:20] Ashley James: Absolutely. Even type 1 diabetics, they can increase their health so much that they require less insulin. I’ve known several type 1 diabetics who after focusing on health. They were able to cut down their insulin by over 70% because they increased insulin sensitivity, their body became more efficient. So even people who have issues where we’re not saying you’re curing it, but you can make it more efficient.

[01:14:52] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yes, definitely. All of these things. Again, we know that we need to eat a good diet. We have good instincts, usually, about our own bodies and what we should and should not be eating. Over time we come to know that, but let’s get to it for real. Let’s just look at it and say, okay, your vitamin D function is terrible. You need to triple a dose. Okay, your B-vitamin functions are fantastic. Just sit in the sun for 10 minutes. We can do that. We can do that now.

What I’m building here is a piece of software that’s going to allow me or you, I’m building it for you, I’m building it for everyone. Again, it’s like the book for mothers. I’m building this piece of software for you, for people to be able to say okay, I have these tests, or if I don’t have them, I can order them here. They’re going to go through this engine, and I’m going to actually know exactly what I need to be taking, or exactly what I need to be eating because here’s a shopping list. I can walk into my grocery store and I can say oh, this is actually the food I need.

[01:15:59] Ashley James: And the herbs.

[01:16:01] Dr. Laura Kelly: The herbs, all of it. Because herbs are concentrated nutrients. That’s what herbs are and that’s why they work.

[01:16:09] Ashley James: I love it. Let’s dive into your research in your book. You studied the cultures, the countries that have the highest rates of osteoporosis, osteopenia, and fractures, and you also study the lowest. Let’s talk about the bad first. What are the commonalities that the cultures that have the worst bone density? What are some commonalities that you feel contribute to bone loss and fractures?

[01:16:43] Dr. Laura Kelly: The two areas of the world are the US and Scandinavia. It’s pretty clear, and they’re significantly higher than they should be than everywhere else. It’s pretty clear in Scandinavia that it’s the vitamin D winter. I think that there’s really not much else to say there. It’s just simply the lack of vitamin D. There was a lot of research done around vitamin A, the balance of vitamin A and vitamin D, and how really important that is for bone health. Just not having enough sunlight is a deficiency.

[01:17:24] Ashley James: Right. I’ve heard some plant-based doctors have come on the show and have shared. I haven’t seen the studies so it would be interesting, but they’ve cited that countries—so certain cultures like Africa and Asia—that consume no cow dairy or very limited consumption have the highest bone density. And cultures that consume the most cow dairy have the worst bone density.

[01:17:56] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yeah, that may be true, but I think there’s a difference that needs to be made also between pasteurized and unpasteurized. I mean they’re basically different foods. I think most of us grew up eating pasteurized dairy, and that’s not going to do much for you. Genetics plays a part in this, of course. You have some African tribes. All they eat is meat and blood and their cholesterol is 120. Do you know what I mean? There are genetic components to this environment. They grew up doing this. This is how their body evolved. This was their evolution, and so it works.

[01:18:40] Ashley James: They have great vitamin D levels.

[01:18:43] Dr. Laura Kelly: And they have great vitamin D levels.

[01:18:46] Ashley James: Okay. So vitamin D, you’re saying, is the biggest thing.

[01:18:51] Dr. Laura Kelly: Well it was. It is in Scandinavia. The point actually that I really should make is it’s just deficiency. It’s really a deficiency issue. That’s clear in the US. I remember, when I first started thinking and studying medicine, I was like it’s not possible. How is it possible that we’re deficient in the US? We’re the land of opulence. We can’t be deficient, but it’s very clear that the majority of us are nutritionally deficient, which is bizarre but true.

[01:19:23] Ashley James: Well the food is void of nutrients.

[01:19:27] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yes. There is that, and the dietary practices aren’t ideal in terms of keeping the system regulated and healthy. But that isn’t something that you know. It’s not something that you learn from your doctor, and your doctor never tells you that that’s something that’s important. It wasn’t something that was thought about for a long time.

[01:19:52] Ashley James: One of my mentors is Dr. Joel Wallach. I’ve had him on the show. He, interesting background, became a Naturopathic physician, but first, he did pathology, was a research scientist, was a veterinarian, and also had a degree in soil agriculture. He studied soil. He actually discovered what was the cause of Keshawn disease in China, and also certain groups of—what are they called in the United States in Pennsylvania?

[01:20:31] Dr. Laura Kelly: Amish.

[01:20:32] Ashley James: Amish, that’s right. The Amish were having high rates of the same sort of disease-like state, and he came in. Because they only eat what they grow, he studied their soil and determined the soil was completely void of certain nutrients like selenium. It was causing miscarriages and causing an alarmingly high rate of muscular dystrophy in this particular area of Pennsylvania because they’re eating the food they grow, and their soil is devoid of selenium. And selenium is needed in utero to prevent certain birth defects like muscular dystrophy, which he discovered.

We usually don’t eat all of our food from the same soil. You look at your grapes, they’re from Chile. You look at your pears and they’re from Thailand. We’re eating food from around the world, especially if we’re not conscious of eating more locally for fresher foods. But just because Brazil nuts, are grown in any soil, that doesn’t mean they’re chock full of selenium because I’ve often brought this up, like oh, we need selenium. And then someone says, oh, I eat six brazil nuts a day. Brazil nuts can grow hydroponically.

Anything can grow in almost minerally void water basically as long as it has NPK and some form of even artificial sunlight. So the fact that you’re eating broccoli, we should absolutely eat plants. But it doesn’t mean there’s enough calcium in that food or enough iron in that spinach. How do you go about combating this? Let’s say someone actually does eat healthily. They’re eating half their plate is full of vegetables, a variety of colors, and they’re all they’re always eating organic. How do you ensure that they’re getting all of their co-factors? Do you do blood testing? Do you look at their symptoms? Do you do the genetics? How do you go about it?

[01:22:31] Dr. Laura Kelly: All of it. This is a long-term prospect because you’re not coming to see me because I will fix your toe if it hurts. I mean, don’t get me wrong—or your knee or whatever. I can do that. But generally speaking, when people are coming to me, they’re coming to me because they’re saying, okay, maybe I have a bone density issue. Or maybe I have another chronic condition, but I’m interested in—I’m getting older maybe and I want to now be healthy for the rest of my life.

What I do is I look at all of that stuff, and I say let’s build the foundation up. So let’s get the information and then we have it. But let’s also say that we know that we’re not running every trace mineral that your body needs for all that cell communication. We’re not running all of that. We know that we need all of it. We know that it’s devoid in the diet, so let’s choose some really base supplements that we’re going to take regularly. And then on top of that, we’ll figure out what your deficiencies are. If you’re missing vitamin C, we’ll supplement with that.

But there is some really base supplementation that we need, just because of where we live, or just because of the world is the way it is. And that is amino acids and trace minerals. We need these things so much. If we eat only muscle meat, which we eat in the west and we don’t eat the connective tissue, we’re missing part of the amino acid profile completely. These are things that I find let’s just do it. Let’s just get these supplements going, and then you have the basis of everything you need. The nucleic acids, you need these things in order to do anything. Let’s blanket supplement these base things—at least for a while—and then figure out what your additional deficiencies are on top of it. That’s how I work. But the trace mineral supplementation, I don’t know if there’s anything more important than that.

[01:24:41] Ashley James: Absolutely.

[01:24:43] Dr. Laura Kelly: Like you’re saying, they’re the co-factors required for all cell communication, the things that are happening inside of the cell, the communication of the DNA, the RNA, and the building of the proteins themselves. All of these things require all of these co-factors. So let’s just put them all in there and say let’s give it all it needs and then work on the problems once it’s got all the fuel.

[01:25:07] Ashley James: Absolutely. Nine years ago—it’s actually coming up on 10 years, I can’t believe that. Next month it’ll be 10 years. I was incredibly sick. I had a lot of health issues and chronic adrenal fatigue was one of them. I got on Dr. Wallach’s protocol. The first thing I did was get on his liquid trace minerals. Within the same day that I took them, my constant gnawing hunger went away. I had out of control blood sugar, and I was type 2 diabetic as well, but the constant gnawing hunger that I was constantly yo-yoing. Every 45 minutes I was hungry. Nothing could satiate it. Within my first shot, I took an ounce of it, within minutes the hunger went away. It was really interesting. Within five days of being on it, I woke up early in the morning full of energy, and it was like a light bulb went on in my body.

That was really what had me go, oh my gosh, I have to tell my friends about this. And then I did, and I have a friend who reversed her lifelong skin problem. I have another friend that immediately stopped five months of kidney stones—stopped them—and he hasn’t had them since. My friend hasn’t had her skin problem since. That’s what led me down this path of wanting to study with Naturopaths, become a health coach, and start the podcast.

So trace minerals are what started it for me. Now, not all trace minerals are created equal. There’s buyer beware out there. I can say that takeyoursupplements.com is where I recommend getting them from. I’m sure you have your own line that you recommend when people work with you as well. I just want to put out there, I don’t recommend going to Amazon, just typing in trace minerals, and getting whatever. There’s so much buyer beware out there, but get it from a reputable source. Either get it from Dr. Kelly or get it from takeyoursupplements.com, I would say. But I think everyone should be on a trace mineral supplement. It makes such a huge difference. I totally agree with you.

[01:27:17] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yeah, definitely. This is another coming back to the theme, which we’ve been in a while is the natural patterns that are there. We have ratios and balances of trace minerals. We don’t have an equal amount of all of them, right? We have different ratios, and it’s the same ratio that’s in the ocean. And it’s the same ratio that’s in shilajit or Himalayan salt. The patterns of mineral balance are replicated throughout the natural world. So finding sources that replicate that natural balance is what you want to find because then you’ll be taking things in the right balance for your natural body.

[01:28:10] Ashley James: So you had mentioned that you came up with a list of all the things that the cultures around the world with the lowest rate of osteoporosis, the highest bone density, and the lowest rate of fracture. That they have in common that helps the body to properly lay down calcium in the right places, not in the wrong places, and you told your mom to pick three. What were the three things that she picked?

[01:28:37] Dr. Laura Kelly: Let me just differentiate for a minute between bone density and fracture because they actually aren’t the same metric. This is relevant because of what I found. The Japanese, on the traditional diet, had very low rates of fracture compared to everybody else. But, if you scan their bones, they’re necessarily not dense, but they’re quite small, can be thin, and could even fall into osteopenia or osteoporosis, but they don’t fracture.

This was a moment of saying, well wait a minute. So there are two separate metrics here and one of them is the density, which is what we read. But the other metric is actually flexibility because if you look at the way the bone is structured, you have the collagen that gets laid down. It doesn’t get laid down in a regular regulated fashion. It’s not regimented like a line a line a line a line a line of collagen. It’s laid down in a completely random fashion, and it creates a matrix, but a really random matrix. And the reason it does this is because you can imagine that if the collagen were laid down in straight lines, the bone would be very strong from one direction and completely not strong from another direction.

So the randomness of the laying down of the collagen strands is completely random so that it can absorb a hit from any angle. This concept of flexibility is something that we don’t look at in the west in terms of diagnosis or understanding bone health. We look at density, and as you know from the drugs, you can densify your bones. But then, you can also suffer what’s called a bisphosphonate fracture, which is the result of taking the bone densifying drugs, and then the bones just randomly fracture standing on the subway, for example. That was the first one that went to the CDC.

I think some woman was standing on the subway, and her femur just shattered. It was because the bone density drugs will support your system in laying down bone, but if it’s already been laying down subpar bone or bad quality bone, all it’s going to do is assist your body in laying down low-quality bone. You may get a denser reading, but the quality of the bone isn’t good, and so you end up with a fracture.

So just looking at bone density is a mistake, and trying to figure out a way to read something like flexibility would be a better approach, in my opinion. Because if I had to choose between a dense bone and a flexible bone, I would take a small flexible bone any day because it’s going to withstand a lot.

[01:31:34] Ashley James: And not fracture

[01:31:35] Dr. Laura Kelly: And not fracture because it’ll be able to take a hit. Considering that concept, I was looking at the Japanese diet and looking at what in their diet is allowing them to not have particularly dense bones but to have flexible bones because that’s why they’re not fracturing. And that turns out to be K2. That’s in the traditional diet and has always been in the traditional diet. Of course, the presence of magnesium is required for activation as well. So it’s the nutrient co-factors. It’s always coming down to those. It’s always going to come down to those.

So it’s making sure that all those nutrient co-factors are there in the right place, at the right time to make sure that the system and the mechanisms work. That was the top choice of my mother. She’s like okay, well this makes a lot of sense to me. So she started supplementing with K2. We looked at the research out of Japan. They’re researching it at very high doses, multiple, multiple, multiple thousands of times what our body would normally use. And there didn’t seem to be any downside.

So we just took a hard-hitting approach for about three months, and I just said, “Okay, mom we’re going to hit your body so that your body knows what we’re doing.” I don’t have any scientific basis for this but I feel like the body wants, like we were talking about before, to be well. It wants its mechanisms to work. It wants to be in homeostasis. I also think that it listens to us, right? Again, it’s the information we’re putting in. What information are we putting in with our minds? What information are we putting in with what we eat?

So I said, “Mom, we’re going to hit it hard so your body knows what we’re doing, and it has no uncertain terms that we are building your bone and we are making sure that the calcium is going in the right place.” So we spent three months of what I would call therapeutic doses of exactly what we talked about—K2, trace minerals, amino acids. These are her choices, and I agree with them completely. We said let’s start there, we started there, then ran her tests, figured out what else she was missing, and filled it in. She’s changed her diet completely. It took about two years for her to really shift her diet into what she actually needed to be eating.

[01:34:02] Ashley James: Which is?

[01:34:04] Dr. Laura Kelly: For her, again, it’s personal. For her, she ended up needing a lot of calcium from plants because she needed a lot of calcium. She wasn’t actually eating the calcium in her regular diet.

[01:34:20] Ashley James: Isn’t there also vitamin K in leafy greens?

[01:34:23] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yup, there is. And that can turn into K2 sometimes, it depends. K2 is one of the things I absolutely recommend supplementing with if you have bone density issues.

[01:34:35] Ashley James: What form of K2?

[01:34:38] Dr. Laura Kelly: Ideally, of course, from natto, but it’s a pretty hard thing to put into your diet because it’s pretty stinky and tastes pretty bad.

[01:34:48] Ashley James: Explain what that is for those who don’t know.

[01:34:50] Dr. Laura Kelly: It’s a fermented soybean in a particular fashion.

[01:34:53] Ashley James: Yum. Sounds delicious.

[01:34:57] Dr. Laura Kelly: It’s sort of like when you—I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Asia but if you bury shrimp in the ground for six months and then you pull it up and make a paste out of it, it’s got a similar kind of flavor to that kind of shrimp paste. It’s very rich, let’s say.

[01:35:12] Ashley James: So fermented natto?

[01:35:17] Dr. Laura Kelly: Natto.

[01:35:18] Ashley James: Natto, thank you. Where would one source that, or can you make it yourself?

[01:35:25] Dr. Laura Kelly: You can make it. It’s a process of fermenting beans, and it’s stinky. It’s a hard thing to do. You can do it. You can find it occasionally in some co-ops. I’ve seen it. And you can also buy powder. That’s another way to go is just to buy the powder. It’s not as stinky, and it actually tastes sort of caramel. So it’s kind of good.

[01:35:50] Ashley James: How did your mom source it? How did she eat it?

[01:35:55] Dr. Laura Kelly: She actually started with natto and then was like, “I don’t know if I can do this for too long.” So we went to supplements. We went to the bacterial fermented supplements. They worked. Everything worked well for her.

[01:36:12] Ashley James: I’ve heard natto’s kind of a miracle food. If someone wanted to eat natto, so it’s a paste, how much would they want to take? How would they cook with it? Do they turn it into tea or soup?

[01:36:26] Dr. Laura Kelly: No, maybe it comes in a paste, but the traditional format is like a fermented bean porridge kind of breakfast thing.

[01:36:36] Ashley James: Oh, okay.

[01:36:37] Dr. Laura Kelly: So you just ferment the beans. It creates this really mucousy, mucilaginous-like gel around it.

[01:36:45] Ashley James: That’s what I want for breakfast.

[01:36:47] Dr. Laura Kelly: Very appetizing. But some people get used to it, and then they love it. It’s one of those things where when you break through the barrier you’re like how could I live without it?

[01:36:56] Ashley James: Can you cook it, or does heating it deteriorate the vitamin K?

[01:37:02] Dr. Laura Kelly: I think heating it too high will kill the bacteria.

[01:37:06] Ashley James: Okay. So I could probably look up recipes. I’m thinking make congee with it, but just add it at the end so it’s not too hot.

[01:37:16] Dr. Laura Kelly: Maybe. The Japanese tend to eat it, I believe, in just a very traditional way, this is how we eat it.

[01:37:24] Ashley James: Just like a cold soup?

[01:37:26] Dr. Laura Kelly: Like a breakfast-ish.

[01:37:27] Ashley James: Like a porridge?

[01:37:28] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yeah, that kind of thing.

[01:37:29] Ashley James: Okay.

[01:37:32] Dr. Laura Kelly: I’m sorry. I don’t know about any other recipes. I think it’s so specific a flavor that it’s hard to—

[01:37:38] Ashley James: It’s kind of like just get it down.

[01:37:40] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yeah.

[01:37:40] Ashley James: It’s so funny. My mom worked with these people from Asia who owned this company for many years. Worked with them, and had a great relationship. We had a cottage. I’m from Canada, and in Canada, especially Ontario, many people have a cottage. It’s like a second home but like out in nature. We kept inviting them to come stay with us for the weekend and they wouldn’t, and my mom said it was because they were afraid of eating the food we ate. The idea of, first of all, not eating rice at every meal was weird. But we were going to serve them eggs and toast and they’re like, no, thanks. We’d rather stay home. At an early age, that opened me up to this idea that there are certain people in the world that find our food repulsive.

[01:38:34] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yeah, absolutely.

[01:38:35] Ashley James: Especially if our body needs nutrition, let’s look for those cultures that eat food to prevent disease, and let’s try to open up our repertoire, our palette to include what they do medicinally, and just see what happens. I think especially, if we could get our kids to eat it, they might be able to grow up eating it. I’m going to see if I can find it at our co-op or have our co-op order it, and I’m going to try it for myself. I have never had it.

[01:39:12] Dr. Laura Kelly: Can you shoot yourself on video doing that so we can all watch?

[01:39:15] Ashley James: I will absolutely do that in the Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook group. I will go live, and I will eat natto for the first time. When I was a kid I’d eat anything, like anything. There was nothing I wouldn’t eat and my dad loved that. So he’d take me out to really weird Asian restaurants and feed me the really weird stuff. I’m just never a picky eater. That wasn’t my problem. Anyway, this will be fun. I will love eating natto.

Okay. So vitamin K2 is incredibly important. Getting it from leafy greens, especially since you’re also going to get some co-factors like calcium is very important. What other things are just generally great ideas to incorporate into our diet?

[01:40:08] Dr. Laura Kelly: Generally great ideas, again, it just depends. This is the process of looking at what you have in your body, what you don’t have, and looking at your genetics and saying what’s actually functioning here? It really is the case that in terms of nutrition, everybody’s different. What do you process? I don’t know. What do you not process? I don’t know. Again, the standard dose of a nutrient is not correct either because I need 10,000 units a day of vitamin D, and you may need none because you’re in the sun for 10 minutes.

There are general recommendations, which are all good, like eat most plants. Everybody needs to eat a lot of plants. Keeping things as whole source as possible. The basic things that we all know for the reasons of the complexity that I was speaking about earlier and the dynamics of the formula—the herbal formula for malaria. That same concept applies to food, and the complexity of the natural sources means that we’re going to get the enzymes that we need in order to digest the things that are there. So staying close to whole sources is always a good idea. But, again, finding out what you need is actually not a bad idea.

[01:41:43] Ashley James: Yes, absolutely. What about water? Obviously, dehydration affects everything in a negative way, but what about the quality of water like avoiding sodium fluoride, which I’ve heard the body gets confused with this kind of fluoride in the water and it ends up harming the bone system but also the skull system. Also, it does things to the pituitary gland and to the thyroid. So what about chemicals in tap water?

[01:42:21] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yes. This is the problem with the world that we have created. It’s dangerous. We’ve created a dangerous world. It’s a problem. Filtering the water is probably not good enough. These are the difficulties of it. I think that there are some small water filter producers who make filters that actually do a good enough job for you to filter the tap water. So investigating those and figuring out what’s actually going to work if you’re going to drink tap water. Finding clean sources, testing your water is something I tell people to do just so you know what you’re dealing with. All of this is so important, and this is coming back to the information that we’re giving the system and saying what’s the information I’m putting in?

With the food production, who knows what information we’re putting in when we’re eating processed food. I don’t know what that information is. The body doesn’t even know what that information is, and what’s in the water? Every single substance that’s in that water is going to say something to your body. What’s it saying? So these things, even though they seem inconsequential, it’s really important to understand and to know what are you putting in.

Looking at your water, looking at your food sources, testing yourself, giving yourself that strong solid foundation because even if you are putting in questionable information, if you’ve got all those trace minerals present, your immune system is going to work well and you’re going to be able to defend yourself against the dangerous water that you’ve just drank. This is the complex web of self-care that we all find ourselves in, given the fact that the system itself doesn’t take care of this stuff for us. That’s why we’re here speaking about it, and that’s why it’s so wonderful that you’re bringing all of this to the forefront.

[01:44:31] Ashley James: Love it. Thank you so much for coming and sharing this information. I totally agree with you. We need to look at the world we’ve created and looked at the chemicals. For example, the pesticides and the chemicals that we’re spraying on our “conventionally grown food.” I think that’s hilarious because to our grandparents, to our great-grandparents, or to our great-great-grandparents, conventionally grown food was organic. We now consider organic. Although there are over 2000 chemicals that have been approved under the certification of organic. So even then it’s questionable. But get organic, get local as much as possible. Work with biodynamic farms as close to farms as you can. Luckily, I live in a state where I can actually go to a farm and actually get my food from the farm.

So if you can do that, if you can figure out how to do that, do it. If you can source some food boxes that are coming directly from farms, that’s great. Organic as much as possible. These chemicals, a lot of them are chelators. So they bind to heavy metals, they bind to even minerals and wash them away from the soil. If we consume them like glyphosate, they will release heavy metals into our kidneys and brain. What we think is safe when we go to eat an apple or go to eat some corn. What we think is safe or even healthy food.

A conventionally grown apple, they’ve had it tested as up to 50 different chemicals. These are man-made chemicals the body doesn’t know what to do with. The liver gets clogged up. These chemicals are endocrine disruptors. They harm the harmony in the body. You’re teaching us how to bring the body back into harmony, back into balance, and support the body’s ability to be strong and heal itself. One of those things is removing what is in our way as much as possible.

[01:46:42] Dr. Laura Kelly: The insults. This is coming back to—you just mentioned the liver. This is just to be clear, your liver gets clogged up because it’s trying to detoxify all of these things. That’s implying that everybody’s liver naturally functions perfectly anyway, which just simply isn’t even the case. I’ve never seen a genetic run where every CYP enzyme, every CYP genetic is perfect. There are polymorphisms all over the place in liver function. So you have CYP pathways in the liver that detoxify all different sorts of substances. There isn’t one pathway for all substances. There are different pathways for different substances, and each of those pathways has different genetics.

Every time you’re dealing with genetics, which is everywhere, you have the opportunity for things to be not perfect, right? You have a polymorphism, which is sort of a mutation but not quite a mutation. In genetics, you call it a polymorphism in the smaller subset like this. So you have the opportunity for polymorphisms, which interfere with liver detoxification pathways, and everybody has those. I’ve never seen one without.

Not only are you taking in the 50 chemicals that are in the water that went in to grow the organic apple. Because even if it’s organic, if they water it with water that’s filled with garbage, how much of the apple is water? Most of it. You’re going to eat that apple and you already have impaired liver detoxification because most of us do anyway. Each liver detoxification pathway itself has separate combinations of nutrient co-factors that are required including amino acids for phase detoxification.

If you’re missing any of those, so you have an insult that you’ve taken into your body, you’re missing some nutrients either because you don’t need it or because of your genetic component, then your liver detoxification is impaired with polymorphisms in your genes for detoxification so it’s impaired. So you’ve got three places already. You’ve just eaten an organic apple, but you have three places where you could potentially run into huge amounts of trouble. It’s crazy. That’s crazy.

That’s the truth of this pattern and this system is that it’s that complicated. And that’s in a healthy person. That’s somebody who’s me or you who’s walking around feeling good, feeling great, and having a wonderful life. That’s me. I don’t have great liver detoxification. I can eat that apple with those 50 insults and be causing myself a problem down the line.

Not to fear monger, certainly not, but just to say that all of this is important. And when you’re thinking about medicine on a fundamental level, medicine for the human body, these are things that are really important to think about, and all of them are important. It’s not like just a little bit of it’s important. All of it is important.

[01:49:50] Ashley James: And if it’s too overwhelming to think about, find a practitioner like Dr. Kelly who does telemedicine. Or find a health coach like myself. Find someone to work with because sometimes we just get to a point where we just need to hand our bodies over to someone. And that’s often where we go to an MD, then we’re given drugs. Drugs are great for certain things, not great for others. It shouldn’t be a tool we use 100% of the time. We’ve already discussed that, right?

One of the Naturopaths that I mentored with who is the dean of Bastyr Naturopathic College, and she’s practiced for over 30 years. She’s delivered over 1000 babies. She’s has a wonderful, wonderful practice working with women. She says sometimes she has a doctor-patient relationship where the patient is handing themselves over to her, and they’re saying, just take my blood, do labs on me, and just tell me what to do. They don’t want to think. It’s too overwhelming. They just want to be told what to do, and they’ll go home and do it.

And then there are other times where she doesn’t have a doctor-patient relationship. She has a teacher-mentor kind of relationship with a client, and she’ll call them her client. They’re someone who wants to come in, and often, like our listeners, they want to be educated. They want to think for themselves. They want to be given options. They want to have a teacher teach them. A doctor can be a teacher because the root word is doceri, which means teacher. So they want a teacher relationship, a mentor, and a coach, not someone just taking their blood and telling them what to do. They want to actually think for themselves.

So some people are just at the point where they’re so overwhelmed and they’re so sick, just please, do my labs and tell me what to do. You can provide that. And then for those who want to learn more, get the book and you can also have that relationship with them. It’s really important that we understand that distinction. That we could ask our doctor—be it Naturopath, osteopath, chiropractor, or a doctor of oriental medicine—to be our teachers, give us options, show us studies, and let us think for ourselves.

If we are at the point in our life where we want to be educated, we want to navigate this world, think deeper, and spend time on this, but if we don’t have the energy to, we can hand our body over. We just have to make sure we hand our body over to the person who’s going to guide us to the outcome of optimal health.

[01:52:38] Dr. Laura Kelly: Right, absolutely. I think that’s the reason why me and all of your other guests write books. It’s like we want people to embrace, and it’s going back to what I was saying in the beginning. There’s a concept of okay, medicine is for when I’m sick. Or there’s a concept that I learned, which is medicine is part of life. Taking care of yourself, self-care is part of life. When you look at it that way and when it becomes part of your life that way, it gets very rich, of course, and you explore a lot of things conceptually. You also really learn to care for yourself this way.

Writing books for people and sharing this information is really just saying, here, step into this beautifully rich world of self-care. Here, let us help you. Let us guide you with this. That’s why I write books because I want people to be able to, even if you are in a crisis point, you’re going to come out of that crisis point. When you come out of that crisis point, you can’t go back to the way you were that got you to the crisis point. So you have to then step into this world of where self-care becomes fun, ritual, or whatever it is that works for you.

So providing information for people in this way. Again, to make medicine is a hard word to use to make medicine part of your life. It sounds a little cold, but I think you understand what I mean. It’s like taking care of yourself on a daily basis with the food, with the air, with the water, with the thoughts, and with the process of thinking. All of these things, on a daily basis, thinking about them as self-care, from a perspective of self-care, enables you to live a healthy and holistic life because your body isn’t under the stresses of the disintegration of the different parts and the different pieces. Okay, wait a minute, I have to do this, here, this, and this, and this. The mechanization that comes in the thinking.

Again, providing this sort of breadth of movement of medicine self-care to the world is something that I really want to do and would like to keep doing. This is a driver for me. I think, again, for many of your guests and many of the doctors working in this space.

[01:55:19] Ashley James: What if we put a new filter on, and every choice became is this medicine for me? Hugging this person—I’m hugging my friend. I’m seeing my friend. I’m going to give him a hug. Is that medicine for me? Or staying up really late watching Netflix, is that really medicine for me? Is that medicinal?

[01:55:38] Dr. Laura Kelly: It can be. It can be.

[01:55:39] Ashley James: There are times when it can be, but I like to use that as an example because I stay up till 2:00 AM in the morning watching Netflix and then having to get up early the next day. You’re starving yourself of time. But having an evening where you’re watching something that makes you laugh is medicine, versus excessively watching television and staying sedentary is not medicine.

[01:56:02] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yeah.

[01:56:03] Ashley James: Looking at all the activities in your life, is this medicine? Is it spiritual medicine? Is it energetic medicine? Is it emotional-mental medicine? Is it physical medicine? And is there a better choice? Okay, watching TV for 10 hours. Okay, this isn’t medicinal for me, but what would be? Going for a walk in nature.

[01:56:28] Dr. Laura Kelly: Well wait, wait. I will differ with you a little bit about that. I would say that it’s really, again, about asking yourself and looking inward for the answer to that question. Because it may be that you just graduated from college, you just wrote a book, and whatever the situation is—that was mine. Watching TV for 10 hours straight is exactly what you need. You’re the only one that knows that. You’re the one that knows inside if this is right or if this is wrong. I don’t think that you can say one thing or another is right or wrong. It all has to do with context, but the most important thing is it has to do with how you feel about it? If you feel like you’re watching tv or 10 hours and it’s not right, then it’s not right.

[01:57:18] Ashley James: Well, if you feel like stiff, achy, upset, and irritable, and the media you were watching was something that ends up making you physically angry or tense, it wasn’t medicinal. But if you’re watching something that makes you happy, you’re laughing, and you’re resting, or maybe you take a break and read a book, but you want to just chill on the couch for the day and that’s what you need, and you feel good. I think we have to check-in. Like you said, check in with that voice inside you, and check-in with your body. Every behavior, every choice could be medicinal.

[01:57:56] Dr. Laura Kelly: Exactly.

[01:57:58] Ashley James: And that’s a wonderful thing to focus on. In your book, do you also talk about exercise? There’s a lot of confusion around exercise and healthy bones. Should it be weight-bearing? Should it be cardio? Should it be stretching? Do you talk about what kind of what are the best exercises for healthy flexible bones?

[01:58:21] Dr. Laura Kelly: Yeah. I don’t go deeply into exercise, but there are a couple of things I can mention. One of them is in the presence of an estrogenic compound—either a phytoestrogen or an endogenous estrogen—the bone has more of a response to exercise. So this would be a situation where if you do supplement with hormones, you’re going to be well placed to exercise. And if you don’t, you may want to consider phytoestrogen as well. If you don’t eat a lot of plants, then that’s going to increase the efficiency or the efficacy of the exercise that you do.

But there is a certain amount of piezoelectric force that has to happen on the bone for it to trigger the brain to build bone. The osteogenic force is a particular force. Weight-bearing exercise, yes. Anything that’s going to put that type of pressure on the bone because what happens in the system is that the bone tells the brain, hey, we have pressure on us. We need to be strong. That’s what happens. When you’re putting pressure on the bone, if you’re jumping, if you’re dancing, running, or anything that’s putting pressure tells the brain we need to be strong. And if you just sit around, it tells the brain we don’t need to be strong.

So it’s really that communication happens, and it’s really that simple. So putting that pressure on is something that you have to do for your whole life, for everybody, regardless of what issues you have. We all need to keep our system moving, and we all need our brains to think that we want to use our bodies because if the brain thinks we’re not using our bodies, it’s going to stop building them. So we all need to move and take care of ourselves in that regard. But specifically for bone, you want a force that’s going to put pressure on the bone.

If you’ve crossed the point into more severe osteoporosis, then you may run into trouble because that kind of pressure and force you actually can’t do because you may fracture. That point you have to pull back, do the supplementation, and do the nutrition base in order to build up some bone strength before you start that kind of forceful exercise.

And then there’s also a company called OsteoStrong, which produces machines that create the amount of force needed to put pressure on the bones without you having to actually create the force yourself. And theoretically, this seems to work. I haven’t seen enough of their science to fully say this is amazing, but theoretically, it’s correct. There is a certain amount of pressure that needs to happen on the bone to trigger osteogenesis, and these machines appear to do that.

[02:01:29] Ashley James: Very cool. That’s exciting. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. All the links that Dr. Kelly does are going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Medicinethroughfood.com is your website. We’re going to also have the link to your book, which is The Healthy Bones. I have already bought your book for myself and also for my mother-in-law. I’m sure I’ll think of a few other people I need to buy your book for.

You’re giving away your book to a lucky listener. Listeners can go to the Learn True Health Facebook group, and this discussion will continue there. We’ll create a post, and then we’ll pick a lucky listener that will win a copy of your book, which is exciting. I’ve invited Dr. Kelly to come to join the Facebook group so we can continue the discussion there, which is great. We have over 4000 listeners in the group. We have a ton of listeners, so I’m always surprised.

It’s funny because I’ll get emails or Facebook messages from listeners saying, “I’ve been a listener for over a year and I just joined the Facebook group.” I’m like, “What are you waiting for guys? Come on. Join the Facebook group. It’s a great community. It’s free. Come join us. We’re all here to support each other. So come join the Learn True Health Facebook group. And then also, Dr. Kelly, you have a Facebook group for readers of your book as well. Tell us about it.

[02:02:55] Dr. Laura Kelly: That’s right. My mother is the moderator, and she’s very, very good at keeping the group really dynamic and really motivated. It’s an amazing group of people. Everybody is probably like yours. Everybody just supports each other. They share their successes. They share recipes. They share trials, the difficulties that they’re having in there. It’s a really beautiful group of people, and they’re really there to help each other densify their bones and not be sick.

[02:03:25] Ashley James: And have flexible bones.

[02:03:27] Dr. Laura Kelly: And have flexible, exactly.

[02:03:28] Ashley James: Stronger bones. I love it. And then as a side effect, the body just gets healthier. The cardiologist who had such amazing insight to tell you to write a book. The cardiologist noticed that the calcification was leaving your mom. How is your mom’s heart health now having focused on bone health?

[02:03:49] Dr. Laura Kelly: It continues to be fantastic in terms of that sort of thing. There are no problems.

[02:03:58] Ashley James: I love it. I love it. That’s so great.

[02:04:01] Dr. Laura Kelly: I think unchecked, there may have been.

[02:04:05] Ashley James: Yes, we have to make sure that we take the blinders off and really not leave these very important things unchecked in our life. Do you have any stories of success you’d like to share?

[02:04:18] Dr. Laura Kelly: In terms of bones?

[02:04:21] Ashley James: Yeah, and well in terms of your book. In terms of patients or clients, you’ve worked with. In terms of the Facebook group. Just off the top of your head, do you have any stories of success that people have had because of the work you do?

[02:04:33] Dr. Laura Kelly: Sure, sure. You can go on that Facebook page and see people reporting, oh my God. I got my DEXA scan. I can’t believe it. I’ve gone from osteoporosis to osteopenia. It happens quite regularly, actually, which is amazing and wonderful. I’m crying every time it happens. But in terms of my own patient population, I had someone come to me who was 59 and her doctor had said, “Look, you can’t exercise anymore. I know you love tennis. You can’t play it anymore because you’re going to break your bones.” She said, “I’m terrible. This is killing me. I’m so unhappy about this.” And I said, “Okay, well let’s see what we can do.”

She’s very small. She’s very thin boned and so there wasn’t a lot of room. We started working together, and I said, “This is going to be a long process. Don’t expect instant results. Maybe in a year and a half, maybe in two years. Maybe faster, but it’s going to be a while.” And she was very active in her own care. She was a mix between, what you said, a client, and a patient. She wanted to know what to do absolutely right away, but then she also wanted to understand.

So we worked together for almost two years, and we completely reversed her osteoporosis. She went from 3.6 to 2.4. I think it took about a year and eight months, something like that, and then she’s just been improving from there. Her doctor was like, oh, okay. Because this was in a situation where at first, she went to her internist and she said, “Well, I’m working with this person.” He was like, “Yeah, whatever. That’s not going to work.” It was the same thing as always. But the book was out, and she took him the book, and then she got her scores finally. He was like, hmm. That was the answer, hmm. It wasn’t, no. It was, hmm, okay. He now has the book, and he’s actually shared the book with other people.

It’s an educational process. In that regards an educational process. That’s the standard success that I’ve had. I’ve had a lot of patients now who’ve reversed bone density issues. She actually had a really bad accident on a Segway where she smashed her leg into one of these metal posts going at 50 miles an hour. She didn’t break anything. She said there is no way that this would have been like this without the work that we had done. That’s what her doctor said. Her doctor said, “Well the fact that you didn’t break your anything in that accident is a miracle of the work that you put in.”

[02:07:31] Ashley James: I love it. Beautiful. I love it. That’s so great. Now, what about osteoarthritis or bone spurs? Have you had success reversing or improving upon either of those?

[02:07:53] Dr. Laura Kelly: I’ve had success improving upon osteoarthritis. I haven’t actually worked with bone spurs, so I don’t know.

[02:08:01] Ashley James: This will be interesting though. I hope some people with bone spurs come out of the woodwork to do your program. I’ve had great success using Dr. Wallach’s protocol with bone spurs because if you can increase the nutrients you’re talking about, especially magnesium, the body dissolves bone spurs and puts them in the right place. That’s something really interesting. Hopefully, some people will come forward and share their experiences working with your protocol in laying down bone healthfully. Can you share any results you remember in terms of reversing osteoarthritis?

[02:08:42] Dr. Laura Kelly: I wouldn’t say reversing osteoarthritis. I would say improving function and improving the sensation of difficulty or pain. This actually has more to do with using herbs. There’s the foundation of bone health, but when you’re talking about osteoarthritis, you’re talking about wear and tear. You’re talking about joints. You’re talking about joint fluid. You’re talking about cartilage, connective tissue, and all these sorts of things. Other than bone, you have all of these other pieces that you also have to work with. You want to lay the foundation, of course, the nutrient foundation for bone health and for connective tissue health. What I do with that is I also use herbs at this point—external herb poultices.

At about 1200, there were Shaolin monks. The Shaolin monks were famous monks in China. They were martial arts. They developed martial arts, basically. They took it to a new level. So the Shaolin monks were martial artists of the highest caliber, and because they did this martial arts work all of the time, they injured themselves all the time. What they developed was trauma medicine for martial arts injury, which is the same as any sort of trauma medicine. You break your leg, you have bruises.

The formulas that were written at the time were written with titles such as the formula for hitting the back of the neck with a metal shovel. This kind of thing. It’s pretty hilarious. You have these very interesting names on these formulas, but they were very specific to different types of traumatic injuries. What I do is I take that trauma medicine and apply it to things like osteoarthritis. You have the basic bone foundation like the protocols in my book, but you also have to work with the trauma of the system and the body at that point.

One thing that’s amazing about herbs, which is not available in western medicine and I’ve done this with many people, is that when they have surgery, what you’re doing is you’ve damaged your tissue when you have surgery. There has to be a repair process. And western medicine really has nothing to offer that process. They tell you to sit still on the couch and take pain medication, right? But what we can do with herbs—because herbs have such wonderful complex properties—is we can actually start the tissue regeneration process.

What we’re talking about at that point is actually stem cell regeneration. We’re talking about providing the right information triggers to the system to actually start turning on and having a stem cell response. That’s one thing that’s possible through nutrients and herbs in a very targeted fashion. So you can do that externally, and this is where the trauma medicine is, which is you use the herbs and a combination externally on the site of osteoarthritis. What happens is the immune system factors come, whatever non-functioning cells, tissue, or damaged tissue is there gets cleared out. And then some low-level tissue regeneration starts to happen in that area.

What happens from that is sometimes, if you’re really lucky, you’ll have actually enough tissue regeneration to actually eliminate any trace of the problem. There still is osteoarthritis, technically, but you don’t have the same experience any more of it. That’s a really beautiful use of herbs and where they can fill in where western medicine can’t.

[02:12:46] Ashley James: So cool. I love it. Again, go to the right doctor. You would never get this kind of medicine from seeing a chiropractor or an MD. You got to go to the right doctor for the right problem. Have an arsenal. Have a team.

[02:13:08] Dr. Laura Kelly: Absolutely have a team of doctors.

[02:13:10] Ashley James: Okay, great. You have an OB. I’d rather go to an OB than just a regular MD for gynecological exams. We’re used to that as women. If you have a skin problem, you go to a skin doctor. Or you have a foot thing, you go to a foot doctor. Why not also have Dr. Kelly in your corner? Why not have a doctor of oriental medicine, but on top of that, have a health coach, have a naturopath, have a chiropractor, and the list goes on and on. Then you can bring your body to them and they can offer different pieces of the puzzle to bring you back in balance.

What if what you needed was that 5000-year-old herbal formula, right? That was your thing. You’re not going to get that from the other doctors. What if that was your thing, and your body does the best with that versus the other form? Never shall we use the word alternative again. There is an alternative to none. These are all valid forms of medicine. Why not have all of these in our team of doctors.

Thank you Dr. Laura Kelly for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom. I would love to have you back on the show. Please come join our Facebook group. Let’s also join Dr. Kelly’s Facebook group as well, and let’s all get her book. And of course, one of you lucky listeners is going to be gifted her book. Come join the Learn True Health Facebook group. The Healthy Bones. I know it’s on Amazon, and we could also go to your website medicinethroughfood.com. Dr. Kelly, is there anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?

[02:14:59] Dr. Laura Kelly: Oh, gosh. It’s probably lots of things.

[02:15:03] Ashley James: Do tell.

[02:15:05] Dr. Laura Kelly: You’ve had amazing people on your program. As you say, have a team. It’s like we’re all doing little pieces of this, and we’re all pulling apart different pieces of this. Everybody has gone into different corners and pulled apart different things. I just want to say to people who would read the book, the book itself is about meeting people where they are. It’s not about going into the biggest detail about every single piece of how to perfect the food, right?

We need to sprout the beans or high pressure cook the beans. These things are there in the book, but there isn’t a huge amount of explanation in detail in all of that that has been done by others because what I have tried to do with this book is to take people, who like my mother, who doesn’t really have that much knowledge about how to take care of yourself and are coming out of the western medical paradigm. In fact, are still in the western medical paradigm where maybe nutrition may be important but I don’t really know.

You can’t step from western medicine all the way into a natural medicine with a snap of the fingers. We’re not built that way as humans. We need information. We need to process it. We need to investigate it. We need to make a decision about it. Most people don’t do it like that.

When I wrote the book, I was writing it to meet people where they are and say here’s a really broad spectrum of information on taking care of yourself. Here’s a way for you to start to understand that you can take care of yourself, and that you don’t have to be afraid of your diagnosis whatever it is. That you can take care of yourself and improve yourself with or without assistance from a practitioner. Hopefully, with a team, but even if it’s just you alone, you have enough ability, and your body has enough innate wisdom so that you can actually care for yourself.

That was the point of the book, and I wanted to make that clear because again, there’s such a wealth of information from all of the people who you’ve spoken with. Again, this is another piece of that puzzle of creating this sort of genre of self-care. I just wanted to contextualize the book for you a little bit like that.

[02:17:47] Ashley James: Beautiful. Thank you. Excellent. Please come back to the show.

[02:17:51] Dr. Laura Kelly: I’d love to. I’d love to. It’s wonderful to talk to you.

[02:17:54] Ashley James: Yes, absolutely. We’ll see each other in each other’s Facebook groups along with all the listeners.

[02:17:59] Dr. Laura Kelly: Okay, great.

[02:18:01] Ashley James: Thank you so much.

[02:18:03] Dr. Laura Kelly: Thank you. Have a great day.

Get Connected with Dr. Laura Kelly!

Dr. Laura Kelly Website

Medicine Through Food Website

Twitter

Healthy Bones Group

Books by Dr. Laura Kelly

The Healthy Bones Nutrition Plan and Cookbook

Use coupon code LTH at ChemicalFreeBody.com for your listener discount!

Use listener coupon code LTH at viome.com for the gut and mitochondrial testing and food & supplement recommendations.

IT'S HERE! Learntruehealth.com/homekitchen
Use coupon code LTH for the listener discount!

Check out the supplements Ashley James recommends:

takeyoursupplements.com

The Power of Living Foods

https://www.learntruehealth.com/the-power-of-living-foods

Highlights:

• Core four secrets
• What cellular dehydration is
• Where chemicals come from
• How to eliminate chemicals from the body

Tim James is a farm boy who used to hunt and eat meat, but he is now on a raw vegan diet.  In this episode, Tim shares what made him go on a raw vegan diet, and what benefits he experienced after switching to a raw vegan diet. He also shares where we can find some of the chemicals that are getting inside our body and how to eliminate them.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I took a little bit of a break. Sorry for not getting an episode out in the last week. My husband and I just celebrated our 12th year anniversary. And so a friend let us come up to her cabin in the middle of the woods five hours away from Seattle in the Okanagan Valley, 45 minutes away from the nearest town or grocery store. We were completely isolated, there was no cell service, and it was beautiful and pristine.

Our son caught bugs the entire time and played in nature. We swam, we walked in the forest, and we just sat in the sun, put our feet on the ground, took long slow deep breaths, and soaked in all the nature. I definitely encourage you to get out in nature as much as you can, as often as you can. Even if you live in the city, find some clean, pesticide-free grass, and just go lie down in it. Feel the earth rotating around this crazy universe. That ability to ground yourself is so healing.

Now this episode, this interview that you’re listening to today is phenomenal. I love this man’s story, and this is going to be a great episode to share with your husband, your brother, or I just think the men that are at the point where they’re sick of being sick—this is going to be a great interview to listen to. The man that you’re about to hear was the American cowboy. Growing up in a ranch country eating nothing but beef, and he had a lot of health problems that men sweep under the rug. He just got sick of being sick, and he was able to—through his journey and his story he’s going to share, it’s a wonderful story—discover how to heal his body. And he teaches how you can do the same. How you can nourish your body in a way that everything comes back into balance.

Now as you’re listening to Tim James share his story, he also shares his website chemicalfreebody.com. And he has invented a few supplements that are whole food supplements. I am very picky when it comes to supplements, but his green powder that you just turn into a drink is so delicious, and really, my body buzzes when I drink it. After this interview, I went and I bought some, and I am loving it. I put it in my smoothie every day. Sometimes I just put it in a glass of water and drink it. What I notice is it almost like could replace a coffee or tea. It gives me energy, but not jitters. It’s safe for children, it has a ton of raw food extracts from different superfoods, and it actually tastes good.

If you’re looking to detox, you’re looking to become more alkaline—and oh also, I tested my alkaline levels and this green juice, this powder that he sells that is extracted from raw organic superfoods—it is so delicious and it also balances pH. I did the test before and after drinking it, and I saw my pH come back into alkalinity, and I thought that was very cool. My husband is doing a fast right now, and he is drinking this stuff every day, because fasting, you definitely stir up toxins. If you’ve been listening for any length of time, you know that I’m really into supporting the body and removing heavy metals, detoxing and supporting all the organs of the body in detoxing, and becoming as healthy as possible.

If you want to give this a try, which I highly recommend you do, and basically it’s great to get for your husband if you’re helping the men in your life who are just coming into wanting to become healthier but maybe they don’t have the time or wherewithal to make a special salad and make a special vegetable smoothie and you just want to give them something really fast, that’s what Tim James created. He’s very particular, very picky about the ingredients that he puts into his stuff so that the quality is there. He formulated them for his own health—for him and for his family—so I like that he’s never going to compromise on the ingredients. It’s chemicalfreebody.com, and then use the coupon code LTH for 5% off. His margins are so slim when it comes to supplements as it is so he gave us a discount, and I thought that was really nice of him. So chemicalfreebody.com, LTH for the coupon code. Be sure to use that, which will give you just a little bit of a discount. That helps to cover shipping.

He recommends doing the Total Energy and Detox bundle. I grabbed just the green drink to start and I love it, and I’m going to definitely dive in and try his other supplements, his bundle next, the Total Energy and Detox bundle. And he also highly recommends doing his protocol while you do any form of fasting, cleansing, or detoxing because it really helps so that you don’t have any flu-like symptoms, detox symptoms, or any downtime when you’re fasting or detoxing.

Enjoy today’s interview. Make sure you go to chemicalfreebody.com, check out his videos, and do the coupon code LTH. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this episode with those you love. Let’s help all the people we love—the men and the women in our lives to learn true health.

[00:06:24] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 442. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have Tim James on. He’s the founder of chemicalfreebody.com. Tim James of no relation. We just coincidentally have the same last name. I’m really excited for the mission that you’re on. In my own quest for health, I found that by cutting out chemicals and pesticides, my health drastically improved, and so I love what you’re doing. Also, when I’m exposed to certain chemicals I notice I really, really feel it. It’s pretty amazing how so many people are walking around with sluggish livers, full of chemicals, and not knowing that there’s a better way. There’s a way that you can just hugely improve your overall health and well-being. The well-being of our children, the well-being at any age by eliminating chemicals and toxins as much as we can from our food, our water, and our air. Tim, welcome to the show.

[00:07:41] Tim James: Ashley, thanks for having me. I’m very excited to be here and share.

[00:07:44] Ashley James: Absolutely. Now you have an amazing story, so let’s dive right in. What happened in your life? How young were you when you first started having health problems? And what happened that led you to discover that chemicals were the cause of your problems?

[00:08:03] Tim James: Well, I can take it back a little further just so people understand my background. I grew up in Eastern Oregon on a cattle and hay farm. We had Hereford cattle. Between me and my neighbors, we had horses, chickens, and ducks. It was just all their—goats and everything. I grew up hunting and fishing a lot, so meat was a huge part of my lifestyle. Played baseball at a high level, and at age 37, that’s when the wheels were really falling off for me. I had gained 38 pounds even though I still, in my mind, I thought I was an athlete, even though I had hardly any energy to get up. I’d only do it to walk the dogs. I was a financial advisor at the time getting up early, long days, lots of traveling, and high stress. And then I had skin issues on my elbows like eczema, and it would bleed and crack. I had to start wearing black shirts because the white ones would you know. I’d bleed on people’s couches on Super Bowl parties and stuff like that. It was embarrassing. And it didn’t look good.

I had this big belly, my elbows were bleeding, my knee finally got eczema too—it was cracking and bleeding. And then I had acid indigestion really bad. I was on Tums and Rolaids all the time. The doctor wanted me to go into Prilosec, I didn’t want to do that, and then finally it got really bad. I started bleeding rectally and I didn’t tell anybody about this for almost two years. I never did tell a doctor, nobody. I’m just like, hopefully, that goes away. How stupid is that, right? It was just that guy mentality like ah, it’s fine. It’ll get better. Not even a pause. Not even a pause. Just oh, I hope that goes away. Back to work because it really wasn’t a problem. I wasn’t stopped completely. I just kept going.

I’m raising the kids and I got a mortgage payment, so I’m moving. Finally, it was on vacation. We were in northern Peru right below Tumbes, which is in Ecuador, and I had to get life-flighted to get an emergency surgery in Lima, and that’s when that mask went over my face. That’s when I knew my life was out of control, but I still didn’t know what the hell to do. I didn’t know what I was doing with my health, even though I thought I was healthy. I was eating trying to do five meals a day and eating more protein. Give me a chicken teriyaki bowl and give me extra chicken. And I thought drinking my milk for my bones, the meat for my protein, and all that stuff, but I was a mess.

A friend of mine got diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which is a supposedly rare supposedly incurable blood cancer. He’s like dude, I can’t die. I have to live. Because our sons played together so he’s like I’m going to go to this place in Florida called the Hippocrates Health Institute. Have you heard of those people at all?

[00:10:44] Ashley James: I have not.

[00:10:45] Tim James: Okay. So they’re one of the oldest alternative health institutes in the world. And he says I want you to go with me and support me. I’m going to try to heal naturally. Well, I’m thinking this isn’t going to work. I’m going to support you. I’m like yeah, dude. I’m all in, but in the back of my mind, he’s dead. My grandma died of brain cancer, my aunt died of skin cancer. We just actually lost a guy in my baseball team that we played in the adult men’s world series in Phoenix on the super nice spring training fields. Clay died of cancer. He had stomach cancer, and he went through chemo, surgery, and all that stuff. He died 80 pounds under his weight. We had already been through that. Clay didn’t have any insurance, but he left three little boys behind at ages 6 to 17. It was terrible.

It was a whole bunch of these really strong tough men on this baseball team were all at his funeral just crying their faces off. Do you know what I’ll never forget? He came for his last baseball game. He was too proud to run out to the center-field because he couldn’t run. He’s just like, “I don’t have the energy to run back and forth to my position. I’m sure as hell not going to walk. Can I pitch? Because I can just kind of jog out to the mound.” And I’m thinking pitching’s going to take way more energy dude, whatever. He’s pitching, and around the fourth or fifth inning he comes in on the bench and he’s sitting there on my left and my buddy Jason’s on his left. Me and Jason were looking at Clay and he’s sitting there spitting up blood. Jason’s like, “Man, what the hell are you doing out here?” He’s like, “Look, dude. I love baseball. And if I’m going to go out, I’m going to go out doing what I love.” I was like, “Okay, man.” What do you say to that? Just okay, whatever you want to do.

I watched a guy my age. Now I’m starting to freak out because I’m bleeding rectally, I have all these problems. I’m looking at this guy. He’s healthier than all of us, and he’s dying of cancer. And then my buddy Charles, at age 43, gets it, and I’m freaking out, but I still don’t know what’s going on. Anyway, long story short, we fly to Hippocrates on January 1, 2011.

[00:12:40] Ashley James: This is you and Clay?

[00:12:42] Tim James: No, Clay passed away.

[00:12:43] Ashley James: Okay, so Clay passed away. When he was spitting up blood at the baseball diamond, did you have any light bulbs going off in your head? Like wow, I was bleeding rectally for years.

[00:12:56] Tim James: No, it was fear. I was just in fear mode, but I didn’t know what to do. I just still didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t until Charles said, “Hey, we got to go to this institute.” Now we’re on the plane flight there because he’s got this blood cancer, and he’s like, “Oh, Tim by the way, when we get there there’s no meat, no dairy, no salt, no sugar, and nothing’s cooked.” And I’m like, “What?” I’m literally freaked out. You have to understand, hunting and fishing were my life. Every year, I worked so hard so I could get another extra week off to hunt and fish. All my thousands of dollars of hunting and fishing equipment. Our motto was if it flies, it dies. If it’s brown, it’s down—just to give you an idea. I’m redneck, okay. Eastern Oregon farm boy. It was fun, we had a lot of fun doing that stuff, so I’m freaked out. And if it wasn’t for Charles and him having cancer, there’s no way I would have set foot into that place.

We made fun of vegetarians, and this place was like plant-based vegans. Not even eggs or dairy, which didn’t make sense because I’m like how are you going to have strong bones? Anyway, I’m freaked out but I’m like, “Look, Tim, put your stuff aside. They probably got salads. Charles has got cancer, just focus on him.” I went there with a notepad, and I’m running around trying to disprove this place, talking to all these people, and trying to gather information from my friend because I really want him to heal but I didn’t think it was possible. Well, it was amazing what happened.

They put us on purified water. They put us on these green juices. All sprouted nuts, seeds, grains, beans, broccoli sprouts, sunflower sprouts, pea sprouts, and all this stuff. Sprouts in the juice even. And what you do is you go through what’s called a healing crisis. Now the first takes about three, four, five days for most people. It’s like doing surgery without a knife, and all this stuff starts coming out of you. They teach you. The very first class is on internal awareness, and they teach you from the time you eat something or drink something—from it enters your mouth until it exits—what goes on. And they just break it down, they make it simple. I’m like, oh my God. Where’s this information? That first class, they’re trying to teach you about getting colon hydrotherapy or colonic. Have you ever heard of those?

[00:14:56] Ashley James: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:57] Tim James: And then I’m elbowing Charles going, “Hey man, you got me to come here to help you, but there’s no way I’m doing that deal.” For those of you listening that aren’t aware of that, you just sit on a tube rectally and water basically goes in and out, and they clean you out gently with water. That’s a colonic or colon hydrotherapy session. He said that most people are carrying around about 6-12 pounds of impacted fecal material and mucoid plaques lining the small and large intestine, and you want to get that stuff out. Now the record at the institute—some lady did a colon hydrotherapy session and she had she dropped 29 pounds of impacted fecal material. And I’m like what? I was the first person to sign up on that thing. I’m like I got to clean that stuff out because I got this blood deal going on, right?

They weigh me, I do the deal for an hour, I come back, and I’m 10 pounds lighter. Just like Dr. Scott said, he goes, “Tim, you got 10 pounds of crap in a 5-pound bag, and we got to clean it up.” This is even before nutrition. What you brought up even earlier was about the chemicals and the toxins, well the pathway of elimination of the digestive tract is the first place to get cleaned up because it’s the epicenter. It’s the driving engine of your life. It’s where all the nutrients flow and everything, so they taught us all that. I did that thing, I started feeling better. Day one, my acid indigestion was gone. The blood had stopped that week.

[00:16:14] Ashley James: When you say the blood you mean rectal bleeding, not the blood coming from your knees or your elbows?

[00:16:20] Tim James: No, that was still there. That was still going on. We do this. I had headaches, I had night sweats, I wasn’t feeling good, I was irritable during that first four days, and this is what they call healing crisis or doing surgery without a knife. Your body is basically changing from an acid-based organism because of the environment it was in. Everything I was eating was acid. I didn’t know meat was acid. I didn’t know coffee was acid. I didn’t think about it. I was drinking two big coffees a day. Dairy is acid, ice cream is acid, pasta is acid, and most cooked foods are acid. I was pouring acid into my body. I’d love picking apples and stuff like that and nature and vegetables, I love that stuff, but it was out of ratio, basically.

They put me on all this alkaline diet. What happens is you change the internal terrain of the body, and that’s when the harmful organisms leave. They pack their bags because harmful organisms like viruses, bacteria, mold, yeast, fungus, parasites, and cancer, they love low oxygen, highly acidic environments. And that’s the environment that I had created for them. Those little buggers were growing, proliferating, eating my food, drinking my drinks, urinating, and defecating in me and I had a build-up of them. We washed out and cleaned out my digestive tract. I started flooding my body, my cells, my blood, and my lymphatic system with all this purified water and green juices, and the body started removing all this stuff. Thank God it only lasted four or five days, and then I woke up the next day and I felt like I was 19 again.

I looked at Charles, I said, “Dude, you’re going to live. I’ve interviewed all these people around here. There’s a whole bunch of people that have already healed themselves of cancer. They’re back now, they’re bringing their friend with cancer, and they’re helping people.” I’m like, “Dude, this is the fountain of youth that we found. This is what everybody’s looking for. I feel great. Dude, how do you feel?” He’s like, “I feel awesome.” I said, “Awesome, dude. I’m going to go back. I’m going to do this whole plant-based thing with you except I’m going to keep bacon. I’ll do that.” Because I figured I couldn’t make it work without—

[00:18:16] Ashley James: So you’re going to eat a whole food plant-based diet plus bacon?

[00:18:19] Tim James: With bacon, with bacon. I was going to keep it. It was hard to give up. I read this book called The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell on the plane flight back, and that changed my mind because they dissected the hearts of 300 young soldiers in their early 20s that came back from the Korean War and they found like 76.3% of them had severe onset of heart disease already in the early 20s from the standard American diet. I’m like oh my God, I have heart disease. Not only do my elbows are bleeding, I’m bleeding rectally, but I have heart disease. Nobody eats more meat than me, and it’s the animal fat that’s causing the problem. That healing crisis really woke me up to like how bad it was, and I didn’t have it as bad as some people. Some people had rashes breaking out all over their arms, their faces, over their bodies as the body was pushing and expelling out toxins, chemicals, pollutants, and harmful organisms. We saw parasites crawling out of people’s pores. One lady had a parasite crawling out of her eye.

[00:19:16] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

[00:19:17] Tim James: Many people, when you’re doing enemas and wheatgrass implants rectally, which that’s what they do at that place, parasites will come out in your stools, not just the big long ones, but your stool can be covered with white fuzzy stuff. All these little white ones will come out, and then there are also microscopic ones that you can’t see that you have parasites in your blood and stuff. Again, it was a pretty awesome thing to get all that stuff out, and everybody on graduation day says the same thing. I feel 20 years younger. I feel 30 years younger. I’m off my medications. My elbows were hurting for 20, I can move my elbow. I can move my knee. On and on these people were just raving about how they were feeling.

So we went back home, we got serious. We implemented the lifestyle, and in two and a half years my friend Charles heals himself with this so-called incurable cancer, and he’s alive today. He got to see his son graduate high school, graduate college. He picked up the guitar, started a band. He’s living his life. He went from cancer and bankruptcy to thriving business and living his highest excitement. I just went crazy with it, and finally walked away from the financial services industry to tell more people about it.

[00:20:19] Ashley James: I love it. My husband, because he was just like you, used to say, “I eat vegans daily,” because he would eat the cow—cow’s a vegan. But he—for many years—would only eat beef every day or bacon. Bacon and beef and nothing else. And then one day he woke up two or three years ago—it’s been a few years. He woke up and he just said to me, “I’m never eating meat again. He just woke up and he became whole food plant-based overnight. Just something clicked in him. Probably after one of my interviews with Robyn Openshaw, and he heard about the frequency of meat and how it lowers the frequency in the body until we’re practically dead. Something in him just went, that’s it, I’m never eating meat again.

And within days of eating just whole food plant-based, you got to get, I never was able to get vegetables into him, and all of a sudden he’s eating only vegetables. About five days in he turns to me and he says, “If you told me that this food would taste this good I would have given up meat years ago. This tastes better. This tastes amazing.” He’s always impressed with how great vegetables can taste in comparison to meat, but our brain is hijacked by fatty foods. A great book to read is The Pleasure Trap by Dr. Goldhamer and Dr. Lisle. I’ve had Dr. Goldhamer on the show, and he explains it. That’s episode 230, so listeners can go back and check that out. 

Part of our survival mechanism is to seek out foods that are highly pleasurable in that they’re salty, sugary, and fatty because those help us gain weight and survive famines. Well now, we don’t want to gain weight to survive a famine because those foods are highly readily available. Whereas they were very hard to find and it took a lot of energy expenditure in order to secure those foods 200 years ago. But now, you don’t even have to expend any energy. You could just type in Amazon and they can deliver all those highly fatty foods to you.

Looking now, we see that 70% of Americans are obese or pre-diabetic. We’re heading very quickly in the wrong direction. Now you have mentioned The China Study. One thing that Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn talks about in Forks Over Knives—I’ve had him on the show, also a really great interview. But Caldwell Esselstyn talks about how during the Nazi occupation, one of the Norwegian countries—it was between 1939 and 1945, the Germans who were occupying the Norwegian countries. They took over all of the food supply, and they took over all of the meat. Only the Norwegians could eat potatoes, grains, and vegetables and they were not given any meat to eat. 

You’d think that heart attacks would have increased because of the stress levels of being occupied in a Nazi-occupied country, but in fact, they completely plummeted. In that population, they saw that the mortality rates for heart disease just completely fell to almost zero. And then when they were liberated and they got to eat meat again the heart attack rates went up. That to me shocked me because I always thought that stress—and stress obviously is a toxin to the body for many reasons. You’d think that stress would have somehow made the heart attacks worse, but no, just cutting out meat significantly decreased heart attacks. That really, really surprised me. Also, of course, increasing their vegetable intake and their fiber intake would then also play a role in their health.

You going to this center, coming back, what happened the first day? So the plane lands, you get home, you’ve read The China Study. You’ve interviewed a bunch of people who are on a raw whole foods diet. Your rectal bleeding has stopped. You feel like you’re 19 again. What was the first day like at home? How did you wrap your brain around making these changes now that you’re back in your old routine?

[00:25:00] Tim James: I already knew the changes were going to have to take place before I left because on Thursday before I left on Saturday, I was like oh, I don’t have a juicer at home. I don’t have all these things. I went to the store at Hippocrates Health Institute and I said, “What do I need to get this lifestyle at my house?” She’s like, “Do you have a juicer?” I’m like, “No.” I said, “Which one?” “That one.” “Okay, I’ll take it. What else do I need?” “Are you growing sprouts?” I’m like, “No, but I grew up on a farm. We had a garden. I can grow anything. I’ll figure it out.” She’s like, “Well, you need wheatgrass, sunflower, and pea sprouts to start.” I said, “Okay, I’ll take some of those.” I just ordered a bunch of stuff. I ordered like $1100 worth of stuff.

I called my wife up and I was like, “Hey, there’s a package on the way so look out for it because it’s got some stuff in there. She’s like, “How much did you spend?” I was like, “I don’t know what to say. No, I spent like $1100.” And she’s like, “What are you spending $1100 for?” I was like, “Look, I’m changing my life. Charles is going to heal cancer. We’re going to do this. I got to go.” I ordered that stuff. I got my seeds out, I started soaking my seeds. I went to the store, I started buying lots of produce—celery and cucumbers for juicing. To be honest, I didn’t know what the hell to eat for a while. I basically created these things that are now—we’re putting a recipe book together. I actually became a raw living food chef, believe it or not. From redneck cowboy type person farmer—my buddy was a cowboy. I really wasn’t, but I have a cowboy hat—a real one.

I created these little tacos. I would take a lettuce leaf, I would take hummus, and I would just put some cumin and coriander in it to get kind of that Mexican flavor. A little bit of chili powder and then mix that up. I started sprouting lentils, mung beans, and fenugreek—red, green, and French lentils. They only take two and a half days and they’re ready to eat. You can do it on your countertop in a glass jar. It’s easy. I would throw those in the hummus and mix it up, and then plop that on the lettuce, cut some sprouts, throw them on top of that or vegetables or maybe some avocado. Squeeze some lemon or lime on it, put some lots of paprika on it so it looked like meat, and then I’d eat it. I pretty much ate that for almost eight, nine months because I didn’t know what else to do, then I found another restaurant that made these living food wraps in town.

Once a week I’d go over and buy those on my way to the rotary club and eat half and eat the other half for dinner. I mixed it up a little bit. About nine months into it I’m like I need some recipes. But I was committed because I told Charles, “Look, dude, I’m going to do this with you. I will follow this protocol. I even started growing the sprouts for him too. I was growing it for me and him, and he’d come over and pick him up or I’d drop him off at his house because he was really busy. He’s reeling from a bankruptcy type thing with his businesses and trying to keep the lights on, so I did that for him trying to keep his stress down and just deliver these beautiful trays of sprouts to him. 

That’s how we started doing it, and then one of my buddies actually came over and he’s like, “Wow, what are all these plants you got grown over here?” And I said, “Oh they’re sprouts.” He’s like, “What’s that for?” I’m like, “Well, it’s part of this protocol, and sprouts are living foods. They’re like 30-50 times more nutritious than freshly picked vegetables out of your garden if you ate them on the spot.” He’s like, “Wow, that sounds pretty cool. Hey, will you grow that for me?” And I’m like, “No way, man. This takes a lot of work. Just grow it yourself, I’ll show you to do it.” He’s like, “Nah, but if you grow up for me I’ll do it.”

So he talks me into it, the next day he brings a friend over. I give the same spiel, and he wants me to grow for him. Before too long, between him and Eric, they keep sending people over, and I keep randomly getting home from work and I got to give these talks. Then finally, I told my wife it interrupted a date night. We’re getting ready to do something. This lady showed up with cancer, and I’m just like, “Sorry, I have to help her.” So I do the spiel and doing all this stuff, and before too long, we started teaching classes regularly. Living food juicing classes on Tuesday nights. Those filled up quickly. Then it was Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And then I started speaking at schools, grocery stores, and hospitals. 

I’d go to an apartment complex and speak at the little places that they have there where people can meet and gather. I just get the message out. I did this for five years, and I was still a financial advisor. I wasn’t getting paid, I was actually paying people to come over and have dinner with me. I figured out I spent about $1100 a month on food extra to feed people in these classes. Think about it, I was feeding a lot of people. We’d have anywhere from 1-13 people. Probably on average about 6-8 people per class were coming. We’re talking over 4000 people in 5 ½ years coming to my house. 

I got a lot of experience sharing this message with people. I was just so passionate about it because in a little over two years, again, my buddy healed himself with cancer. I have the first-person experience on this, right in front of my face. So he isn’t bs-ing me. It’s right there. I healed myself. Within 60 days all the weight was gone. I could feel my ribs again. The eczema was gone. I had another skin issue on my shoulder that disappeared. And eight months later, the big huge patch of eczema was completely cleaned up on my knee too. I completely healed myself, and I’ve stayed that way.

Now I’ve been able to maintain it for 10 years, and I just keep getting healthier every year, and I’m 47 today. Nobody believes me. I’ll be in conversations, and “Oh, where are your kids?” “Oh yeah, Mike, I have a sophomore at the University of Oregon and a junior at Tualatin High School.” And they’re like, “What? Wait a minute, how old are you?” I’m like those people that worked at the institute now because the people that worked there that were on that lifestyle, they looked 10, 15, 20 years younger than people their age, and it blew me away. 

I made a decision back then because they said that in seven years you can replicate completely new you. If we took every cell out of your body, put it in a catalog, categorized it, and come back in seven years—completely new you, new cells. He goes, “You have a choice.” I thought about them. I’m like, well I can either keep doing what I’m doing and probably have heart disease and cancer, who knows what’s going to happen with me. Or I could change, do what these people are doing, and build a new Tim. And seven years later there was a new Tim. I keep rebuilding new Tim all the time and finding ways to be healthier, younger, fitter, and make it simpler and easier for people so they can cut through all the minutiae online because there are so many people saying all these things that work and stuff like that, but in reality, they do a little bit but they really don’t. It’s confusing.

The problem is, the standard American diet, Ashley, is so bad that if you make any changes you’re going to see some improvement. But I’m looking for optimal performance. What really works. The cool thing is most of these things are really simple, and it really boils down to what you said earlier, which is getting the toxins out. Our main job over here is not—even though I’m considered a nutritionist now, and I don’t have a degree in it, but I’ve had tons of nutritious and dietitians come to my classes. I actually had one crying and she’d been a nutritionist for 30 years. I said, “What’s going on?” She’s like, “Everything that you said tonight resonated with me so well. It just makes common sense. Everything I’ve been telling my clients is mostly wrong. How am I going to face them?” I said, “Well, just tell them the truth and just say you’ve discovered something new and you’re going to do that. You want to help them, right?” “Yeah.” I said, “Well, go help them. Look at me, I was a mess for 37 years. I got some new information, I’m flipping the coin, and I’m going down that path 100%” So she started going down that path.

[00:32:25] Ashley James: It’s so true. We have to sometimes eat a little bit of humble pie, put our ego aside. When we find new information, we just have to open your mind so much your brain could fall out and be ready to receive new information that could help you change your life and let go of the egoic belief system that you were raised with around food. People believe that they have to eat bacon, eggs, or dairy because we’ve been taught since a very young age that those are healthy things. One thing that really surprises me is cereal, for example. I go to health food stores. We have local health foods, local co-ops here in and around Seattle, and I go to Whole Foods.

Whenever I’m in a different city I go to a health food store, but all cereal—it’s very, very hard to find a cereal that doesn’t have sugar in it. Just a whole-grain cereal, it’s very difficult to find. There are a few, but most cereals—and I’m so surprised because when I was a kid, there were more cereals that didn’t have sugar. Rice Krispies didn’t have sugar in it. There were so many cereals that you could find that didn’t have. Of course, there were sugary cereals back in the ‘80s, but I’m just noticing that even in health food stores, the second ingredient, or sometimes the first ingredient is sugar. And that blows my mind. Now, of course, I don’t buy cereal. I’m just using that as an example of how food has changed in the last 30, 40 years.

Since we were children, I think a lot of people are eating like—even on an unconscious level—how they were raised to eat. How their grandparents told them what was healthy or their parents told them what was healthy. We developed belief systems. My mom was afraid of carbohydrates. She would get very angry at me—I was a child. I remember at a restaurant I ordered the fish and the rice with the side of vegetables. I thought that was a healthy choice to make, and my mom started literally yelling at me. Everyone in the restaurant was looking because she was so angry that I ordered rice because, in her mind, rice was very unhealthy for you. Any carbohydrate was very unhealthy for you. 

I had these unconscious beliefs about food and my food choices that led me down a very unhealthy path. And then I had to re-examine why do I think this is good food or bad food? Or why do I believe I can’t live without cheese or I can’t live without eggs or dairy or I can’t live without meat? Why do I believe that? You really need to wipe the slate clean of my own belief system, and look at what is the most healing thing I can do for my body? What’s my body going to resonate with. 

So trying out the whole food plant-based diet I was shocked. I remember my first meal without meat because I had never in my entire life had a meal without meat. I’d had lots of meals with just meat and no vegetables, but I’d never had a non-meat meal because it wasn’t a meal in my mind. You had to have meat in a meal. And I remember my first meal, and at the end of it, I was shocked because I thought I was going to feel weak. I was going to feel tired. I was going to feel still hungry. I really assumed that it was the meat that filled me up and gave me energy, and it was the opposite. The more I went whole food plant-based and incorporated more complex carbohydrates from potatoes, for example, and sprouts—I love sprouting too. But the more I incorporated vegetables—both raw and cooked—I noticed I had more and more energy.

If we examine our own belief system and we are able to try on things that we said to ourselves I’d never do that, if we talked to you at 18, you would have been like no freaking way I’m going to eat that stuff that you’re eating now. We have to be willing to make these changes and then notice what happens in our bodies. Now you mentioned you spent $1100, and to a lot of people, that would be enough of a barrier to not even listen any further. I couldn’t do that. I can’t afford that. I guess this isn’t for me.

And I want to tell people that you don’t have to spend $1100 to get a juicer and get all this stuff going. I know you did Tim, you did and you probably bought like the best of the best. I’ve actually twice bought juicers that were worth hundreds of dollars for $12 at a local thrift store. You can go to your thrift stores, you can go to Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, or even the Buy Nothing—there’s buy nothing local groups on Facebook—and seek out a juicer. It doesn’t have to be the best of the best but just get started. You could probably find someone who has an extra. I own five juicers. You could probably find someone who has an extra juicer that would be willing to lend it to you or sell it to you at a really cheap price. Don’t let money be a barrier to your health.

Same with sprouting. Sprouting is so incredibly affordable. I buy my lentils organic, of course, but in bulk, and then I just actually use a colander. I soak them for 24 hours, and then I put them in a colander, and I put them in a dark warm place. And then twice a day—in the morning and at night—I rinse them off and I shake them up. For me, I like eating them at about day four day five because I like them when they’re grown more and they’re a little less crunchy. But that’s just my personal preference. There are many ways, and I’ve only done lentil sprouts. I’d be really excited to try like the pea sprouts, the mung bean sprouts, and the other sprouts that you mentioned. That sounds delicious. Your whole thing is living foods as much as possible, we can do it on a budget for those who have a budget they need to adhere to.

[00:38:34] Tim James: Yeah, can I talk about that?

[00:38:35] Ashley James: Yeah, absolutely. I want you to.

[00:38:37] Tim James: You can save money and save your life at the same time eating this way, so it doesn’t have to be expensive. Yeah, I bought a $600 juicer. I got after it, and I did it. I made the juice twice a day, and it can become expensive. I was teaching people what I learned. I went to this place, juicing twice a day, doing this, eating that, and it worked, so I brought it home, and I recreated it. Most people can’t do it in their busy schedules. First off, you can’t go cold turkey because you’re going to go through that healing crisis, and you can’t. You’re trying to raise kids, soccer practice, school, taking care of aging parents, and all the things we got going on today. People are busy, they don’t have time for a healing crisis. That’s why you have to go away to an institute like that.

People would come to my classes, I would teach them the whole thing. We had a lot of people get juicers, but the problem was only 1 out of 10 would stick with it. Within 30-60, 90 days, most of them would have the juicers underneath the cupboard and they weren’t using anymore. I was like, “Why? You saw what happened to me. You knew me.” I know thousands of people in Portland because I was in business for years, and I’m like, “You know Charles. He healed himself with cancer. Why aren’t you doing this?” “Tim, it takes too much time. It’s too much money. My husband won’t help me with it. My wife won’t help me with it. They’re not on board. I’m getting made fun,” or whatever, blah, blah, blah. It’s too much work, and I’m like man.

I’m like, what could I do to help these people? I went out and interviewed 100 people that came to a class, bought the juicer, got excited, and then stopped. They wanted something simple, and they wanted a plan. It just has to be easy. I went back to the drawing board, and right now I’d like to share my core four secrets that we teach everyone. This is the foundation for transforming your health, losing weight. getting the energy, boosting your immune system, and whatever you need to do. Is that okay if I share those?

[00:40:19] Ashley James: Absolutely.

[00:40:20] Tim James: Okay. So core’s four secrets. Core secret number one is drinking half your body weight in liquid ounces of purified water daily. And if you live in the city, then the water needs to be purified and restructured so you can actually absorb it because the high-pressure pipes in city water make the molecules stick together, and they will not go through the intestinal lining very well and you just pee it out. That’s very important. That’s it right there. And just on a side note, you can at least go to the grocery store in gallon glass jars and get single purified water for 25 to 44 cents a gallon. There’s no reason you can’t at least get some 90% purified water in your life. Okay?

Less than 5% of people are doing this. If you’re 200 pounds, that’s 100 ounces of water a day. If you’re 100 pounds, that’s 50 ounces of water a day just to maintain health. Now if you’re drinking caffeine-free teas or drinking a green juice with no sugar in it, we’re not talking apple juice, orange juice, that kind of stuff—that doesn’t count. Coffee doesn’t. Just flax seed water. Green juices with vegetable juices and purified water itself, hibiscus tea—all these counts towards your water intake. That one right there, less than 5% of the population is doing this, and we are literally sitting in a situation called cellular dehydration. This is like a national catastrophe right now that nobody knows about or even talking about.

And if 95% of us are dehydrated, when your body needs water, do you know where the first place it goes to get it? It’s the colon. It’s the colon. This is why people have—this is what we learned—6-12 pounds of impacted fecal material in that colon because your colon has been dried up over the years because you don’t drink enough water. And if your cells need water, your brain needs water, or your bones—your bones are 22% water. Whatever your body needs for a process or an organ system needs water and it doesn’t have what it needs, it goes to the colon. So the colon then can’t evacuate waste properly. It doesn’t work properly. Do you see the problem? It’s just day in and day out, it adds up and it builds up, then you get backed up, and then you get messed up. That’s what ends up happening.

So simply by changing your water intake, you can allow your colon to start working, waste to start removing better, your lymphatic system works on movement, water, and oxygen, you can start getting the garbage out through the lymphatic system better, you’ll have more intelligence, your IQ will go up if you drink more water—literally. The difference between not having enough water in your body could be the difference between finding your keys, searching around for your keys, or hunting for your keys for 10-15 minutes in the house trying to find them. That’s the difference the water plays. 

I had one lady, she implemented this at my class, eight months later I was teaching a class at a yoga studio and I saw her. I was like that lady looks familiar but I couldn’t recognize her for some reason, and then I said, “Hey, you look familiar.” She’s like, “Well, yeah. I attended one of your classes eight months ago.” And I was like, “Oh, wow. I don’t know, I thought I noticed you but you look different for some reason.” She’s like, “I hope you noticed, I’ve lost 50 pounds.” I was like, “Whoa, wow. That’s awesome.” Now everybody’s tuning in, listening, and taking notes. I was like, “What did you do to lose the 50 pounds?” She goes, “You gave me so much information that night, Tim. I just stuck with one thing—water. That’s what I heard, so I did that. So every morning now I drink water. I do half of my body weight. I dropped 50 pounds.” I’m like, “Well, that’s great. What are you doing back this time?” She goes, “I’m here to find out what’s next.” I’m like, “Okay, here it is.”

Here’s core secret number two, chew your food until liquefied. This is so important. We have two ducts in our upper mouth and four in our lower mouth that secrete the enzymes, amylase, and lipase. These break down our starches and our fats. And if you don’t chew your food really well, they’re not going to get digested, and instead of digestion and a simulation of nutrients, which is what we want, you’re going to get fermentation and gut rot. You’re going to destroy those intestinal villi, those little hair-like structures lining the intestinal tract, and you’re going to end up with a leaky gut like me. 90% of people have leaky gut at some level, which is these little tears and holes in your intestinal tract where undigested food particles and microbes get into the bloodstream. And they start wreaking havoc, causing inflammation, causing headaches, weight gain, cancer, and all these other problems. Hashimoto’s, arthritis, everything.

Chewing your food is of the utmost importance. It’s the first domino in digestion, and if you don’t chew your food well, the first domino doesn’t fall and you’re going to end up with a lifetime of gut rot, gas, bloating, and problems. This one’s big, and less than 4% of the population, that I benchmarked, is chewing their food well. And for those of you suffering from depression, by chewing your food really well and hitting those meridian points on your teeth—this is right from Dr. Gabriel Cousens, Medical Doctor, MD—you can increase your serotonin up to 500%, which is your happy juice just by chewing and stimulating those meridian points in your teeth. So it’s a huge deal.

Core secret number three is avoiding liquids with meals. People are like what? This is a tough one especially when you go to a restaurant—if you can nowadays—and they’re trying to get some water, would you like some wine, you want some tea, you want a beer, or you want some coffee. They’re always trying to upsell you that stuff. Even when I tell them half the time I don’t want water they still bring it to me. Now that you’ve worked really hard to chew your food well and get it really small so it’s easy to digest and you’ve pre-loaded it with all those enzymes if you drink purified restructured healthy water, apple juice, wine, or beer you’re going to dilute those digestive enzymes and you’re going to go from a simulation of nutrients and digestion right back to fermentation and gut rot. You’re going to go right back to where you were—problems, your gut will be jacked up. Less than 2% of the population is avoiding their liquids with meals.

We give a rule of thumb. For beginners, stop 30 minutes before you eat and wait an hour after you eat to start drinking liquids again. For those of you with stage four disease, wanting to win an Olympic gold medal, or just be your fit top best stop drinking liquids an hour before and wait two hours after you eat and then start drinking a lot of liquids again. That’s core secret number three.

And the last one is core secret number four. This one is doing some breath exercises before you eat, just for a minute. Maybe a minute or two. And it’s as simple as this—taking a big breath in through the nose, pause at the top, and then release out to the mouth. And while you’re going through this process you can think about how grateful you are to have that breath, to have your life, to have this food in front of you that’s going to nourish your body. What ends up happening, Ashley, is most people—I mean, would you agree that we live in a stressed-out environment, a world?

[00:46:49] Ashley James: Right.

[00:46:51] Tim James: So even if you don’t think you’re stressed, you are. Your body doesn’t know the difference. If you are in stress mode, which most of us are, and we’re talking lots of stress—work stress, family stress, financial stress, COVID stress, and EMF stress. There are lots of stresses on us, right? Your body will—as a defense mechanism—go into fight-or-flight mode. The blood actually leaves the organ systems because digestion is not important now. You got to fight something to live or you got to run to live. So all the blood and all the energy goes out to your extremities. Cortisol gets jacked up, adrenals, and all these things.

So by simply doing this breathwork for a minute to two, you bring the blood from the extremities back into the organ system so you can actually digest your food properly. Less than 1% of the population is doing that. Now these core four secrets, besides getting some glass jars and packing the water from the purifying place, how much does that cost anybody? Nothing. It’s free, right? There they are. I have so many people when they order our products they hear me on a podcast or whatever radio show, they’re like, “Tim, I’m already feeling better before I even got your products.” Because they started implementing these things. They’re just common sense.

I’ve used this for 10 years. I’ve shared it with thousands of people. It works for everybody, every single person. I tell people until you’ve done it yourself, how do you know? You have to have a first-person experience. Don’t believe what I say. You got to go home and try it. Because people are like, well I don’t want to change my food. I’m going to exercise. I’m going to go get something. No, you don’t even have your foundation in place first. This is the foundation. This is the sub-basement to build upon, and then after that, then we really get deep with our products, to the detoxing, to the nutrition, to the bacteria, and all the other stuff.

[00:48:37] Ashley James: Awesome. So cool. I love it. I love that you point out that anyone can start this, and you can start it slow. You can start one habit at a time. I think chewing the food more is something that is going to take a bit of conscious effort, especially if you’re used to drinking a lot of water. I’ve seen a lot of people do this where they just take maybe two bites and then drink some water to help get it down. The food hasn’t really been chewed.

[00:49:15] Tim James: I have a solution for this if I could share.

[00:49:17] Ashley James: Yeah.

[00:49:17] Tim James: I do private coaching, one-on-one. In the beginning, I didn’t charge anything because I didn’t value myself. Now I have people pay me thousands of dollars a month to coach them if they wanted to work with me. I have other coaches, it’s not that expensive, but the first thing I do on our initial call, we do this onboarding calls. I have them pull out their phone, and I have them program these things into their life with recurring appointments. Now think about it, if I say plot, plot, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is, many people listening today know what I’m talking about. We’re talking about Alka-Seltzer. Why is that?

It’s because television programming actually calls it that. They’re telling you, hey, we’re going to program you. That’s what they call a television program. My dad was like, “What program are we going to watch tonight?” We’re getting programmed with commercials—the habitual repetitive motion. You say something long enough, and often enough, people believe it is true or they’ll remember it because what you’re doing is just simple. It’s programming the subconscious mind. 

What I have my clients do is they wake up in the morning and it says drink water. They pick the time and they had a recurring appointment. And it’s like [buzzing] and it says drink water. Then maybe 30 minutes later it’ll say green juice, Gut Detox, Toxin Detox. Those are our products, and we have them programmed as a reminder. Then at lunchtime, it says chew food. You can put chew food, avoid liquids, breath, probiotics, and enzymes, and we have that as a recurring appointment. In the afternoon—green juice, and then at dinner—chew food, avoid liquids, breath, enzymes, and recurring.

So I have them set up that structure. And then every day, their phone [buzzing], they look down, they see it, they see it, they see it, they see it, they see it. They’re smart. They’re now programming it. They’re using their phone to program themselves, and in three to four months you’re going to have a hard time forgetting those four things. And everybody improves. That’s the easiest, cheapest way I’ve found to do it because everybody carries their phone around.

[00:51:12] Ashley James: Very cool. What kind of juicer? Could it just be any juicer, or do you like the masticating juicer over the centrifugal juicer? Is it better just to get any juicer and just start doing it, or do you have a preference?

[00:51:28] Tim James: Well it really depends on what you want to do. If you’re just going to do celery juice, then you could get a cheaper centrifugal one. It’s really fast, but the ones that are the most nutritious—I’m putting sprouts and wheatgrass through mine. I can do wheatgrass juice. I can turn right around and make a nice sprout juice. I do cucumber, celery, sunflower, pea sprouts, and I’ll put some ginger in there, turmeric, or some lemons and limes. Maybe some vegetables from time to time like leafy greens or whatever.

What you want is a slow auger juicer that’s going to turn under 72, 75 RPMs, very slow so it’s not going to create all that oxidation like a wind tunnel that’s going to oxidize and devalue the nutrients quickly. That’s very important. It’s just a really slow auger juicer. The one we recommend now is an Omega. Omega’s got a bunch of them. You can pick them, but I can’t remember the exact model number now because I used to be super into the juicers. I still use my old Omega 8006. It just works, but there are newer ones that actually work a little bit better and they don’t get gummed up as much. They’re awesome, but you can get one of those for $350 bucks and you’re dialed. Or like you say, go to OfferUp. People are selling stuff like crazy now. Or they started juicing, they got all excited about it, and they gave up on it. Hey, take my juicer for $1000 and you can get a $300, $400 juicer for $100.

[00:52:55] Ashley James: Yeah, right. I’ve got them for even cheaper, but yeah. I have an Omega that I got back in 2008 for $30 or something.

[00:53:04] Tim James: That’s a deal.

[00:53:05] Ashley James: I know, I know. There are people who just want to get it out of the house or whatever. There are so many juicers out there. You want one you can find one at your budget, but the Omega’s fantastic. I love Omega. I’ve had such great success with it.

[00:53:23] Tim James: Yeah, they’re really good. I literally healed myself with juicing. I juiced twice a day for five years because I was like I’m healing Charles, I’m committed. I gave my word that I would do this with him, so that’s another thing is to get a buddy and stuff. The first product that we actually developed—this could be a good segue—is our Green 85 Juice formula. It’s basically as close to a fresh-pressed juice as you can get. This is where I met people where they’re at. It’s simple, it’s easy. They just take a scoop, mix in water, shake it up, and they drink. It takes literally under a minute and they’re done. And they’re flooding their body with all this nutrition. If you still want to juice, do it. I totally do it. I made a fresh juice this morning and I put a scoop of Green 85 in it. Because I want more rights. That’s what I do, but we have stuff like that available to people.

For those of you that don’t want to buy a juicer, I recommend that you do at some point, but you can get this in yourself once or twice a day easily. There’s no juicing, there’s no cleanup, there’s no mess. The grocery bills are way cheaper. When people are drinking these greens twice a day, your grocery bill drops about $100 a month. If you’re drinking it once a day it drops about $50 because as the cells get hydrated from all this new water you’re going to be drinking, hopefully, and you drink these greens and get the nutrients in there, the cells are going to send signals saying, hey, I’m not hungry. You just can’t eat as much. It’s impossible. Your body just whips right back up into shape, and your grocery bill drops. It’s pretty cool. You can do this on a budget. You just have to be strategic about it.

[00:54:51] Ashley James: Very cool. Why is it called Green 85? Is it 85?

[00:54:56] Tim James: Yeah. We called it Green 85 Juice formula, not because I’m a marketer or anything, it’s just because it replaces the 85% of the nutrition that’s farmed out of the soil. Most people aren’t aware of this that even if you’re eating organic vegetables or organic meat, the soil is 85% deficient on average, so it’s just not there. If it’s not in the soil, it’s not going to be in the plant or in the animal that ate the plant. Literally, almost all of us are actually walking around on 15% fuel or 15% octane. What I teach people to do is how to get up to 100% octane. We figured it out with our products now to make it easy for people so they can do it.

Our whole program, it’s a clinic in a box. Literally completely from the inside out—gut health, blood health. It takes less than five minutes a day, so it meets people where they’re at with their time constraints. That’s why we called it Green 85 is because it replaces the 85% that’s been farmed out of our soils today.

[00:55:55] Ashley James: How do you guarantee that your stuff has all of the minerals and the vitamins in it that we need? If the nutrients aren’t in the soil, how do you get it in your sprout formula?

[00:56:06] Tim James: It’s all about sourcing. Sourcing the individual ingredients from farms and farmers that understand how to keep their soil healthy. Either they are doing permaculture, maybe they re-mineralize with rock dust, or even better, they’re re-mineralizing with ionic ocean minerals. They get a concentrate out of the ocean. There’s a company called oceansolution.com. I’ll just give them a plug because this stuff’s awesome. You can get a gallon, and you should. You should get a gallon of this stuff. It’s like $55 or something. And you can put a little quarter of a teaspoon or a half a teaspoon in with your sprouts when you soak them and deliver tremendous amounts more minerals because the plants will soak that stuff up. You can do your lawn with it. You can do your garden. We did my brother’s garden. We sprayed one spray with ionic ocean minerals and the size of his garden doubled. And they were like what is going on. I’m like yeah, your soil’s deficient, right?

And the other thing that you can tell is how you feel. When you start drinking this stuff on a daily basis, it’s going to radically change your physiology from the inside out. I’ve personally made three runs at it. I wanted to do 40 days and 40 nights on just Green 85. The first time I tried it I made it 11 days, then I made it 26 days, and then last year I finally made it 40 days. And all I had was Green 85, 3-5 times a day. I had hibiscus tea, which is just water and hibiscus leaves, and I did some Irish sea moss in the morning and night. I actually did do a chai tea latte, but no sugar. That’s what I lived on for 40 days was Green 85.

[00:57:50] Ashley James: So you were doing a fast?

[00:57:52] Tim James: Yeah. And the time before when I did it 26 days, it was only Green 85 and I never felt better. I don’t want to blow people out of the water here too and think you have to do that stuff. Because I remember when I was at the institute and this guy was on a 10-day fast, I’m like 10 days you didn’t eat? How is that even possible? See I wasn’t even ready for that. It takes time to build up the mental strength, understanding, and how the body works. And then you have to be willing to go through a little pain to feel amazing because usually, the first two, three days of a fast it’s like you’re not feeling so good. You’re freaking getting cravings, and then all of a sudden you’re just not hungry at all and it just goes away. Your body kicks into ketosis and starts burning up all the fat and the dead cells in your body. It just starts cleaning you up.

We were nomadic people for almost the entirety of the time we walked this planet. So we’d walk for two or three days, and then we’d eat some food. Then we’d walk for two or three days, we wouldn’t eat, and then we would allow our digestive tract a time to rest and clean itself up, and our blood to clean itself up. We’re just literally eating ourselves to death. Like you said with the cereals and stuff, I mean, I don’t want to get started on that, but it’s terrible. They’re putting genetically modified wheat, as an example, so it’s grown in a lab, raised in soils that are deficient, sprayed with chemical fertilizers, chemical pesticides, fungicides, larvicides, and herbicides.

They grind it up in its dormant state, which if I gave you some hard red winter wheat and had your spring wheat and had you chew it you’d crack a tooth. You can’t digest that. It would come out just how it looks when it went in your mouth, but they ground it in that dormant state into a powder. They add sugar, water, and yeast. They cook it at high temperatures, devalue it more, and then they spray synthetic vitamins on it. They call it enriched vitamins, and then they give it to kids. This is supposed to be healthy food. And then it’s even worse. Now they’re putting super sugars like high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup that are 50% by weight glyphosate. This is not me saying it, this is right out of MIT. It’s bad. 50% by weight high fructose corn syrup is glyphosate, it’s Roundup—so ketchup and stuff.

This stuff started freaking me out, but that’s not good enough. They want more addiction so they hired these engineers types, they pay them big salaries, and they created these opiate derivatives that they put in cereals, and it’s not even on the box, to further addict us and our children to eat cereals. So the cereal thing really ticks me off. The only one that I would purchase is Ezekiel Brand Natural. That’s actually sprouted grains, that’s it. They have sprouted grains ground up and you just put it in some seed milk and then off you go. Flaxseed milk or something like that so you’ve got proper food combining, and then then you’ve got cereal you could actually eat and it’s not going to destroy your health.

[01:00:31] Ashley James: Right. Some of us have allergies to gluten or can’t eat barley, wheat, rye, or oats so cereal is not even on the table. But you know what, I’ve gotten used to eating big beautiful salads for breakfast. Actually, what I do is I take my sprouts. I told you day five is my favorite. I take a big bowl of my lentil sprouts, I drizzle balsamic vinegar on it, then I take a little bit of either coconut aminos or soy aminos—the Bragg’s aminos—and then I just mix it up. And I eat a big bowl of lentil sprouts for breakfast. I was surprised because then it was all of a sudden 2:00 PM and I’m like wow, I’m just starting to get hungry. A big bowl of lentil sprouts gave me energy throughout the whole morning, and well into the afternoon. It was really cool. Sometimes, on days like that, I just have that for breakfast and then I just make a really big beautiful dinner, and that’s it.

We can get away from this idea of having to eat what we ate as children, right? Or what we are marketed to our entire lives. I love that you brought up that. We have to remember to not become relaxed and give into—because sometimes people say, oh, just in moderation. I don’t want to get too strict. I’m going to be in moderation, and once in a while, we’re going to eat the standard American diet. We’ll just buy this Cheerios or whatever once in a while, but we have to remember that the glyphosate—the Roundup—is so concentrated. When they make high fructose corn syrup, it’s so concentrated.

I’ve had two really great interviews with Dr. Stephanie Cena, who’s the PhD, top research scientist from MIT who is an activist trying desperately to let us know. And she doesn’t get paid to do any of it. She’s trying to let us know that glyphosate is such a harmful chemical. It binds to heavy metals and releases them into our brain and into our kidneys causing major problems with developmental issues for children, but also can cause kidney disease and actually damage to the brain.

[01:02:56] Tim James: It’s in over 70% of the rainwater today, just to give people an idea of how much it’s out there. It’s bad. That Stephanie gal, she’s smart. I’ve seen some of her work. She was also talking about the laminate floors directly linked to autism in children—another contributing cause. Some really good work that she’s done. She’s done some really cool stuff.

[01:03:18] Ashley James: Yes. In cleaning up our diet, water, and food, we also have to consider the environmental factors that are in our home because the air quality in our home can have 10 times more pollution than outside, than being in a busy street in downtown whatever town you’re in. And yet, we think that it’s fresh air inside, but it’s not because everything is off-gassing. We have to remember to open the windows.

[01:03:51] Tim James: Maybe we are related because you sound like me. I feel like I’m listening to myself. The paint’s off-gassing, the glues are off-guessing, and we’re bringing this stuff in. It’s really cool to be chatting with you today.

[01:04:04] Ashley James: You might have heard of the Sternagles, have you heard of them?

[01:04:07] Tim James: Mm-mm.

[01:04:07] Ashley James: I’ll connect you guys. The Sternagles are a family. I’ve had them on the show. Their son, at a year old, and actually his pediatrician was our pediatrician. They now live in Utah, but we found out that we actually lived really close to each other. At one year old, their son was diagnosed with cancer, and so the last five years he’s been fighting cancer and it came back. They got it to go away and then it came back again. So they really have been fighting it for five years, maybe six years now. He now has a clean bill of health—spoiler alert—but they tell a great story of how they’ve had to fight cancer twice.

The first time they used natural medicine and in conjunction with some allopathic medicine. And the second time it came back, they got the oncologist’s blessing—because they’re very persuasive—to just allow them to do 100% natural medicine and watch, wait, and see. And they’re able to 100% help their child to not have any cancer any tumors. He had tumors in his nervous system and in the spine—very painful. In their journey, like you, they’ve really gotten clear that the toxins in their house and in their environment needed to be thrown away. They moved to Utah, took the rest of their life savings, bought some land in a beautiful area, and they built from scratch a completely non-toxic home

He teaches people. He shares all this information, teaches people how to do it, but his whole thing is what kind of light bulbs are you going to use? What kind of carpeting? What kind of paint? What kind of caulking? What kind of tile? Just every single square inch of their house is the lowest toxic, and it’s just amazing the things we take for granted that we don’t realize are affecting and are contributing to potential cancer, contributing to potential disease, or slowing the development of our children.

Like you said, Dr. Stephanie Seneff, seeing there’s even a link from laminate floors and the off-gassing to potentially creating autism-like symptoms in children.

You mentioned the Irish moss. Why did you take it? And how do you take it?

[01:06:40] Tim James: I take it because it’s got like 92 minerals in it. It’s chocked full of minerals. It can be used as a thickener. You can make a pudding with it, you can make a key lime pie with it, or you can just eat it plain or you could squeeze some lime or lemon juice, a little bit of salt, and then consume it in the beginning. It’s just a wonderful thing. It’s great for the gastrointestinal tract, for your skin, your brain health, and your gut health—everything. What I do is I try to get the purple stuff, it’s harder to find, especially now with everybody home, everybody’s buying all this stuff up. It’s either white or purple. I try to get the wildcrafted purple stuff, and it can be more expensive like $35 to $45 a pound.

But then I take a half a pound of it, I soak it in water for 10-12 hours, then I rinse it off, and I pick out any little sea stuff or rocks that are leftover. It’s pre-washed, but there’s still stuff left, and then I put it in a blender with a little bit of water and blend it to a kind of a paste. Add more water, and I just keep doing that until I got about a half a gallon. From that half a pound I’ll turn into about a half a gallon of this gel, and then I put in the fridge and it gels up. Every morning and night I take a big huge scoop of it. That stuff’s awesome. It really is.

[01:07:53] Ashley James: Does it taste good?

[01:07:54] Tim James: I wouldn’t say that at the beginning because especially when it comes out of the blender it’s kind of warm. It really needs to chill. I mean I can eat it warm now but I’m still like ugh. It’s still what it is. It’s like a sea vegetable. It’s not like dulse flakes. Dulse I think is really good. We put that in our green 85 formula because it’s got a lot of iodine in it, and that’s one of the big reasons so many people have thyroid issues today is because there’s a lack of iodine. It’s one of the four halogens. You’ve got iodine, bromide, chloride, and fluoride. What I was taught was that the thyroid thinks that those other ones like chlorine, fluorine, and bromide are iodine, especially if it’s not getting enough of it. So it grabs it. It’s like oh, iodine, but it’s not. And then it doesn’t communicate properly. It doesn’t talk and give clear direction.

Especially for women listening with breast cancer, we’ve been taught to give them tons and tons of iodine. We like it through a root system of a plant so that it’s converted from rock form to a carbon-based form. It works better, and this sweep, sweep, sweep, sweep, sweep, and sweep that out and then get the thyroid chock full of a normal plant-based vitamin or iodine that’s been through the root symptom of a plant. That really helps out with breast cancer. There’s a lot of studies on that kind of stuff too.

[01:09:12] Ashley James: I love  01:09:12] iodine, which has been derived from sea vegetables. I like yours better because I love a whole food source of nutrients because then you’re always going to get it in the right ratios. So you’re getting iodine in the right ratios with other trace elements, and I love that you brought up that something that people are getting in their body every day—the bromine, the fluoride, or the chlorine. They’re getting it in their tap water, they’re getting it when they go in their hot tub, or when they go swimming in a swimming pool. We’re absorbing these chemicals that confuse.

[01:09:47] Tim James: From their toothpaste or their bread.

[01:09:51] Ashley James: Oh, right. Processed foods would have bromide in it. Processed foods are made with tap water so they’re going to have that. You know what’s really interesting, it made me so sad, but frozen vegetables, which I thought was a good alternative if you can’t get to the grocery store often. Frozen vegetables are processed by being washed in highly chlorinated water.

[01:10:17] Tim James: Yeah, genius.

[01:10:19] Ashley James: Because they’re supposed to make them disinfected or whatever. It’s great because it’s fresh, right? They’re picking it from the farm and immediately flash-freezing it, but before they immediately fast freeze it, they wash it several times with highly chlorinated water. Then that chlorine is getting into your system or those chemicals are getting into your system from your tap water, from swimming, from your bread, from taking showers. I live on a well so I feel really blessed, and I haven’t used fluoridated toothpaste in 12 years because I woke up back then discovered why fluoride is so bad. Not in its naturally occurring state in the ground because we can eat fluoride when it comes out of the ground.

It’s one of those trace elements the body needs, but not in the chemical form sodium fluoride. It confuses the thyroid, and the thyroid is absorbing these instead of the iodine. And then the thyroid can’t make the hormones, so then we go to an MD and the MD gives us what? Gives us a prescription when the thyroid isn’t working because we’re giving the body chemicals.

[01:11:25] Tim James: Yeah, so you get more chemicals. This is really important because this really helped me. All the listeners have to do is type in the umbilical cord and the word chemical. Just type that in—umbilical cord and chemical. You can go back to 2005 and you can see the studies showing that they actually take the umbilical cord blood from these brand new babies and young mothers, and they tested for like 400 chemicals. They found 71% of what they were looking for. For about 250 toxic chemicals, 180 cause cancer in humans, 212 cause developmental and brain disorders, and on down the list it goes. The scientists and doctors refer to this as a body burden. How come this is not being blasted on mainstream media?

You’ll see it in 2005, 2010, 2013, 2012, the different studies that come out. Environmental working group, different places, and nobody’s talking about that. That’s when I realized, I’m like, oh my God. If the youngest of young—the young babies and the young mothers, the healthiest of everybody—is already being born into this world with a body burden, we’re all polluted. Everybody’s polluted. I realized that. I’ve been on a mission, that’s what we call our company chemical-free body because you can look at the studies. And if that doesn’t hit you upside the head like a frying pan and you realize that you’re polluted, even though you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not the case because we’re all breathing the same air, drinking the water, eating these foods, and we’re exposed to all these personal care products that you don’t think.

Like you were saying, everything’s off-gassing. You got people spraying chemtrails, automobile exhausts, rubber compounds coming off of tires. Where does that go? Well, the tires started out with a lot of treads and then you got to get new tires every year or two, why? Where’d the rubber go? It goes into the environment microscopic. You breathe it in, it attaches to your mucous membrane in the back of your throat, and down into your gut, it goes. That’s where the problems are. That’s why we have really focused on teaching people how to become a mechanic for their own self, be doctoring themselves. You’re a mechanic. If the car is not running right you got to check body light or check engine light.

Here’s the example, car’s not running right check engine light comes on. Do you just keep driving that car? No, nobody does that because they know if they keep driving it and they don’t take it into the mechanic, the repair bill could get huge. Or the car could explode, or break down and they’re stranded at the side of the road they can’t get where they want to go anymore. When check engine lights come on people take them in and get them fixed. It makes sense. It’s common sense, but as our own bodies—the most important vehicle that you’re ever going to own, it’s the only one you got—has a check body light like you’ve gained weight, you have low energy, you have headaches, you have heart disease —

[01:14:02] Ashley James: You’re bleeding rectally.

[01:14:04] Tim James: Yeah, yeah you’re bleeding rectally, you have cancer, all these things. You have eczema on your elbows, you’re on medications, your body is just flashing the lights like hey, hey, stop, stop, take me in, take me in. Tune me up. This is where self-care comes into place, and you have to start loving yourself and realizing the only person that’s going to take care of your body is you. Not me, Ashley, some doctor, your aunt, your uncle, your grandma, your brother, your sister, your husband, or your wife. It has to be you. Look at animals. They take care of themselves. The cat wakes up, it stretches, does its yoga poses, and it licks its fur—it takes care of itself.

We don’t do that. We don’t expect everybody else to do it. We take really good care of the outside. We wake up, we shower, we brush our hair. We got our face—put our makeup on, we got our earrings, and everything’s looking good. The coat’s looking good, the skirt’s looking right, but what do we do to the inside of ourselves? You can’t see it so it’s not paid attention to. What we do is we teach people to take care of the inside. If the car’s not running right you flush the transmission fluid, you flush the engine, new spark plugs, new fuel filter, new air filter, and new water filter. Then you put in the good fuel and then you maintenance that sucker, and that’s what we’re teaching people to do with their bodies.

You clean out the digestive tract. We have a product called Gut Detox, it’s a thousand ancient-year-old formula from India. It works beautifully for that. You want to purify the blood, we have a product called Toxin Detox. It was originally two formulas for the military that will purify the blood of heavy metals, radiation, and toxic chemicals like glyphosate as an example. And then where are you going to get the fuel? Well, you need to flood the body with those green nutrition twice a day.

We have a product for that, and then you got to recolonize that bacteria—probiotic spores. We do the spore base rather than regular probiotics because they die in the stomach acid, and for those of you eating yogurt and thinking that’s a health food, it’s a dessert. Probiotics are bacteria, okay. When you heat them, which by law you have to do that to all that yogurt, it’s pasteurized. It’s 190 degrees, they’re dead. So yes, you’re getting probiotics, but you’re getting the corpse of a probiotic. It’s dead. There’s no benefit. You’re just having breakfast, or you’re having dessert for breakfast with yogurt, that kind of stuff.

All these things come into play, and it’s really about internal health. When you clean out the gut. you clean the blood, and you start flooding the body with nutrition, flood the body with these bacteria and eating fermented foods like sauerkrauts, kimchis, and these types of things, and more bacteria, getting outside, getting your hands on the dirt, more bacteria. Petting dogs and let the dog kiss you, more bacteria, the healthier you’re going to be. That’s how it works.

[01:16:39] Ashley James: I love it. There are plant-based fermented yogurts you can find that are raw.

[01:16:48] Tim James: CocoYo is one.

[01:16:49] Ashley James: Yeah, CocoYo. So what I do, I learned this from my friend Naomi. Naomi and I created a whole food plant-based course, videos. We basically just made videos in her kitchen because she’s amazing at whole food plant-based. I was doing it before her then she started because she had a heart disease diagnosis, and then she started spreading it. Her whole family started doing it, her parents started doing it, and then they all saw these great benefits. She’s really creative in the kitchen at getting people with very picky appetites to like the food. So she figured out, she soaks raw cashews, and then takes cashews, puts in the Vitamix, blends it, and then mixes in a few spoonfuls of the CocoYo and a very little water and then ferments it for about 24 to 48 hours on the counter. It makes the most delicious, and it works best when we use CocoYo because of the live culture. We can really tell the difference, but it makes the most delicious like cream cheese, sour cream, and you don’t need a ton of it because it’s—

[01:18:03] Tim James: Strong.

[01:18:04] Ashley James: Yeah, it’s strong. It’s very. It’s strong. It’s very dense nutritionally, very calorically dense, but her kids will fight over it. She had to take it and put it in individual little containers with their name on it because they would literally fight over it, which is really cool. She’s made other great delicious recipes where the kids will fight over it, and not leave any for the dad when he gets home from work. And that always surprises her because she made a vegetable dish the other day with mushrooms, and her kids hate mushrooms, but the way she made it was so delicious they ate it all up and they didn’t leave any for the dad. So she had to make a second dinner.

It’s just so cool when she never would have thought that her kids would get excited over a whole food plant-based diet. There are just ways of making it really delicious. When I used to cook years ago, I would start with, okay, well, we’re going to have a roast for dinner. We’re going to have the salmon for dinner. We’re going to have the pork chops, or we’re going to have the chicken. You would start with what’s the meat, and then what complements the meat. Well, I guess I’ll make some couscous, or I guess I’ll make some broccoli. You bring in the side dishes, right?

Now, my focus is on what can I eat to heal my gut? What can I eat to maintain my energy and my vitality? What can I eat to get nutrients in my body? And that becomes the compass or the foundation of that meal, and then what can I eat that’s raw today? What can I eat that has all those delicious raw enzymes that my body needs? And then I build the meal upon that. If you bring your focus to what you want to heal in your body, and what you want to support your whole family, what can I eat to support my immune system? What can I eat to help my liver detoxify? And then you build the meals upon the premise of healing the body.

So your kitchen becomes your pharmacy instead of what can I eat that’s just delicious? Because these foods are delicious. They can absolutely be delicious, but we have to make our focus be what can I do to support the 37.2 trillion cells in my body, so in seven years, I’m a totally new person but I’m actually going to be younger cellularly. I’m going to be younger in seven years. What can I do to make me younger? Now, as women, we spend thousands of dollars in our lifetime on face creams to make our skin appear as young as possible, but we’ve got to actually work on the nutrition on the inside. And when we do that, then our skin will develop younger-looking cells.

So instead of focusing on what I can schlop on my face, we should be focusing on what nutrients we give our body that will make healthy cells, and then we actually look younger and younger? It’s so true.

[01:20:51] Tim James: Yeah. It’s usually coming more from our women clients, but in six months on our protocols, people look five years younger. You’ll know once you start getting about three to four unsolicited comments like maybe your hairdresser will be like wow, your skin’s looking good. Or your roots are coming in thicker, what are you doing? Somebody will just say, wow, you look younger. And in the beginning, it feels weird because I started getting this from people. Especially from a guy, redneck, supposed to eat meat, drink whiskey, and shoot guns or something. Now it’s like, hey, Tim. You have really beautiful skin. I mean that made me feel my skin crawl in the beginning when people started telling me this stuff because I didn’t even know how to take it because nobody ever talked to me like that before. Now, I’m like, my skin is beautiful. Thank you so much. I love it. I love getting the comments. And I like freaking people out. I can’t wait till I turn 50. I can’t wait till I turn 60 because I like people going what?

I want to be that guy that’s like 110, sprinting down the beach, playing tag football with my great, great, grandkids, and they think I’m like their old dad or a healthy grandparent, you know what I mean? Because I know that’s possible now because I’ve met people that are doing this.

Dr. Gabriel Cousens, he lives a living food diet. You should have him on, he’s awesome. He goes deep into diabetes and stuff, wasn’t trying to do that, but he’s got books written on it. The dude’s like 80 something, he can do like 30 pull-ups. He did a rain dance for the Indians. He was telling all the Indians you got to stop eating the buffalo, you got to start eating plants, and they thought he was crazy. Nobody had done this rain dance in a decade, 4 decades, or 10 decades. It’s been a long time because it’s two days no sleep doing this dance. Well, he did it. He did it in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, and then afterward, all the chiefs were like well maybe we should start eating plants because somebody’s been able to do that dance for 40 years or whatever it was.

The results speak for themselves. People see other people. If you want people around you to change, you have to make those changes for yourself. There’s no question about it. That’s how you do it.

[01:23:07] Ashley James: Awesome. I love it. In the last few years since you’ve been working with people and helping them to adopt a more whole food plant-based, even more raw foods lifestyle to support their overall health, what diseases have you seen people reverse? What medications have you seen people get off of because they became so healthy?

[01:23:27] Tim James: Everything. I’ve seen everything.

[01:23:30] Ashley James: Can you give us some stories or some examples?

[01:23:33] Tim James: Yeah. One of the first ones was this guy that had multiple sclerosis. His name was Bob, and this guy had come to me. Actually, I met this other guy in the grocery store at Whole Foods. He had a whole bunch of stuff. And I’m like, “Wow you must be juicing.” He’s like, “Well, actually, I got horses, and we feed all these carrots to the horses.” I was like, “I just started juicing so I thought you were because when I first started juicing, I was doing carrots and that kind of stuff.” He’s like, “No, it’s for horses.”

Anyway, he came over, went to one of my dinner classes. He was an attorney, really nice, just a gentleman. The guy was a sweetheart, and we became friends. Then he was part of this men’s bible group. This guy Bob had MS. He’s like, “God, Tim, will this help Bob?” And I’m like, “Yeah, actually what I heard was that people with MS, they actually really need this. Besides the lifestyle and the juicing, they need a blue-green algae.” It comes from Klamath Lake down in Oregon here. It really bolsters and strengthens the fatty tissue of the brain. What I was told is that MS is a virus that’s attacking the fatty tissue of the brain, so we want to bolster and strengthen that up. It’s one of the protocols they use at the Hippocrates Health Institute for people with MS.

Well, this guy couldn’t even walk. He had a caregiver, and I don’t know how long it was—a few months or whatever he was on the protocols. All of a sudden, he was driving up to his house, and the guy was walking across the street and getting his newspaper. He pulled up. He’s like, “Bob. Look at you.” And he’s like, “What?” He’s like, “You’re getting the newspaper, man. You’re walking.” He’s like, “Well, yeah. I guess I am.” And then a few months later, all of a sudden, I get this knock on the door and it’s Bob and his caregiver. He’s walking. I never met the guy before. It was just somebody through osmosis.

He’s like, “I just want to come by and say thank you because the stuff that you’ve been sharing with my buddy has helped me. I’ve been able to get out of the house. I can walk now. I’m getting around to do things. I feel a lot better.” And believe me, he wasn’t fully on the whole program at all, but the changes he made had made a significant impact on him. It wasn’t just the blue-green algae, the [inaudible 01:25:29], it was the brain on version. That’s very important for those of you that are writing that down who might have somebody with MS. But it’s like a super-duper omega is what it is. You’re looking for those omegas. It’s the sub-basement of where all omega comes from.

We recommend people do that for a two to three year period, and then after that, you can do it periodically. Human beings aren’t supposed to eat algae all the time, but for healing, it can be a good thing.

[01:25:52] Ashley James: Absolutely. I totally agree with you. I’ve had several interviews with Catharine Arnston, who’s the creator of energybits.com. She gives us a great discount. Listeners can use the LTH coupon at energybits.com. But she shares her story, and she sources blue-green algae. It’s chlorella and also spirulina. She has it tested, has the water that it’s grown in tested—it’s all purified.

[01:26:21] Tim James: Yeah, it’s important.

[01:26:22] Ashley James: Yeah, it’s very important. There are zero heavy metals. There are other companies out there. You can buy it cheaper, but the problem with buying it cheaper is it’s full of lead, heavy metals, and pollution. There are only a handful of companies out there that will test it. She actually has it tested twice. She has tested where it’s grown and also has the final product tested for purity to make sure there are no heavy metals and there’s no pollution in it. I’m really impressed with the quality of hers, and hers actually don’t taste fishy like other companies do. Hers tastes like it’s fresh.

[01:26:57] Tim James: Clean.

[01:26:58] Ashley James: Yeah, it tastes clean. My son loves them. He’s five but he’s been eating them his whole life. He calls them green crackers, and he loves that it turns his tongue different colors depending on which one he’s eating. He loves that game. So if you want to get kids into it, it’s like look at my tongue, you can make your tongue green. You can make your tongue like this bluish color, and then they freak out and they want to do it too. That’s a great way to get kids to eat it, but it also helps to chelate the heavy metals from the body. That’s part of the protocol that a doctor here, I’ve had him on the show, Dr. Klinghart. He’s just outside of Seattle, and he has a clinic where he basically reverses autism.

He gets kids that are non-verbal, rocking themselves, hitting their head, or banging them themselves against a wall. He gets them from the point where they’re completely shut in their own nervous system and unable to communicate or connect with people, to where they’re able to go to college. Where they’re totally no longer on a spectrum. I think it’s because they don’t actually have autism. I think most of the children that are diagnosed with autism, it’s autism-like symptoms, and that it’s the chemical toxicity.

What he does, Dr. Klinghart has a whole protocol where he cleans the child’s body out of all of the heavy metals and nutrifies the body—like you’ve been talking about. And has them remove the chemicals in their life—like you’re talking about. They just come back online. He has them do green juicing—just like you’re talking about. He has them do chlorella, spirulina, and do saunas—depending on their age.

[01:28:44] Tim James: Is he having them do chlorine dioxide?

[01:28:46] Ashley James: I don’t know, but I will find out. He has a whole protocol. A lot of it is food-based as well. He puts herbs in their green smoothies that also are natural chelators. It’s easy to put just these herbs. You can grow yourself in your own garden into your into your green smoothies every day. But that’s when I first learned that he specifically uses it with children very effectively. That he gives them the algae, and he will only recommend one of the few brands out there that are so clean like Catharine Arnston’s brands.

But we’ve had had her on the show a few times because she went into all the studies and talks about the nutritional profile of chlorella and spirulina, and it’s fascinating. You can get your vitamin K. 

[01:29:42] Tim James: It’s amazing. It’s amazing. Our top four ingredients—spirulina and chlorella are in there. We test them like crazy. It’s very important that people understand the ingredients. You can’t even believe labels anymore today. You have to know the people behind it, that’s the only way. The only reason I have the supplement brand now is because of frustration.

As a health coach, I would do all this research. I’m like okay, I got to clean their gut—this product. Okay, we need to purify their blood—this one. We need a green juice—this one. And then we need digestive enzymes—that one. We need probiotics—that one. And then six months later, I’m looking, I’m like what? Xanthan gum? That wasn’t in there before. And I’m comparing the bottles and I call them up, I go, “What’s this?” It’s mutated corn syrup fermented in bacteria. I’m like, “What? I’m not putting that in my body.” And then I started reading the labels and I started looking up every little ingredient—dicalcium phosphate, the wrong type of silica that would cause hardening the arteries, gallstones, and kidney stones.

After research, research, research, I’d finally get something. I tell everybody about it. My coaching clients are using it, and then they’d switch the ingredients. I mean after this happened three or four times, Ashley, I finally said this is enough. I found Dr. Scott Treadway, who’s one of the top formulators in the world, and he actually studied in India under two lineages of thousands of years of apprenticeship at herbology. Then he studied Chinese herbology, and then Western herbology. So he’s got this trifecta of knowledge. He did practice clinical work with patients, seeing his own patients for 10 years besides when he was getting trained in India, and then now he’s one of the top supplement formulators in the world.

When we met, I was looking for somebody. I went through 30 labs until I met him. And I’m like, “Do you know what Kirlian photography is?” And he’s like, “Oh, yes. We have two of those machines.” I’m like, “Really?” For those of you that don’t know what that is, it’s a machine that can actually measure the energy or the frequency from whatever you’re pointing it at like a night scope. What’s cool is we can process—anytime you process anything you’re devaluing the nutrients. What we do in ours on our wheatgrass juice extract, spirulina, oat grass juice, wheat sprout, broccoli sprout, meringue leaf, or anything that’s in our products, they’re air dried or sun driesun-dried10 degrees to keep those enzymes or that life force active. It’s actually a charge. Not only are you getting the vitamins, the minerals, and the trace minerals, but you’re literally getting a frequency charge from the product itself. It’s literally charging the cells instant contact.

And we’ve had those people that are intuitives or Reikis people that are really into energy healing. They’ll come to booths that we have at events and they’ll take one sip of our greens and they’ll go, “What is this stuff?” They just flip out. And then, “I’ll take six cans.” And then the people working there are like, “What’s going on?” They see that they’re in tune and they know. So that’s what we tell people on our greens. Don’t blend it because 90 seconds in a blender you’re going to kill 85% to 92% of the nutrition of whatever you put in there. Make your smoothie if you’re going to do that, add the greens in later, stir it in, spoon it, and then shake it up, and drink it that way to not kill that life force. That’s very important. And then please read your labels.

On my products, you’ll see in red on all of them no magnesium stearate, no silicon dioxide, no dicalcium phosphate, and I can’t tell you how many people have called in and are like, “Dude that stuff’s in all my stuff.” So if you’re buying supplements, you have about a 95% chance that you’re consuming a toxic chemical even though it’s purported to be health food. Keep in mind, 85% of the supplements on the market today are synthetic versions sold by pharmaceutical companies. So 85% of the entire supplement market is big pharma.

[01:33:25] Ashley James: Right. I’ve been working with Dr. Joel Wallach for the last nine years, and he had the same problem. He is a Naturopathic physician, but back 20-30 years ago, he was working with patients. He had clinics actually from Washington all the way down to California. We’d drive down I-5, go to a different clinic, meet with people, and work up and down the western seaboard. He was getting great results because of all of his research that went into understanding that we’re minerally deficient, and so he was using another company. And all of a sudden people stopped getting results. He looked into it. He analyzed the supplements and found out the company that he was working with decided to dilute their product to make a bigger profit, and he was so upset.

He obviously stopped telling his patients to use those, but he just didn’t know what to do because he couldn’t find the quality that he wanted to get the trace minerals and all the 90 essential nutrients for his patients. And then his family begged him to start their own company. He said, “I want to be helping people. I don’t want to be building a company or running a supplement company.” So his family begged him. “Okay, logistically, we’ll run the company. You keep working with people.” That’s over 22 years they’ve been doing that, but that’s the same story is companies will keep changing their supplements.

And also, with Kristen Bowen who has the magnesium soak that I love, she was getting amazing results with it and then the company overnight—her, and she actually had 200 people. She just kept telling people about it, telling people about it, and over 200 people that she became friends with were all using this magnesium soak. It’s concentrated or undiluted magnesium from the Zechstein Sea, and she reversed major health issues with it. And then out of nowhere, someone says, “It’s not working anymore.” And then she grabs an old bottle and a new bottle, takes it to a lab, and sure enough, the company started diluting it hugely to increase their profits.

[01:35:33] Tim James: This happens all the time. People that are listening, it’s not easy to step into the supplement business. I could see because I only did small batches for my coaching students. Now that things are expanding and the supplement thing is growing, it’s very difficult to compete because my raw material costs are through the roof. I build this stuff for my body and my coaching clients. I build this stuff for me. I want it to freaking be the best, the top of the pyramid. That’s what I want, and every time we build it, I go to the formulator. I’m like, “Look, I want to be the best.” Well, if I was to sell my greens at regular retail value, it’d be like $117 to $127 a jar. Most people can’t afford that.

I can’t really compete on the marketing because I don’t have this huge marketing budget because I’m not making an extra $60 a can or $50 a can on people on top of what I sell it for. It’s just numbers at that point. If I ever sell my company, probably don’t buy the products anymore. But we’re not going to do that. I’m going to put it in the bylaws. We’re family-owned, and it’ll be probably employee-owned. We’ll probably turn it over to the employees and they’ll be bylaws soon. The formulas have to stay the way they are, they will never change, and that kind of stuff so that after I’m dead and gone, it’ll still perpetuate. Because I have a lot of people, they have to have my stuff. Once they get on it, they’re progressing, they do not want to get off of it, so they get on auto-ship and they stay consistent with them.

[01:37:00] Ashley James: It has been such a pleasure having you on the show, Tim. I know you’ve got to go. Thank you so much. Do you have any final words that you’d like to say to our listeners to wrap up today’s interview?

[01:37:09] Tim James: Yeah, I do. I always like to end these talks with a challenge, and I would like you to challenge yourself to start putting yourself first—100% loving self. You have got to be first. I see this with men, and I see it with so many women, especially young mothers, mothers in general. They do everything for everybody. I mean taking care of the kids, washing the clothes, making the food, cleaning the house, trying to have a romantic life with the husband, and taking care of people. They put themselves last, they put their health last, and then eventually, a wheel falls off. Then they find themselves in the hospital with a nervous breakdown, they’re on anxiety medications, depression medications. They’re not happy and they’re not feeling good.

Well, the reality is you have to put yourself first if you truly love your children. You have to because they’re watching you, and monkey see, monkey do. Literally, do you want your children to follow your footsteps and be worn out, worn down, sick, tired, overweight, and all these problems that people have today? No. My people ask me, “What’s more important, you or your kids?” I’m like, “I’m more important.” And people think that I’m a jerk by saying that. I say, “Let me finish. If somebody shoots our way, I’m going to jump in front of my kids and take the bullet. Obviously, I love them unconditionally, but I put myself first because I want my children to put themselves first. And I’m going to lead by example.”

And I can tell you in my own life, it works. You lead by example, and what you’re doing by leading by example is giving other people permission, not that they will do it, but you give them permission and inspiration to do it for themselves. That’s all you can do. You can’t get people to do anything. I mean, you’ve probably experienced this. It’s hard. It’s like pushing a rope or trying to herd cats. Look at your husband. When he finally made the decision is when he changed, not when you wanted him to, when he wanted to. And the best way to do it, change yourself, that’s how you change your world.

[01:39:15] Ashley James: I love it. Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure having you on. You should definitely come back. I’d love to have you on and continue sharing and teaching. I love your mission and the work that you’re doing to help people to live happier, more vital lives. It’s wonderful. Thanks, Tim.

[01:39:35] Tim James: Thank you so much. Yeah, I’d love to come back. We could go deep on whatever you want. Also, on my website, my podcast is there too where people can find me on the Health Hero Show. That’s my podcast, and I go deep on some stuff like proper food combining and things like that.

[01:39:53] Ashley James: Absolutely. And the links to everything that Tim James does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Thank you so much, Tim.

I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Tim James. Wasn’t his story amazing? I love it. I feel like all men should hear it, I mean women too, not excluding anyone, but men need to hear his journey. Because I think a lot of us, we can stop and go what symptoms have I been sweeping under the rug? What symptoms have I been writing off?

I have friends who take Advil every day because they have aches and pains. They just keep going, and like Tim said, if you’re sick, you have all these symptoms but it doesn’t stop you, it doesn’t stop you from doing your daily tasks, then it’s really easy to keep ignoring or keep self-medicating. That down the road is going to lead to bigger problems.

My mom died when she was 55. I was 21 years old, my mom died when she was 55, and she was the epitome of health. She was the healthiest person we knew. She exercised seven days a week. She ate incredibly clean. She took supplements, and she didn’t manage her stress levels. She ignored certain symptoms, and she died of cancer. My dad died of heart disease. These are diseases that when you listen to enough episodes, you gather that there are many diseases we’re dying of that are lifestyle diseases, that are caused by our choices.

I can’t get in a time machine and bring my parents back, but I can show you this information. Maybe we can share this information with your family members, with your friends, with your loved ones. Maybe we can save some of the loved ones in our life. Maybe you can help someone in your life to stop ignoring some of the health symptoms they have and do some simple changes to their diet or their lifestyle to help their body correct itself. We can extend the quality of our life. We can put years on our life by changing our diet, by changing certain health habits.

This is what we explore in this podcast, so keep listening. If you’re a new listener, subscribe. Please give us a five-star rating review. That helps our show get to more people. And then please, go back and listen to past episodes. The most current episodes are on iTunes, but we’re also on Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and Google Podcast is an app now. We’re on all those, and you can also go to learntruehealth.com. All the episodes are on learntruehealth.com. The most recent episodes, the most recent 100 or so, have been transcribed. You can even just read the transcripts. And you can use the search function on the website to find episodes about specific illnesses or correcting certain things, certain topics.

Please check out Tim James’ website chemicalfreebody.com and use the coupon code LTH. I invite you to try his green drink. I absolutely love it, and I’m very picky. It is organic. He sources the highest quality ingredients, and it is gluten-free. I had to make sure that myself. So chemicalfreebody.com, coupon code LTH.

Come join the Learn True Health Facebook group, it’s free. A great resource, great community there. Go to learntruehealth.com and check out all the resources there. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. You can reach out to me on Facebook, or you can reach out to me through email ashley@learntruehealth.com. I’d love to hear from you. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about.

If you have any suggestions for future topics, or if you are grasping at straws with your own health, I’m also a certified health coach, and I’ve been working with people for nine years. I’d love to help you as well. You can go to learntruehealth.com, and on the menu, there’s a section for working with me. You can also go to learntruehealth.com/chat and fill out the form for a free consultation to see if we’d be great working together.

Excellent. Thank you so much for being a listener, and I can’t wait to meet you either on Facebook, through a phone call, or an email. I’d love for you to reach out. Just know that you’re not alone. We’re all in this together. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day.

Get Connected with Tim James!

Website

Podcast

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Recommended Readings by Tim James

Supplements Exposed – Dr. Brian Clement

Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle

Check out IIN and get a free module: LearnTrueHealth.com/coaching

Magnesium Soak: Use coupon code LTH at Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com

Use listener coupon code LTH at viome.com for the gut and mitochondrial testing and food & supplement recommendations.

IT'S HERE! Learntruehealth.com/homekitchen
Use coupon code LTH for the listener discount!

Check out the supplements Ashley James recommends:

takeyoursupplements.com

Check out IIN and get a free module: LearnTrueHealth.com/coaching

Magnesium Soak: Use coupon code LTH at Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com

Viome: At-Home Gut Microbiome and Mitochondrial Testing

https://www.learntruehealth.com/viome-at-home-gut-microbiome-and-mitochondrial-testing

Highlights:

• Bad oral hygiene causes inflammation in the gut and the body
• The byproduct of the gut microbiome is important
• What diet ages people the quickest
• No such thing as a universal healthy diet

Every single person is unique, not only physically, but even internally. Because each person is unique, shouldn’t we have a diet specific to what our body needs? In this episode, Naveen Jain tells us the at-home tests that Viome has created that help in optimizing our health. He talks about the importance of feeding the microbiome what it needs and that every gene in our body is important, so all genes expressed in the body need to be tested to fine-tune what diet our body needs specifically.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. Today is one of those days that’s going to change your life. I’m so sure of it. This episode is mind-blowing. Cutting-edge, state-of-the-art at-home tests—you don’t have to go anywhere. You don’t have to go to the doctor’s office. You don’t have to go to a lab somewhere to have blood drawn. An at-home test that can take a few drops of your blood easily with a finger prick, can take stool, and even saliva and do a huge immense amount of genome work on the microbiome and of the mitochondria of your body, which are also bacteria, and understand exactly what you need to eat to bring everything back into balance and to make your gut bacteria work for you instead of against you. We can heal a leaky gut. We can heal all kinds of autoimmune issues that are triggered by and at its root caused by dysbiosis. This is very exciting.

If you listen to episode 440, the one right before this, I had a gastroenterologist who has been working for 14 years helping people heal the gut with food. This episode complements that one because now we’re taking something to a whole new level where now you get to determine exactly what foods specifically for you right now, specifically for the very complex and individual microbiome matrix that is so specific to you. No two people in the world have the same makeup of gut bacteria, and so of course, not one exact diet fits all. Why is it that some people can eat bananas and some people can’t? It’s because of our gut, and it all starts there.

We could even heal food allergies by following this method. So I’m so excited for you to listen to today’s episode. I want to let you know that I always ask founders and owners of companies to offer discounts to the listener. So Naveen has offered a discount for listeners. If you choose to do his at-home test, you’re going to use the coupon code LTH when you go to his website Viome and you use the coupon code LTH. I want to let you know that his website has a discount right now. He does have things on sale, but he does have things at a discounted rate, and you’ll get an even further discount by using the coupon code LTH. But there will come a time when those discounts on the website go away, you’ll still get a discount by using coupon code LTH. Go to viome.com, use coupon code LTH, and get a further discount.

Enjoy today’s interview. It’s a doozy for sure, and I can’t wait to have him back on the show. My husband and I have ordered the kit, and we are going to be doing it. So the next time I have him on the show I will be sharing our experience with it, and I’m very, very excited. I’ve already told some friends about this and every single one of them said how can I get my hands on this kit. This sounds amazing. I have a feeling that everyone’s going to enjoy today’s interview and make you think about your bacteria in your body in a new way.

Thank you so much for sharing this episode. Thank you so much for supporting the Learn True Health podcast. Come join our Facebook group if you get a kit from Viome and use the coupon code LTH there. If you end up going to viome.com and doing the kit, please come to the Learn True Health Facebook group and share your results as I will share mine as well. I’d love to hear from you guys and hear what you think. Excellent. Let’s figure out what we can do to feed our mitochondria and feed our microbiome to achieve absolute, amazing health together. It’s so exciting. Enjoy today’s interview.

[00:04:09] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 441. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have Naveen Jain on the show. Viome is your website, is your business—viome.com. I’m very excited about this. You are offering a discount to listeners. The LTH coupon code they can use. You give testing that allows us to get precise food and supplement recommendations based on our gut microbiome and mitochondrial health, and this is fascinating. So many of my listeners have asked me what food allergy tests they should get. And every week, my listeners are asking about different probiotics and how they can heal the gut. Many of my guests have said that if you want to heal any disease, you have to start by healing the gut microbiome. It is that important.

And of course, now we know more and more that if you don’t have mitochondrial health you have a disease. Your company is helping people to get right to the root and solve this health crisis we have of chronic disease. I’m excited today because you said you wanted to talk about how we can, as a society, move in the direction so that chronic disease becomes optional. Welcome to the show.

[00:05:43] Naveen Jain: Thanks, Ashley. It is just amazing that we are living in this world of COVID, and it is hard to even mention that as a humanity, we really have done a great job of infectious disease. These pandemics, like COVID, happen once every 100 years. But at the end of the day, the world has this epidemic of chronic diseases. Think about it, we know or every one of us knows at least a dozen people who are suffering from obesity, diabetes, depression, anxiety, or autoimmune disease. You can give names like heart diseases, Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s, but these are just the symptoms. These are just symptoms of chronic inflammation.

So one of the things that I realized is that chronic diseases are really caused by chronic inflammation. In terms of chronic inflammation, the root cause of almost all of the chronic inflammation, especially the systemic chronic inflammation, tends to be the gut microbiome. We somehow feel that we have discovered some new signs and new biology about human beings, and we are so much smarter. But if you go back 2500 years ago and Hippocrates say the same thing, “All diseases begin in the gut. Let food be thy medicine. Let thy medicine be the food.” It’s not that we have become any wiser or any smarter, except that now we have a scientific way of actually looking inside the body and finding out what is going on.

So if I were to describe Viome in a simple way, we digitize the human body. We look at every single gene that’s expressed in the human body. We look at the human gene expression, mitochondrial gene expression, the gut microbial gene expression, and the oral microbial gene expression. As you mentioned, these things all work together. Unfortunately, it’s not like these things are just siloed. What happens in your gut doesn’t stay in the gut. It changes our body. What happens in our mouth when we chew our food changes what happens in the gut that changes what happens in the body.

All these things are interconnected. As we go along here, we’re going to talk a lot more about this latest research and the latest science of what we’re learning.

[00:08:10] Ashley James: I’m going to just come out and say the big elephant in the room. Let’s just clear the elephant in the room right now. A lot of my listeners are really interested in doing the different gene tests, but they’re afraid of—myself included. My naturopathic physician was suggesting I do one of these gene tests, but I don’t want to give my genetic code over to a company that’s going to sell it to a pharmaceutical company. Does Viome promise to not sell our RNA or DNA sequences or the information of our body to other corporations? Do you keep our information protected and safe?

[00:08:54] Naveen Jain: First of all, the short answer is yes. I’m going to give you a slightly longer answer as well.

[00:08:58] Ashley James: I’d love a longer answer.

[00:09:00] Naveen Jain: So the longer answer is, remember, your DNA or your genes never change. That means you’re born with your DNA, you’re born with the genes, your genes never change. Anytime someone who is telling you they can give you some recommendations based on your genes is simply fooling you, here is why. Now imagine, if I made the recommendations to you based on your genes and a year later you gained 200 pounds, has your genes changed? No. Your recommendation better change because you’re not going in the right direction. Now let’s assume you also developed depression, now you have autoimmune diseases, now you have diabetes, you have every chronic disease known, and now your genes still haven’t changed. So how can you possibly tell me that somehow the solution lies in the genes?

What really the diseases develop when your gene expression that means your expression of genes is constantly changing, your genes don’t change. So if you’re not looking at gene expression you will never be able to know what is causing a disease, and that’s literally how cancers are formed or everything. It is the microbial gene expression signaling the human genes expressions and they’re literally working in coordination that causes almost every single chronic disease. If you’re not born with a disease you’re not going to get a disease unless you actually trigger it, and these triggers happen with the choices that we make every day.

The interesting thing about gene expression is genes are like your thoughts. You can have good thoughts or you can have bad thoughts, and as long as you don’t express any bad thoughts there is no crime that happens. In the same way—you can have good genes or bad genes. If your bad genes are not being expressed, then you are in good shape. It is really about the expression of genes. You may or may not know, Viome is the only company in the world that actually measures the gene expression because no one has figured out how to sequence RNA because they all look at DNA, which is genes rather than RNA, which is really where the gene expression comes from. As we go along we’ll tell you a lot more about that. I just want to make one more point.

Assume hypothetically that I looked at your gut and I got the gene expression of it. God forbid, let’s assume somehow somewhere our data got stolen. Let’s just assume because anybody who tells you that they have a complete foolish safeguard. We are HIPAA compliant, we have every single security put in place. But let’s assume, God forbid, it does get stolen, then what now? The question you have to ask yourself is since your gene expression is always changing, someone can beat the out of you and you still have a different gene expression so they won’t be able to match it back to you. That means since it’s a dynamic environment we know what is happening right now. And six months later or a year later, it’s going to be completely different. That’s why it is less critical to worry about gene expression than about genes. I hope that makes sense.

[00:12:07] Ashley James: You said some very interesting things in there. Your microbiome gene expression triggers your body’s gene expression. We know the microbiome is incredibly important, but the microbiome is reaching out and sending signals to our body, and our body’s gene expression will change based on our microbiome’s health.

[00:12:29] Naveen Jain: Of course. Think about that, right? I mean 70% of our immune system is along our gut lining. How does our immune system get trained? So it’s literally the signals that microbial—what I would call micro poop, which the technical term is metabolites. The microbiome metabolites. That means the molecules that are produced by the microbiome based on the food they eat they produce certain molecules, and I call them micro poop because they’re literally the poop of these microbiomes. Sometimes these poops are really, really good. They produce short-chain fatty acids such as butyrate.

So the butyrate is a microbiome metabolite or microbiome tool. That literally triggers our immune system to calm down, so it’s anti-inflammatory. There are things like that microbiome produce a molecule called LPS, lipopolysaccharide, that literally creates then tells the immune system to start creating more pro-inflammatory compounds because it says, hey look, the bad stuff is here. Start creating the pro-inflammatory stuff so we can kill that stuff right. It’s constantly interacting with the immune system. Just know that our immune system does not have eyes and ears. Our epithelial cells don’t have eyes and ears. It is simply acting on the biochemicals or the chemicals that are being produced by the microbiome. And based on what is being produced, our body changes. For example, most people probably know that 90% of our serotonin is produced in the gut, not in our brain. And serotonin is, as most people know, is the molecule that actually makes you feel good. Serotonin makes you feel good, right?

The interesting thing is 90% of it is produced in the gut, and it’s produced by the human epithelial cells. But how do the human cells actually know when to produce it? That is triggered by the gut microbiome. So the microbiome triggers the chemical that actually causes the epithelial cells to produce serotonin. They literally are always interacting with each other and you will find that that’s why without microbiomes, your genes are necessary for you to be born, but you couldn’t live if you didn’t have the microbiome in your body.

In fact, the majority of if you look at all the genes that are expressed in our body, 99% of them are expressed by the microbes, which are foreign to our human body. If you look at the human genes, Ashley, less than 22,000 genes that are expressed in the human genes are protein coding genes. When you start to look at the microbes, 39 trillion microbes in our gut, and a trillion in our mouth and all over our body. They are expressing somewhere between 2 million to 20 million genes. And that means at any point of time, we have probably less than 1% of the genes that are expressed in the body are our own, and the rest are all coming from somewhere else. We are literally a container for all these organisms. That’s really—we are beautiful containers for these organisms.

I might even argue that these organisms may have actually created us for their own benefit, right? If you are interested I’ll give you my creation story of how I think humans may have been created.

[00:15:55] Ashley James: We definitely have to hear that, especially when you look at it that way. When you look at it from a standpoint like we’re the planter box that the garden lives in. When you realize that that’s six pounds of gut biome sitting in our digestive system is trillions of cells and does 99% of the gene expression of our entire body. And it does things like convert our thyroid. 25% of our T3 is converted there. Our serotonin is made there. Our short-chain fatty acids are made there. So much of our nutrients are digested there. We know that when someone has an unhealthy or a sick microbiome that their entire body becomes sick. There’s a direct relationship.

Yes, it’s not us in that we didn’t grow. It’s not like the cells of my eye that I grew or the cells of my finger that I grew, but it is ours to take care of or to neglect. Just like having a pet, we have to take care of the microbiome. We can’t just eat whatever we want. If we eat whatever we want we’re going to get the common diseases. I often say in the show if you want to be a statistic, do what everyone else is doing. If you don’t want to be a statistic like the number one killer is heart disease. One in three people will have a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. One in three people has pre-diabetes or diabetes and are obese. All these diseases are on the rise, even though we spend, as a nation—I’m talking about the United States, but most industrialized nations are similar to us in that we spend the most out of every nation “health care” and yet we come in dead last in things like infant mortality and other chronic illnesses.

Your mission is to help build a society where chronic illness is an option. Where someone could choose to not be chronically sick. I love that you also mentioned if you’re not born with a disease, if you didn’t develop a disease in utero, and you weren’t born with a disease, then any disease that comes after birth is optional. Very interesting. I want to talk about those points. Let’s start though by going back to what you said about your creation story because it’s interesting. I’ve had an expert on the mitochondria on the show and he said—and this just blew my mind—that the mitochondria of our cells are a different DNA than the rest of our body. So at one point, we merged with mitochondria and made an agreement that they would be part of us.

We really do have foreign living organisms in a beautiful relationship with us. So tell us about your creation story.

[00:19:02] Naveen Jain: I think as you started that, think about it. Microorganisms have been on planet earth for three and a half billion years. The humans are, give or take, a couple of hundred thousand years old. How do you think the human came to be? And this is my tongue-in-cheek story and then I’m going to tell you the scientific basis of all how it actually happens. But this tongue-in-cheek story, once you hear it you can never unhear it. Now imagine this world. Close your eyes and imagine this world. All these microorganisms are living in Africa and then one day they all got together and said we are sick and tired of living in a small space. We want to take over the world, and they all looked at each other. One of the microbes says I have an idea. What is your idea?

What if we can create something bipedal and trillions of us could live right inside it? Now, all we have to do is keep this person. We can make it crave any food we want and they’re going to run all over the world, find the food for us. All we have to do is keep this thing healthy. Now we can make it crave anything we want and it’s going to go everywhere, it’s going to poop, everywhere, it’s going to spread us around, and we’re going to just take over the world. They actually created humans and they named it humans. Right after they created humans, they started to wonder, oh my God. What have we just done? As you can possibly imagine, we are so worried about artificial intelligence and we keep wondering what if someday the AI becomes smarter than us, what will happen to us humans?

So microbes had exactly the same thought. They all reassemble and say, master, master, what have we done? We created this monster called humans. What if someday it became smarter than us? What will happen to all of us? Master says not to worry for a second. We took care of all those problems. Master, what have you done? Master says, well the first thing we did is right inside their cell we put one of our brothers right inside their cell, and can you believe that they call that mitochondria. It provides all the energy for their cell and we keep in direct communication with us all the time. We are bacterial brothers, we talk to them all the time. At any point in time the humans don’t take good care of us, we tell our mitochondrial brother to shut the energy down and they’re all dead.

Master, that is brilliant. However, you’re forgetting something. What son? They are starting to develop this thing called the brain, what are we going to do about that? Master says, that’s the first thing we thought about what do you think we did? We put a direct connection to their brain and can you believe they call that a vagus nerve? They thought they’re going to name it after Las Vegas thinking what happens in the gut is going to stay in the gut. They’re so wrong. What happens in the gut goes everywhere. Now, through that vagus nerve, we control their mood, we control their behavior, we control their thinking, and we control their craving. And guess what, if they want to feel good they better take good care of us because we’re not going to let them produce most of the serotonin. 90% of that we’re going to produce it ourselves.

So ladies and gentlemen, we are the ones that actually are the puppets, and our puppet masters are these trillions of organisms that are constantly pulling the strings and telling us what to eat, what to do, how to think, and what happens to us. It’s a tongue-in-cheek story, Ashley, but I can tell you some of the research that came out. Just two weeks ago there was a research that showed that our social behavior, whether we are extrovert or introvert, actually is driven by our microbiome.

[00:22:55] Ashley James: Wow.

[00:22:56] Naveen Jain: Our mood is driven by our microbiome. Our cravings for the food are driven by microbiome so much so they did an experiment on different types of sweeteners, and it turns out that the microbiome releases the signal directly to the brain that releases the dopamine that is specifically designed for the sugar molecule. They want to test the theory is it just a sweetness versus actual preference for the sugar. So they did the artificial sweetener, and the microbiome hated that. They wanted their sugar. So they thought maybe it is because of the amount of calories the sugar has. So they actually created this molecule that had identical to sugar except that it cannot be digested. That means it won’t produce any calories. Guess what, they still have the same preference for the sugar molecule. That means they literally want their sugar, and that’s what happens. When we eat sweet stuff we crave sweet stuff, right?

But now interestingly, these organisms that make you crave for that stuff if somehow you can use two weeks of willpower not to eat sugar, guess what happens. You actually don’t even feel like eating anymore because we kill the organisms that are making you crave that stuff. And that’s literally what happens. You and I look at some people and say oh my God, how can you just eat this salad and some people say I love it. I enjoy it. For our microbes it’s like, I don’t want that stuff right. I want my bread. I want my pasta. I want my pizza.

Another very interesting thing we noticed, Ashley, was our blood sugar, diabetes, or glycemic response is completely dependent on what is happening in our gut. We actually did a large study that showed that we are able to predict the glucose response for a specific food based on what is going on inside your gut. That means two people can eat the same slice of bread and one person will get six times the glycemic response and the other person get none. Intuitively, we know some people who can eat bread all day and never get fat, and some people like me can smell bread and get fat, right? We all know that happens. That thing is all are driven by our gut.

The other interesting thing that we talked about—cancer and heart disease, I’m going to tell you something very interesting we found. In the last 30 days, there were two research papers published—one in cell and one in nature. And they looked at about 20 different types of cancer. What they realized was every single cancer tumor had microbiome inside the tumor, and that microbiome was very specific to each cancer, not only providing the energy to the cancer cells, but also protecting it from the immune system.

Remember, the microbes can tune the immune system down, so they were releasing the anti-inflammatory signal to let the cancer actually continue to grow so the immune system doesn’t kill it. Isn’t that amazing that now we are able to simply look at—there is a company that’s looking at it, just looking at the microbiome in the cell and the blood plasma and predict that not only you have cancer but what type of cancer just by simply looking at microbiome.

In fact, we applied for FDA now that by looking at the microbiome in our saliva we can predict stage 1 or stage 0, the pre-cancerous cells in your mouth oral cancer with 94% accuracy just by looking at the saliva microbiome. And it is really amazing how oral microbiome is communicating directly with the gut microbiome, is in constant communication. So essentially, are in fact our body. The other thing that’s really very fascinating to me is almost all of the metabolic diseases and you look at some of the neural diseases like depression, Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s, many of them are obviously directly tied now to the gut microbiome. In fact, they were able to do a fecal transplant and were able to actually transfer the depressed person’s poop into a person that was not depressed, and actually the same phenotype goes across.

There was another very interesting research that recently came out. There was a person who had Alzheimer’s, and it turns out the person ended up getting a C. Diff infection. And for the C. Diff infection, they gave you tons of antibiotics, and then they do the fecal transplant. This person, after they got a C. Diff infection, they got a fecal transplant and six months later, this person’s memory came back. So Alzheimer was reversed simply with changing the microbiome.

Think for a second. Now what we are learning is just like when our gut microbiome is behaving improperly or what I would say dysbiosis, we get this leaky gut. And these microbes are constantly now going past the epithelial barrier into our blood, and our immune system is constantly inflamed trying to deal with that. The same thing happens when we have leaky gum. Remember, when you have blood, the gums which are inflamed. And now when you brush you’re bleeding because that inflammation now the microbiome from the mouth is now starting to go into the blood causing the same systemic low-grade chronic inflammation.

What they found was, at least in a couple of papers, oral microbiome could be a predictor for Alzheimer’s disease, depression, and autism just like the gut. What’s really happening is that when you get the inflammation in your gum, in one of the studies they showed was not only the pathogens move from the mouth to the gut, even the immune cells—the Th17 cells—they actually fluorescence those cells. They saw them move from the mouth all the way to the gut. That means our immune system cells are moving as well when we have inflammation in the mouth. When we don’t have good oral hygiene, not only you are actually causing inflammation in the body, you’re also causing the inflammation in the gut, which also furthers the inflammation in the body.

[00:29:16] Ashley James: There are two things, one is to screen. So you can use the microbiome to screen for cancer, you can use the microbiome if there’s dysbiosis in the mouth, for example, which could be a precursor, like you said, to dementia and other problems. We can screen the microbiome and see what kind of diseases could have been created in the body because of this. So screening or early detection, especially with cancer, is key, but it’s not prevention. Prevention is the best key, it’s the root cause because if we could do a course correction or prevent it from becoming a dysbiosis in the first place, that would be the best thing.

So here we have people. Most of our listeners are really excited about getting even healthier. Some have major health issues, and some are fairly healthy but they want to get to the next level. Let’s just assume that all of us, on some level, may not have the perfect microbiome. We all have some form of dysbiosis or Homer Simpson gut. I once heard someone refer to the standard American microbiome as the Homer Simpson of microbiomes because there are so few. It’s like a dumbed-down microbiome, and that makes us crave really bad food for us. We could grow a new microbiome that would make us crave healthy foods instead of bad foods, that would give us our serotonin so we’re happier, that would prevent diseases, that would heal up the gut so we didn’t have leaky gut, and it just cascades into better and better health.

Does your testing help us do both screening things but also then teach us what we can do to regrow a healthier microbiome?

[00:31:18] Naveen Jain: The first thing is, I will tell you, we’re not a diagnostic test. We don’t tell you have cancer or you have this particular disease because that will be an FDA-approved diagnostic test. What we do instead is to look at what is going on inside your body. We will look at that blood, stool, and saliva, and based on that we can tell you what your cellular health looks like. That means cellular health consists of many things. In terms of what your oxidative stress looks like, how do your cells behave under stress, what is your cellular senescence looks like, how is your immune system activation, what is causing the immune system to be active.

We will give you things like your gut health, your cellular health, your mitochondrial health, your immune system health, your stress response health, and your biological age because in some sense, what is your true inside age rather than what your chronological age is. And under each one of those scores, we give you the sub-scores that if your gut health is this, what is causing you gut health to be this poor? Is it because your LPS is too high? Is it because your butyrate is too low? Or is it your sulfide production is too high? Ammonia production is too high. After looking at all of that we say here are the foods that you should avoid, and for each thing, we tell you why for you specifically.

For example, the first time when we launched the thing I did a test. I honestly thought, Ashley, I was eating the healthiest one could. I’m a vegan, to begin with. I’m eating spinach, broccoli, cabbage, and brussels sprout. I wasn’t thinking I am going to be the person they’re going to put a picture of me and say this is what the healthy person looks like. It turns out, my gut was so bad it told me not to eat broccoli and says your sulfide production in your gut is very high and the broccoli contains a very high amount of sulfate. You should lay off the broccoli because the sulfide is causing a lot of inflammation in your gut.

My second thing was not to eat spinach because it sees your oxalate pathway for your gut microbiome, which is very poor that means you eat spinach that is very high in oxalic acid, it is not going to be digested properly. All the protein that lentils and legumes I was eating says it’s producing a lot of protein fermentation and producing ammonia that was causing issues because I was eating so much of this. That means they were not being digested, instead were going to the colon where they were being fermented and microbes were releasing ammonia. It told me to take a digestive enzyme along with my food to be able to digest that protein so it does not get fermented in the gut. 

Literally, for every food it says here’s what’s going on, here are the food you should avoid, and why. Here are my superfoods and for each one it tells you why. And then it says here are the supplements that you need to keep your body currently correct. Because a lot of the things that your body is not currently producing that your body needs, so in the short term you should take these supplements until we can get your microbes to start producing that. Take butyrate so you can at least heal your gut lining while we get the short-chain fatty acids to get going.

Literally, that is what the test does. What is interesting is come now three years later, having followed this, my biological age now, I am in my 40s even though my chronological age is at 61. I’m in my 40s as a biological age just because I’m able to heal my gut and get my immune system health, mitochondrial health, and my cellular health to be this good.

[00:35:19] Ashley James: You’re in your 60s?

[00:35:20] Naveen Jain: Yeah, 61.

[00:35:22] Ashley James: You really do look like your early 40s.

[00:35:26] Naveen Jain: Yeah, so there you have it. My biological age is still I’m 40.

[00:35:29] Ashley James: I mean some of us would just do your test because we’re vain and we want to look 20 years younger.

[00:35:36] Naveen Jain: Ashley, I’m going to tell you something very interesting here. Now we looked at biological age and something really fascinating data that now that we’ve analyzed over a quarter-million people now. It’s a lot of people we have analyzed, and here is the thing that really surprised us. The number one offender of your biological age, that means what makes you really, really old is—now I’m going to say it and I’m going to probably get a lot of hate mail for that—the keto diet. The ketogenic diet makes people really thin and lose weight in the short term, but technically it completely their body.

[00:36:17] Ashley James: I can believe it. I had several keto doctors on and it sounded really interesting. My husband and I ended up doing the ketogenic diet with a naturopathic physician where we came in weekly. We did it for three months and we were very strict on it. I’ve done it about three times in my life, but this was a very strong stint of being in constant ketosis for three months with this naturopath. At the end of it, I had developed such bad liver problems that my liver was distended. You could see my liver was sticking out of my gut. It was very inflamed and painful. I went for an ultrasound and they said it wasn’t cirrhosis, it wasn’t fatty liver, it was just inflamed liver. My liver was so bad. All of my liver enzymes were through the roof. Basically, my liver was very damaged.

But what was worse was my husband developed incredibly high blood pressure like worrying about an aneurysm kind of blood pressure. Very scary high blood pressure in those three months. We went for further testing and he found out that he had such bad kidney damage from the ketogenic diet that it took him over a year of eating a whole food plant-based diet and supplementing to heal his kidneys. He had been put on several medications in the interim. We’re working with a really great naturopath here. It’s a naturopathic physician who’s a cardiologist. He specializes in heart and getting people so healthy they no longer need high blood pressure medication.

Working with him, it took my husband over a year to heal his kidneys and get his blood pressure back down from that event and get off of all the medications. It wasn’t worth it. What I do love—

[00:38:08] Naveen Jain: My point is you and I are both going to probably get canceled.

[00:38:13] Ashley James: I’m sorry.

[00:38:14] Naveen Jain: We are both going to be canceled. In a cancel culture, people are going to just think we are the two nut people trying to bad mouth keto diet because there are so many fans of the keto diet.

[00:38:24] Ashley James: You know what, my experience with my listeners is they’re very open to learning about and hearing it. I hope they’re not going to just cancel out what we said because they love the keto diet, and I get it. I get it. I was a raving fan of the ketogenic diet. I looked in all the research, followed the doctors, and I really, really loved it until my husband and I had those experiences. Then I turned around went wait a second, I was really ignoring all of the signs that it was deteriorating my health and it’s a very acidic diet. It’s very bad for the gut. It’s a way to manipulate the survival mechanism in the body, but is that really health? Is that really going to be long-term health?

I have a few friends that are really heavily into keto, and they have been for a few years. I’m afraid for them in the long term. So you’re seeing though that when they analyze cellular age that it is the one diet that ages people the quickest?

[00:39:32] Naveen Jain: Yeah. Remember, the aging is fundamentally the aggregation of all the damage that we are doing to our body, right? To some extent, the keto diet was one of those biggest offenders followed by the paleo diet, by the way. It’s really all these fad diets that we fall into maybe the short term may work for some people, not for others, but they really damage our bodies. To me, it is all about the right balance. You have to eat a balanced food. You can’t say carbs are bad. Carbs are not bad. Carbs are needed for your body. The point really is there is no such thing as a universal healthy diet.

A diet that’s good for one person may not be good for another person. Or even the foods that are good for you today may not be good for you six months from now because remember, when you change your food habits your gut microbial ecosystem completely changes, and then you have to readjust. It’s a constant tuning of your body. Just like you have to tune your car once a year, you got to tune your body every couple of times a year to keep this body into a perfectly working machine. If you want a great working machine you got to keep it tuned. And that’s what the gut microbes do is adjusting your diet so you can keep tuning your gut microbiome to stay in homeostasis. Another thing, Ashley, I found the concept of this good microbiome and bad microbiome. I think that is being just one of those misnomers just like good genes and bad genes.

These microbes actually all work together as one big ecosystem. Think of your gut microbes as a rainforest. That means every step you take in the rainforest can be completely different from each other, yet everything can be lush and green. That means no two people have the same gut microbiome. Both can be extremely healthy. In a sense, it is not about what organisms are there in each person’s gut. That is the second part that when you talk about health, and this has been a big, big misnomer in the field of microbiome. That’s the reason why science has never advanced. Our focus has always been in genes—microbiome genes, and the human genes—the DNA. What that meant was the focus on microbiome was to tell me who is there. I want to know the names of every organism that is there. Somehow thinking that will allow us to find out why people are sick.

The biggest breakthrough for us at Viome was we say that can’t possibly be the problem because I’m being naïve. I thought the microorganisms are probably like human beings. That means there are two people who could have completely different microorganisms producing exactly the same thing that may be causing a disease. Or the same organisms could be producing completely different things in two people’s gut based on the environment and the ecosystem it finds itself in, right? Because remember, you and I both know—like human beings—depending on which company we are in, our behavior changes, what we do completely changes. Me at work—an entrepreneur, me at home—a dishwasher. What changed? Not me. The environment, right?

And it’s very interesting that you look at Akkermansia, which generally most people consider to be good bacteria. Akkermansia can be very good when it is actually taking the fiber and producing butyrate or short-chain fatty acid for us. And Akkermansia can be extremely pathogenic and is known to cause many of the diseases including cancer when it actually turns into virulent and pathogenic. It is not about the organism itself, it is the environment. When you find an organism under attack—so let’s assume there are a lot of other pathogens or something that actually the organisms find to be inhospitable. The organisms start to release inflammatory compounds and antibiotics to kill other organisms so it can protect itself. Now the same organism that was producing short-term fatty acid is now producing toxins trying to kill everything else, in turn harming the body that it’s inside.

The point I’m trying to make is this fundamental change that we did at Viome was we focused on what these organisms are producing. That means what biochemicals are being produced rather than who they are because our body can’t see the bacteroidetes. My body cannot see the fusobacteria. My body cannot see Akkermansia muciniphila. It only can see the chemical signals that are being produced, and it doesn’t care why. It only cares about what is being produced. Our job now is to look at this ecosystem and say what biochemicals are being produced? How do we change the input? Like a computer, if food is the information, when you give it a new set of information, now the process comes up with a totally different output. So when input changes, your output changes. 

But in this case, it is a self-modifying operating system in a sense that when you change your food, the organisms that can thrive on that food start to grow, and other organisms that can’t digest those foods start to wane. And now your ecosystem changes, that means now you have to start changing your diet again so that you can start to create a balance. Otherwise, when you keep eating the same food, the certain organisms that are really, really good at metabolizing that food they become in so much quantity then they start to behave poorly and they start to form the biofilm and they start to misbehave. It’s literally about getting the right balance between all of these different organisms to actually produce more and more nutrients for us.

[00:45:52] Ashley James: I love it.

[00:45:53] Naveen Jain: Makes sense?

[00:45:54] Ashley James: Yeah, absolutely. So the trillions of cells in our gut doesn’t matter what they are. There’s a variety. It’s like a rainforest. It’s more about what they’re producing. Don’t think of it like it’s a bad microbiome or good microbiome, it’s what’s being produced. What if someone has candida, for example? What if someone, in the past, we’ve called that a bad microbiome. The candida—the concern though is the byproducts it’s producing are toxic for the body, right?

[00:46:24] Naveen Jain: The interesting thing is, again, every organism—for example, one of the worst offenders is C. Diff, right? I mean everybody knows about C. Diff. Obviously, once you get a C. Diff infection then literally there’s not much you can do. You take as much antibiotics as you can and your only survival for people I’ve seen is FMT after that—fecal transplant. It’s very interesting almost every one of us has C. Diff. It is when it becomes out of control that means other organisms, which are good organisms, don’t keep it in balance, then it goes out of proportion. Remember, we need some of these—what I would say—pathogenic people to constantly keep our immune system primed.

Immune system is very interesting. When it is very, very low activity that means not prime and suddenly you get an infection, your immune system is really not ready for it. The immune system can’t be too inflamed—it’s really bad, or it’d be too low where it’s actually not ready for attack. The best way to do that is to have your immune system ready, but not be at high, high inflammation. That means at high activation where it’s dealing with so much inflammation. And that means a little bit of these pathogenic activities actually keep your immune system primed for you to be actually capable of dealing with when there is a pathogen out there.

In fact, when you look at our immune system health, when you have low immune system activation it is bad, and when you have high immune system activation is bad. And if you want to protect yourself from flu, cold, or for example COVID, the best thing you really need to do is to be right in the middle when it is in the best adult prime hood to go take on the enemy.

[00:48:11] Ashley James: Fascinating. Here we have a vast microbiome, and we want to support the body in having a diverse microbiome. Because what you’ve described as being optimal for the immune system. With your test, it’s testing for the byproducts of the microbiome. Then we can see what’s out of balance because it’s not so much, like you said, about what bacteria you have, which ones. The body doesn’t see that, but the body is affected by their poop and is affected by their byproducts. And some of their byproducts can be incredibly healing for the body, so we want to continue to feed those and give them the nutrients for them to thrive like the short-chain fatty acids are—

[00:49:08] Naveen Jain: Are good.

[00:49:10] Ashley James: Sorry.

[00:49:10] Naveen Jain: They’re very good. The SCFAs they’re very good, but they need fiber.

[00:49:15] Ashley James: Right, and they need fiber. You want to be eating the potatoes, for example, instead of the white bread. You want to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables, but the problem is then we have these other microbiome that might be over-producing something that is harmful. So your test will say okay, this substance is too high in your gut so you want to limit these foods. Does your test also tell us what we should eat more of or continue to eat to support and grow a more diverse and healthy microbiome?

[00:49:51] Naveen Jain: Yeah. We give you a superfoods. Here are your top 20 or 25 foods you should eat as much as you can. Here are your foods of another 500 foods that you should enjoy as much as you can, here are the foods you should minimize, and here are the foods you should avoid. You lift all those four categories. And the one thing we are doing next, Ashley, which we have not announced yet but I’m going to tell you since you asked. We always found that getting these supplements, which are an augmentation to the food, how do we only give people what they need rather than giving as much as you can get?

What we found is any time you give your body something it doesn’t need, it actually has to work hard to get rid of it and that means it only causes damage to your body. We thought what if you can actually create supplements made to order for each individual, one capsule at a time. That means if I looked at your body and say here are the 60 things you need, here are the herbs you need, the food extracts, minerals, vitamins, enzymes, amino acids, prebiotics, and probiotics. If you only need 22 milligrams of lycopene, there is no way to find it. What if we create these things for each individual made to order?

We’re going to be launching that next month. We’re launching that in August, basically making make to order after we do the test and say you need 22 milligrams of lycopene, 11 milligrams of elderberry, 2 milligrams of chicory root, and we need these 60 ingredients. We’ll literally take those exactly in that dosage for you and put them in these eight capsules in a sachet, make them for you only that time. And then when we do the retest, you can see all your health markers, what they were after you took all the changes, what they changed to, and then we reformulate again as we do the new results. Literally, constantly reformulating and giving you a new recommendation as your body is changing and adapting.

Imagine every four months, you get a completely new set of food recommendations, a new set of supplements that you need, and they’re all sent to you every single month and made just for you.

[00:52:18] Ashley James: Fascinating. So you recommend that someone would take this test every four months because they want to continue to adjust their diet? Obviously, diet is key, but then they can also have supplements made to order for their specific gut health and their body health.

[00:52:35] Naveen Jain: We also take all your superfoods that you need and we actually extract their stuff and put them in these supplements. For example, we know you may need fisetin that is in strawberries. But the problem is, first of all, you have to eat five pounds of strawberries to get enough fisetin. And the second problem is it also contains a lot of histamine producing products in the strawberry. In fact, we will see strawberry is avoid for you but the strawberry extract actually could be in the supplement. People say wait a second, how can the strawberry extract may be in my supplement when you’re asking me to avoid strawberry? And the answer is we literally just took out the fisetin from the strawberry, we gave them as a supplement, and we took out all the other histamine producing stuff that is going to cause you problems.

It is quite possible the food maybe avoid, but the underlying ingredients can actually be in the supplement that you need. That makes sense to you?

[00:53:35] Ashley James: Absolutely. When you went back and you took the test and it told you should take a digestive enzyme because you’ve been fermenting your food instead of digesting it. You should avoid these foods but eat more of these foods. Even though you eat a whole food plant-based diet, you eat a very, very healthy wholesome diet, you made these slight changes, which don’t seem bad. Cut out this vegetable, include this vegetable, and take an enzyme. That’s almost no effort at all to do. What health changes did you see in your body take place after doing that?

[00:54:10] Naveen Jain: Another interesting thing that you’ll find fascinating. My wife had completely different. Everything that was my superfood was her avoid, and my avoid for her superfood. And it became a challenge. We’ve all been told to eat together in the same dinner. It became a challenge for us to start following those diets. We ended up really making two things—one that was good for her, and one that was good for me. We started adjusting smoothies because for even right now, coconut water is her avoid and coconut water is my superfood. Guess what we do. We make the smoothie and I put the coconut water after.

What I’m trying to say is she is healthy, she works out every day. She tells me, “Why do I need to do anything? I am just so healthy already.” When she did that test and followed the diet—the husbands are always or your spouse is probably the dumbest person you ever know because they think what do they know? They’re not a doctor. How can their company be telling me do this. He’s not a doctor, what does he know? I said, “Look, why don’t you do the test and follow it for three months and you’ll find out for yourself.”

She does the test and she says, “You know it’s amazing. I used to always feel tired in the afternoon. I just needed a 15 minutes nap, and I just thought it is something that is needed. Now, I just don’t feel tired all day. I just never take a nap.” It’s like wow. She tells me quietly, “You know all my baby fat is gone.” I didn’t know how to respond to it. All I could say was, “What baby fat? I never saw it.”

[00:55:52] Ashley James: Good husband.

[00:55:58] Naveen Jain: The point I’m trying to make is for me, I don’t need more energy, but God, after I change my diet I feel so good. I jump out of the bed at 4:00 AM in the morning jumping with joy, wanting to do things, and I can work 17, 18 hour days and I work 7 days a week and never feel tired.

[00:56:18] Ashley James: I love it. Both of you—even though you were healthy to begin with—saw total improvements in your health in a few months just by making sure your diet was going to be optimal for what your gut biome produces. It’s so cool to think about how we can just cut out one food, include another, and all of a sudden our microbiome is producing better chemicals for our body. And then our whole body responds on every level. Energy, weight loss, mental clarity, and even hormone function.

[00:57:01] Naveen Jain: Everything.

[00:57:02] Ashley James: You have two tests. At viome.com you offer the Gut Intelligence service. I’m really surprised by your prices, to be honest, because I paid over $200—it was close to $300—to have my food allergy testing done. And I thought your services would be like $1000. The Gut Intelligence service is cheaper than what it cost for me to get my food allergy testing done. I’m thinking that if I followed your system in terms of the food recommendations, I’d have far better outcomes than following the IgG food intolerance test. You’ve got this Gut Intelligence service, and then you have another one, which is the Health Intelligence service that includes the Gut Intelligence service. Can you tell us about each one and why we should choose one or the other, or should we all just choose the Health Intelligence service because it includes so much more?

[00:58:11] Naveen Jain: Yeah. Obviously, one thing is the price. Look, if you can’t afford the Health Intelligence service, then you use the Gut Intelligence service. And again, the Health Intelligence service looks at your body, which is human gene expression, mitochondrial gene expression. That means we’re now looking at your cellular health, we’re looking at your immune system health, we’re looking at your mitochondrial health, we’re looking at your stress response, and we’re looking at your biological age. All that stuff also goes into our recommendations. If you’re not doing that test, then you still get very, very good recommendations, but only based on what’s happening in your gut microbiome.

Gut Intelligence test only looks at the gut microbiome. Health Intelligence looks at the gut microbiome and all the stuff that’s happening in the human body from the blood test. It is essentially an at-home test. When you order, it comes in—by the way, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the test or not—a beautiful kit. It’s literally like a Louis Vuitton silver metallic box. But the interesting thing is because we didn’t want people to feel it’s some type of a product that looks like a medical product because we want to make it very easy for people to use.

The way it is done is so easy at home. Even for blood, you don’t have to go somewhere to draw the blood. It is literally you finger prick it, four drops of blood. There is a small pipette, you put the pipette next to it, it draws a full drop of blood, you put in the test tube, prepaid envelope, a touch of stool—prepaid envelope, and you’re done. Literally done. Ten days, two weeks later, in the app, it tells you everything that we saw, so all the insights into your body. And it tells you here are your superfoods, here are your foods to avoid. For everyone it tells you why, so here are your superfoods and why, here are your foods to avoid and why, here are your foods to enjoy, here are your foods to minimize. 

And the supplements that you can made to order for yourself, or you can just go buy them from Amazon. But in that case, you’re getting a whole bunch of stuff that you don’t need and paying 10 times more for the stuff that you don’t need. That means you could be spending $500, $600 a month getting these supplements, and most of the stuff you don’t need versus we just only put the stuff that you need and give it to you on a monthly price, which is substantially cheaper than what you would buy.

[01:00:36] Ashley James: Absolutely.

[01:00:38] Naveen Jain: Another interesting part that you mentioned was the food sensitivity test. I just want to say it because I think most people don’t realize. The food sensitivity is actually about IgG, which is the immune system antibodies for this food. Why would a food ever create a goal into the blood for your immune system to create antibodies? Think for a second.

[01:01:02] Ashley James: Because you have a leaky gut. You got a leaky gut and the food is getting in there. You eat some carrot, a tiny piece of carrot gets in. For me it’s bananas. I’m just so depressed about this. I loved bananas, and now my body just wretches and has such a negative reaction to bananas out of nowhere, but it’s leaky gut. So I ate some banana, I had a leaky gut, the little particles of banana got into the bloodstream, my immune system attacked it because it’s a foreign body—it’s not supposed to be in the immune system. Anything injected into the bloodstream that the body didn’t create as a foreign body that the immune system is going to mount a response against, and it’s not supposed to be there. If I were to eat a banana, my immune system would mount a huge response and my gut totally hates it.

[01:01:56] Naveen Jain: But here’s a very interesting thing. There are two points to make. One was if you have a leaky gut, you’re going to get the antibodies for almost every food that you eat a lot of because a little bit of it’s always going to end up in the blood. Literally, the IgG tells you that you have a leaky gut because if you are allergic to all these foods, all that means is you have a leaky gut. Not that you really are sensitive to those foods, it is what they show. If you fix the leaky gut because these antibodies go away in six months or nine months, then you would be able to eat the food. More often than not, most of the IgGs goes away.

In a sense, if you can now fix the leaky gut and you can tighten the epithelial barrier, then many of those IgG just disappear. So my point I’m trying to make is that the food sensitivity test is the wrong, wrong word. You’re not sensitive to those foods, you simply have a leaky gut. The point is, food should never be in the blood to begin with and there should not be an antibody. You’re not sensitive to those foods. You made them sensitive by eating the foods when you had a leaky gut. That’s all happened.

[01:03:09] Ashley James: Following the advice after doing your test would allow us to seal up the gut and heal it so we no longer have a leaky gut?

[01:03:19] Naveen Jain: That is correct. One of the scores that we give you is actually the intestinal barrier health. That means how tightly your intestinal barrier is actually regulated. You want to keep it nice and tight, and we give you all the foods and supplements to make sure that the only reason it gets permeable or leaky is because of the inflammation. As you can see, inflammation stretches the thing and that causes it to get the junctions to get loose. The best thing you can do is to reduce the stuff that causes inflammation, increase the stuff that is anti-inflammatory, and get more foods that are going to give the nutrients that your body needs. Remember, there is no such thing that more of the good thing is better. That is another thing that most people actually make mistakes on.

For example, somehow you probably heard that you take NAD, and NAD is really good for longevity. It increases your mitochondrial biogenesis, it’s going to make you younger, and you’re going to live longer. And it turns out, there was the research that came out, I think, two months ago that shows that actually the NAD precursor, NMN, and NMNH, when you have high inflammation or high cellular senescence, it causes the cytokine storm and causes the inflammation to get even worse. The point is when you have higher mitochondrial biogenesis, you are actually now creating more free radicals. And if your free radicals were already being over-stressed because they were not getting cleaned up, now you even have high amount of free radicals that are going to cause more inflammation in your body, and higher cellular stress.

[01:05:10] Ashley James: So it just cascades? It’s like a domino effect. People are often just eating whatever they want. You go to a restaurant, you go to a friend’s house, or your spouse cooks, you cook. You cook something that your kids like to eat. We just throw anything into our mouth, just whatever. Just order Thai food. Let’s just eat that. There’s a ton of ingredients in there that might be triggering to your microbiome. Okay, now we’re going to order pizza tonight. Okay, now we’re going to go to McDonald’s drive-thru, or we’re going to go to Starbucks. It’s interesting, though, I got to tell you. My husband switched from Starbucks to a different kind of coffee at one point in his life and he noticed a huge health change. He looked into it and he saw that there’s stuff in Starbucks. There are ingredients they put in their coffee and that will disrupt your health. And if someone were to just switch to a cleaner organic coffee, many people have noticed emotional health changes, as well as physical changes.

Let’s say you wanted to have a pizza, there’s a difference between something you make at home, from scratch, with your own ingredients and you know exactly what’s on it versus the delivery pizza. If we make pizza, we have a cauliflower crust. I make my own sauce on it. We don’t have any cheese, we put some vegetables on it, and we can make something really healthy. But when we do, which a lot of people are doing right now, ordering out at restaurants, we’re throwing just random stuff out of our microbiome to handle. Actually, one of my clients recently said my poop is fine. My poop is fine. I’m good, my poop is fine. I thought that was just the weirdest response. I don’t need to change my diet, my poop is fine. I get enough fiber. I’m fine, I poop. It’s okay. And I just thought that’s so interesting that someone thinks they have a healthy gut just because they poop.

[01:07:08] Naveen Jain: A couple of interesting points you brought up, Ashley. Same thing on supplements. Oh, I heard my friend tell me that the elderberry is really, really good for me not to catch COVID. And I should be taking vitamin C, vitamin D, and I should take this. They have no idea what that thing is doing to your body. You just hear it, you read about it in some magazine you say, oh, I need the green coffee extract because it will help me lose weight. Really? My point is all these things, you get every single magazine—here are the 10 supplements you should buy, here are the 10 ingredients that are a superfood, and you’re always looking for what is it that you need. You keep popping more and more and in the morning you take 20 pills just to make sure you got everything that everybody has mentioned to you and end up harming yourself rather than actually helping yourself.

That is really the trick is to know what exactly your body needs and how much, rather than just thinking somebody recommended so I’m going to take it. I think it’s not just the food but also, as you mentioned, how you prepare it and where you buy it. Let’s assume tomatoes are good for you. If not, you can now buy some tomatoes which obviously have all kinds of pesticides in them. You may still want to get good organic tomatoes. How you cook the food, the tomatoes are more beneficial when they are cooked rather than when they are raw. We eat pizza just like you do. We sometimes make a whole wheat at home pizza, no cheese on it, and we put so many different colors of vegetables on it. We make our own tomato sauce, and then we actually now cook the tomato sauce with basils and stuff and herbs and oregano. We literally make our own pizza that I think is pretty healthy.

It’s not the pizza is bad, it is the ingredients on the pizza and everything else you put on top of that and the crust itself that may be the one that’s causing problems.

[01:09:07] Ashley James: Exactly. Now I’d love to know a little bit more about your company and Viome. Tell us about the history of your of Viome as a company. Because I know that you have a mission and that you see a future where biome is helping the world to make chronic disease an option. They get this testing and then they go okay, I can choose this path and go down this road of disease, or I can choose this path and go down this road of health. We’re not forcing it upon anyone, but it is giving people information and giving them the ability to make better-educated choices about everything they put into their mouth because they’ll know. They’ll have the science to know what is the optimal thing that they could eat and put in their mouth or drink at every moment of the day to maximize their longevity and their health.

Viome I know has this mission. You’re seeing where you’re going in the future. First, tell me about your past. How did Viome get started? How long have you guys been doing this? What kind of doctors and scientists are behind it?

[01:10:29] Naveen Jain: The technology for Viome came from Los Alamos National Lab, which had designed this for the biodefense work. And this is the only technology that’s available to be able to actually measure the gene expression. Preserve your RNA, measure your gene expression, and find out what molecules from the gene expression are being produced. And then we use the AI to be able to see if this is what’s happening in the body. Here are the bioactive compounds in this food. How your gut, which is really a chemical factory, is going to turn a food chemical into what will be the output. It’s a complex chemical factory, but once you know what are the bioactive compound in a food, then you can see what they’re going to translate them into, what is the poop of the chemical factory that’s going to come out, and is that going to be good for you or bad for you?

We started this company four years ago. And anytime I start a company, Ashley, I ask myself three questions. One is why this, why now, and why me? The first question is, God forbid, I am actually successful in doing what I’m about to be doing, is it going to be able to help a billion people live a better life. And if the answer to that is no, then I’m thinking why would I dedicate 10 years of my life to doing something that does not move the needle. And the reason for that is whether you do something small or you do something big, it takes every ounce of energy and it takes every effort to do something. Why not do something that is meaningful and that’s going to literally improve the lives of as many people as you can?

And the second part of that thing is are you truly obsessed about solving this problem? I didn’t use the word passion because a lot of people talk about I’m passionate about this. Me, in my world, passion is for losers. Passion is for hobbies. Passion is I am passionate about meteorites. That’s a passion. That’s not an obsession. Obsession is I go to sleep thinking about how do I solve the problem of chronic diseases? I jump out of the bed at 4:00 AM thinking about how do I go solve this problem? And part of this obsession comes from having lost my own dad to pancreatic cancer and watching him go through the system that could have easily, not only prevented cancer, could have also cured cancer, but they would not go beyond what is the current practice.

I showed them all the research how pancreatic cancer is caused by the gut microbiome going through the bile depth into the pancreas. Showed in the research how the researcher, in fact, injected the antibiotics directly into the pancreas, killed the microbiome, and the immune system killed cancer. Showed them research. I said all I want you to do is just put antibiotics in his pancreas and I would take the responsibility. My dad will sign the thing, I’m going to sign the thing, and you are not responsible. They say we will not do it because that’s not what’s allowed. No, I could not do anything. Nothing I could do and watch him die.

And I told my dad, I said, “Dad, look. I can’t save your life but I’m going to dedicate my life to making sure no one else has to suffer. No one has to suffer from cancer. No one has to suffer from diabetes, obesity, heart disease, or watch someone lose memory from Alzheimer’s or have Parkinson’s. I just don’t want that to happen to anyone else.”  So that’s my obsession.

Part of it is you have to believe that what has changed in the last five years that allows you to do this now than 10 years ago. The reason is if something could have been done 20 years ago and if nobody’s doing it, you have to assume you’re not the smartest guy in the world. Somebody would have solved this problem. So there has to be what has changed? To digitize the human body, the cost of sequencing has to come down. When we started, the cost of sequencing would have been several thousand dollars. We said look, it is an exponential curve. I know in the next couple of years it is going to come down. We were able to use robotics and break it down, and we said let’s go do that.

The second part of it was: are computers going to be powerful enough to be able to analyze these petabytes of data that’s going to come out of, which is the cost of competing going to kill us? And the answer was you can fire up a thousand cores on Amazon Web Service and you’ll survive, and the cost of processing is coming down to zero. AI has to be powerful enough to analyze this massive data because every single person—you’re now looking at you know tens of thousands of these gene expressions and you have to analyze for every single thing. That’s massive AI. Is it powerful enough? The answer was yes, it is happening now.

The last part is the most, I would say, interesting part for me, entrepreneurial perspective, called why me? Why me is what is it that I believe that other people are not thinking about? What question that I am asking that is different from what everyone else is asking? And that’s why they are solving the wrong problem, they are working on a different problem, or they are not going to be solving the problem—their question is completely wrong. And let me give you a couple of examples of that, what I mean by asking the right question.

My other company is Moon Express. We are trying to make humanity a multi-planetary society. Can we settle down on the moon? And then essentially take that humanity into Mars, Pluto, and beyond. And the reason for that is all eight billion of us are living on a single spacecraft. And God forbid, if we get hit by a large asteroid, humanity is going to get completely wiped out. It’s not the planet won’t survive. The planet will do just fine. Remember 65 million years ago when an asteroid hit the planet? All the dinosaurs completely got wiped out, and dinosaurs were much larger than us. The planet actually did just fine. The planet did so fine that it created humans.

Now we may get wiped out and it may create superhumans for all we know. But the point is if you can hear any dinosaur rolling in their grave what would they be saying? If they had one good entrepreneurial dinosaur they’ll be roaming on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. So I thought, what if we can do that? Now, what do you think the first question people ask when we say hey, we can live on the moon. They say how are you going to grow the food on the Moon? And my thinking was wait a second, that’s the wrong question.

Instead of asking how to grow the food on the Moon, what if we ask a different question. Why do we eat food? Because if you ask the question of how to grow the food, the only solution is to grow the food. But if you ask a slightly different question, which is why do we eat food? Now there are many solutions. You eat food for energy, and you eat for nutrition. What if you can get energy from radiation? What if you get energy from photosynthesis? What kind of nutrition do you need? Hydrogen, oxygen. What if you can get that from water? But the point is, just by changing the question, now you have a plethora of possibilities rather than just growing the food.

The same thing happened in the space of Viome. Look, all the research is clearly showing the gut microbiome is key to chronic diseases. There are tens of companies doing microbiome as service. Why is the problem not getting solved? And it turns out that everyone was asking the same question. I want to know what organisms are in our gut. And I say what if the question is different, which is what they are producing? And if we can solve that problem, then we will be able to solve the chronic diseases. And that’s the reason I started Viome.

By the way, we hired the head of IBM Watson who worked on the AI, and he runs our AI. We hired the best genetic expression people out of human longevity, Craig Venter’s team. Craig Venter, as you know, is the guy who sequenced the human genome. And then the guy who developed the technology for Los Alamos, Dr. Momo Vuyisich. We actually hired him to go develop this technology for us. So we got the best and the brightest from around the world to solve the problem that we wanted to solve.

Another interesting point, Ashley, is if you set out to solve a problem like how to make chronic diseases optional, you get the best and the brightest because they want this to be their legacy. Smartest people want to work on the toughest problems, right? And that’s why it’s easier to solve an audacious problem than to solve a smaller problem. So that’s really the history.

In four years, as we have come along, we have helped hundreds of thousands of people. If you just literally look at the emails I get every month about the number of people telling me that you saved my life, you saved my wife. I thought I was going to die and now I can walk. It’s just an unbelievable amount of comfort you get that your hard work is not being wasted. You’re doing something that actually improves people’s lives. Really, my goal is to provide actionable information to people that they can act on rather than simply do things and give you information that is not actionable.

My DNA test, I’m six times more likely to get Alzheimer’s, enjoy. What am I going to do with that?

[01:20:13] Ashley James: That’s true. You go get those DNA tests and they just say here’s what you could have. Angelina Jolie has her breasts removed because she has the BRCA gene. Well, the BRCA gene doesn’t mean you’re going to have breast cancer. And in fact, when the BRCA gene expresses in a healthy way it prevents breast cancer. She was worried about the BRCA gene expressing in an unhealthy way that would create breast cancer, and then what, she continues eating McDonald’s, continues eating whatever she wants and disrupts a bad microbiome. Cancer can show up anywhere. It doesn’t have to show up in the breast. She could get a different kind of cancer. What is she going to do, remove everything? Cut out all her organs?

This just infuriates me that women are being told, and I’ve had clients where the women were told to have full hysterectomies and their ovaries removed because their sister had ovarian cancer, or their sister had some form of cancer that was triggered by hormones. Because it’s in their family and their genes, all the women in their family should have their ovaries removed. This is ridiculous. This isn’t preventive medicine. To remove organs to prevent cancers is ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous.

[01:21:42] Naveen Jain: And more than, these genes would not have actually evolved through the selection if they were always bad for you. Think about that. They would have been wiped out from the human population if they were bad for you, right? The same thing by the way for Alzheimer’s is called APOE6. APOE6, it turns out in the Amazonian forest they have 8 or 10 copies of them and they never developed Alzheimer’s. In fact, it turns out it is supposed to protect you against all types of bacterial infection because they have so much mosquito-borne diseases it protects them from all those diseases that’s why they have these many copies of things. Elephants have eight times more the same APOE6 gene and elephants never get Alzheimer’s, right?

[01:22:27] Ashley James: And an elephant never forgets.

[01:22:30] Naveen Jain: And never forgets. There you have it. My point is, these GWAS studies are so bogus. In fact, it turns out, when you look at these GWAS, which is Genomic-Wide Association Study, they did 20 studies on depression. They basically will take 200 people who are depressed and say oh, look at what we found in common. The 20 separate research were published all differently. One guy decided that he’s going to do a matter research of look at all these 20 research and see what is in common. And he concluded there is not a single gene that is actually in common between these 20 research that causes depression. It is nothing but measuring the noise because any time you can find a pattern in the noise when you have these millions of these genes, you’re going to find something out there that’s common between these 200 people and you publish a paper. It doesn’t mean that it’s actually causing the disease.

[01:23:26] Ashley James: Like they all ate apples.

[01:23:28] Naveen Jain: Yeah.

[01:23:29] Ashley James: Right. It must be apples because they all ate an apple on a Tuesday. It’s not about the gene is what you’re saying. It’s about the genus expression, and that’s epigenetics. Because we epigenetically can turn gene expression on and off depending on the nutrients that are available. So people can express in a way that develops a disease. And you give the body new nutrients, different nutrients, and the body then expresses in a healthy way that suppresses that disease. So it all comes back to the food. But you take it one step deeper and go back to the microbiome, so it all comes back to what we’re feeding the microbiome because the microbiome is feeding us these chemicals. And we have to optimize the chemicals the microbiome is feeding us in order to optimize our own health. I’m very excited.

[01:24:29] Naveen Jain: Agreed. That’s literally what it does. And I really hope that your audience gets to go try this because I’ll tell you that it will change their life. It will fundamentally. Small changes will have a massive impact on their own, and they can feel it. Not only will it improve their health from the inside out. They will be able to feel it. They will feel younger, they will look better, they’ll have more energy, the mental fog, and all the stuff. And hopefully, prevent all these chronic diseases from happening. Every single person who joins also essentially helps everyone else before them and after them so that we can together understand what is causing these diseases and prevent it from future generations. Even if we don’t do it for ourselves, let’s do it for our children and grandchildren.

[01:25:21] Ashley James: Absolutely. As we’ve been sitting here I’m thinking, well, I’m definitely going to do the Health Intelligence service, which you give listeners a discount. So please listeners, you can go to viome.com and use the coupon code LTH as in Learn True Health. Use the coupon code LTH for your discount. I’m going to get the Health Intelligence service, but I’m also going to get it for my husband because like you said and I just know this, he and I react differently to different foods. I’ll feed him at dinner and all of a sudden his gut looks like he’s nine months pregnant. Because he’s fermenting. Whereas I eat that dinner and my gut’s great. I’m like oh, that felt wonderful. But for him, it made him bloated. And then there’s another meal I’ll make and I get bloated and he doesn’t. We definitely have two different microbiomes going on that we need to help. But what about my son?

My son’s five years old and we have a lot of listeners with children. Can children do this as well?

[01:26:20] Naveen Jain: Yes. Yes, they can but the parents have to consent to it.

[01:26:26] Ashley James: Of course. Well, yeah because we’d be the one pricking the finger for the blood and collecting the stool sample. That’s right. So walk us through. Is it saliva, stool sample, and a little prick of blood that we can all do it in the comfort of our own home?

[01:26:42] Naveen Jain: Yeah. Currently, the Health Intelligence only has blood and stool. We are launching the next product, which is going to be the whole body intelligence that will also include saliva. But that’s currently not available. So only products available are Gut Intelligence and Health Intelligence.

[01:26:58] Ashley James: Got it. So very soon you’ll have the one that has all three. We’ve talked a lot about Gut Intelligence. I’m interested about the microbiome. Your Health Intelligence service, what kind of information does it give us to help us to optimize mitochondrial health? I’m really interested in supporting mitochondrial health. You talked about how the gut talks to our mitochondria. Is it that by correcting the gut and supporting the gut health and supporting the microbiome we’re supporting mitochondria? Or are there further steps to take to support mitochondria?

[01:27:36] Naveen Jain: Well, first of all, as you pointed out earlier, Ashley, mitochondria is an organelle inside our own cell. It has its own genes. It replicates itself just like any other bacteria. So inside ourselves, these bacterial cells are constantly replicating. It has its own 12 genes. We look at its own gene expression to see how much energy it is producing? How much is it replicating, which is called mitochondrial biogenesis? When the cells divide you need the mitochondria, you need all the energy. So if you don’t have enough mitochondrial biogenesis happening, you’re going to start feeling tired. You don’t have enough energy. Cells are going to die.

So we look at all of the mitochondrial biogenesis. Then remember, if you go back to high school biology, the mitochondria is the one that completes the Krebs cycle, that ATP cycle. You take glucose and it actually gets converted into ATP. If anything inside that, to complete that cycle there are a whole bunch of coenzymes that they need. So for example, if you are missing some coenzyme like CoQ10, then you may actually not be able to produce energy. And then we will actually give you the foods that are high in CoQ10 or the supplement that contains CoQ10.

It’s literally by looking at your mitochondrial gene expression, we are able to recommend the foods that are good for you, recommend the food that you should avoid, and also include them in the right set of supplements. If there are certain things that you’re not producing but you need, we give them to you as an augmentation or supplement with that.

And we do the same thing with, by the way, cellular side. So by looking at your blood, we’re looking at your cellular senescence. These are the cells that neither died but they’re still alive producing toxins. And the cellular senescence causes aging. So we have to also worry about making sure how do we go out and making sure these cells don’t become these zombie cells. So we look at your cellular stress. We look at, as I said, stress response. We look at your immune system’s health. Because if your immune system is highly inflamed, not only at that point.

Essentially your body is going to constantly be in inflamed mode causing a whole bunch of diseases and getting your organs to start failing. But also, you’re not prepared to be able to deal with the infection. Whether it is cold, flu, or COVID. To be able to get your immune system right in the place, that’s the reason I recommend people do the Health Intelligence Test because they get the most comprehensive insight into their body, and the recommendations are now based on more information rather than just the gut information.

[01:30:16] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you. I’m really excited about your pricing. Just thinking about the last time I got blood work at my annual visit with my naturopath. Even after having insurance, insurance pays for only so much because you’ve got deductibles. I actually paid more. I paid more out of pocket than having your test. So it cost me more to get all these other tests, whereas they didn’t actually tell me. The blood tests I get that I pay a ton for, even with insurance at the doctor’s office, don’t tell me what to do. I mean, the doctor is supposed to tell you what to do, but most doctors don’t. Most doctors go okay, well I guess we got to get you on statins now. You’re going to get on metformin soon. Because MDs will use blood tests to determine if you need to get on drugs. That’s not health. We’ve got two different philosophies of thinking.

The mainstream philosophy of medicine is wait till you get sick and then get on a drug, which will probably make you sicker but whatever. We’ll suppress symptoms in the body. You’ll do that until you die and maybe get on more drugs as you age. And then there’s the other way to think, which is I want to get so healthy I don’t need to be on medication. I want to get so healthy that I optimize myself and I look 40 when I’m 60. I want a blood test that I pay hundreds of dollars for at the doctor’s office to actually tell me what to do. Okay, here’s the information. Here’s where you are. Now here’s what you should do to get better. That’s been my frustration.

Even though yes, I get to sit down with the Naturopath and they look over. Here’s your A1C hemoglobin. Okay, you’re getting better. Here are your triglycerides. Oh, they’re a little up. The Naturopath would be like—because I eat brown rice they’re like—eat less brown rice. What do you mean eat less brown rice? Is that really what’s causing high triglycerides? And we go through all these different things on the blood test, and at the end of the day, I was left confused because it was sort of muddled. Keep taking your supplements, maybe a little less brown rice, and see you in a year when you pay another $500 for all your work up. That just drives me up the wall when I’m not given a really clear intelligent scientific path to take.

Here enters your third option. The third option is your testing. Now you’re not saying don’t go to a doctor, don’t go to a Naturopath. You can absolutely continue that route but taking the Health Intelligence service that you offer in the comfort of your own home. And now you’re given very, very specific instructions on what you can put in your mouth to optimize your health, and then you do it in another four months or so and then you see that you’re getting better. You see that you’re progressing.

If someone were to do that for a year they’re going to get much better results that if they just waited to get sick, go to the MD, and get on drugs. Or saw a holistic practitioner who just took a bunch of blood and then said well, we’ll keep monitoring this but maybe eat a little bit less rice. They have no idea because they didn’t test for what your microbiome needs and what your mitochondria needs.

So I’m very excited for what you’re doing. I’m really, really excited to take the test myself, my husband, and my son. I know that some listeners are going to absolutely want to take the Health Intelligence service test and join me in trying this and seeing how they can optimize their entire body, every cell in their body, to be fully nutrified because they’re eating to feed the gut. To make the gut biome make exactly what we need.

This is just so cool. I love it. It’s finally the right time, like you said. It’s the right time because now the costs can be driven down so low because of AI and because the way machines can be used, robots can be used in labs. Now gene sequencing isn’t thousands of dollars. When I started the podcast four years ago it was thousands of dollars to take tests similar to this, and now it is a few hundred dollars, so this is very exciting. 

I definitely want to have you back on the show after I take the test and after my husband and I do this. We can follow up, and I’m sure we can talk more about it because like you said, your company is releasing this next test shortly. There’ll be more information to talk about, but I’d love you to come back and have you continue to share what Viome is doing in the future as you unfold more and more exciting services in your effort to make chronic disease optional. This is very exciting. I definitely want to have you back on the show. Is there anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?

[01:35:25] Naveen Jain: I would say, first of all, Ashley, thank you very much for hosting me. And all I can say is keep dreaming and dream so big that people think you’re crazy.  And never ever be afraid of what you want to do because imagination is the only thing that stops us from achieving what we want. Let’s just keep moving humanity forward. Let’s just keep doing the things individually what we can to contribute back to humanity. I look forward to coming back and talking more.

[01:35:53] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you so much. Listeners can go to viome.com and use the coupon code LTH. Join me in doing the Health Intelligence test, and let’s feed our gut what the body needs. It’s so exciting. Thank you so much.

I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Naveen Jain from viome.com. You can go to viome.com and use coupon code LTH as in Learn True Health, coupon code LTH for your listener discount. And please, join the Learn True Health Facebook group and come tell us about your experience. And I’d also love for you to join the Facebook group and share what you thought about this episode, other episodes, come ask questions. It’s a free community of wonderful holistic-minded people who want to achieve true health. I look forward to hearing everyone’s results using the Viome experience. The Viome feedback from their tests and their app, and I can’t wait to do it myself. I’ll let you guys know how it goes in a few weeks after I get my results back and start eating specifically for my mitochondria and my microbiome. And I can’t wait to hear back from you guys and hear how it’s helping you as well.

Excellent. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day. And I hope wherever you are, you get to go out in nature, put your feet in the grass, have sunlight on your face, take a few deep breaths, and think of things that you are grateful for. Help ground yourself, come into yourself and feel love and gratitude for all the trillions of cells in your body and all the wonderful energy that’s flowing through you. God bless.

Get Connected With Naveen Jain!

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

YouTube

IT'S HERE! Learntruehealth.com/homekitchen
Use coupon code LTH for the listener discount!

Check out the supplements Ashley James recommends:

takeyoursupplements.com

Check out IIN and get a free module: LearnTrueHealth.com/coaching

Magnesium Soak: Use coupon code LTH at Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com

https://theplantfedgut.com

Gastroenterologist Prescribes Food Not Drugs For Healing The Gut 

https://www.learntruehealth.com/gastroenterologist-prescribes-food-not-drugs-for-healing-the-gut

Highlights:

• The biggest issue is the absence of fiber in the American diet
• Fiber is the preferred food of our gut microbiome
• Most powerful driver of gut health was the diversity of plants within your diet
• Human health starts in the gut
• Raw and cooked vegetables feed different microbiomes
• Prebiotic and probiotic

How important is fiber to our health? In this episode, Dr. Will Bulsiewicz explains the importance of eating a variety of plant-based foods to support our gut microbiome’s overall health. He also shares how to increase our gut microbiome’s biodiversity, the difference between prebiotic and probiotic, and the effects of these two in our gut.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I’m loving the series that we’ve been doing on gut health and healing the body by healing our gut. If you haven’t already listened to the last episode, we did episode 439 as I think it plays really well into today’s episode with a gastroenterologist who focuses on—instead of using drugs and surgery—using food to heal the gut. I know these two episodes play really well together. And then after this episode, so 441, is going to be an amazing episode about healing the gut as well and tests that we can order to fully understand the foods that we want to eat or avoid to properly feed the microbiome.

Why is it that your husband can eat one food but if you eat that same food you’d get bloated? Or why is it that some people can eat a certain way and be fine but other people are not even though those are both healthy foods? Well, that is going to be uncovered in episode 441. We’re continuing our series on gut healing.

Something I found with the Learn True Health podcast is guests tend to book themselves all clumped together and it ends up being the same subject. I reach out to many different holistic health professionals. I give them a link and they sign up to get on my schedule, and they choose the date that works best for them. So many times it turns out that within one week, I’ll have several interviews that are all about the same thing, that are all about heart health, or all about gut health, and I didn’t coordinate it. They don’t know each other, and they don’t know that they’re doing it. But so many times, I’ve sat down and looked at my calendar and realized that I’ll have several interviews in the row about the same topic. Not covering the exact same information, but complementing each other. This is where I really feel that God and divine intervention are taking place on so many levels in our life, and I can see it when these episodes come together in such a wonderful way.

I believe the latest episodes that have been published and are going to be published really complement each other. And I invite you to look at your life and see where wonderful divine intervention is taking place, possibly the information you’re hearing today. I’ve heard from several listeners, they’ll contact me through email or through Facebook and they’ll say, you know, I was just praying or I was just thinking about wanting this information and boom, I turned on your podcast and they were talking about exactly what I wanted to hear. That is so cool. I just love that. I love how what we focus on and what we want to have show up in our life we can create it. Neurologically speaking, it’s the reticular activating system, which is a part of the brain that will seek out what we choose to focus on.

If you’re someone who has anxiety or would love to learn more about how the brain works, and how we can optimize our life for success, eliminate procrastination, and eliminate anxiety, I invite you to take my course. So I’m a master practitioner and trainer of neuro-linguistic programming, and I spent 14 months putting this course together. It is a wonderfully fun course where you learn all these techniques—the behavioral change techniques for personal growth and development. Go to learntruehealth.com and in the menu click on the Free Your Anxiety course and take it. It’s phenomenal, I love it, and I do give a money-back guarantee if you take it and it’s not your cup of tea. Although so many listeners have said it’s been completely life-changing. So I invite you to check that out.

I also invite you to check out the course that I put together with my dear friend Naomi where we have filmed ourselves cooking in the kitchen delicious recipes, and we also include information on how to heal the body with teas, herbs, and different foods—both cooked and raw—and why those fibers or those nutrients in those foods are so healing for the body. So if you love listening to the podcast, you’re going to love the Learn True Health Home Kitchen membership. Check it out, try it for a month, it’s less than $10 to just try it for a whole month and get all the delicious recipes out of it. And if you continue to enjoy it continue being a member. You’ll be supporting the Learn True Health podcast. This is what I do full time, and so you’d be supporting me to continue putting out these episodes, but also helping you and supporting you and your family to learn delicious recipes that are designed to heal the body and nutrify the body. So you can go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen for more information about that.

Like I said, also check out the Free Your Anxiety course. It is very powerful. And please, come join the Learn True Health Facebook group. We’d love to see you there. We have a wonderful community of people that are totally into holistic health and healing, love to answer questions, support each other, share insights, and share inspiration. Whatever you’re dealing with, whatever you’re looking to heal or to optimize, we’re a whole community that wants to get behind you and get to behind each other and support each other in our success.

Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you love. Continue to share the episodes that you know will make a big difference. We’re going to turn this ripple into a tidal wave and help as many people as possible to learn true health. Enjoy today’s interview.

[00:05:50] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 440. I’m so excited for today’s guest. We have on the show a doctor that specializes in healing the gut. And isn’t that the first place we need to start when it comes to building our health? I’m really excited to have you on the show. Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, welcome to the show.

[00:06:20] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Ashley, thank you so much for having me on the show. It’s an honor to be here. I’m excited to talk about it.

[00:06:24] Ashley James: Absolutely. I’m thrilled that you focus on healing the gut when so many doctors just throw drug after drug after drug at people. I know in my 20s I was so sick. I had chronic infections, and every time I went to the MD, I got another antibiotic. And I’m sure that did not help. Years of being on antibiotics did not help my health. One of the first things I had to do was heal my gut and what a difference it makes. When you heal the gut first, so much comes into balance. So I’m really excited to hear your story though. What happened in your life that made you want to become an MD? Which normally, MDs don’t typically go the route of holistic medicine, right? That’s not a typical MD move. So what happened in your life that made you want to become an MD? But then what happened that made you want to help people heal their body and heal their gut with food?

[00:07:22] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Yeah. Well, I think that when we have individual experiences, similar to what you described in your own life, those things motivate you and drive you to think outside of the box. Particularly when you have to go outside the box to find your solution, to begin with. So for me, how I became a doctor really starts from a really simple thing, which is the desire to do something where I would help people. I started down that path. I mean, basically made the decision when I was in high school—16 years old. This is what I want to do with my life, and that was the motivation. Truly, if it was about money, you should go on banking, not medicine.

So I started down that path and I didn’t really get there until I was 34 years old. But during that process, it feels like I woke up one day and I was 30 and I felt like I was 60. I look in the mirror and I weigh 50 pounds more than I did in high school, which is for me a tough pill to swallow because I was a three-sport athlete, so I think of myself as an athlete. And there I am, looking in the mirror and I have this gut. I have high blood pressure, tons of anxiety, low self-esteem, and tremendous fatigue to the point that I’m basically caffeinated 24 hours a day like drinking coffee at 9:00 PM at night. Something had to change.

I trained at these great American institutions. I went to Georgetown for med school. I was the chief medical resident at Northwestern, one of the top internal medicine residencies in the entire country. And I went to the University of North Carolina for my GI training. And within my field in gastroenterology, many people consider UNC to be—if not the best—clearly one of the top two or three. I trained at these great institutions, but here’s this problem that I have. I weigh 50 pounds more than I used to. I have high blood pressure, high anxiety, and I don’t know how to fix my own issue.

At that point in my life, I was incredibly good at dealing with the care of an acutely ill person who is crashing in the hospital. That’s what I have been built for, that’s what I spent so much time training on, which is the person who might die unless you do something, then you do that thing, and you bring them back. That’s what I was good at, but I was not good at conventional healthcare, taking care of the routine person, giving them dietary advice, and preventing illness as opposed to waiting for the illness to arrive. I wasn’t good at that because the system didn’t prepare me for that. So I needed a solution. I needed a solution in my own life.

So being a typical type A medical doctor type, I decided to try to work my way out of it with exercise, and I started showing up at the gym six days a week—30 to 45 minutes of heavyweights, and then jump on the treadmill for a 5K to 10K during the winter. Or if it was the summertime, go to the community pool and swim 100 laps. Did that six days a week. I could build strength. I could build muscle. I could build endurance. I couldn’t lose the gut.

When things changed for me was when I met the person who actually is now my wife. Because we went on a date and I have to tell you, at this point in my life—I’m in my early 30s and I’d never been around anyone who was vegetarian let alone vegan. I honestly didn’t even really know what the difference was. I see this person that I’m on a date with who’s eating completely plant-based, and she’s eating without restriction, cleaning the plate, loving her food, and completely satisfied. Meanwhile, I have a post-meal hangover, and I’m struggling just to keep up after because I want to go home and put on some sweatpants.

This relationship opened my eyes and made me think. Maybe it’s the diet that I was raised on. Maybe the food that I have consumed since childhood is what is actually affecting my body in a negative way and holding me back. So I started to make changes in my nutrition. It wasn’t a radical change. It wasn’t going all the way to one extreme. It was just making simple substitutions. Instead of going out for fast food, I would go home and I’d make a big like 30-something ounce smoothie. Or instead of drinking a two-liter of soda, which I actually did back then, I would drink water.

And making those simple substitutions, next thing I know the fat is just melting off my body. The blood pressure issue goes away. The anxiety lifts, my self-esteem surges, and I start feeling young, vibrant, and alive again. It was so powerful that I said, why have I not heard anything about this? I trained in these great places. How come I was never taught anything about this? I turned to the medical literature thinking there must not be anything out there. This must be a space where we just don’t have the studies yet. I was really shocked when I found there were literally thousands of high-quality studies that already were in existence, and I just hadn’t been taught about them.

This motivated me to start devouring nutritional information, and I was studying in my free time. I was doing it at night. I was staying up to do it. And then I was bringing what I found into my medical practice, using it to take care of my patients with digestive issues, and seeing radical transformations in their life on par with the way that it changed in mine. And that was so provocative that—I mean, I have to tell you. I never in a million years thought that I would be on this podcast with you, talking about my New York Times bestselling book, or having an Instagram account with 150,000 followers. I never thought of any of those things because it wasn’t the plan.

I’m the guy who creates plans. I think they’re going to happen, and all of a sudden here I am—and this was like 2016—and I just felt like I had to share this story of what was happening in my clinic. I didn’t really like social media at all. I still don’t, but I felt compelled to share. So I started posting stuff and not really thinking anyone would be interested. One thing led to another and in 2018 I did a podcast interview that went viral. 300,000 people have listened to this podcast now. When that happened, the energy was so profound surrounding these ideas that I was putting out there. There was so much energy that I was like I have to compile this into something so that people can get the whole story in a structured, organized fashion. And there’s really no better way to do that than to write a book.

That’s when I decided, in August of 2018, that’s what I wanted to do. I spent basically the next year and a half doing it. Investing everything that I had, all my effort, waking up early—5:00 AM in the morning writing. I was at Starbucks here in Charleston, South Carolina from 5:00 AM until 7:30 PM. They know me really well at Starbucks. I know the deals. I know that you can get a free refill if you want it, and basically wrote this book. And then it came out in the middle of a pandemic. I just had to adapt to that. But the bottom line is that here it is, it’s arrived, and two months after release 35,000 people have bought a copy of this book.

[00:16:14] Ashley James: Nice.

[00:16:15] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Yeah, and I’m getting messages. If you just go back to that 16-year-old kid who sat there and said I want to help people. That has been what’s motivated and driven me this whole time. People, they may or may not know this, a book itself does not pay the bills. I paid the bills with my medical practice. I’m a full-time gastroenterologist, but to get messages from people from around the world who have read the book and are healing their digestive issues—healing their autoimmune, their hormonal, their metabolic, or their mood issues, restoring function to their body. To get those messages on a daily basis is incredible, it’s a dream come true for a doctor.

[00:17:11] Ashley James: You have a clinic as a gastroenterologist. What does that look like? Are you doing colonoscopies? What does it look like to go to you if someone has gut issues?

[00:17:24] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: So I spend about half my time doing procedures. So during that time that I’m doing procedures, I do colonoscopies and upper endoscopies. For example, an upper endoscopy, it is typically a five to ten-minute procedure, and it allows me to look in the esophagus, the stomach, and the small intestine; allows me to, for example, take biopsies for celiac disease, which these days, unfortunately, our blood tests for celiac disease—I don’t know how much people realize this, but the blood tests are completely inaccurate or completely inadequate in terms of testing for celiac disease.

So the endoscopy is the gold standard that allows me to firmly know whether or not a person has that. I also spend my time doing colonoscopies. A big portion of that is colon cancer screening. But then the other half of my time, this is part of what I love about my field. One of the things that I love is I get to use my mind, to be very personal with my patients, and have relationships. But I also get to use my hands, and that’s kind of fun. So half of my time is spent in the clinic talking to people, hearing their health history, breaking down what the problems are, creating complex plans of how to attack them, and finding solutions.

[00:18:48] Ashley James: I have an interesting guest. Have you heard of Chef AJ?

[00:18:53] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: I love Chef AJ. She’s a dear friend.

[00:18:55] Ashley James: Okay, great. So she tells her story in one of our past interviews. She’s been on the show twice. I think it was the first interview I had her on. And she shares that although was vegan for ethical reasons, was a junktarian, ate lots of junk food. She went for a colonoscopy cancer screening and her doctor found pre-cancerous polyps—bloody polyps through her whole colon and her colon looked just totally destroyed. She’s so afraid of surgery that she decided not to get surgery to have them removed, but she ended up going to a center and doing a deep cleanse, doing a raw food vegan. Whole food but the foods are alive. She did that, and then she came back six months later and had her colonoscopy. Her doctor got very angry at her. Have you heard her story when she tells it?

[00:19:52] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: I don’t think I’ve heard this one.

[00:19:55] Ashley James: Okay. So her doctor gets really angry at her. I imagine the doctor was the same kind of profession as you are. So he’s sitting there, he’s doing the colonoscopy, he just starts getting angry, and he goes, “Who did your surgery? And she said, “What are you talking about? You’re my doctor. I have insurance with you. I wouldn’t go to a different doctor. I’m terrified of surgery. If I were to get surgery it would be with you.”

And he’s sitting there, the camera, staring at her colon and going, “Someone did surgery on you. I knew where every single polyp was and all the pre-cancerous polyps and none of them are here. They’re all gone. Your intestine, your colon looks like vascular and healthy like a newborn baby. It used to look just disgusting and purple.” Whatever color it looked like before. He was visibly upset at her because he did not believe that she healed her body with food. But there was another doctor who was maybe a resident or something from India. She whispered to Chef AJ. She goes, “I believe you.” Because this doctor had seen coming from India where it’s more acceptable to heal the body with food.

It was interesting. I’ve heard many stories, and I’ve had my own personal experiences where MDs just do not believe you can heal the body with food. That it’s part of the training. So what happened in medical school? Did you have teachers say to you like no, you can’t heal the body with food? Do they actually try to tell you guys that? Or why is it that most MDs don’t believe you can heal the body with food. I love that you have broken away. It’s kind of like you came out of the Matrix and you’re able to think for yourself and go no, we can heal the body with food. Drugs are a tool but they’re not the only solution. Since we’re putting something in our mouth that our body is using to build healthy cells, shouldn’t we look first to food? Did any part of your education try to tell you that we can’t heal with food?

[00:22:04] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: I think that there’s a pervasive culture of allopathic Western medicine that stands in the way of accepting these types of ideas, and that’s unfortunate. It’s something that is hindering the quality of care and also the quality of the relationship with the individual patient. Because at the end of the day, if you try to tell a reasonable, rational person that the food that you eat makes no difference, any reasonable or rational person would say that’s BS. That’s BS. How can you possibly say that the food that you eat makes no difference? It’s very obvious that the food that you eat does make a difference. So if it does make a difference, how much of a difference does it make?

The modern science shows us that if you look across all of humanity on our planet, and you were to quantify health and disease, you would discover that just 20% of actual disease is driven by genetics. I mean, look, there are individual diseases, don’t get me wrong, like down syndrome. If you have the gene, you have the disease. But if you look across all humanity, just 20% of disease is driven by genetics, which means that 80% is driven by our environment, driven by diet and lifestyle. The 80,000 pounds of food that we are going to eat during our lifetime, that will always be far more powerful than a couple of milligrams of medication. And you can’t prevent disease effectively with medication. There’s very little evidence to support that that works.

You can’t overcome a bad diet with medication. You can’t make someone back to net neutral. The best that you can do is cover it up. That’s the best you can do is just cover up the problem with the medication, and that’s not really addressing the root of the issue. If our problem exists because of our diet and lifestyle, then to ignore our diet and lifestyle in the treatment plan is to never actually address the root of the issue.

So from my perspective, we need to go there. We have to go there. Now I can’t say that there was ever any conversation where people said, that there was formal teaching, that no, diet is worthless, or diet is not important. That was never said. It’s more so that if you withhold the education on diet and nutrition, if you never actually provide that information to people, and all you do is ask them to study and learn the side effects of all these bazillion drugs and the indications, and you know how to do this surgery, if that’s all that you teach them, then it’s unrealistic to expect them to just automatically transition. As intelligent as medical doctors are, they’re not trained and taught how to have a conversation about conventional nutrition. That’s the problem.

[00:25:36] Ashley James: Yeah, absolutely. In college, when I took anatomy, my teacher was actually a retired neurosurgeon. When it came to studying the joints, he said once someone has—because we also studied pathology with him—arthritis, when your client has arthritis, they cannot regrow it. Once you have damaged your cartilage you cannot regrow cartilage, no supplements work, and he got kind of angry. Supplements don’t work and diet doesn’t work. Nothing works. When someone has arthritis that’s it. They’re done. You can’t regrow cartilage. Obviously, he must be smarter than me. He was a neurosurgeon. He knows what he’s talking about. And I just thought it was really interesting.

Years later, I met a naturopathic physician who regularly helps his patients and clients reverse arthritis. I know a friend of mine, her mom, in six weeks on a whole food plant-based diet, all of her arthritis symptoms went away. It’s amazing what the body can heal, and it’s also amazing that we’re taught by people we put on a pedestal—people that we put in authority—were told that we can’t heal.

Now as a patient is on your table, you’re doing a colonoscopy, and you see they have polyps. Let’s use Chef AJ’s example. Their colon is bleeding a little bit. It definitely does not look vascular and healthy. Maybe it looks just discolored and they’ve got some polyps that you identify as possible pre-cancerous polyps. What’s your next step with them versus other doctors? What do you do with them to help them to heal their body?

[00:27:16] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Well, I think that from my perspective, the solution is in having a conversation about diet and nutrition. That’s where the opportunity lies. And a big part of the issue, from my perspective, is the absence of fiber in the American diet. If you look at the consumption of fiber in the United States, we may be the culture with the least consumption of fiber in human history. We certainly are probably about as close as we could get to the worst. The average American is consuming 15 grams of fiber per day.

Now to put them into perspective—15 grams—the minimum recommendation on a daily basis for women is 25, for men is 38. Actually, it’s really embarrassing when we do these fiber studies because the way that we’ll set them up is we’ll say let’s compare high fiber consumers to low fiber consumers. And what you’ll see when the study is done in the United States is you’ll see the high fiber consumers are getting 22 or 23 grams of fiber per day. And most people don’t know enough about fiber including the doctors to register the point that even the high fiber consumers in these studies are not even getting the minimum recommended amount on a daily basis. It’s embarrassing. 97% of Americans are not getting enough.

When I say fiber, by the way, I’m talking about fiber from real food. Fiber comes from plants. Plants have a monopoly on fiber. And the way that you should get your fiber is by eating fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seeds, nuts, and legumes. The reason that I want to motivate fiber consumption is that I know the vast majority of Americans are wildly devoid of fiber in their diet. And also, because I know that there is a direct connection between fiber and the prevention of colon cancer. So let’s unpack that a little bit.

When we eat fiber, we’ve been taught that fiber goes in the mouth and just goes through, sweeps through the colon—some people describe it the way it sweeps through, and it just comes out the other end as a torpedo. All right. That’s like sort of the traditional teaching on fiber. We always think of grandma stirring the orange drink so that she can have herself a bowel movement. We need to update our definition. We need to understand the actual way that fiber works in the body, which is that there are many different types of fiber. They’re not all the same. We have oversimplified fiber by just counting grams or just calling it soluble or insoluble fiber. And the reason why we’ve simplified it so much is because fiber is incredibly biochemically complex.

If you were to look at fiber molecules—I was a chemistry major in college—I look at them just like what the heck is that? Because of that complexity, we try to keep it as simple as we can and we look at it as soluble and insoluble fiber. Well, insoluble fiber does what we traditionally think of fiber. It just goes in the mouth and it comes out the other end. But soluble fiber is a totally different story. Soluble fiber passes through the small intestine—untouched—and it arrives into the colon. When it gets there, your gut microbes, which reside predominantly in your colon, they get into an absolute feeding frenzy. They go crazy because fiber is their preferred food. You’re feeding your gut. And when you feed them, they consume it, these microprobes become stronger, and they become energized. Because of that, they are more capable of upholding your human physiology.

These microbes are so central to the way that our body works. We need them in tip-top shape to help us out if we want to be healthy. When we feed them fiber, that’s what we get. We get healthy microbes that are strong, energized, and ready to help us, and they help us immediately on the spot. Because what they do is they take that soluble fiber, they consume it, and they transform it into short-chain fatty acids. Short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, acetate, and propionate. These short-chain fatty acids, we can unpack them. We can talk more about them throughout the entire show. I am obsessed with them. They are an entire chapter in my book. I honestly think this is the biggest secret in all of the nutrition that no one is talking about, and we should all be talking about it.

We can get distracted by all these other red herrings. We should be talking about why we need more short-chain fatty acids in our life. And when we talk about colon cancer itself, in the study of colon cancer, we discover that short-chain fatty acids have been shown to directly impair the development of colon cancer. So it creates this mechanistic pathway, which is that fiber comes into the colon, connects with the gut microbes. When you put these two ingredients together—prebiotic fiber and these probiotic microbes, you combine them, and they basically will create for you these post biotic short-chain fatty acids that will directly impair the development of colon cancer.

It’s no surprise that colon cancer is the number two cause of cancer death in America because we’re completely fiber devoid. If you compare African Americans to native Africans, native Africans consume a very high fiber, low-fat diet. African Americans, typically, traditionally, consume a very high-fat low fiber diet. Before I even tell you the number to frame this, if you said there were two times the risk of developing colon cancer, in the cancer world, that would be a lot. If you said three times, you go whoa, that’s crazy. If you said five, you go this is completely bonkers.

All right, the number is 65. African Americans have 65 times the colon cancer that native Africans have. It’s absurd. That’s ridiculous. And it’s because we’re not taking care of our diet, we’re not taking care of our microbiome, and we’re not feeding our microbiome what it needs to give us these protective molecules, these short-chain fatty acids. And when you zoom out and you apply this mechanism, it’s more than just this connection from an epidemiology perspective between African Americans and native Africans.

You can find studies from around the world, different cultures showing us that high fiber consumers—when I say high fiber I mean actually high fiber meaning definitely more than 38 grams of fiber per day. High fibers consumers have virtually no colon cancer, and there was a major, major, major review done that came out in January 2019 by Andrew Reynolds, and I wrote about this in my book, where it was basically a mega meta-analysis. So a meta-analysis is where they compile studies. We have a hierarchy of evidence, and the hierarchy of evidence says that the highest quality evidence comes from a meta-analysis where you compile studies to answer questions. And in this mega meta-analysis where he did multiple meta-analyses, Andrew Reynolds and his science team found numerous benefits to fiber for longevity, for heart disease, and for cancer, in particular—no surprise—colon cancer.

[00:35:57] Ashley James: That is something to wrap our brains around, isn’t it? I’m fascinated by the microbiome. It’s about six pounds of bacteria that live in our gut that help us. It actually makes nutrients for us. It helps us digest our food and make nutrients for us. And we live in such a sterile world, especially now, everyone’s using hand sanitizers. We’re constantly thinking about how to sterilize our food and food is just dead. The average household is eating packaged food, and the food is just dead. It’s void of life. It’s void of healthy bacteria.

You’re saying we need to adopt a diet that works with our microbiome to get the nutrients the body needs. And that’s great. The fiber, it just doesn’t go in one end and out the other. It’s doing so much more for us. I loved learning that fiber helps bind to the toxins that the liver has excreted through the gallbladder and helps to remove the estrogen that the body is getting rid of. It helps to remove all of the chemicals, the pesticides, and everything that the liver is trying to excrete. And it also binds the cholesterol in the gallbladder. The bile juice, it’s binding to all that and bringing it out. And that people who are constipated or eat low fiber, the colon can reabsorb it. And we see that in studies where people do fasting.

I had a guy on the show where he did different things with fasting. They took blood and they found that the body would reabsorb certain pesticides because they were testing for chemicals and pesticides. But with fiber, when there was something to bind to it, the body wouldn’t reabsorb it. So it becomes very exciting. Are you saying everyone should go and start drinking Metamucil? Is any fiber good? Or are certain fibers better than others? I’ve heard that there’s a kind of fiber from potatoes, for example, or there’s non-resistant starch. There are all these different kinds of fibers, which one should we eat?

[00:38:27] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: I have so much I want to say. I’m so excited to talk about all this.

[00:38:33] Ashley James: You have the floor.

[00:38:36] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: I’m a nerd, I’m a nerd. I love everything that you just said. I want to get into it more. All right. So to answer your question and try to not get distracted by so many tangents that I would love to talk about, let’s talk about fiber and optimizing fiber, okay? It starts with exploring the relationship between fiber and these microbes, which is an incredibly important relationship for the health of our gut microbiome. Fiber is their preferred food. But let’s talk a little bit about what that means. Let’s define the gut a little bit first.

Your gut is made up of 39 trillion microbes. That’s a ridiculous number. How can we put that into a number that makes sense? Okay, try this. We live in the milky way, that’s our solar system. Take our solar system with every single star that exists in the sky—every single one—and you have 100 solar systems worth of stars living inside of you right now that are microbes. Mostly bacteria, but they also include yeast, archaea, sometimes parasites, and I’m not counting viruses in this number 39 trillion, but there are viruses too. They all live there in harmony and balance. This is an ecosystem. Your gut, microbiome this community of microorganisms that by the way are as alive as you and I are, they are.

There’s an ecosystem in the same way that the Great Barrier Reef and the Amazon Rainforest are also ecosystems. And if you’re a biologist, there is a simple rule that applies to every single ecosystem and is a measure of the health within that ecosystem, which is biodiversity. When you have a more biodiverse Amazon Rainforest, a more biodiverse Great Barrier Reef, you have an ecosystem that is resilient. It is strong. It is prepared for any challenge or perturbation that you throw at it.

Let’s go to the Amazon for a moment. I don’t like snakes. They terrify me, I used to have nightmares when I was a kid like snakes being in my bed. I don’t love mosquitoes, they annoy me. I don’t like these creatures, but here’s the issue. If you remove all snakes and all mosquitoes from the Amazon Rainforest, you’re going to create a biological hole that the other animals are not designed to fill. And there will be a ripple effect that will have negative consequences on the health of the entire Amazon Rainforest because of that.

So biodiversity is key. We need all these players. We need as much diversity as possible, and that applies to our microbiome too. We need a diversity of species, as many different species as possible. So how do we get there? Okay. Let’s understand how they live because they’re alive, which means they need food. They got to eat and their preferred food is fiber, but not just generically fiber. There are at least millions maybe even billions of types of different fibers that exist in nature. Every single plant has its own unique types of fiber. And these microbes, they’re just like us. They’re picky eaters. All right.

Chef AJ is vegan, I’m vegan too, but we don’t eat the same food. She’s got her preferences, and I have mine. Guess what, these microbes are just like that. They have their preferences. They don’t all eat the same. They don’t just generically eat fiber. So when you eat a particular food, let’s use the black bean as an example. You consume black beans, you send these black beans down to your microbiome, and there are specific populations of bacteria that are going to thrive because you just fed them. They will grow, they will be more strongly represented within your microbiome, and they will reward you with whatever it is that they do best, which may include the production of short-chain fatty acids. They will go to work helping you.

But the opposite of that is also true. If you say I am going bean-free, no more black beans. Okay, well this population of microbes that are waiting to be fed black beans, they’re not being fed. And just like us, when you don’t feed them, they starve. They grow weaker. And at some point, they grow weak to the point that they’re incapable of holding up and doing the job that your body needs them to do. And potentially it can get to the point where they go extinct. Just like the loss of mosquitoes and snakes within the ecosystem, when you have bacteria within the ecosystem that are not able to do their job, you create a loss of balance where that ecosystem, that gut is not able to keep up with the rigors of supporting human health anymore. And that’s what dysbiosis is.

Dysbiosis is a damaged gut that’s out of balance. Some people call this leaky gut, and we’re basically talking about the same thing. So we want to maintain that biodiversity. And the way that we do that is by recognizing each unique species of bacteria has its own way of eating, and they like fiber. But not all fiber is the same. Every single plant has its own unique types of fiber. So when we eat as many different varieties of plants as possible, we are delivering as many different types of fiber as possible to our microbiome, and therefore supporting the dietary preferences of the broadest diversity of microbes possible. This is a core idea in my book, this is my central philosophy for human health and diet, and this is the most important thing that I’m going to say in the entire episode, okay. Not that I want people to turn off after I’ve said this, I got more to say. But if there’s only one thing that you take away from our episode today, let it be this.

And this is more than just Dr. B’s idea. This is actually scientifically validated in the largest study to date to make a connection between diet and lifestyle and the health of our microbiome, which is called the American Gut Project. In the American Gut Project, they found that there was a clear-cut number one predictor of a healthy gut. The most powerful driver of gut health was the diversity of plants within your diet. So it’s a change of philosophy where this is not about grams of fiber, and this is certainly not about consuming mono fibers like Metamucil.

This is about getting as many different types of fiber into your diet as possible so that you can support the biodiversity of your microbiome. And as a result, just like the Amazon Rainforest, just like the Great Barrier Reef, you create a lush, biodiverse, stable, and strong microbiome that is prepared to uphold the pillars of human health, which are digestion of your food which basically is access to nutrients. What’s more important than that?

And these microbes, beyond that, are also connected to our immune system, our hormonal balance, our metabolism, and even our mood and the way that our brain functions. Human health starts in the gut. And the most important part of human health isn’t even human, it’s these microbes, and we need to feed them. We need to feed them, and we’re just not feeding them in the United States. We’re starving them. Then we’re surprised when we have an epidemic autoimmune disease.

[00:47:11] Ashley James: That came out of nowhere. When you and I were kids, autoimmune disease was not as pervasive as it is today. It’s definitely on the rise. Would you agree with that? Would you say that the illnesses that we’re seeing now are in no way the same numbers as when even when you were in medical school? That we’re seeing an increase in these illnesses. I mean, the question is, is it that they’re getting better at screening? Of course because technology advances, right? However, there weren’t this many autoimmune issues 20, 30 years ago, was there?

[00:47:55] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Yes, there definitely was not. People can argue the statistics in whatever direction. And if they have an agenda, they’ll figure out their way to argue the statistics to feed their agenda. But if you take a step back and you just look objectively, think about something like ulcerative colitis, which presents with profound profuse diarrhea that’s bloody, and it occurs around the clock. You wake up in the middle of the night because you got to go number two. That to me is not something that you would miss for years on end. That’s not detection bias. It either exists or it doesn’t exist.

In Brazil, it’s quite fascinating to do epidemiology case study looking at third world countries as they modernize into first world countries. Brazil westernized really ramping up from the late 80s through the 90s and into the 2000s. They really started to ramp up and westernize. And during that period of time, they saw an 11%-15% increase in ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease on literally a yearly basis. Think about that growth. That’s absurd. And these doctors that were down there, they had never seen this before. We were very used to treating this in the United States because our epidemic was already fully here, but down there, they had never been seeing this. So they had to start basically flying up to the United States and attending our meetings and hearing how we treat these patients because they had no experience.

[00:49:50] Ashley James: Because the diet changed so quickly because the country became more Americanized and their diet changed to more of an American diet?

[00:49:58] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: They just changed to more of an American diet. This is starting to unfold in China too. Not that we have reliable statistics coming out of China, but they’re starting to westernize and follow the same patterns. Ashley, I know you would agree with me that it’s more than just diet.

[00:50:17] Ashley James: Yeah.

[00:50:18] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Diet is the number one driver, okay. Let’s take a step back and think of our life in the context of how radically things have changed in 100 years. Think about your relative, whoever that might be, your great grandparent or your grandparent, whoever that may be. A hundred years ago, for them, there was no processed food. They knew the farmer more than likely. Everything was locally sourced and in season. There was very little use of pesticides—at least the modern pesticides had not been invented yet. The animal products that they consumed—if they did consume it, most of them did—at least those animal products were not hyped up or pumped up with antibiotics and hormones.

Lifestyle-wise, think of the percentage of people who walked to school back then compared to the percentage that walks to school today. Radically different. Think about how they entertained themselves. We do Twitter at 10:30 PM at night and expose ourselves to the blue lights, which by the way disrupt our circadian rhythm and suppress our melatonin. So that even if we do sleep, we’re not getting good sleep. We are watching television. We’re sitting on couches. We’re sitting in offices and working on computers all day. That’s not the way that they lived back then. They were very active. They didn’t have access to vehicles for transportation as readily as we do these days.

Here we are, and there’s just been this radical lifestyle and diet transformation that has occurred in the last 100 years where now, the average American, their diet is 60% processed foods that didn’t exist 100 years ago. And 30% of the American diet is animal products that are hyped up on hormones and antibiotics. And literally just 10% of the American diet as fruits, vegetables, whole-grain seeds, and nuts. And perhaps the saddest part of it all is that when I say 10% actually most of that is french fries.

We have made huge, huge changes in a very short period of time. It’s putting an evolutionary strain on these microbes, and none of the changes that we’ve made have been advantageous to our microbiome. All of them have inflicted harm. And now, here we are.

[00:53:05] Ashley James: About 15 years ago, I read a really funny book. So if anyone’s looking just to kick back with a funny but true story, The Sex Lives of Cannibals. Have you ever read that book?

[00:53:16] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: No, but I love the title.

[00:53:19] Ashley James: Yeah. I bought it because of the title. I was like, what is this? But it’s a true story. So a man travels with his wife—I think it was actually his fiancé at the time—and they go to the South Pacific. There are island chains in the South Pacific like Vanuatu and Christmas Island. He talks about how hot it is, obviously, down there. I think she works for Red Cross or something and he’s a journalist, and so he thought this will be fun. I’ll bring my typewriter or whatever. I don’t know if he brought a laptop because it was spotty whether they would ever have access to electricity.

They get down there and the first island they land on after—I think they came from New Zealand—they land on a bigger island and it is definitely Americanized. He couldn’t believe how many fast food joints from America he saw because he thought he’d be exposed to a different culture, and yet it just felt like he was in Hawaii with all the American food. And he also noticed the people kind of looked like they were from Hawaii or looked like they’re from the United States. And then they ended up going on a smaller island where there was all the people who lived there ate the way they’ve eaten for hundreds of years. And they all gardened, fished, and lived off the land. And they were all very healthy and they didn’t have any access to McDonald’s.

He just noticed the two. He just noticed it was interesting. He didn’t go deep into it, but that planted that idea in my mind of I wonder what it looks like. It’s probably been long enough since he wrote that. I think he wrote it 20 years ago. I bet we could go and collect the information—because they’re all Polynesians. They’re all genetically similar, but we could go look at this one island that’s 50 miles away from this island and see okay, well this island people have been eating for the last 20 years McDonald’s and more of an American. They have constant access to electricity so they can watch TV. They have more influence to eat the way we’re eating in the standard American diet. And they have more access to oil, more access to meat, the potato chips, and whatever.

And then we go 50 miles away, these people are still eating—and they’re not vegan by any means—coconuts, fish, and whatever vegetables they can grow. They have very little imported. And we look at how they’ve been doing the last 20 years. I think that would be really interesting. Just from the microbiome standpoint, the people who stuck to the diet that their ancestors have been eating—a whole food diet—versus a diet that’s been disrupted, the microbiome has been disrupted by lowering fiber and consuming oil, which also affects the microbiome. And then eating food that’s dead, that’s microwaved, that doesn’t have any bacteria. Because they’ve disrupted their microbiome, how’s their health as a people changed

I think that would be a really interesting study, and I’m sure people are doing it like you said. Looking at those from Africa versus those born and raised in America but have their ancestors are from Africa and seeing the differences. And I’ve heard of people from Japan. Japan used to have an incredibly low rate of heart disease and now they don’t. Okinawa used to be a blue zone and now it’s not. The people have changed their diet enough that people are no longer living in their hundreds on a regular basis super healthy. 

I would like to address the urgency that we need to turn this ship around on a personal level. Okinawa, in one generation, is no longer a healthy population. We can’t wait any longer. Things are going downhill. We need to take individual responsibility and turn this around right now.

[00:57:49] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. Let me talk a little bit about what you just laid out with the South Pacific, which by the way, I love that idea and I find it to be fascinating. I think the South Pacific is very interesting too, by the way. But there’s actually a guy, his name is Justin Sonnenberg, who’s a microbiome researcher. World-class, one of the leading microbiome researchers. Wrote a great book by the way. It’s called The Good Gut. And he endorsed my book Fiber Fueled. He was fully in support of everything that I wrote in my book. Sonnenberg has done these studies on a population of people called the Hadza. And they live in Tanzania in Africa. They are tribal and they are pre-agrarian meaning that they are hunters and gatherers.

He has basically taken a look at their life, the way they eat, and then he also has done microbiome analyses on them. First of all, let’s talk about their diet. Again, they don’t have crops. There’s no farm and they’re not part of organized society. They’re not going into the supermarket. They don’t have dollars and cents. They’re, as described, foraging for their food, and then to a degree, hunting. And they’re not vegan. They’re eating an omnivore diet. But if you look at what they eat, they eat more than 100 grams of fiber per day. More than 100 grams of fiber per day.

I said before the diversity of plants feeds a diverse gut microbiome. If you look at the diversity in their diet, they eat 600 varieties of plants on a yearly basis. A lot of this seasonal. So berries come to the season, they start eating berries again. And then something else comes in the season, they eat that. 100 grams of fiber per day, 600 varieties of plants. Ashley, let me ask you a question. All seriousness. Give me just ballpark, rough estimate, off the top of your head, how many different plants do you think you eat on a yearly basis?

[01:00:11] Ashley James: Oh, geez. I just went grocery shopping at Costco this morning. We have a great Costco with organic broccoli, cauliflower, corn, spinach, mixed greens—so there’s maybe three different kinds of greens in there. We eat potatoes, brown rice, brussels sprouts. I think I just rotate about 20 different vegetables. I probably eat 20 different vegetables a year, maybe 30, but on a regular basis probably 20.

[01:00:51] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Okay. Does the number 30 include whole grains, seeds, nuts, legumes, fruit?

[01:01:00] Ashley James: I would say vegetables. Probably 30 different kinds of vegetables a year. I get a variety of potatoes. I like different potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes, different squash, and gourds. Maybe 50 or 60 different. I really do try to get a variety, but maybe between 50 and 60 if you include fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains, legumes, and beans.

[01:01:25] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Yup. Okay. I don’t have an exact number. I don’t track my—

[01:01:30] Ashley James: I’m going to write it down. I’m going to start thinking about that.

[01:01:35] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Okay. We can talk a little more about what number people should have in mind on a weekly basis, but just to continue the conversation with regard to the Hadza, if I had to estimate for myself, I would probably guess I’m 60 or 70. For most Americans, certainly less than 50. And the Hadza over here are having 600 on a yearly basis—600 different plants. So that would lead us to believe, if my theory from the prior conversation is correct, they should have a more diverse microbiome. And guess what, they do. It’s radically more diverse. In fact, they have 30% more diversity than the average Brit, and they have 40% more diversity than the average American.

We are born with a 40% deficit in terms of biodiversity—the measure of a healthy microbiome. We are born with 40% less biodiversity than you find in this population of native tribal people. That shows you how much things have changed on a radical basis. And there’s actually a doctor who’s associated with the American Gut Project who has created this. I mean it’s kind of interesting to think about, but it’s also terrifying. He’s created a doomsday microbe bank. Basically, what he’s done is he said, “I’m worried that we’re killing too many species too fast. I’m worried that we’re eroding our microbiome so fast that we’re just going to be disease-stricken.”

The sad thing is these Hadza, the tribe is falling apart because just like in Okinawa, the younger generation doesn’t want to carry on the tradition. They want a cell phone. They want a job. They want money. They want to watch television. I mean, they’re not living in someplace where they don’t even know that real society exists. They know it’s out there. They’re choosing to continue what they have. So the tribe is eroding. The concern that they have is that we may lose these microbes forever. So they’ve created this doomsday microbe bank where one day, if we need to open up the bank, multiply these microbes, and bring them back, we have the ability to do that if we need to.

Going back to the urgency of this, there are a few things that I want to talk about with regard to this. and part of it is individual health, which is that if you wake up one day and you have Crohn’s disease, you can’t just walk that back. You have it. I personally believe, and I take care of these people for a living, there’s no such thing as a cure. Once you have Crohn’s disease, there’s remission. That’s the best that you can do. And you may be able to put yourself into a deep remission and keep yourself there effectively having the appearance of a cure, but there is no cure. You’re always vulnerable to the recurrence of Crohn’s disease.

You don’t want to wake up one day and have this. Even in health, it becomes imperative that we nurture the health of our microbiome. The second thing, Sonnenberg who is the doctor from Stanford who is studying the Hadza, he’s done some other studies that I think are super fascinating. If you think about the transfer of microbes from mother to child, that’s where we get started in life. If we pass through the birth canal instead of the cesarean section, the birth canal is our first exposure to the outside world, and it’s designed to basically inoculate us with these microbes. So there’s an inheritance that occurs as a result of mom passing down microbes to the child. And there’s a question, could we alter the inheritance of microbes in a way that’s detrimental to future generations? We all care about our kids. Many of us care more about our kids than we do about ourselves.

Sonnenberg, you can’t recreate this study in humans because a generation of humans takes 25 years. But you can do this study in mice very quickly using human microbes—the same microbes that we have. So Sonnenberg did mouse studies looking at generational differences in the microbiota and the biodiversity. Again, biodiversity is key to the health of the ecosystem. And what he found is that if you withdraw fiber from these mice, there is a generational loss of species that compounds. So for example, if grandma has 1000 species but she’s not eating fiber, then by the time she has mom, she’s down to 700 species. So mom starts with 700, and by the time mom has you, she’s down to 400 so you start at 400, and you start at a 60% deficit relative to grandma. And that deficit may be enough to make you far more fragile to developing the disease than grandma was. 

[01:07:22] Ashley James: Wow.

[01:07:23] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: So the concern is there’s this generational inheritance of the microbiome that could have negative consequences that perhaps some of the issues that we’re seeing in 2020 or in our generation are the results of the initiation of a low fiber diet that started with our parents and even our grandparents’ generation. And what’s interesting is, a ray of hope here, let me just say—

[01:07:53] Ashley James: We’re all doomed. The end.

[01:07:55] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Yeah, as scary as that sounds. I mean, look the framing of the question was why do we need to do it today? We have to have at least a little doom and gloom in there. But the ray of hope here is that if you reintroduce fiber, you can get the species back, all right. You just have to do it early enough, so do it today. Why wait? Do the fiber today and support your gut microbiome and support the gut microbiome for future generations to come.

And then the last thing that I wanted to say is this. This is the third thing. I can’t help but say that we need to think about the impact that we’re having in our environment. I usually don’t like to go there because I feel like as a medical doctor it’s not my place, but increasingly, I’m starting to feel like we can no longer deny the connection between our environment and human health. And if that connection is there, then it’s my job as a medical doctor to make people aware of that connection. Consider human population growth, we have 7 billion people on the planet right now. We will have 10 billion people in 2050. So in 30 years, we will go from 7 to 10 billion people.

Guess how many people there were in the year 1800. One, there was only one billion people on this planet in 1800. We’re about to have 10 times that number in 250 years. Humans are resource consuming on a very heavy basis. We consume resources like crazy. The planet is reaching a point of saturation in terms of our consumption. And we need a food supply for 10 billion people. And how are we going to actually accomplish that? And they actually got together a bunch of scientists recently. They wanted to try to understand what is going to be the best way for us to preserve our environment, preserve the resources, and not flog this planet to the point that we destroy ourselves.

It was called the EAT-Lancet Report, and one of the big issues that people need to realize is that 80% of the agricultural land, which we are currently sort of stretched and maxed out, 80% of that land produces just 18% of the calories that we consume. So we have a very inefficient system. And what I’m referring to, by the way just to be totally clear in case it’s not, is animal agriculture. There’s a huge loss of efficiency when we build a diet around animal products. And that loss of efficiency has to do with the fact that if you have 10 calories when you start, and you feed those 10 calories to the cow, the cow is going to burn a certain percentage of those calories. The cow is going to use a certain percentage of those calories to build joints, bones, eyeballs, and stuff that you’re not going to eat. The cow is going to fart and poop out a certain percentage of those calories. And then a small fraction of it is what actually goes into creating the food product, which is the meat.

So there’s a huge loss of efficiency there where when you could have just had a human consume 10 calories. You could just feed that to the human. Why give it to the cow and run it through that system with that huge loss of efficiency? And this is how you end up in a scenario where 80% of our agricultural land produces just 18% of our calories. So when we see the Amazon Rainforests burning, let’s not be naïve. That is a rain forest. It doesn’t burn like California. This is not a forest fire. These are man-made fires for forest clearing to create more land because you need more land if you want to expand that business. The land is already fully consumed. The only way to do more is to get more land. And so how are we going to do that with 3 billion more people? A 50% jump. How are we going to do that?

[01:12:22] Ashley James: Yeah, we’re going to lose all the rain forests. And this is what they think happened to Africa. I saw a really interesting—I don’t know if it was a TED Talk—but Africa and the Sahara desert didn’t use to be a desert. We just think it’s always been a desert. It actually wasn’t. They cut down all the beautiful huge giant trees to make wood ships—500 years ago, 600 years ago. And because of that, the moisture that the forests used to create helped to make the clouds and make rain on the inland of Africa. And with all the forest cut down for all the ships they built it, it completely changed the dynamic of that continent. That’s what they’re thinking is going to happen to South America. That they’re cutting down enough rain forest that it will forever change the ecosystem of an entire continent again.

We have to learn from our history. We have to learn. I love that you’re addressing this. A good documentary to watch would be Cowspiracy. I think it’s still on Netflix. It’s a good documentary because they do cover—in more detail. I’m a very visual person so with graphics they show what you’re addressing. But someone might say eating animals is healthy for me. It’s a necessary step. Isn’t it healthy for me to eat this? I should have dairy because that’s how you build strong bones. I should have eggs, that’s a good source of vitamins and vitamin D. I should eat animals because that’s where I get my protein and my energy from.

This is what we’ve been told since we were children. It’s like a necessary evil. Cows are beautiful and I don’t want to hurt the environment, but then if I didn’t eat cows, it would be harmful to my body to not eat it, so I have to keep eating it. This is the mindset that many people still have because it’s what we’ve been told our whole life through all of the marketing. So maybe you can address that because people are afraid to give up meat and eat more fiber because they think it would be harmful to their body. That they wouldn’t have energy, they wouldn’t have protein, they wouldn’t have those vitamins that they’re getting from dairy, eggs, and meat.

[01:15:02] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Yeah, let’s start with the marketing campaign. Marketing is incredibly powerful. Most food industries and also supplement industries have discovered that you’re far better trying to attack people’s emotions through marketing campaigns than you are actually conducting clinical research. Clinical research is expensive and it may not support the perspective that you want. It may in fact show the opposite, right? Why invest your money into that when you can invest your money into marketing campaigns that are designed to prey on people’s insecurities or their emotions and build fear? Got milk, the entire campaign, which most people understand comes from our government. Maybe you don’t. That was a government-run campaign. “Got Milk” was subsidized by the US government.

“Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.” That was a US government subsidized campaign. Now, what is the government doing getting involved in what food we choose to eat? Well, that’s the issue. There is lobbying that exists that is tremendously powerful. There’s a reason why organic fruits and vegetables are expensive. The reason is that they’re not subsidized at all. If you have allowed animal products to be their true cost, the true cost would make them prohibitively expensive, and we wouldn’t have problems with people who are of lower socioeconomic status who, as part of being lower socioeconomic status the vast majority of time that also means lower educational level. And they don’t have the ability to see the big picture, which is that going to McDonald’s and getting the $3.99 Happy Meal that your kid is jumping for joy, they’re kissing you, they’re thanking you, and it’s an easy dinner, that’s actually hurting us.

We have made it readily accessible. We’ve made it cheap. We’ve gotten rid of all the barriers to people consuming these unhealthy foods. And so you make the choice simple for people who fail to really have a complete understanding of what the big picture is and how that’s going to hurt them in the long run. When it comes to consuming these foods, here’s the thing that I’ll say. First of all, if you read my book, I really truly believe in meeting people where they are. And so I’m not in the business of saying this is all or nothing. This is not black and white. I’m in the business of saying the path to optimal human health is with plants. All of the healthiest cultures in human history are predominantly plant-based.

The blue zones—all five—90%+ plant-based. It’s the tie that binds them together. They are all predominantly plant-based. So the evidence is clear. Science repeatedly shows us that when we substitute and we use plant products instead of animal products we live longer with less disease. It’s consistent. I mean, how many studies do we need to say the same thing? I feel like we’re in the era 50 years ago where the tobacco industry was pushing back maybe 60 years ago. Seriously. Do you know how many studies they had to do to convince people that smoking actually caused lung cancer?

[01:18:55] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

[01:18:56] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: There is no randomized controlled trial to prove that smoking causes cancer. It doesn’t exist. Do we all agree that smoking causes lung cancer? It is so obvious. But they had to do a bazillion studies to convince people this is the truth, and the problem is that you had a big tobacco industry that was extremely rich, was buying lobbying power, and was basically mobilizing their resources to create confusion and tried to make this less clear. And now the exact same thing is repeating itself when it comes to our food.

You have big industries that are tremendously powerful that have bought influence. And they’re also intentionally running and conducting studies or doing marketing campaigns to create confusion so that ultimately, the status quo reigns supreme. Here we are, and the average American eats 220 pounds of meat per year. That is simply not sustainable. And the problem is that we get upset when we see the amazon rainforest getting cut, getting burned, and we go do something about it. And we turn to our government.

They’re not going to do anything about it. First of all, they can’t. Second of all, there are not motivated to because the lobbyists are convincing them to do otherwise. But I want everyone to keep in mind, at the end of the day, we have the ultimate power, not them. The government can do whatever it wants to do, but we are the consumer. And every single dollar that we spend is a vote for an industry. And when we choose to spend our money on purchasing 220 pounds of animal products, guess who we’re making rich? That industry.

Instead, if we cut it back—literally consider this. Consider this picture, Ashley. American diet right now—10% plants, 60% processed, 30% animal products.

[01:21:04] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

[01:21:04] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Okay. What if we did this? What if we went to drop the processed food and replaced it with plants? Now we’re 70% plants, 30% animal products. Gosh, that’s pretty good. But hold up. 220 pounds of meat, that’s absurd. Do we really need that much? So what if we cut that down by 65%? What if we took a third of that? We’re still eating more than a pound of meat per week. Right now, the average American eats more than their own body weight in meat per year. It’s gross. And what if we cut that down to where we are consuming one-third of that—70 pounds, 75 pounds. You can still have your meat, and now you have moved into a blue zones diet where you are 90% plant-based, 10% animal products.

But the truth is this, and this is what happened to me. My favorite foods, if it was my birthday, I was going to have a rib eye and a glass of red wine. That was my food. All right. The interesting thing about it is as I started to change my nutrition and the weight was melting off my body and my anxiety was lifting and my blood pressure was dropping and my confidence was soaring, as I was doing that I wanted more and more and more. I wanted to keep feeling better and better and better. So there’s no reason to stop. You just keep ramping up your nutrition and doing better and better and better emphasizing progress, not trying to be perfect, and you keep moving in this direction. I’m just going to tell you, if you get to 90% plant-based, first of all, that’s a healthy diet. Second of all, you’re going to want more. Why would you stop? Keep going.

For the people who live in fear of I don’t think I can do it, I don’t think I can be 100%, you don’t need to go and be 100% starting today. You need to take an honest look in the mirror of what you’re currently doing and say where can we do a little bit better? I just want to start this week. Give me one meal that’s plant-based. Start with that and let’s go from there.

[01:23:23] Ashley James: I love it. So there are two things to consider in terms of the microbiome of the gut. You’re a gut doctor, you’re a gut specialist so it’s best to talk to you. There’s the prebiotic and the probiotic. The probiotic is the alive bacteria that are digesting our food, making nutrients, making the short-chain fatty acids, and helping prevent disease in our body. The prebiotic is the fiber that we’re eating that feeds. I’ll use this as an example because I had a guest use it as an example. The six-pound gut biome is like having a chihuahua. But I wanted a panda, she wanted a kangaroo. Anyway, it’s a six-pound animal. People take care of their dogs and their cats more than they take care of themselves. I’m a pet owner, I will go out and buy the best food and the best everything.

I know a woman who spends hundreds of dollars a month on handcrafted organic treats for her mastiff. We really take care of our animals. Imagine your gut biome is your pet. It’s your pet. You take it for walks. Go take it for a walk. Put it on a leash, take it for a walk because when you go for a walk, you’re taking your pet by microbiome for a walk. But the food you feed it is the food that’s either going to allow it to thrive or it’s going to kill it, right? And the prebiotic, the fiber you eat is feeding it. Now my question to you is about raw food versus cooked food versus a package supplement like taking a Metamucil as a fiber.

We want to increase the biodiversity of the gut biome, and how we do that is by eating a variety. But if I eat cooked broccoli versus raw organic—I’m always organic because of the pesticides. Does raw broccoli have an advantage overcooked broccoli in terms of feeding the microbiome and also introducing new healthy bacteria?

[01:25:41] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Okay. There’s a lot that I want to tackle, but let’s start here. First of all, raw versus cooked. All plants contain fiber. Each plant has its own unique types of fiber, and that fiber is specific to the way that the plant is being served. So there is another well-regarded microbiome researcher named Peter Turnbaugh who did a study. This is fairly new. This is less than a year old. The study is fascinating where he basically looked at the effect on the microbiome of cooking the food, so raw versus cooked. And here’s what he found. The key is there was a difference. You wouldn’t describe necessarily that one is superior to the other. Instead, what he described is when you cook your, food you’re creating different types of fiber that feed different microbes. We want to feed all the microbes.

So the key is rather than choosing one versus the other, we should have both. So if you are cooking your food one of the things I talk about in my book is the health hack, which is that if you are cooking your food, you should have a nibble of the raw food before it’s cooked. If you’re going to braise your greens, braise your kale, just make sure you chop up a couple of pieces of that kale and nibble on it while you’re cooking, while you’re braising those greens.

[01:27:33] Ashley James: Yeah.

[01:27:34] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: All right, that’s one of the things. Yeah, kind of cool. There are a couple of other topics that you brought up. You’re bringing up so many great points that you just get me really excited to talk. Let’s talk about organic versus non-organic in the context of living food. Now, when I say living food, to the average person they’re going to hear fermented. And that’s true, fermented foods have microbes. But guess what, all life—most people have not thought of this—has a microbiome. All life either has a microbiome or you are a part of the microbiome. Those are the two choices. If you’re alive, you’re one of those two things.

[01:28:19] Ashley James: Oh wait, are we the microbiome of the earth?

[01:28:21] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: I think we kind of are. I hate to say this, actually, I kind of think we’re a virus because we’ve grown exponentially and we’re destructive. All right. Think about that growth—1 billion in 1800, 2 billion in 1900, 7 billion today, and 10 billion in 2050. That’s exponential. That’s the same thing that you see with viruses. All right. But all life has a microbiome, right? Take an apple, for example. They’ve actually studied this. They’ve discovered that an apple has about 100 million microbes as a part of the apple. The tremendous diversity of species. Actually more diversity on an apple than you will find inside the human body. A couple of paradoxical or interesting things. Out of curiosity, Ashley, because I’m guessing you’re going to give the answer that anyone would including me. Where do you think the microbes are on the apple?

[01:29:28] Ashley James: On the skin.

[01:29:29] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Exactly. That’s what I would say too, and it’s not a bad answer. Anyone would say that. But actually, most of them are in the core.

[01:29:36] Ashley James: In the core? The thing we throw out and don’t eat?

[01:29:39] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: The part that we throw out. That’s where most of the microbes are.

[01:29:42] Ashley James: So we should be juicing them, right? Or blending them? How would you?

[01:29:48] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Or just eat the core.

[01:29:48] Ashley James: Eat the core.

[01:29:50] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Yeah, why not? What’s stopping you other than tradition?

[01:29:56] Ashley James: I guess there’s a minor amount of arsenic in the seeds.

[01:30:01] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Yeah. You could throw out the seeds. You don’t have to eat the seeds if you don’t want to. But what’s interesting is this microbiome that this plant has serves a purpose to the plant in the same way. There are parallel tracts that exist where these microbes are there to support plant life in the same way that these microbes support us. They’re the architects of life on this planet—these microbes. We rely on our microbes to support us as we grow from newborns all the way to grown adults. And the same thing happens with these plants. From flower to fruit, the microbiome of the individual plant is evolving and it’s helping to facilitate the growth of the plant.

So this apple has a hundred million microbes in a tremendous diversity of species, and they’ve looked at organic versus conventionally raised. What’s cool is the organic—to me yet another reason to motivate to consume organic—apple had more diversity. Okay. So more biodiversity on the apple, that’s a good thing. That’s a measure of health. And also, the organic apple had a stronger representation of species that are known to be probiotic. Because the word probiotic does not just mean bacteria. To be considered probiotic you have to actually demonstrate a health benefit in humans.

Eating that apple goes back to this idea—eat an apple a day keep the doctor away. We’re now learning there’s a lot of truth to that, and this is part of the reason why—these microbes.

[01:31:50] Ashley James: Fascinating. I’m so excited. I’m going to start eating apple cores now with my apple.

[01:31:55] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: And then the other thing that I wanted to say really quick is the debate about prebiotics and probiotics. I’m moving a little bit into the supplement space. So before I move into it let me just say above all else that diet always comes first. All right. Diet and lifestyle come first. You can’t supplement your way from a C- gut to an A+. That’s impossible. You can’t keep a junk diet and have an A+ gut. That’s impossible. If you want a good gut you have to take care of your diet. It’s the only way. All right. But that being said, there is a place for this prebiotics and probiotics. So let’s talk about this.

All right, probiotics. So everyone’s heard of probiotics—living bacteria that as I just said, they have a health benefit in humans. So we always think you got to take this capsule that has this probiotic, but that’s again a construct of marketing convincing us that the path to gut health is through a supplement. That’s what they’ve taught us. That’s not true.

[01:33:02] Ashley James: Well, they’ve taught us to go to the doctor, get a pill, and you’ll be fine, right? I believe medications have their place, but we’re overusing them 90% of the time. I believe that supplements absolutely have their place, but the problem is people have the mentality, like you said, you cannot up out supplement a bad diet. Just like you can’t out-drug a bad diet. A bad diet is a bad diet. I know everyone listening probably eats way healthier than the average person and genuinely wants to eat even healthier than that. So if we could incorporate a good diet and then find a supplement just to kick-start us or get us an edge, I’m sure we’re all interested. So we understand the advice you’re about to give is has to go in conjunction with a really good gut health diet.

[01:33:57] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Yes. A supplement is meant to be the word. It’s a supplement, right? It’s done in addition to a healthy diet. And there’s definitely a place. Going back to your point, I just want to double down on what you said, which is we should not live in a world of absolutes. Meaning we should not choose to live in a world where we are fully reliant on pills and procedures for our health. That doesn’t work. And we also shouldn’t live in a world where we believe that diet alone is a silver bullet. That’s not true. The optimal approach for human health is to optimize diet and lifestyle, to fully support and potentially even extend your health with the use of supplements that are targeted, and frankly, not excessive. I don’t believe in taking 20 different supplements because you just don’t know what the interactions are.

But supplementation—where appropriate—to optimize our health, and then engaging with the health care system—where appropriate—to protect ourselves. Anyway, we’ve been sold to this idea that probiotics are the source of gut health. The problem is you, for example, Ashley, have a completely unique gut microbiome. There’s literally no one on the planet with the same microbiome as you including your mom. It’s like a fingerprint. When I give you a probiotic I am prescribing a generic formula. And what I’m doing is I’m really crossing my fingers and hoping that when this generic formula mixes with your completely unique gut microbiome, that we get good chemistry. And you just don’t know.

There are some people who benefit—no question. There’s also a lot of people who spend a lot of money and they get nothing. So we have to understand this limitation of our current approach, but the second part is we should understand that these probiotics already live inside of us. We don’t need to introduce it from the outside with the hope that we’re introducing something that our body is missing. Instead, we just need to acknowledge that the microbes that live inside of us, we could use them and just make them stronger. Make them more powerfully represented.

And that’s where prebiotic comes into play, which is that Ashley, once again you have a completely unique gut microbiome. And although I don’t know the nooks and the crannies and the details of what’s there and what’s not, what I do know is if I feed your microbes with a prebiotic, I’m going to be selecting for specific healthy bacteria. I’m going to be selecting for the probiotics. And we’re going to enrich them, we’re going to make them more powerful, more well represented, we’re also going to be feeding them. Fiber is requisite for feeding these microbes, and then they’re going to have the ability to transform that into short-chain fatty acids.

Just to step back for a moment and reconsider our big picture. If we had probiotics but we did not have fiber, there really wouldn’t be much of a point. If we had fiber but we were sterile creatures, which we’re not, there really wouldn’t be much of a point to fiber. But when fiber, specifically prebiotic fiber, connects with these bacteria, specifically probiotic bacteria, magic takes place. And what we get are postbiotic short-chain fatty acids. And the entire point of this relationship is not one or the other. The entire point is what happens when you connect the two. And that’s why I’m a bigger believer in prebiotics than probiotics.

[01:37:54] Ashley James: Because you already have a gut biome. I’ve heard someone reference the Americans have the micro Simpson of gut biomes because it’s so not diverse. We need to have something more complex and intelligent, or we have to incorporate and support our microbiome to have many more species, so be much more diverse. And we can do that, over time, by eating a variety of plants that are organic because we take on the microbiome, like you said, you eat the core of the apple with the apple. Your gut is taking on those bacteria that become part of your healthy and diverse gut biome. But the most important thing is to feed it. Feed it first. So we have to feed it before you just take a probiotic.

I heard this study once that they had people take a probiotic, like acidophilus. We all heard of acidophilus. They examined their stool a month after they had stopped taking it and they found that the acidophilus was no longer there. They thought for sure taking the probiotic, taking acidophilus, or whatever probiotic would have then continued to live in the gut right. It doesn’t probably because they didn’t change their diet to incorporate enough fiber to feed it to continue its development. So you’re saying the most important thing is to start by feeding the gut the healthy fiber, variety of fibers—both cooked and raw—so that the gut can get fed, so that microbiomes can get fed.

I know you’ve got to go, and I definitely want to have you back on the show because I have this whole list of topics and questions I want to explore. How to reverse chronic constipation? How to reverse diarrhea? What about people who have IBS or have a really irritated bowel and they can’t tolerate it. Every time they try to eat fiber they can’t tolerate it. These are topics I want to go deep with you. So I’d love to have you back on the show to explore that.

You keep mentioning hormone balance as well, that’s something I’d like to go deeper and have you explain why is it that healing the gut, fiber, and the microbiome affects our sex hormones and our stress hormones. Why does it affect all of the hormones in our body? Interesting that I’ve heard that 25% of our T3, our thyroid hormone, is converted in the gut. What without a healthy gut we have significantly low T3 levels. So low in fact that then someone’s put on medicine. And isn’t that a shame that there are so many doctors out there that prescribe a synthetic T3 drug without even addressing gut health? Because the root cause could be in that person’s gut, and likely statistically is, given how little fiber the average person eats.

There are so many more things to explore, and I definitely want listeners to know about your website. Theplantfedgut.com. The links to everything that Dr. Will does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at Learn True Health. I definitely am going to encourage listeners to buy your book as well, and the link to your book will be there. And people can also go to your website The Plant Fed Gut. And it says right there, want the ultimate plant fed super snack, put in your name and email. And they get a little booklet from you. That’s really cool. And of course, they can follow you as well on Instagram. I saw some of your Instagram posts that I really, really appreciated them.

One, in particular, was about racial equality, and you address that we cannot have racial equality until we have medical equality. And if we really look statistically, our medical system is so skewed, especially in the United States. Other countries it is less, but in the United States it’s so skewed and it is not a fair system. We need to change. We need to make sure that our medical freedoms are protected for everyone, and that medicine is available to everyone. I don’t want to get into politics, I love that you addressed that while we’re all really conscious of it’s in our daily consciousness to be addressing and looking at and trying to change racial equality, we should know and we should also address that medical equality needs to be addressed in order to fully help everyone of all races.

Thank you so much for everything that you’re doing. I love your message. You’re speaking out. You’re kind of a black sheep. I’m so excited that you’re here talking to our community of listeners, we’re all the black sheep. Let’s just say we are all on the same page as you. At times, if you ever feel like you’re the odd one out because you’re the MD that doesn’t want to give people drugs first but wants to really, really help people on a root level, heal their body, and do it in a way that is radical. It’s radical to tell someone to eat plants and not meat. It’s totally radical. You’re going to get more and more and more results the more we go down this path.

I just interviewed an MD who’s been a plant-based doctor for 39 years. I love that you and your career and you’re seeing how you can help people and then you can even go do a colonoscopy and see that these diets actually work and they help heal the body from the inside out. Knowing all the science of exploring the microbiome, it’s so fascinating. Please come back on the show. I’d love to have you back. I’d love to continue to learn from you.

[01:44:04] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: I appreciate it, Ashley. I definitely would love to come back. I’ll be honest, I don’t feel like a black sheep. I mean, seriously. I guess for me maybe it just seems so obvious.

[01:44:21] Ashley James: Right?

[01:44:21] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: It just seems so obvious so we need to talk about it. And I’m not afraid to share how I feel about these kinds of things because it’s really important for people. If this is the way to heal people, then we need to put it out there. And that’s been something that has been a part of me and everything I’ve done and it’s brought me to where I am today. I just wanted to add real quick a couple of things, I hope you don’t mind.

[01:44:45] Ashley James: Please do.

[01:44:46] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: At theplantfedgut.com, we have a COVID-19 guide. We have a guide to clinical research. I really think that one of the big issues—this is why I wrote this guide—is people are confused by the conflicting information that they receive. On a consumer-level, we have to have protections in a place where we become smart enough to sniff out fraud, to sniff out something that’s fake, to sniff out an agenda, and to see the truth. Because the truth exists but there’s a lot of noise. Because the truth brings us to health. Truth is the compass that guides us to health, but the only way to find that is to get rid of the noise. You can’t believe every single word that every person puts out there. We have to start discriminating because we have excessive access to information these days.

And then the other thing I wanted to add is probably by the time this episode airs I have a course that I’m starting in late August that I’m super excited about. Basically, what this is is an opportunity to connect deeper with me and my ideology to go beyond the book. When I see problems I go, okay, how are we going to fix this? One of the problems is I only get 30 minutes with my patient, and I wish I could have a day to just completely educate and give them everything. And that’s where this course comes in. It’s a structured way for me to give you over seven weeks all of the information that I think is necessary to actually understand gut health and to understand how to navigate our health care system to make yourself well.

What’s cool is I’ve been working on this course for about a year, and I’m just releasing it for the first time. But I’ve beta tested it twice in private with small groups and had amazing results. I’ve had people who have suffered from issues for more than 10 years who have healed because the course empowered them with the right information to know how to talk to their doctor, what questions to ask, and then we found solutions. I’m super excited about it because it’s just another way for me to connect with more people and provide the information and education necessary to help people to heal so that they’re not overly reliant on a system that’s not giving it to them. Let me step in and intervene and give you what you need.

[01:47:33] Ashley James: I love it, I love it. And so many symptoms people don’t realize are related to gut issues like the thyroid we had mentioned, but also serotonin levels. So depression and anxiety often the root is in the gut because there’s a direct relationship between serotonin production, gut health, and the nerves that connect the brain to the gut. Skin issues—so psoriasis, eczema, dermatitis, and the list goes on and on.

You had mentioned hormones, but our brain fog, our energy, our weight gain—there are so many health issues that you don’t realize start in the gut. By making sure we have the healthiest gut possible, we may actually be resolving mental, emotional health issues and strengthening our mental and emotional health, strengthening the health of our immune system. 70% of our immune system surrounds our gut and is directly affected by our gut and by the food we eat.

I’m sure you have this information on your website, especially because you have a guide to COVID and maintaining optimal health through this. Listeners can go to theplantfedgut.com. They can fill out their information to get your super snack guide for gut health. And then once your course is available, you just email them? Is that the best way for them to be notified on your—

[01:49:06] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: That’s right, theplantfedgut.com

[01:49:07] Ashley James: What’s the name of your course? Have you named it yet?

[01:49:11] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: Yup. It’s the Plant Fed Gut Online Course.

[01:49:13] Ashley James: Okay, great. Easy enough to remember. Awesome. We’ll have all that information in the show notes of today’s podcast. Thank you so much. Please come back to the show. I’d love to have you back.

[01:49:23] Dr. Will Bulsiewicz: I would definitely will. Looking forward to it. Thanks, Ashley.

[01:49:25] Ashley James: Thanks so much. I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Dr. Will Bulsiewicz. It was amazing. I did not know that fiber in the gut creates short-chain fatty acids that are so important for overall health. And there are so many fascinating things to learn about how we could support the microbiome through our diet.

Coming up next in the next episode, we’re going to dive even deeper and learn more about how we can support the microbiome of the body with the food that we eat. And how we can actually use tests—special lab tests that you can do in your own home that will tell you all about what foods to eat and what foods not to eat to best support your microbiome in producing special chemicals that heal the body and boost the immune system. It is so fascinating.

Now, as you listen to the episodes of all these amazing people and you think to yourself you would love to learn more about holistic health, you’d love to learn more about how you can heal your body and also help others. If you’re interested in augmenting your own health or changing your career becoming a health coach, I highly recommend checking out IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I went through their program, I absolutely loved it.

Many people go through the program just for personal growth alone, and I had such an amazing time with the personal growth that I got out of it that I would have just done it for that alone. But on top of that, you also learn a whole career. So you can do it just for yourself and your own personal growth, you can do it to help your friends and family, or you could do it to shift careers. Or maybe you already work with people and you want to have another tool in your tool belt, IIN sets you up to be successful as a health coach, they train you how to do it. They guide you, they hold your hand, it’s an amazing program, it’s very nourishing, it’s all about holistic health on, not only a physical level, but also a mental, emotional, spiritual, and energetic level. It’s a fantastic program.

Why don’t you just try a section of their course for free? Go to learntruehealth.com/coach. That’s learntruehealth.com/coach and they’ll give you a free module for you to try out and see if you like it. See if that’s something that you’d be interested in. And if you’re interested in it, call IIN. Just google IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and talk to them. Make sure you mention Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because they give a huge discount to our listeners. I’ve been just raving about them for years because I had a wonderful experience with them, and so many of our listeners have gone through the program as well. They’ve given all of our listeners a really fantastic discount.

You can go ahead and check out a free module by going to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can just give them a call. Just google IIN and call the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Everyone you talk to on the phone has gone through their program, so they can actually sit down with you almost like a coaching session. And they can help you plan out your goals. They genuinely want to help you. There’s not like a sales pitch when you get on the phone with them. It’s not like a high-pressure sales pitch. They really lovingly and genuinely want to support everyone to make the right choice for them. And if IIN is the right choice, then they want to help you with that.

So go ahead, check it out, give them a call, and see how you like it. I highly recommend it and encourage you to check it out if you’re looking to do some online learning, especially these days when we can be home more, learning more, absorbing more great information to better ourselves. What a perfect time to do that. To take this time to go into our cocoon and transform ourselves.

We can choose to be a victim or we can choose to be a cause in our world, and I choose to be a cause in my world-transforming myself. When the times get tough, I’m going to transform myself. I’m going to choose to learn and grow and be even better when times are hard. And I know you want to as well. Have a fantastic rest of your day. I’m looking forward for you to listen to the next episode. It’s going to be fantastic, I can’t wait. Please share this episode with those you love and continue sharing so we could help as many people as possible to learn true health.

Get Connected with Dr. Will Bulsiewicz!

Website – The Plant Fed

Facebook

Instagram

Book by Dr. Will Bulsiewicz

Fiber Fueled

IT'S HERE! Learntruehealth.com/homekitchen
Use coupon code LTH for the listener discount!

Check out the supplements Ashley James recommends:

takeyoursupplements.com

Check out IIN and get a free module: LearnTrueHealth.com/coaching

Magnesium Soak: Use coupon code LTH at Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com

Dr. Klaper's sites:

https://www.doctorklaper.com
plantbasedtelehealth.com

Dr. Michael Klaper’s Powerful Healing Strategy

https://www.learntruehealth.com/dr-klapers-powerful-healing-strategy

Highlights:

• The food is square one
• Humans are herbivores
• Type 2 diabetes is a disease of fat toxicity
• High protein diets are toxic to the kidneys
• Indications that humans are herbivores

We have heard that a whole food plant-based diet is the best diet because it can prevent and reverse diseases. But there are also different indications and proofs why we should be herbivores as shared by Dr. Michael Klaper in this episode. He explains why food is square one and why type 2 diabetes is a fat toxicity disease and not carbohydrate problems. He also gives tips on how to ease into a whole food plant-based diet.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I’m very excited for you to hear today’s interview. It’s with a doctor who’s been practicing medicine for 39 years. And instead of walking in the room with a prescription pad ready to dole out drug after drug, he looks to help his patients reverse major diseases and extend the longevity and quality of their life with food. It’s going to be a lot of fun today so strap in your seat belt and get ready to go.

I want to let you know, as you’re listening, if you’re interested in learning more about using food as medicine and healing your body with nutrition, please go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen and sign up. I created a very affordable course that teaches you how to cook delicious food for your whole family that also heals your body. And it’s totally in alignment with what this doctor is teaching today. Just give it a try. Just try it for a month and just see how you feel. Especially if you’re quarantined at home right now, what’s a few weeks of just trying nutritious foods, trying different dishes in the effort to support your overall health? That’s learnturehealth.com/homekitchen.

When you sign up you’d also be supporting the Learn True Health podcast to continue doing what we do, so you’d be supporting yourself and you’d be supporting the podcast you love. Awesome. Learnturehealth.com/homekitchen and use the coupon code LTH. If you’d like to sign up for an annual, it gives you a big discount. That’s coupon code LTH at learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you love. Please share this episode with those in your life who have any kind of heart disease or are afraid that they might develop it—high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, and any kind of circulatory problems. Please share this episode with them as they will want to know this information. Enjoy today’s interview.

[00:02:17] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 439. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have Dr. Michael Klaper on the show. His website, or one of his websites, is plantbasedtelehealth.com. It’s going to be really interesting. The other website you have is doctorklaper.com. And of course, links to everything that Dr. Klaper does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at Learn True Health.

You’re quoted as saying, “It’s the food. It’s always the food.” And you love to show people how they can reverse disease, prevent disease, and heal their body with the nutrition in their food. So I’m very excited that you’re here today because you’re going to break down the science of how we can use food as our medicine. Welcome to the show.

[00:03:12] Dr. Michael Klaper: Well, thank you very much, Ashley. Good to be with you and your listeners.

[00:03:15] Ashley James: Absolutely. Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of how we can heal our body with food, I really want to hear more about your story. What happened in your life in your youth that led you to want to become a doctor? You kind of broke away. I mean, whenever I see an MD teaching people how to heal their body without drugs, I feel like they might be a little bit of a black sheep. You broke away from the stereotypical norm and you are an advocate for helping people heal their own body. So what happened in your life that made you become a doctor and then had you break away like a renegade to teach people how to heal without drugs?

[00:03:56] Dr. Michael Klaper: Oh my. Got a minute?

[00:03:59] Ashley James: Absolutely.

[00:04:00] Dr. Michael Klaper: Here’s my life story. I did much of my growing up on my uncle’s dairy farm in Northern Wisconsin. The natural world entered my life very early, and I’ve been milking cows since I was eight, driving tractors, and I saw a lot of things on the farm. I saw life, death cruelty, and the reality of putting meat on the table. But like the rest of society, I just closed my mind and my heart to that reality. It was registered, no doubt. But I was the kid on the farm who always wanted things to be okay. I patched up the injured animals and just as fascinated by biology in general.

It was natural that I grew up and went to medical school. I graduated in the early 1970s. For the first nine years, I practiced blood and guts emergency room medicine, outpatient clinic, emergency rooms, operating rooms, and I did anesthesia. That’s what I thought I was going to do. Just acute care medicine, just patch people up when they got sick or hurt.

A couple of things happened in 1981. I was a resident in anesthesiology. I thought I was going to be an anesthesiologist, and I was up in Vancouver. I was on the cardiovascular anesthesia service. Day after day, I’m putting people to sleep and I’m watching surgeons open their chest and open their coronary arteries and their heart. From their arteries, the surgeons pull this yellow greasy guck out of the inner linings called atherosclerosis. And I knew very well what that stuff was.

There were already studies in the medical literature explaining it, and actually, some showing that you can melt this stuff away with a plant-based diet. I had an academic interest in it, but a personal one, my dad was already showing signs of clogged arteries. He already had a blue leg, diabetes, and chest pain. I knew that I had the genes, and if I didn’t change my diet, I was going to be laying on that operating table with that striker saw going up my sternum. I didn’t want that. I saw those folks when they woke up.

I was getting some really strong messages to stop eating animal fat because that’s what that stuff was. It’s the fat of the animals largely these folks are eating. When I changed my diet to a plant-based diet, my body responded dramatically. Within 12 weeks, a 20-pound spare tire of fat melted off my waist. My high blood pressure went to normal. My high cholesterol went to normal. I felt great waking up in a nice lean light body. And I realized at that point, three-quarters of the way through my anesthesia residency, that I didn’t want to be an anesthesiologist and spend my time putting people to sleep. I’d rather go back to general practice and help them wake up.

So I did, much to my parents’ dismay, and I moved to Florida. Started doing nutrition-based medicine. My patients who were able to follow my counseling—I found people in the area who would do plant-based cooking lessons. Those patients who are able to change their diet in this way to a whole food plant-based diet, they noted the same wonderful changes. They lost weight. Their high blood pressure came down, their cholesterol came down, they felt really good, and I became the happiest doctor I know. My patients get healthy right in front of my eyes.

It’s the most exciting transformation in medicine to watch someone waddle into your office obese, diabetic, hypertensive, clogged up, and inflamed. And week after week, meal after meal, month after month of these healthy plant-based foods, it’s just remarkable what you see. The obesity melts away, the arteries relax and open up, the high blood pressure comes down, the joints stop hurting, the asthmatic lungs stop wheezing so much, the migraine headaches get better, the colitic bowel settles down, and they turn into normal healthy people. How exciting that is to celebrate with them these health victories.

I’ve been a nutrition and lifestyle medicine doc ever since. And as important as the lifestyle is, you got to get enough sleep, you need to walk every day. Yes, yes, yes. But until you change the food stream washing through your cells meal after meal after meal, the other modifications are not going to make a great difference. It’s the food. It’s the food. There’s the food. It’s square one. You’ve got to do the other things, but the food is square one. 

There’s just remarkable magic, if you will, pharmacological effects of plant-based diets that we can talk about. It’s become an art form for me to look at all the different ways that plants change the body, how they promote healing. And now we’re giving master classes in plant-based nutritional healing.

That’s been my evolution. My body’s the same weight as it was back in 1981 when I graduated. It was the same weight when I graduated high school. I don’t need medications. I feel great, I just turned 73 yesterday, and I plan on doing this for as long as I can. As I said, I’m the happiest doctor I know and I want to share with the medical students before pharmaco sclerosis sets in their brains. I’ve been going to the medical schools to tell them it’s what your patients are eating before you order another $1000 scan, another $500 set of blood tests. 

Ask them what they ate yesterday. If it’s full of pepperoni pizzas and buffalo wings, that’s why they’re sitting in front of you, doctor. Send them to the plant-based dietitian. Let them do the counseling. You see them back in a month and they ought to be doing better. Trying to put a new model of how medicine should be practiced in these young doctors’ heads. That’s my mission of late, and it’s a challenge, but I’m enjoying it.

[00:10:13] Ashley James: I love it. We have a listener who was going to be—I don’t know what the term is—fired but discharged from the military. He’s a career man in the military. It’s his life, he loves it, and he works down in DC. His cholesterol was so high that he was going to be medically discharged from the military from active service. I don’t know the details other than he came listening to the show, came to us. I think he heard my interview with Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. He’s a steak and potatoes kind of guy—gets on the whole food plant-based, no salt, sugar, oil protocol for one month and his cholesterol numbers came down in one month so fast that he’s been able to keep his job and keep his career.

That was so cool to see that in one month, it could change that fast. You’re 73. You look very young for 73. You’ve been eating a whole food plant-based diet for 39 years?

[00:11:28] Dr. Michael Klaper: Correct, that’s exactly right. The more I found out about how meat is produced, especially today’s industrial factory farming and what I saw happen on the farm, I chopped the heads off chickens. I did all of that, and now I realize the violence involved. I just don’t want anything to do with that. And learning what it’s doing to the earth, to the animals, and to the people who consume it, that’s certainly gotten me into a plant-based diet, and there’s no looking back. There’s no sneaking a cheeseburger now and then.

[00:12:04] Ashley James: But you know what, there are unhealthy vegetarians. There are unhealthy vegans. Just cutting meat out doesn’t mean someone can be healthy. I’d love for you to explain the finer nuances of what going just going meatless alone could still have someone develop diabetes or develop a heart attack. But what are the finer nuances of a whole food plant-based diet versus vegetarianism that would have people heal, prevent, and reverse disease?

[00:12:35] Dr. Michael Klaper: Thank you. That’s such a key question, of course. And the answer is in that phrase. It rolls off our tongues, people like you and me—whole food plant-based diet. It sounds like one word here. But wait a minute, whole foods, stop right there. We’re talking about whole foods like they grew out of the ground that you could recognize in the garden. Oh, there’s a tomato over there. There’s a carrot growing over there. There are green beans hanging on the fence there—whole foods. That’s really what we’re designed to eat.

We have the same digestive system that our gorilla and bonobo cousins have, and they’re up in the trees eating leaves and fruit because we have this digestive system meant to digest a high-fiber, plant-based food. We are not carnivorous apes. We are plant-eating, simian-like creatures. We have fingers on our hands, not claws. We got long intestines for digesting fiber. We’ve got enzymes in our saliva for digesting starch, not protein. We’re clearly plant-eating creatures. And as long as we stay on that diet, it’s a whole food plant-based food stream, then our body knows what to do with it.

The microbiome hums along there, the arteries stay open, the blood stays free-flowing, and we live our long healthy natural lives. I’ve never had a gorilla in the office saying doc, I can’t keep my hands off the cheeseburgers. The animals know what to eat. And our simian cousins do fine with their whole plant foods. When we stray from that, and there are two ways that the [inaudible 00:14:23] vegetarian straight one is broadening their definition. I’m vegetarian so I can eat eggs and dairy.

Well, you put cow’s milk with baby calf growth fluid and it’s filled with the hormones, fats, allergenic proteins, and growth factors. You flood your system with that—with the milk, the cheese, and the ice cream. That’s going to not do great things for your system. It’s going to spawn bacteria that cause problems. It’s going to change your blood chemistry. It’s going to change your hormone levels. It’s going to set you up for everything from diabetes to autoimmune diseases. 

And eggs that people have—they’re full of cholesterol, saturated fat, and choline that turns the bacteria turn into trimethylamine that drives cholesterol into the artery walls. We’re not egg and dairy eating creatures either. You don’t see the gorillas going around raiding birds’ nests and eating the eggs. That isn’t our affair.

When we stick to the whole grains, whole potatoes, legumes, and the whole wonderful world of plant-based foods, lots of steamed grainy yellow vegetables, colorful salads, hearty soups, stews, casseroles, and stir-fries. When we keep our belly filled with that, we eat all these colorful sweet fruits for dessert, our body hums right along. Our arteries stay open, and the inflammation in our body subsides, and the blood is free-flowing. The artery is good. There’s a reason that long-term vegans are lean. They will not become obese. We can talk about why. The calorie density just isn’t there. It’s mostly fiber and water that we’re eating. It doesn’t stick to you.

If you go back for the fourth bowl of vegetables, who cares, they’re just fiber and water. It’s like high-quality gasoline in a sports car. Runs great, but you start putting the eggs, the dairy, and then the processed food—even the vegan process food. But if they’re made of flour, oil, sugars, flavorings, glutens, dough conditioners, yellow number three dye, and all the adulterants that get put into the various chips, [inaudible 00:16:51], the bips, the burgers, and all of that. Well then, It’s like you’re mixing diesel fuel, kerosene with your racing gasoline. The engine starts running rough, the gas line plug gets clogged up your arteries, and diseases happen.

Then we put names on them. You have high blood pressure, you have type 2 diabetes, but really, they’re just putting the wrong fuel and the engine clogs up, our insulin receptors clog up our arteries. Similar to your man in the service there who jumped on Dr. Esselstyn’s program there, he gets on that whole food plant-based food stream and the arteries clear out, the cholesterol comes down. They say, oh, how wonderful, how wonderful. But really, it’s predictable. That’s what should happen. That’s what must happen. You put the right fuel in and the numbers take care of themselves.

I joke that clinical reporter, that people get better on plant-based diets was published in that prestigious medical journal called duh. Yeah, that’s the point. We do get better because it’s the food we ought to be running on. Long answer, but it’s just a matter of obeying natural law. Your house cat is a carnivore. The majority of food that goes down a mountain lion’s gullet or your house cat is the flesh of animals. They are carnivores. We are not. We are herbivorous creatures. The majority of what goes down our gut should be whole plant foods.

Now, you can quibble around the edges with a little bit of meat once a month or no, you probably wouldn’t. I’m sure the gorilla eats the occasional beetle little worm on the underside of the leaf there, but by and large, as long as we stick to those whole plant foods, our body knows what to do with it. It functions beautifully and these diseases should not occur. Type 2 diabetes should never occur in a homo sapiens body. Obesity should never really occur. These autoimmune diseases shouldn’t occur. These are all dietary diseases. And the hopeful news is they get better when you put the right fuel and then most of them go away.

[00:19:12] Ashley James: In working with your patients for the last 39 years, you have helped people reverse so many different diseases. If a woman comes to you with an autoimmune disease like maybe MS or Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, what do you do? Do you put her on prescription drugs? Or do you start her on a whole food plant-based diet and see how fast and how far you can go with that before you put her on drugs? Or do you not use drugs at all?

[00:19:45] Dr. Michael Klaper: Very perceptive question. The answer is kind of yes to all of the above. I’m a complete pragmatist. I’ll do what works, and I want to save that woman’s tissues whether it’s in her joints, her kidneys, or her nervous system. I want to quell the inflammation and get to the root of the disease as efficiently as possible. In the past, if someone’s in the middle of a big arthritis flare or whatever, I have no qualms about her short course of tapering down prednisone or other types of anti-inflammatories.

The beauty of changing to a whole food plant-based diet, but we’re not anywhere near answering your very complex question there, is it bathes the tissues with antioxidants and it has a real anti-inflammatory effect. When you say autoimmune diseases, the most common ones we see are the autoimmune inflammatory arthritis. The woman who wakes up and her joints are sore and severely fatigued, maybe she’s got a faint skin rash, and goes to the rheumatologist. Negative for rheumatoid arthritis, but it’s seronegative rheumatoid arthritis. Here’s a woman that has most likely a so-called leaky gut phenomenon. She’s injured her gut wall and food proteins and bacterial cell walls are leaking out into the bloodstream and flowing through her joints and causing this inflammation.

Here’s a person that if you pull out the offending molecules, and that includes even starting with water fast for 5 days, 7 days, or 10 days to just put the fire out. It’s remarkable how dramatic these inflammatory states respond to a water fast—we can talk about that—but even without the water fast, if she just can’t or doesn’t want to do that. Just drinking vegetable broth for a day or two and then going on a very low antigenic plant-based diet—blended squash, sweet potatoes, quinoa. So just slowly add these in—steamed green vegetables and probably some omega-3 algae-derived DHA and a fairly hefty dose—300-600 milligrams a day. We often get a dramatic improvement in the inflammation throughout the body. And then you want to keep her on that so it doesn’t flare. You can’t go back to the fried chicken and the grilled fish that she was eating before.

Occasionally, it’s indicated to do a leaky gut repair if they’ve got all sorts of hives and skin rashes after they eat particular foods. They’re showing signs of leaky gut. There’s a protocol of various supplements—quercetin, glutamine, and probiotics for a couple of months to help the gut wall heal. That’s the most common type of autoimmune conditions that we commonly see.

Now over on the other end of the spectrum of autoimmune diseases are the real tough gunslinger diagnoses that make most doctors want to run the other way when they see it on the chart there are multiple sclerosis and Hashimoto’s. These are very complex diseases. These are more than just inflammation from a leaky gut. If you see Hashimoto’s thyroid under a microscope, it is swarming with lymphocytes. There’s an inflammatory fire burning in that gland, and it’s hard to put out. Eventually, it burns out after a couple of years. I have not found the magic pill or herb. I wish I could tell them to eat two cloves of garlic and wear rutabaga around their neck and their thyroid will heal. But most of us docs here, we would love to turn off that raging inflammatory fire in the thyroid gland.

You support them with thyroid hormone, and we nibble around the edges with various herbs, anti-inflammatory oils, and things. But I’ve not found the magic key for Hashimoto’s and similar to multiple sclerosis. Certainly, there are legendary recoveries for multiple sclerosis. Dr. Saray Stancic, an infectious disease specialist, pretty much cured herself of multiple sclerosis. A number of people have done these dramatic turnarounds, but I’ve got a couple of other MS patients who they’ve been plant-based for years and the disease is still progressing. It’s clear when you have a lot to learn about those particular conditions.

But still, even if the disease is progressing, there’s no way I can see when you bite into a chicken leg or a chicken breast, what are you really eating? At the risk of being graphic here, you’re biting into that chicken’s muscle, artery, tendon, and nerve and now you’re chewing up the nerve tissue—the myelin and neural proteins of another animal. Especially if you’ve got a leaky gut, some of that myelin from the cow, the chicken, the pig, the lamb, or whatever you’re eating is going to get in your system. If you’ve got antibodies against myelin or you’ve got some type of neurologic activity going on, the last thing I would think you would want is the myelin of another animal flowing through your immune system, in your bloodstream. Just to help put out the autoimmune inflammatory fire, stop running animal tissue through your body just seems to be a square one logical thing to do.

And then again, lots of dark leafy greens and the omega-3 containing nuts and seeds. If you’re also seeing a neurologist, you can use some of their high-tech medicines. I’m fine with that it’s I won’t stand on principle if it will let them keep walking and keep seeing the MS patients then I’m happy to work with the conventional docs. The patient still should be eating a really healthy plant-based diet no matter what other therapies that they’re on.

[00:26:56] Ashley James: Very good, Dr. Terry Wahls, I’ve had her on the show and she’s doing studies now using diet to reverse MS. Very promising work, and she’s working with Dr. Kahn doing studies on the plant-based diet reversing MS. I love that you’re pragmatic and you’re willing to continue to learn, grow, and implement what you can to help your patients to heal. It’s just those more complex cases where it’s like how far can food take us, right?

I’m a health coach so my client comes to me. I don’t want to throw the kitchen sink at them. I used to do that early on. I’ve been doing this for nine years, and I used to do that early on. I just want to throw everything at them at once and overwhelm them. That doesn’t help them with long-term success, but in the beginning, let’s just get them on the path to eating and bringing in nutrition into their body. Like you said, bathing all those cells in their body with the right nutrition and see how far you can get just with that.

It’s amazing how many symptoms. I have them write down all their symptoms and grade them at the beginning. A full of symptom inventory checklist. Then a month later, I have them go back and do it again, and every month have them do it. What’s amazing is they see how many of their symptoms resolve just by the fact that they’ve changed their nutrition to nutrient-dense foods so that now their body is being bathed, like you said, in these antioxidants, in these phytonutrients, and all the vitamins and the minerals they can possibly take in, and so much reverses.

And then after that, maybe there’s still some lingering things that they can work out with. Like you said, herb supplements, or maybe they need to work with a functional doctor and see how that can be supported. You’re eating a standard American diet, you take your symptoms, and you go to a typical MD, you’re going to walk out with a bag full of prescriptions. Which one of my previous guests—who I just had on the show—he’s basically the mayor of Brooklyn. Very interesting story. He walked out of his doctor’s office with a prescription pad full of drugs and basically came home with a bag full of drugs with multiple problems. Diabetes, he’s losing his eyesight, losing his feeling in his hands and feet, and has an ulcer. The doctor, the MD was like get ready to be on this entire bag of drugs—like 15 medications—for the rest of your life—and probably more. 

He went home and he had a little pamphlet they gave him that said, how to live with diabetes. And something about that saying didn’t sit with him. It was almost like divine intervention. He went home and googled how to cure diabetes, and that’s when he discovered the whole food plant-based diet. He got on that, and it’s been a few years. He’s totally off all those meds, he’s reversed all those conditions—the conditions that his MD said you will have for the rest of your life and you will be on these meds for the rest of your life.

Does that upset you? You’ve been a doctor for so long. You’re kind of a pioneer. You’re way ahead of your time helping people reverse disease with food. Doesn’t it upset you when you see so many people being told they’ll always have type 2 diabetes? They’ll always have these problems. They have to be on these meds for the rest of their life when you know they can heal their body. I mean, doesn’t that just get to you?

[00:30:41] Dr. Michael Klaper: It drives me around the bin. It leaves me somewhere between anger and despair, but the determination to correct this. It’s just outrageous to let these young students go through four years of medical school and never once ask about what their patients are eating. We practice medicine like what our patients are eating has no effect on these diseases. It’s some genetic mismatch, or your liver is making too much LDL. Let’s pound down those enzymes and drop that LDL level. No, doctor. It’s from what they’re eating meal after meal.

I practiced medicine for 45 years before anybody put the words disease reversal into the same sentence for me. When the light went on, I said these are reversible diseases. Why didn’t somebody tell me this? Why aren’t we telling these young medical students these are reversible diseases. All of us who practice a diet and lifestyle kind of medicine, we have files full of patients who used to have type 2 diabetes, who used to have high blood pressure, who used to be obese, who used to have an autoimmune disease. These diseases go away. How can we withhold that information from the students and from our patients? It’s unethical to do that, and it really has to change. The public needs to demand that. The students have to demand it, which is what I’m advocating.

We’ve formed a non-profit initiative called Moving Medicine Forward, and I’ve been going to the medical schools telling this to the students. You’re dealing with reversible diseases from what your patients are eating. Ask them what they’re eating, get them on a plant-based diet, and you will see most of these diseases go away right before your very eyes. Do you want to heal these patients or don’t you? I let that question hang in the air. Why are you going into medicine? Do you want to heal these people or don’t you? Either way, if you just call in your obese diabetic patient and you clock your time over their A1C level. You’ve got to raise your metformin level, we’ve got to raise your glyburide level. Okay, you come back in two months. Let’s see what your numbers look like.

If that’s the kind of medicine you’re going to practice, you’re sure not helping your patients. You’re just going to watch them get fatter and sicker until you get that call from the wife, John had a big heart attack. He’s in the ER. They’re not sure if he’s going to make it. That’s what you’re going to witness, and you’re going to leave medicine. You’re not going to do this for 25, 30 years. It’s discouraging. It’s bleak medicine, especially when the way to heal these patients is right in front of you. It’s on their dinner plate. Probably you need to change your diet too, doctor, because there’s nothing sadder than a doctor who walks in the exam room with a big obese potbelly and a pocket full of statins and beta-blockers for his own high blood pressure and his own hyperlipidemia. That’s no example to set for a patient. They want to see a healthy healer walk through that door.

It’s all accessible just for ordering the bean chili instead of the beef chili. That’s the huge sacrifice we’re asking people to make. I mean the cuisine is delicious. You can eat all you want. And you could do it Italian, East Indian, Mexican, or Chinese. This is not a diet of deprivation, but somebody needs to speak the truth to these students. But with the meat industry, big pharma, big egg, and all that, there’s a lot of distortion of the truth that’s getting into these young docs heads. So a few of us are trying to reach them directly. And if people are interested, again, go to my website doctorklaper.com. It’s all spelled out, doctorklaper.com, and click on Moving Medicine Forward. You’ll see the work we’re doing. But absolutely, it causes me great consternation that in this day and age, we’re still withholding that information from the students and the patients. It’s unconscionable and it can’t stand. The patients know it.

It’s getting easier though. When I go to the medical schools—years ago before COVID, now we’re all online—now, in every second, third, fourth-year med school class, there’s always 20, 30, 40 students who’ve seen films like Forks Over Knives. They’ve seen What the Health, and they’ve seen Cowspiracy. The light’s on, and the kids know something’s up with nutrition here. They’re worried about the environment. They know the importance of all of us adopting a plant-based diet. So the message is getting easier to deliver to the students, but the faculty is still pretty resistant. But they will yield. Let the truth be told or the heavens fall. We’ll keep pecking away at that wall and eventually the wall of ignorance and resistance it’ll come down.

[00:35:38] Ashley James: Very cool. I’d like to talk about carbohydrates. I was type 2 diabetic. I reversed it with food and supplementation of nutrients. I no longer have type 2 diabetes, but I was left afraid of carbohydrates. It really started when I was a child. My mother, who was thin and fit, was incredibly afraid of carbohydrates. She was very afraid of becoming fat, of becoming obese, and she would wake up really early in the morning to go to a 90-minute exercise class. She would do that every day and eat lean chicken and vegetables and never ever, ever touch potatoes or rice or any kind of grain. She was just so afraid of carbohydrates.

When I had type 2 diabetes, I was again afraid of carbohydrates. I would do things like Atkins wishing that the promise of Atkins would be bestowed upon me. That this promise of being incredibly healthy. Oh, all you have to do is eat lots of fat and protein and very very few carbohydrates and you too could be diabetes free and full of health and vitality. Well, I don’t know anyone who has achieved long-term health and vitality by eating such an acid-forming diet, but I felt very sick doing Atkins. But every time I did it, I thought it was me. That I was failing somehow, or my body was broken somehow because I kept reading these books and kept seeing all the information out there that that was the way to go.

Even my doctors would say you have to eat 50 grams or less of carbohydrates. Well, in coming into the whole food plant-based diet, it seemed radical this idea that you would eat almost entirely your diet is carbohydrates. Of course, there’s healthy fats and protein as well within a whole food, but the majority of it is a complex whole food carbohydrate—brown rice, quinoa, potatoes, and vegetables. They all contain carbohydrates and starches, and I was afraid of it.

I chose to dive in because I like doing experimentation, and in eating this way, what shocked me was my blood sugar went even lower. I actually burst into tears. I had a meal, an hour later I took my blood sugar—it was 87. I burst into tears. I eat 200 grams of carbohydrates on average every day, but they’re whole food sources. So I’m eating potatoes every day, brown rice every day, and what I noticed is I wake up earlier, I have more energy, and my body wants to go to sleep at night. I just noticed that my body shifted, and it has more energy throughout the day, but I also wake up earlier. Then my body’s more ready for bed at night, which was really just an interesting shift in just increasing carbohydrates in the form of whole food carbohydrates. 

I know some people who are still afraid, even with all this information, they’re still afraid of eating potatoes. They’re still afraid of eating brown rice because carbohydrates have received a very bad rap. I would love for you to get into more details. You wouldn’t be taking these potatoes and putting butter on them or putting olive oil on them. You wouldn’t put even some veganaise or whatever. You wouldn’t take processed oil and include it in the foods. Why is it that someone can eat more carbohydrates and their blood sugar becomes more stable if they eliminate processed fats? Why is it that we’re seeing that processed fats have a larger role in disrupting blood sugar and insulin regulation than eating a whole food carbohydrate would?

[00:39:40] Dr. Michael Klaper: That’s a key question. Congratulations on your bravery for persevering with a really natural diet, and you got rewarded—as you would and should. Because we are carbohydrate burning creatures. Ask any gorilla, ask any gazelle, ask any buffalo. We are meant to burn carbohydrates. The mitochondria in our cells burn glucose preferentially, not fats. We are sugar-burning organisms, and that’s what the grazing animals are eating. That’s what the gorillas are eating—the leaves, the fruits, and the roots. And that’s what our ancient paleolithic ancestors ate, not mammoth meat. We spent all day foraging, digging up these starchy roots and tubers.

Most of the calories that came in the paleolithic camp were gathered by the women who spent all day foraging for the starchy roots, tubers, berries, leaves, and fruits, but these are carbohydrate-heavy whole plant foods. Nature makes their plants out of carbohydrates. We’ve got this beautiful digestive system that burns them cleanly, and that’s the point. Glucose, which is what sugars and starches are, it’s a clean-burning fuel. Once it goes into mitochondria, the energy is extracted from the glucose molecule. And what’s the waste product? The carbon dioxide that you breathe off in your lungs and water that you pee out in the urine. It leaves the body cleanly, elegantly, and delivers a lot of good energy.

The problem is fats. When people are grossly diabetic—and type 2 diabetes is the most common type because people have clogged their insulin receptors up with fats, we’ll get to that in a minute. Once they’re all insulin resistant and their insulin receptors are clogged up with fats, then they eat some rice, potatoes, or some fruit—and because their insulin sectors don’t work because of the fat—their blood sugar spikes way up. And people say, aha, see those bad old carbohydrates. They’re evil foods for you and they make you fat.

No, they don’t. Carbohydrates cannot, with one exception, turn into fats. They can’t. When you think about it, the body is not going to take a ring of glucose, blow it apart of the mitochondria, grab the two, three-carbon fragments, and start stringing them together and make it a long-chain fatty acid with a bunch of enzymatic steps to turn that sugar into fat. Not going to happen. Your body’s not going to do that. What’s it really going to do? If you, at dinner time, eat a couple of potatoes and a heap of rice, you take in a carbohydrate load at 6:00 PM in the evening, what’s going to happen?

Blood sugar is going to go up, that’s true, and insulin is going to be secreted by the pancreas. That’s going to move the glucose into your muscles and your liver where it’s going to be stored in a form called glycogen. That’s the energy we use in our muscles to walk around, breathe, et cetera. But once the glycogen stores are full in the muscle, what happens to that extra energy? You burn it off as heat. Your body temperature will go up a quarter of a degree, and you’ll stick your foot out from under the covers at night or throw the covers off, and you’ll radiate that heat off to space. It will not turn into fat.

What will happen is as you rightly imply—now if you pour olive oil on your baked potato or on your pasta—you eat fat and sugar at the same time, the body will preferentially burn the sugar and will store that fat for later. That sugar and fat combo does stick to you, but the real damage is done is that is the fat. And again, people are keeping fat in their blood all day of bacon and eggs for breakfast, cheeseburger for lunch, and fried chicken for dinner, or pizza with cheese then the olive oil. All these fats, they’re keeping their blood fatty all day, day after day, week after week, month after month. It never really clears out of the bloodstream.

And as a result, the fat starts oozing into the liver and into the muscle cells and they start clogging up the fat molecules, clog up the insulin receptor mechanisms. And then insulin that needs to move sugar from your bloodstream into your muscle doesn’t work, so the sugar piles up in the bloodstream and goes up. It’s not a good thing to walk around with high sugars. It hurts your arteries, it hurts a lot of things. But the primary problem is not the carbohydrates, it’s the fats. We need a little bit of fat, but get it out of a handful of almonds, walnuts, some olives on your salad, or some avocado in your dressing. Get it out of whole foods. We need some fats. You don’t want to eat grossly fatty foods as far as the things made with egg yolks, vegetable oils, certainly the meats, the dairy, the cheeses, and all that stuff. That’s where it comes from.

Type 2 diabetes is a disease of fat toxicity, it’s not a disease of carbohydrate problems. Your mother—God bless her—your mother didn’t know, my mother didn’t know, who knew? But she was given bad information by the doctors at the time who are chasing these blood sugar numbers. Oh, it’s the sugar, it’s the sugar. No, it’s not, doctor. It was fat all along. You changed that. You got rid of most of the fat when you went on a whole food plant-based diet. Your insulin receptors cleared out, and suddenly you’re able to metabolize that very slowly released glucose that comes from whole rice, whole potatoes. They’re released very moderately into the bloodstream and don’t cause a big spike in sugars, as you noted there.

Again, it’s just going back to natural law. We are carbohydrate burning creatures here, and it’s the fat that seduces us. The folks on the keto diets who have these low blood sugars, they’re all insulin resistant, but because they run the other way when they think about eating any carbohydrates. They never eat any so no, their blood sugar doesn’t go up. And they say, see, it cures diabetes. No, ma’am. No, sir. Your diabetes is not cured. You are insulin resistant as hell as you would find out if you ate some carbohydrates how high it goes, but this is not a state of health. The steak in ketosis week after week after week. There’s stress on the body. I think these folks are setting themselves up for some bad diseases, but that’s another story.

But anyway, ask any gorilla. We should subsist on whole plant foods, and if we do, the gorillas don’t go diabetic, and there’s no reason we should either. Again, thank heavens it’s one of those eminently reversible diseases. If you’ve got any pancreas function left at all, you should be able to handle the glucose from whole plant foods quite well, and diabetes is one of those reversible diseases.

[00:47:02] Ashley James: Triglycerides is something that we have come to know as being a better indicator of heart disease than cholesterol. I’ve been told by my doctor that high triglycerides are caused by eating sugar. Can you explain how we could eat a whole food plant-based diet where we’re eating a ton of carbohydrates but at the same time lower our triglycerides?

[00:47:29] Dr. Michael Klaper: We’ll get to that at the end. Yes, when I said with one exception, sugars don’t turn into a fast. The one exception is if you really flood your liver, especially with fructose, which is not a friendly sugar. Muscles cannot burn fructose. There is only one organ that burns fructose and that’s your liver. If you’re eating way too much fructose, fruit juices, various high fructose corn syrup, confectioners, and things like that, the body will take some of those fructose molecules, rearrange them, and turn them into your triglycerides. But let’s talk about some science here, if you don’t mind.

[00:48:15] Ashley James: I’d love that, please.

[00:48:17] Dr. Michael Klaper: The real issue here when you say triglycerides is a better indicator than cholesterol, realize that all of those statements are derived from a population of Joe meat and potatoes Americans who are eating meat and dairy every day. In those folks, triglycerides and LDL cholesterol they’re markers. They’re indicators. These are the folks you’re going to get in trouble because of what they’re eating. It’s not so much the absolute number of your triglyceride or your LDL is. Atherosclerotic plaques do not form on your artery walls because your LDL is too high. These are inflammatory lesions.

These arteries are being injured meal after meal of fried chicken muscle, vegetable oils, frying french fries, high fructose corn syrup, phosphoric acid from cola drinks, the artificial colorings and flavorings, the detergents, and the polysorbate 80 that keeps the candy bar soft. These detergents injure the inner artery walls, the endothelial lining. Meal after meal, day after day of exposure to this chemical these all rips up the endothelial linings. When you grill a steak or a burger, you are oxidizing cholesterol in the muscle of the animal. When you eat that oxidized cholesterol and it goes over those ripped up endothelial linings, that’s how it’s able to get into the wall of the artery and set off the inflammatory reaction that winds up with a plaque being formed that can rupture and kill you.

But this is an active biological process. It’s not just about how high is your triglycerides, how high is your LDL. There is an inflammatory fire burning in the walls of the arteries kindled and kept blazing by the person’s daily diet. If you are on a whole food plant-based diet, if the only thing you’re running through those arteries are rice, greens, beans, papayas, fruits, and vegetables—just filled with antioxidants without the fried animal muscle, the Neu5Gc, the endotoxin, the aldehydes, and all the things that are inherent in a meat-based diet. You pull those out and you bathe those artery walls with antioxidants, phytonutrients, resveratrol, and all these things meal after meal, the arteries heal. And these plaques melt away as Dr. Esselstyn demonstrates, but cardiologists have become these fear-filled technicians ricocheting off these numbers.

What’s your LDL particle size? What’s your ratio? What’s your LDL number? Doctor, you’re a healer of arteries. Think about what is injuring those arteries. It’s artery abused by the owner of the arteries, doctor. Talk to the owner of those arteries about how they’re treating them. If you never change the oil in your sports car and you’re screeching the tires, eventually you’re going to wind up with a rickety engine and bald tires. That’s what this person’s doing to their artery walls. Talk to them, doctor. Get real. Don’t just raise their statin dosage. There’s an active biological process going on here that will turn that process into a healing one with a change in the fuel mixture flowing through those arteries and those arteries will heal, doctor.

When you say triglycerides are higher, they’re just indicators for who’s beating up on their arteries. Now I’ve got vegans with cholesterols at 210, and cholesterol is not an evil molecule. Your liver makes it, so your adrenal glands can make cortisol out of it. And your genitals can make your estrogen, your testosterone out of it that’s why the liver makes it. If you don’t have enough iodine in your diet, and you have low-grade hypothyroidism, that will raise your cholesterol. There are reasons why a vegan may have slightly higher cholesterol. But if their inflammatory markers are stone-cold negative, they’re not injuring their arteries meal after meal, I don’t care that their cholesterol is 208. They’re never going to develop a plaque.

As I said, when the arteries are inflamed, there are all sorts of inflammatory markers you can measure—high-sensitivity CRP, myeloperoxidase, oxidized cholesterol. There’s a whole panel now that you can measure. If those are stone-cold negative, you get an ultrasound of their carotid arteries and they’re smooth and clean, I don’t care that their cholesterol is 210. I can put that person on statins. They do not have the disease of atherosclerosis. 

There is a medical term, I would say, doctors, please, make the distinction between benign hypercholesterolemia where your liver just happens to put out a little extra LDL in your bloodstream versus the disease—the active biological inflammatory process of atherosclerosis burning in the walls of the arteries. They are not the same thing. You can have benign mild hypercholesterolemia without the artery disease. It depends on how the owner of the arteries treats those arteries.

Thanks for letting me get that out, but I want to free people. It’s what I call the tyranny of the numbers. We’re so scared. Oh my god, my LDL is 184. How many statins do I need? Get off that merry-go-round. Treat your arteries like the gorillas treat theirs. I don’t have any gorillas on statins or any bonobos. There really shouldn’t be any humans needing them either, ask Dr. Esselstyn. He occasionally uses it acutely to drive down their cholesterol for a few months. If you got a patient on death’s door or were all clogged up, yeah I don’t have any problem with six months of statin. There’s an emergency measure. But it’s the food, it’s the food, it’s the food going to heal that person, not the statins. People need to be aware.

I’m giving that masterclass this Sunday evening if people want to hear that in my masterclass. Go to my website and sign up for a master class on healing arteries and hearts.

[00:54:49] Ashley James: Very good. You mentioned that it’s more about what is doing damage to the artery and what is damaging and inflaming the artery. There are all these blood tests and they’re showing either triglycerides and cholesterol. Cholesterol is a catchphrase for a bunch of different sized molecules. It’s like what’s damaging that artery for that person? Is it high blood sugar? High blood sugar damages the artery, all the oxidative stress. What you’re saying is really the best thing to look at are the inflammatory markers.

[00:55:25] Dr. Michael Klaper: Yes.

[00:55:26] Ashley James: Can you break down and teach us what are the safe numbers? You said there’s a whole panel, but for those who don’t know about the inflammatory markers, what is the best way to measure artery damage, basically?

[00:55:42] Dr. Michael Klaper: I’ll be glad to answer that question. Pulling back the focus a little bit though, a wise doctor once said, anybody who’s been eating the standard American diet for more than 30, 40, 50 years, you have artery disease. It doesn’t matter what your markers are. I used to order a lot of these, I don’t order so many anymore. Because the truth of it is no matter what the numbers are, the treatment is the same. Get on a whole food plant-based diet, run those greens and beans through your blood vessels, and no matter what the numbers are, they’re going to take care of themselves.

Ultimately, no one needs to really focus on these numbers. The idea is that what they’re telling you is there is an inflammatory fire burning in the walls of your arteries or not. And if there is, put it out with a whole food plant-based diet. If people are really serious about pursuing this, go to the website of either Boston Heart Laboratories—I have no connection with either of these labs—or Cleveland HeartLab. They have these lovely diagrams and the lovely panels of all the inflammatory markers there. So Boston Heart or Cleveland HeartLab will show you.

But basically, there’s a progression. As the artery starts to get inflamed—first of all, measure the oxidized cholesterol. That’s the really atherogenic particle. See if that is elevated. And the different labs, the other different range of normal. But check for oxidized cholesterol. Then as inflammation starts happening, you start getting prostaglandin E2 two building up. Isoprostane two is one of the early markers of inflammation. And then, as it progresses, as plaque starts developing, you get a protein release called C-reactive protein. And the test for that is hs-CRP—high-sensitivity C-reactive protein. You want that less than one. 

As plaque develops and the white blood cells invade the plaque and start softening it and getting ready to rupture, which would set off a clot, then the enzymes that the white cells use to soften the plaque material, the monocytes release phospholipase A2, PLA2s. And the white blood cells release an enzyme called myeloperoxidase or MPO. That’s the panel. If I’ve got a patient eating a standard western diet and his isoprostane is up, he’s full of oxidized cholesterol, he’s already putting out CRP, and his myeloperoxidase and fossil lipids are up, he not only has a plaque, but they’re probably getting ready to rupture. This man needs to jump on Dr. Esselstyn’s green heavy diet. Boot in, full tilt.

If I have a vegan—10-year, 20-year vegan—who’s eating rice, beans, and greens, but his cholesterol is 222 but his oxidized cholesterol is near zip, and his CRP is less than one. Again, his myeloperoxidase and his fossil lipid, they’re all negative. I send him over to the ultrasound store there and they check his carotids and they are slick and clean with nice laminar flow. This man does not have the disease atherosclerosis. I don’t care if their cholesterol is 220. He’s not cooking up plaques here. He’s a very low risk. This man does not need a statin.

Those are markers. The individual numbers vary with the different labs, but if they’re grossly high or negative, those are the two boundaries that you’re looking at.

[00:59:49] Ashley James: Very cool. Thank you for clarifying that. When you had said that fructose can increase triglycerides if someone were to eat a raw vegan diet that’s more of a fruitarian, would that be enough to increase triglycerides? Or you’re saying more like concentrated highly processed foods like high fructose corn syrup and drinking Coca-Cola, that kind of thing? It’s basically the standard American diet, which is full of processed sugar and processed fructose versus eating whole fruit.

[01:00:25] Dr. Michael Klaper: Correct. When you bite an apple, what’s really in your mouth? What do you find? It’s mostly water, fiber, and a little fructose. There are other sugars involved. There’s not that much fructose, but it comes in with B vitamins and minerals to help with the metabolism of the fructose. Really, how many apples can you eat? You’re not going to be getting that much fructose from whole fruits.

Now once you throw six mangoes, a pound of grapes, four bananas, and pineapple into a blender and make a fruit smoothie, you are full of fructose. Chug-a-lug it down in 90 seconds, that’s a heck of a fructose load. You do that—and some of my fruitarian folks do—that’s a good way to get to jack up your triglycerides and give you a surge on your weight and possibly a fatty liver. But again, there’s no one other animal that does that. I tell folks if you’re going to do a smoothie, it should be a green smoothie. Just packed solid with baby kale and baby broccoli or whatever with some almond milk in there, some ground flax seeds, and maybe some frozen mangoes for sweetness, but mostly greens. 

If you’re making up a smoothie like that, or any kind of smoothie, don’t chug-a-lug it down all at once. Take a mouthful, put the glass down, chew up the mouthful, mix it with your saliva, swallow it, wait 10 minutes, wait 15 minutes, let it get down into your stomach out into your duodenum, let it absorb, and start getting into your bloodstream there before you take the next swallow there. But take an hour, take two hours to drink a smoothie. Don’t chug-a-lug those things down all at once. There’s nothing physiologic about dumping 32 ounces of fructose and potassium into your system all at once. That’s my thought on fruit. How many mangoes are you going to eat? Three? That’s really not going to cause a huge fructose injury to your body, I don’t think.

[01:02:32] Ashley James: Especially because, like you said, the sugar, the fructose is bound to the fiber, the body has to break down the fiber, and the fiber helps feed the healthy gut biome. It slows everything down. I was fascinated when I learned that the body takes nine hours to utilize all of the carbohydrates, the fuel, the energy from a sweet potato or a yam. So you eat a yam, it’s nine hours of constant fuel slowly being dripped into your system because your body has to break it down, has to break it away from the fiber versus if you were to process it. Let’s say we process that yam into a flour—removed it from the fiber or broke it down, processed it, and made some kind of pasta out of it. Oh, it sounds like a really cool gluten-free paleo pasta. It sounds like a fun treat, but that would shoot up blood sugar much quicker because we process the fiber or removed the fiber.

So when you eat whole food, it reacts much differently in the body than any kind of processed food, especially if a processed food that’s had oil added to it, which is what you explained. It’s interesting looking at this way of eating because we have to continue to remember, it’s no oil. Really coming back to you, if you want to get fat, you have to get it from whole food. So many people keep saying, but what about olive oil? It’s so healthy. And what about coconut oil? It’s so healthy. There are studies that show that these foods are healthy. 

I keep coming back to then eat the whole food. They’re actually removing it out of all the other nutrients and throwing those nutrients away—throwing the fiber away, throwing the minerals away. Eat the whole coconut. Drink the coconut milk and eat its flesh. That way, that coconut oil is going to be inside that, but you’re also going to get it with all the other nutrients. Same with an olive. Find some low sodium olives. It’s not that I’m against sodium. If you want to eat 12 olives, you’re definitely going to want to look for a low sodium olive because they are packed full of sodium and get the nutrients from that.

You mentioned some really great documentaries. One that I actually went into the movie theater to see is the Game Changers. That one was different from the others because they were following the lives of elite athletes—gold medal winners in the Olympics. There’s a man in his 70s who is able to perform athletic feats that 20-year-old athletes couldn’t do. There were fighters in mixed martial arts battles, and there was the world’s strongest man. He kept referring to gorillas as well and looking at a 1500 pound or a 2000 pound bull. Looking at these giant bulls rippling with muscle or a giant gorilla rippling with muscle. He would refer to them and say, “What does the bull eat? What does the gorilla eat? They don’t eat a giant 30-ounce steak to get their muscle. They’re eating 100% plants. That’s just where they get their protein from.”

This man, who’s the world’s strongest man, gained after he went whole food plant-based. Actually was able to gain 30 more pounds of muscle. That really shocked me. There are people who have different health goals listening to this. Some want to gain weight, some maybe are a little thin—on the thinner side—would like to gain some muscle, like to gain some more definition, or just be in a healthier place. Many people want to lose weight. 70% of Americans and many other countries around the world— because we follow what America does in terms of the diet—the hyper-palatable foods. 

Many people want to lose weight, so 70% of adults are considered overweight and also have pre-diabetes, a diabetic, or on their way to becoming diabetic. They have different health goals. How can someone who wants to lose weight, someone who wants to gain weight or gain muscle, and someone who just wants to maintain their weight but be healthy or maybe reverse a disease, how can they all achieve the same goal with the same way of eating?

[01:07:08] Dr. Michael Klaper: Beautiful question. There are two separate issues, though they do meet in the middle so to speak. As far as the weight loss goes, yes, we are overweight, obese nation. I’ve been a physician for 49 years since the early 70s. I’ve seen this tsunami of obesity sweep through the American public. It’s been eye-watering to see this. Despite the movement for fat acceptance, obesity is a state of inflammation. There are no healthy obese people. They are inflamed, they have hormone imbalances, and they die earlier from clogged arteries, cancers, and strokes. Obesity is not something to be accepted.

Now, the way through it is not to pack your intestines full of meat every day, and it’s not to starve yourself of calories. The beauty, as we implied much earlier, of a whole food plant-based diet is mostly fiber and water. If you start your meals with a big salad, a hearty bowl of vegetable soup, and some steamed green-yellow veggies, already your stomach is pretty full with just a couple of hundred calories. And then have your rice and potatoes towards the end of the meal there, but a meal like that is going to take the weight off you. You can’t hold an obese body on that kind of dietary fair. The calorie density is just not there.

So the answer is just to adopt the whole food, and here’s again that whole food. It’s got to be whole plant foods. It can’t be energy bars, cookies, granola cereals, and energy drinks. These hyper-concentrated, hyper-palatable foods—even if they’re vegan—are not going to help you get a lean body. But as long as it grew out of the garden, and you can call it by name—that’s a cucumber, that’s a cabbage—then keep your belly full of that and your weight will take care of itself. Within 3, 6, 12, or 18 months, you’re going to have a much leaner healthier body. That kind of takes care of itself.

Now, as far as muscle mass goes, it’s not a matter of just trucking down huge bolts of protein and expect your muscles to ripple. One, it doesn’t work like that. You can’t eat brains and expect to get smarter. It’s not a matter of just eating a cow’s muscle or a bull’s muscle and expect to have muscles like a bull. It doesn’t work like that. But before I just blow past that, it’s not healthy to do that. High protein diets are toxic to the kidneys. When you eat these high protein meals—and that includes the veggie protein powders that these bodybuilders bolt down—you slam the glomeruli with 100 grams of amino acids and it hurts them. I’ve seen chronic kidney disease in long-term vegans who are eating way, way too much protein.

Get your protein out of beans, peas, chickpeas, and lentils in their whole form and you can easily make it to that magic 70, 80 grams of protein. Nobody really needs that. Most people function just fine on 40 or 50 grams of protein. Even that’s plenty. But if the bodybuilders eat one gram of protein for every pound of bodyweight, you ought to be eating 70, 80 grams. Okay, so you have an extra hummus sandwich and a scoop of lentil stew or have a nut butter sandwich. You better eat the more calorie and protein-dense foods, but that’s not going to put muscle on you. 

What puts muscle on you is then getting up off your duff and going to the gym or going into the room where your weights are and spend 40 minutes using those muscles. That’s why that bull’s got that rippling muscular body because he’s carrying around 2000 pounds of bone and muscle in every place he goes. The gorillas, they’re constantly doing these feats of strength as they lift their bodies up and they brachiate through the forest. These animals develop these muscles because they’re using them all day. They’re muscular athletic creatures. That’s what builds muscle. Whether you want to get into the whole rippling bodybuilder thing, but just have enough. You want to get to your 80s and 90s with enough muscle in your body so you can get out of a chair unassisted. That’s the most important thing. If you fall so you can get up off the ground. That’s the most important athletic act you will ever do.

When they go to the old folks home on the senior citizens’ home and they see who can get out of a chair unassisted, they’re the ones who are still there the next year. The folks who can’t get out of a chair unassisted often don’t survive very long. No one needs all these rippling muscles. I don’t think it’s a terribly physiological healthy thing to do to really just way overdevelop your muscles. But if that’s what you choose to do, yes, you can do it on plant-based foods. But again, it comes from those sweat in the gym. It’s not a matter of how much protein you can bolt down.

[01:12:51] Ashley James: Thank you for the clarification. You’re mentioning gorillas several times. I guess two schools of thought. One is that we’re evolved from gorillas or we’re distant cousins of gorillas. And then there would be the more biblical Adam and Eve story. Of course, we’re not here to say that anyone’s religious beliefs aren’t incorrect. But for those who have a religious belief about where we came from, why is it that we want to look at gorillas as a good example for our health?

[01:13:34] Dr. Michael Klaper: I don’t want to step on anybody’s religious beliefs. Yes, I’m assuming that if you believe in evolution at all—all the way up from the fish to the lizards to the whole evolutionary tree there—we homo sapiens creature, we’ve come up through the simian line, through the ape line. We didn’t come up through the antelope line or through the ungulates. We came up through the simian ancestors. You did not evolve from your cousin. We did not evolve from the gorilla, but way way way way back, we probably had a common ancestor, probably a lemur or something that was 10 million, 20 million years ago. But we clearly came down the simian branch of evolution.

So we look at the great apes and the monkeys that are on this planet. They’re all essentially plant-eating creatures. Yes, the baboons can get into flesh-eating et cetera, but even the majority of what they eat is still fruits and herbage. It is just because I’m just being true to just our evolutionary heritage there. None of those animals go out. You don’t see a bunch of gorillas banding together into a group of 20 of them and hunting down a gazelle and tearing its flesh.

[01:15:10] Ashley James: They could.

[01:15:12] Dr. Michael Klaper: They could but they don’t. They’re not built that way. Their nature is not in their digestive system. And could they really bite through that hide? It’s not simian-like to do that. We are not carnivorous apes. Because they’re so close to us in our anatomy, et cetera, it’s not that big of a logical leap there to say they’re of the same prototype.

[01:15:44] Ashley James: For those who don’t prescribe to that belief system, what kind of science can you bring? What kind of examples can you bring to show that eating the way an ape would eat benefits humankind?

[01:15:59] Dr. Michael Klaper: Well, certainly, our body gives us lots of indications. Plants have no cholesterol so it keeps our arteries clean and it feeds our microbiome a plant-based diet, breeds the beneficial prevotella organisms that crunch cancer growth and inflammation. I mean, on every level, our body hums along, but when we start eating flesh, and especially in any quantity, our arteries become inflamed and clogged up. We spawn Bacteroidetes and other microbes in our gut that produce carcinogens and uncouple our bile salts and set it up for colon cancer. There are just so many red lights that start flashing when we drift into an animal-based fuel. That alone should ask us to just obey the nature of who we are.

We’ve got our canine teeth shorter than our central incisors. If we jumped on the back of a cow, you couldn’t bite through its hide let alone its muscle, but these short little canines work great for biting into starchy roots, tubers, and apples. That is really what our dentition is made. We’ve got these made flat grinding molded teeth and a rotary jaw joint that lets us chew in a rotary motion to chew up leaves, grains, and seeds, et cetera. Again, we’ve got fingers on our hands, not claws. 

In fact, I would invite people, if you really want a beautiful discourse on this, go to YouTube and search for the wonderful presentation by Dr. Milton Mills, MD. Is man an herbivore or an omnivore? And he gives a brilliant discourse removing all doubt we are herbivorous creatures. And to stray from that is to transgress national natural law and we wind up summoning all those diseases that reverse on a plant-based diet. I don’t know what more proof people need.

[01:18:18] Ashley James: The best thing we can do is learn from our history, learn from our past so that we don’t repeat it. Many of us don’t know what the diet of our ancestors was like and also don’t know the statistics of disease. Could you let us know what our great grandparents—what was their quality of food? What was on their plate versus the diseases they had? Statistically, we’re most likely to die of heart disease. If we look at it, the biggest killer in the United States and in many countries around the world is heart disease. This is why it’s so important. If you eat a diet that keeps your heart and arteries clean, you’re likely to also stave off other diseases. That’s what we see, we learn from the whole food plant-based diet.

This is not a new fad. You’ve been doing this for almost 40 years. This is certainly not new, but it is new to us in that we were raised under the marketing and under the hypnosis of the mainstream media pushing us, marketing to us to eat eggs, bacon, butter, and dairy—makes a body good. Let’s get cracking. We were all marketed to eat a certain way, and of course, our tax dollars are funding subsidies, which artificially lower the cost of meat because we subsidize the corn and the feed for the animals. They’ve altered the food supply in the last 100 years so much and now we see disease skyrocketing. What did it look like 100 years ago or 200 years ago in terms of the statistics of disease versus today? And what was on their plates versus today?

[01:20:13] Dr. Michael Klaper: Oh my. We’ll get to 100 years ago, let me take back 100,000 years. As far as what our ancient ancestors ate—people say, well, how do you really know? One thing we know is that when we look at their encampments, these people—just like us—they had bowel movements. The feces became fossilized, and there are fossilized fecal droppings, called coprolites, all over those ancient encampments. When you look at the mass of the bowel movements of the fecal that they passed, you see the massive amounts of fiber these people were eating. They have been eating about 100 grams of fiber a day to produce these large stools. Again, that’s plant material. Whether they had a mammoth in the freezer and ate the occasional animal flesh, again, the majority of what those folks ate was a whole food plant-based diet.

That said, coming into more modern times here, the picture’s kind of skewed in medical history because 100 years ago, certainly 150, 200 years ago, people were dying of infectious diseases. They were dying of tuberculosis, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, and all these diseases of crowded cities and poor sanitation. That really carried away about half the public there. There were still heart attacks, but I think Eric described the first one I think in 1910. Again, it seemed to be a 20th-century disease, they certainly had gout, they certainly had diabetes, and they certainly had the diseases of affluence—the diseases of kings and queens. Now people ate like that back then got those same diseases. But the regular folks who couldn’t afford meat every day, they didn’t die so much of the artery disease. But again, they were the poor folks who wound up in crowded cities and dying of typhoid and tuberculosis.

No matter when in history we tune in, the diet was certainly playing a major role. But the main thrust of your question, you are right. After World War II, I was born 1947, from that era on, the western diet changed. We got rich in this country, we got high techie, and we got money-driven. The food folks learned that you put fat, salt, and sugar on people’s tongues, man, you can sell them anything. They developed it into an art form. Their science of it. We’re left with the sorry legacy of that juggernaut that got spawned with that lethal mix of marketing, the money, and the disregard for public health. I don’t care what it does. As long as they’re buying my product, as long as my stockholders are making money, that’s all I care about.

Look at our children. Look at the cost of that philosophy and the costs have been way, way too high. I don’t care if they’ve made a lot of money. They’re going to wind up giving it back with all the hospitals, the medical plans, and the insurance. The old saying, pay your grocer now or your doctor later. The one or the other. You’ve got to pay for your health. It’s better to pay the grocer for healthy food rather than paying your doctor to bail you out of the problems that bad food has created.

[01:24:16] Ashley James: In all your years of working with people and helping them to heal their body with food, is there one story that stands out? Someone who you were so surprised that they were able to reverse that. You didn’t expect them to reverse that problem with a whole food plant-based diet.

[01:24:39] Dr. Michael Klaper: Oh my, yeah. A number of them. I had a man in his 40s come in. He had low-grade cancer, but he had some numbers that were of concern regarding his blood tests, his arteries, et cetera. He had read Dr. Esselstyn’s book and he said, “I know I have to do this.” And I really encouraged him to do that. He was living with his mother and father and both of them said we’re fine, but as an act of solidarity to support you, our son, we’re going to eat the same way you are. Not only did Andre do beautifully with his cholesterol levels and his cancer never came back, but his father lived—totally unbeknownst to me. 

He had diabetes, high blood pressure, was taking four medications and was on insulin. I would see the son every month or so and about six months into it, he brought his father with him. His father walked in and gave me the biggest cry. He had tears coming down his face. He said, “You don’t know me,” but he brought in the pills that he was on. He had a paper bag full of pills. He says, “I don’t take a single pill. Every morning I work out on my exercise, I bike like you recommended for my son, and I’ve never felt so good.” You never know who hears, you never know who sees, you never know who gets inspired. We became quite good friends. We see them a couple of times a year. I’ve got a really fine thing with the father now who wasn’t even my official patient.

I had another patient. He was the head of physiotherapy at Truckee hospital in the California mountains. He had angina so bad and he was clogged up. He used to be a football player. He couldn’t walk across the courtyard of our clinic without taking two nitroglycerin. He was in such a bad artery shape. He did a water fast and got on a really lean clean diet, and every morning, I would meet him for our morning and afternoon walk. When we started he could barely make it at half a block, but day after day, healthy meal after a healthy meal, I watched him. I watched the weight come off him, I watched his walking ability increased, and I watched his confidence increase. His face changed as he lost weight. He became a different man right in front of my eyes. And by the time he left our clinic in Northern California, he was walking five miles around Santa Rosa. Yes, it makes you go to bed at night saying yes, that’s why I went into medicine to help people get into that state. Wonderful good stories. Everybody’s got a bucket full of those who practice this kind of medicine.

[01:27:58] Ashley James: I love it. I call my kitchen my pharmacy and you walk into your kitchen, when you walk through the threshold of your kitchen, just know, say to yourself, I’m walking into my pharmacy. Use farm like farmacy. You’re walking into your farmacy. You open that fridge, and when it is full of a beautiful variety of colorful vegetables, leafy greens, it is so beautiful. There’s just something magical about it. I love cooking, and I love making delicious food. Some people are really intimidated by it. There are so many recipes out there. I had Chef AJ on the show a few times. She has at least 100 videos on YouTube teaching different recipes.

Then I got together with a really good friend of mine who got on the whole food plant-based diet as well and has seen amazing results. But not only that, her parents, her mother-in-law, her entire family, and they all have had results. She converts people. It’s pretty amazing. She’s a living example. She’s in her 40s, she was diagnosed with heart issues, or she was told she has heart issues. She noticed that she was having some pain and she thought it was a different health problem, but the pain in her chest was the beginning of angina. 

And then she got on a whole food plant-based diet, and within just a matter of—I think it was less than two weeks, it was really really soon—her walking partner, she goes around the block with a working walking partner very often. The walking partner said you’re walking faster, and she didn’t really believe her. She has three boys around the ages between 9 and 13 or 8 and 13, and they were usually always in front of her. Come on, mom. Come on, let’s go. Keep up. They’re walking somewhere together and all her boys were behind her. Mom, slow down. She turned around and she started crying. She’s like oh my gosh, I am walking faster. I don’t have angina, and then just things progressed from there. The weight came off. I think she said she’s at the same size as she was back in college. Just so many things are getting better.

It’s like watching a snowball melt. It’s like watching your body slowly transform, but not only that, her mother, her arthritis within six weeks went away—completely went away. Both her parents are doing great on a whole food plant-based diet. We’re just seeing so many wonderful changes that are taking place.

She and I got together, she’s an amazing cook, and we started filming ourselves cooking in the kitchen. We made that available through our website as a course. Everything that we can do and I could think of to help people to just try it, just try it. I was so afraid to try it. I had never had a meal without meat. I really went into this kicking and screaming. My husband, I think it was about three years ago, he woke up one day and he was a meat guy. He barely ate anything other than meat. It was just coffee and then meat, that’s all he ate and eggs. He woke up one morning a few years ago and he said to me, “I am never eating meat again.” Just something inside him snapped and he said, “I’m never having anything from an animal again.”

If I had told him that 12 years ago when I met him he would have laughed at me out of the house. He totally transformed into seeing all this health information. Me, I went kicking and screaming because I was so afraid. I was so afraid of what might happen, but I tried it and I was fascinated with the results. At every turn, my body rewarded me with better and better health. I’m still on my health journey, so is my husband, and we’re just seeing the changes take place as we continue down this road.

For those who are just starting out, potentially they’re interested, but again they might be like me where they’ve never had a meal without meat. They don’t even know what life would look like in that way. Maybe they have a spouse that wouldn’t support them in this way. Can you give us some resources or some tips, or maybe just walk us through what they can do to transition or try this out? 

[01:32:26] Dr. Michael Klaper: Absolutely. If they have a pencil and paper or they can remember this. Go to a website with these initials pcrm.org—Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. They have a 21-day plant-based kickstart program there that will walk you through. They’ll find your favorite food. You start with mashed potatoes and corn on the cob, just things that you’re already eating, and just get a couple of plant-based breakfasts together, a couple of plant-based lunches and dinners. They ease you into it. That’s a really useful website, pcrm.org. But also go to a website called Forks Over Knives and see the film at the website of that same name, but they’ve got beautiful transition plans and recipes. Another one is called Engine 2, which is Dr. Esselstyn’s son Rip’s website. Those four will certainly get you started.

You’ll find no oil and salad dressings there, and you can find everything you need at those four websites, but there’s no end of wonderful cookbooks. Cathy Fisher’s Straight Up Food is wonderful. Katie Mae’s plant-based gym is wonderful. There are lots of resources on the web, but start with pcrm.org and Forks Over Knives and they’ll walk you through the transition deliciously.

[01:34:02] Ashley James: Very cool. Do you personally have any tips? Imagine we’re sitting in your office, we’re new patients of yours. What are the things you would tell us to help us get started?

[01:34:13] Dr. Michael Klaper: Again, take your time. There’s no emergency here. Don’t get uncomfortable, but don’t linger in bad food land there either. As the PCRM folks, let’s start with the food you already eat. Let’s see if we can healthify them. What do you have for breakfast? How about oatmeal with some fruit on it and little almond milk there, are you okay with that? Sure. Or just a bowl of fruit, wonderful. Just drink water if you’re not hungry until you get hungry. That’s all fine. And lunches and dinners, I want a salad with every—Dr. Fuhrman says the salad is the main dish, and he’s right. You want that fresh, live, colorful salad every day, and a hearty bowl of vegetable soup. 

Just start with that. Have a salad and soup as part of lunches and dinners. And realize starches are your friends. The whole grains, rice, quinoa, millet, and buckwheat are wonderful things to put in soups and to put on your plate there and cover with vegetables. Learn to love legumes, beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils, and anything in a pod. Lentil stews and bean burritos without the cheese—should visit your plate frequently. And there’s a world of colorful fruits for dessert. Instead of ice cream, have berries with some almond milk on it. My wife and I enjoy that. Have a couple of mangoes. Have some grapes and cherries for dessert.

It doesn’t take much. These are all delicious foods. Learn to do batch cooking. Make up a big pot of soup and eat part of it and put the rest in freezer containers and put it in the freezer for those days you don’t feel like. You can just pull them out and heat them up, and you only have to cook like twice or three times a week. You just coast the rest of the days on the soups, the stews, and the casseroles that you made up in those big batches. There’s an art to it, and the more you do, the easier it gets after you’ve made these dishes two, three times. You can do it in your sleep. They’re not that complicated. 

Have fun with the seasonings. As I said, you can make it Italian style, East Indian, Mexican, or Asian. Have fun with the different cuisines so you don’t get bored. Enjoy, eat all you want, and you’ll wind up lean and healthy.

[01:36:47] Ashley James: I love it. It sounds great. That is such a perfect way to ease into it, but like you said, don’t dwindle but definitely ease into it. That is such a simple plan that someone can get started right away. Your website, you offer some great services. You do telemedicine, people can work with you, and you also have these classes. Tell us a bit more. When someone goes to your website, of course, all the links to your websites are going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. When someone goes to plantbasedtelehealth.com or doctorklaper.com, what kind of classes should they sign up for?

[01:37:31] Dr. Michael Klaper: Sure. Plant Based Telehealth, this is our official medical services company. I work with two other plant-based doctors, Dr. Laurie Marbas and Dr. Chris Miller, and we do plant-based nutrition consultations. We do 30-minute consultations about any disease you’ve got there, so if you want a plant-based doc who won’t cluck their tongues when you tell them that you’re vegan, go to plantbasedtelehealth.com and make an appointment. It’s very reasonably priced, but that is for straight medical counseling.

But if you want to learn about the plant-based diet, the scientific side, the ethical side, the environmental side, and you want to see videos, et cetera, go to my website, doctorklaper.com. You’ll find free videos there. You’ll find recipes, you’ll find articles, you’ll find Q&As there. It’s just a treasure trove of plant-based information. You can sign up for our masterclasses and plant-based nutrition. We do them every two weeks for 12 classes, but once the course is finished, people can download the recordings. It’s never too late to sign up if you’d like. Again, that’s all at doctorklaper.com.

[01:38:56] Ashley James: Awesome. Tell us what you ate in the last 24 hours.

[01:39:01] Dr. Michael Klaper: Oh, wow. Well the last 24 hours, we always have a big salad going in the fridge. My wife makes these dynamite salad dressings in the blender, and we always have a big Crock-Pot full of super stew on the counter. We’ve got an Instant Pot. We just made some Gordo beans soup. I could live on soup, salads, and greens.

So yesterday, for lunch, I had soup and a salad. Dinner time my wife had made a tofu lasagna and we splurged on cooked foods about once a week. That was our decadent treat for the week. She put up overnight oats before we went to bed. She started soaking oats for the morning, and so this morning the overnight oats were ready. I put in half a quart of blueberries. I love blueberries. I loaded up with that and my wife makes cashew milk in the blender. I put some ground flaxseed and hemp seed on the cereal. And lunch, I haven’t had lunch yet here, but I think she’s making a buddha bowl. I think she’s cooking up some quinoa and she’ll put some greens and some tahini dressing on it. I’m a big fan of her buddha bowls. It’s cherry season here. She brought back some dynamite organic cherries, and we’ve been feasting on the cherries in between meals.

[01:40:43] Ashley James: That sounds delicious. Dr. Michael Klaper, it has been such a pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you so much for bringing your 39 years of experience helping people to reverse disease and prevent disease with a whole food plant-based diet. Do you have any final words you’d like to say? Words of encouragement or some challenges that you’d like to give us, some homework you’d like to give us to wrap up today’s interview?

[01:41:10] Dr. Michael Klaper: Absolutely. No matter where you look, the lights are flashing, the bells are clanging that major changes are needed here on planet earth. By far, the one thing we can do as we are hurtling towards environmental catastrophe is each of us to evolve our diet to a whole food plant-based diet. It’s beyond nicety, it’s beyond your cholesterol level. Large-scale industrial animal agriculture is destroying this planet. It’s destroying the forest, the waters, and the soils and it’s what’s putting greenhouse gases into the air as we cut down the forest. 

We are being told, humans, if you want to survive on an individual level, you want to live a healthy life with clean arteries, adopt a whole food plant-based diet. But if you want a livable planet that we can pass on to our children without hanging our heads in shame, as species, we need to adopt a whole food plant-based diet. If we do, we’ll need so much less land to grow our food that the forest will come back. As the trees grow, they’ll take carbon dioxide out of the air. The waters will run purely again. The soils will stabilize. The earth will heal. But the age of animal eating is over. We’ve used it up. We’ve used fishing up.

The bell is clanging, the red lights are flashing. We’ve run out of time here. What can we do? What can we do? We can adopt a whole food plant-based diet as individuals and as species. I urge people, don’t put it off. It’s the most life-affirming thing that you can do. On some level, if we hold on to our old meat-eating ways, the future looks very bleak. Plant-based diet offer a future of health, stability, and healing. I urge people to take it seriously. Get on the plant-based train, and it’ll take you good places, I promise.

[01:43:22] Ashley James: I love it. I love it. One final thing. I just remembered you said that when we don’t eat processed fats—so no oil—and we don’t eat the animal fats, so now we’re just getting whole food plant-based fats from a whole food source like avocado, some nuts, or some olives. Occasionally, not in excess quantity. We’re primarily getting starches that the body will take the excess starch or the excess carbohydrate and burn it off as heat. 

Sometime after I gave birth—my son’s five—I noticed that I’m not cold anymore, and I attributed that to something changed in my body because I gave birth. Because I couldn’t figure out what it was. I was always freezing. I’m from Canada so I just thought it was the cold weather because it would be -40 in the wintertime, but I was always cold. I had to wear heated socks. You put them in the microwave, you heat them up. I even had an electric blanket in my house. I found an electric blanket that plugs in the car and I would wear that around me. I was just always cold all the time. 

After adopting a whole food plant-based diet, and it didn’t click until you said it because I thought it had something to do with maybe my hormones after giving birth, but it was after I went whole food plant-based. I am hot all the time in the last few winters. I’ve walked around barefoot in the winter even outside. I am so hot I don’t ever have the blankets on me. My husband is amazed. I can’t believe it. Something about my circulation, something about the heat, but I know so many women are complaining that they’re cold all the time. Their hands are cold, their feet are cold.

I’m telling you I’m hot, but I’m not uncomfortably hot. But I run hot now. That’s so funny you mentioned that. Any excess carbohydrates I’m eating the body’s just burning it off as heat, and I run hot, which is really cool. I mean it’s really hot, but it’s so much better than the alternative. It was so uncomfortable being cold all the time, which almost is like saying I had a carbohydrate deficiency. My body was unable to produce enough heat, and now it is having a healthier circulation and producing enough heat. I thought that was really interesting. 

Thank you so much for everything you brought today, and I’d love to have you back on. Anytime you want to come and share more information, we’d love to have you.

[01:45:44] Dr. Michael Klaper: Thank you very much. You’ve done a great service in bringing this information—and hopefully inspiration—to your listeners. It’s a great service that hopefully will help everyone heal including the planet, so it’s been a delight and an honor. Those are great questions. You’re an excellent interviewer, by the way, and I really enjoyed being on your show. Thank you very much. All the best to you and your listeners.

[01:46:08] Ashley James: Thank you. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode of the Learn True Health podcast. You can go to learntruehealth.com and check out all of the wonderful resources there. We transcribe all of our interviews, so you can scan through and read interviews. We have some really great free goodies on the site as well. If you have a friend, family member, or yourself suffer from anxiety, I have a wonderful course where you learn tools on how to eliminate anxiety. How to turn off the anxiety response in the body, how to decrease stress, and increase health mentally, emotionally, and physically.

So go to learntruehealth.com, search through the menu. You’ll see there are many resources on the site available to you there. Thank you so much for being a listener, and thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. Let’s help turn this little ripple into a tidal wave and help as many people as possible to learn true health.

Get Connected With Dr. Michael Klaper!

Doctor Klaper MD

Plant-Based Health

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Books by Dr. Michael Klaper

Magnesium Soak: Use coupon code LTH at Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com

IT'S HERE! Learntruehealth.com/homekitchen
Use coupon code LTH for the listener discount!

Check out the supplements Ashley James recommends:

takeyoursupplements.com

Check out IIN and get a free module: LearnTrueHealth.com/coaching

Dr. Krause's site: https://doctorjkrausend.com

Easy Lifestyle Changes To Improve Overall Health

https://www.learntruehealth.com/easy-lifestyle-changes-improve-overall-health

Highlights:

• Importance of breathing
• Physiological signs that the body is in stressed mode
• Drinking water makes a big difference
• Checking mineral status to see where you’re deficient in
• Physical signs that you have mold in your house

There are many health and nutrition advice out there that sometimes we try to do them all at once and get overwhelmed. But in this episode, Dr. Jannine Krause says, “less is more and daily routines are more important.” She talks about little tweaks we can do to improve our overall health such as breathing and drinking water.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. In today’s interview, you’re going to learn easy lifestyle changes that you can start doing today but will make huge changes to your overall health and well-being. One of the habits I highly recommend you take on is soaking in magnesium. If you haven’t already, go to learntruehealth.com and search Kristen Bowen and listen to my episodes with Kristen Bowen. She shares about all the benefits of soaking in magnesium. No, I don’t mean Epsom salt or those magnesium flakes. I’m talking about her concentrated, undiluted magnesium from the Zechstein Sea that also contains other cofactors. We’ve actually had over 2000 of our listeners purchase her magnesium soak and have amazing results, and many of them have shared the results in the Learn True Health Facebook group.

I myself have had fantastic results. I love soaking in her magnesium. They’ve done tests where they’ve seen that the body up takes 20 grams of magnesium while soaking in it. All you do is put a quarter of a cup of her magnesium soak in a big bowl or basin of water and put your feet in it. Just enough to cover your feet, and it doesn’t matter what temperature the water is. If it’s summer you can have cool water. I did that last summer when it was really hot and it was very refreshing. And of course, over the winter, it’s nice to have hot water to put your feet in. And then you soak for about 45 minutes. You can do it between 30 minutes and an hour to optimally get all the magnesium that you’ll get in that session. You stay in it for an hour.

For children, you can actually put it in their bathtub. It’s completely safe. We noticed right away that our son started sleeping better when we put the magnesium soak in his bath, and he became calmer, which was really exciting. My restless legs went away. My fatigue that I had. I was still having sleep problems because my son was colic, so I’d be up with him in the night and I would have fatigue. I noticed that my fatigue was significantly diminished. I had more energy, my muscle cramps went away, and I’ve been oral magnesium for years and I was still deficient. She explains why you can take her magnesium, her soak, and her magnesium and even if you’re taking oral magnesium, you’ll have even better results because your soak absorbing. Your body absorbs what it needs.

So go check out my interviews with Kristen Bowen. You can actually just purchase her magnesium soak by going to livingthegoodlifenaturally.com. That’s livingthegoodlifenaturally.com and be sure to use the coupon code LTH. That’s the special listener discount. I also highly recommend checking out her Magnesium Muscle Creme as it is, in our home, absolutely mandatory to always have a jar of her creme around. If anyone in our family has a headache, usually just a tension headache, we rub it on our neck and our headache immediately goes away. It is very soothing for any kind of aches or pains. And it’s highly concentrated magnesium that you would put locally on the skin. I’ve also used it on my son when he had a bump and he had some pain because magnesium helps the body to turn off the pain response.

There are many uses for magnesium and I absolutely love her magnesium products. That’s Kristen Bowen. You can go to learntruehealth.com, type in Kristen Bowen to find all the episodes with her. She shares about even how she’s used magnesium to help rid herself of parasites, so we’ve had some create interviews and great discussions. Come join the Learn True Health Facebook group and ask. If you’re interested, ask other listeners, other members of our community to share their experiences with her magnesium soak. I just think it’s a wonderful habit for self-care. It’s something that you can do while you’re watching TV or even while you’re working during the day at your desk. I often do it when I’m doing an interview. You can also use her soak in the bathtub like I mentioned, you can even use it in the sauna, or you can go outside because it’s the summertime and soak your feet outside while you’re just enjoying nature and breathing or reading a book.

This is such a great habit that’ll help you to decrease your stress levels and achieve the goals that our doctor today in this episode is going to share with you. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this episode and other episodes with your friends and family. Please continue sharing this podcast so we can help as many people as possible to learn true health.

[00:04:43] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 438. I am so excited for today’s interview. We have on the show one of my favorite kinds of guests, Naturopathic physician Dr. Jannine Krause. I’m so excited to have you on the show. Welcome.

[00:05:08] Dr. Jannine Krause: Thanks, Ashley.

[00:05:09] Ashley James: Now you practice Naturopathic medicine and acupuncture and you are also a podcast host, so we’ll make sure that the listeners know how to get to your podcast—The Health Fix podcast. I will have the links to your podcast and website in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. You went to Bastyr University here in Washington State. That’s a university I’m very familiar with. So many of the Naturopaths that I work with have gone there. How long has it been since you graduated?

[00:05:44] Dr. Jannine Krause: I graduated in 2007, so it’s been 13 years actually this month. Wow. Yeah, 13 years.

[00:05:52] Ashley James: Time flies, right? It just feels like yesterday. That’s crazy. Since you started practicing, in the last 13 years, what has really surprised you? Have you had any big aha moments as a doctor?

[00:06:07] Dr. Jannine Krause: Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think in the last, I’d say, five years, it has started to come together for me that less is more and daily routines are more important than all of the herbs, supplements, and trying to really spend a lot of effort on testing the daylights out of people. While that’s still important, it’s just that I’m finding that less is more and some of our daily routines might need to be tweaked to get the results we’re looking for.

[00:06:40] Ashley James: What kind of daily habits did you tweak in your clients that saw you maximize the results, that had you have those aha moments?

[00:06:49] Dr. Jannine Krause: One of the biggest ones is breathing, which seems silly because obviously we have to do it, otherwise we wouldn’t be alive. Actually, having folks take the time to slow down their breath but also target it when they’re feeling stressed or when they’re finishing up a workout. Because so many folks I see, I’m in a little bit of a different practice may be in terms of I have a lot of folks who have chronic pain and chronic illnesses, but then I have a whole other subset of folks that are athletes. Pushing themselves to the limits and finding that gosh, they just seem wired all the time, anxiety, and things of that nature. But if we could get them to breathe and slow down for five minutes after a workout, it’s like this parasympathetic reset. Finding that breathing is this amazing tool was kind of a big game-changer.

[00:07:46] Ashley James: I love it. It’s so funny. My husband holds his breath all the time. He doesn’t realize he’s doing it, but when he’s stressed or concentrating, he’ll hold his breath, and then he’ll just do this big exhale. I’m like you got to breathe. You just have to take slow deep breaths, become more conscious of it. If people do that when they get tensed up and then they hold their breath, do you have any steps for teaching people how to reorganize their brain so they begin to breathe in a healthier way?

[00:08:13] Dr. Jannine Krause: Absolutely. It comes down to setting a routine. It’s much like anything that you’re going to practice like learning how to ride a bike. You had to do it a couple of times before you got in your groove. In the same case with breathing, I have folks waking up in the morning starting their breathing practice. Some people are already down with meditating and have that going on. They’ve got their thought process going and they’re just not really taking advantage of the breathing aspect that they could integrate into it. Or we have another set of folks who the first thing they do when they wake up in the morning, they grab their phones and start looking at the newsfeed, texts, or things of that nature.

There’s a great little time frame in our morning when we first open our eyes that we can work on some of our breathing techniques. I’m talking like five counts inhale, seven counts exhale, that kind of stuff. And then finding time throughout the day that we can practice it. Usually, I’m finding that folks will have little stressors right around the time that they’re either driving to work or right before they start work, so I’ll do another session then. And then after work kind of trying to close down the day because I think so many of us like go from work and then boom right to the next thing.

Now, granted, the coronavirus has given us a little time to not have to have so many social events after work, but unfortunately, so many people don’t take advantage of that time frame after work to unwind. And I think that’s a great time to start to practice working on breath work and flipping out of the sympathetic mode into a parasympathetic mode so that you can chill for the rest of the evening.

[00:09:53] Ashley James: For those who don’t know if that is, you’re switching the nervous system into a state of healing and switching it out of a state of stress.

[00:10:01] Dr. Jannine Krause: Absolutely, yes. We’re all sympathetic-driven just the way our society is. Meaning, that we’re constantly on alert. Our nervous system is in fight-or-flight mode most of the time. And to switch into parasympathetic, which is known as rest, digest, and I add in the chill component, it’s huge for us because so many people are caught in being chronically fatigued and chronically anxious because they’re literally running marathons within their body. Whether they realize it or not, that sympathetic mode and that fight-or-flight mode just keep them on for hours and hours on end. Taking more time to pull yourself out of it and flip that switch is huge. It can be a game-changer.

[00:10:48] Ashley James: Since Naturopathic medicine is science-based, what changes did you see in labs? Or did you actually see some changes when your patients started to change their breathing that had you go aha, this minimalistic approach is actually we’re maximizing all the things we’re doing with them because they’ve started to breathe better?

[00:11:12] Dr. Jannine Krause: Absolutely. I think that’s one of the ways when I started to connect like huh, if we tried this, would it change labs? In particular, a couple of different things that I’ve found over time—cortisol, in particular saliva cortisol tests are something that I use. I use it in terms of four points. If folks who are listening aren’t familiar with a saliva cortisol test, you are going to spit into a little tube and you’re going to do it when you wake up, before lunch, before dinner, and before bedtime. What we’re going to do is look at that pattern in terms of what’s happening with your cortisol release. Naturally, we’re supposed to have higher amounts of cortisol in the morning, then it’s going to taper off, and it’s going to go down lower to get us ready to go to bed in the evening.

What I found, with a lot of folks who were not taking the time to breathe and were pretty stressed out, that we had either really high spikes in the morning right about the time the folks were going to go to work. Or we were having higher earlier spikes, say 3:00 AM, 4:00 AM in the morning, which can also be related to hormone stuff and we can talk about that later but I would see that. And then I would see the second blip of an increase in cortisol right around the evening time, almost like someone was becoming more amped up and the body was having signals that they should have more cortisol around 5:00 PM, 6:00 PM.

With working with breathwork, I timed it to when the cortisol was out of range. Like I mentioned before, the morning is always a good time for most people. I see that 9 times out of 10, then I see it 9 times out of 10 before work, and then this evening time. I had people working on their breath work and then three months later or six months later, depending on the individual we were retesting. Sure enough, we were able to bring down the cortisol from doing that.

I also added in a little bit of ashwagandha as well in some cases, so I can’t say 100% breathing, but I did see, in quite a few folks, quite a difference of bringing things down. That was one of my first inclinations like okay, we can do this. Then the next was starting to look at hormones and thyroids because so many people are on thyroid medication and they’re not seeing results. They’re not feeling good. As a Naturopathic doctor, I get mad. I’m like I’m not fixing this person. Why am I not helping them? What’s going on? What are we doing wrong?

One of the things I found is that if we can get the body out of sympathetic mode a little bit more, we start to see the T4, which is your hormone that comes directly out of the thyroid, we start to see that coming up and we start to see conversion better. T4 is the hormone that comes out of the thyroid and it gets converted to T3. We’re starting to see higher levels of T3 compared to someone who had lower T3 levels, and we’re just getting more and more medication to try to bump up the T3, so a little Cytomel if you’re familiar with that medication, that is a T3 supplement. I found that these folks didn’t need these medications anymore. Almost as if their metabolism was starting to kick in naturally on their own when we were working with getting them out of sympathetic mode and more into the parasympathetic mode with breathing.

[00:14:28] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. I love it. The body becomes more efficient, it responds to protocols. I think, in this society, we really do not value getting out of stress mode. We really don’t value self-care. It’s kind of like oh yeah, that’s for other people. I’m a mom. I also have a job. I have this, I have that. We think I’ve got to cook dinner, then I have to do this, and I have this list of things I have to do. We don’t put self-care on that list because it doesn’t seem important. I was just talking to a client yesterday. She has these bouts of panic attacks where it’s so bad she has to lie on the floor and just do breathing. Her whole body feels like it’s dizzy and spinning and her heart is pounding.

We talked about a list that she can make of things that really help to manage her stress like going for walks, taking a hot shower while doing some breathing in the shower, and having a tickle fight with her kids. Make a list of things she knows gets her out of stress mode and to do them throughout the day. I said, “I bet if you think about the last time you had one of those panic attacks were on the floor totally unable to be there for your kids because you have to lie on the floor for 45 minutes. If you think about it, there were signs leading up to that. There are signs throughout the day leading up to the heart palpitations.”

If she’d go to gone to an MD, they might have put her on medication for the heart palpitations, medication for high blood pressure, and medication for the anxiety. Meanwhile, none of those medications—they mask symptoms but they’re not addressing what caused her to have a panic attack in the first place, which is not taking care of herself in terms of self-care, managing her stress, and doing activities that get her body out of the sympathetic mode and into the parasympathetic healing response. I just can’t imagine how many people are on drugs—multiple drugs. And how many people are on drugs, like you said, with the thyroid medication where the medication isn’t even working efficiently because of their lifestyle. Simple things they could change. Their lifestyle is causing their body to break down instead of being a healing mode.

I’d love for you to talk more about the physiological effect of stress on the body and the physiological effect of getting out of stress mode so we can really understand how important it is to put the self-care, install the self-care. As little as five minutes in the morning doing some deep breathing, install self-care throughout the day in order to make the whole body go into that healing mode and stay away from the disease mode, which is being in chronic stress mode.

[00:17:40] Dr. Jannine Krause: I think one of the big connections that I like for folks to make here about the physiological effects of stress—I have so many folks that come in to see me and they have the anxiety and different things that we would think about—stress. But what they don’t connect is why is the wait keep going up? They’re like I need more thyroid meds. I need my hormones adjusted. No, I don’t think it’s all that because I’ve done that with so many people.

In my 13 years, I’m kind of like no, it’s lifestyle. I’ve seen it over and over again work, but physiological effects of stress—you’re going to gain some weight or yes, you could lose weight. But what happens is we start to have fatigue. Fatigue to the point where you wake up in the morning and maybe you’ve had 8 to 10 hours of sleep and you’re like I feel like I got no sleep. I’m so tired. I could sleep for 20 more hours. Just wanting to like pull the sheets back over your head and just crash back out.

Where another area of fatigue you can see as folks might be getting out of bed and kind of plugging through the day but like 2:00 PM they’re starting to really crash. I mean not just like you can solve it with going by the candy dish at the office or picking up a snack. It’s like you have to lay down on the couch and actually take a nap. That is where we’re really starting to hit the wall with stress.

Another biggie, physiologically, that I’ll see with folks is that we actually see the labs start to change. I was talking about it a little bit more in terms of the thyroid where the TSH, which is thyroid-stimulating hormone and this is signaling from the brain to the thyroid, this number starts to go up. It may not be in a completely abnormal number, so let’s say it’s around 2.5, 3. The number at which conventional medicine starts to say you need medication is around 4.5. Some doctors are changing that. Naturopaths start to think about uh-oh, we got problems when we’re seeing that TSH around 2. This is going okay. So our brain is trying to tell our thyroid, hey, we need something going on. Metabolism is slowing down. What are we doing? Why aren’t you responding to me?

That’s one physiological sign. T4 is another one. This is where that hormone coming out of the thyroid starts to also slow down. Now, we’re not pumping out the main hormone from the thyroid that has to get converted for us to have proper metabolism. Now, we’re having issues with low T4 and T3. That could be some physiological changes that you might see. The next thing is blood sugar starts to creep up. We’ll see that someone’s A1C, which is blood sugar, over time in about three months average snapshot of what’s going on with their blood sugar. You might start to realize all of a sudden oh my gosh, I’m pre-diabetic, which is an A1C of 5.7 or you might be right on the borderline or you might actually have your fasting glucose going up. You’re going okay, that’s weird. You’re gaining weight on top of that, and your thyroid numbers are starting to suffer and be lower.

These are some of the physiologic signs. Now, another physiologic sign that’s really common, and a lot of people will start to play off, is multiple food sensitivities. When you start to be like I just can’t tolerate foods anymore, or I can’t tolerate dairy, wheat, or wine. That’s usually when people start getting upset is when the wine is starting to bother them and I’ll get complaints, but that is a sign that you’re physiologically starting to become stressed because your body’s getting overloaded. Rashes are another big physiologic sign that we’re starting to overload the system. That’s a snapshot of what’s most common. I will tend to see things where we’ve got autoimmune antibodies starting to pop up. When we go specifics, we don’t see anything specific but the autoimmune antibodies come up as well, so the body starts to attack itself a little bit.

These are all some of the most common physiologic signs that I see in my practice in addition to pain. Pain comes along with the CRP, which is known as C-reactive protein. That’s an inflammation marker in our blood. That’ll start to go up and the pain will go up. Sed rate which is how sticky your blood is as I talk to folks about. Platelets might increase as well, and you might even see eosinophils or basophils which are white blood cell markers that there is an allergic surveillance reaction going on in the body. That it’s sending off signals something isn’t right. I’m getting overloaded. Ashley, that’s what I look at to see what’s going on physiologically if someone is starting to get to overload of the sympathetic nervous system mode.

[00:22:32] Ashley James: Can you walk us through physiologically? So someone’s in stress mode for a long period of time. What’s causing multiple food sensitivities? Is it that when we’re in sympathetic nervous system response that the body shunts blood away from the core, away from digestion so digestion suffers? Does being in stress mode affect the microbiome? Does it increase the chances of leaky gut? Or is it that when people are stressed out they’re probably eating foods that are harming their gut? Can you just walk us through what you think is the root cause of why long-term stress causes food sensitivities?

[00:23:15] Dr. Jannine Krause: I think all of those. D, all of the above. Your microbiome changes as you’re stressed because certain bugs are super sensitive. The lactobacillus family is extremely sensitive to stress, and you’ll see it low on stool samples in someone who’s really stressed out. Your gut lining separates the part with stress. One of the most, I guess, common examples I use in my office is looking at some of the big marathon runners who win. A lot of them will have bowel issues, and unfortunately, sometimes they get documented on some of the media in terms of the gut not behaving. There is a true thing of gastritis related to exercise because of the stressors it puts on the body. You don’t actually have to run a marathon to have that same kind of reaction.

The other thing with like you were saying the blood shunting away and being in the muscles because we’re at this state of any moment we need to run away from that bear. Not having the blood in the digestive system to help us with circulating the molecules, things sit longer, we don’t produce digestive enzymes like we should. We don’t produce the hydrochloric acid to break things down like we should. So that, combined with when we’re stressed, we’re usually eating on the go. We’re usually not sitting down and taking our leisurely time to eat. We’re eating faster so bigger pieces of food get in the gut. They sit, they ferment, they irritate the lining, and now we’ve got issues with leaky gut happening there.

Yeast is another common bug in the gut that is naturally supposed to be there, but in excess, its little finger that grows out and spreads cells apart. That can be a leaky gut factor. And we also have the factor of declining estrogens, in particular estradiol and progesterone. Lower amounts of estradiol will also have an effect on the gut lining just like it has an effect on your skin. I like to tell folks that what you see on the outside on your skin is kind of a reflection of what’s on the inside of your gut lining. So if you’re getting wrinkly, chances are, the inside of your gut is getting a little wrinkly and might be getting a little leaky at the same time.

Progesterone, if we drop on progesterone and just a little insight for folks if it’s not been mentioned or you’re not familiar, when the body stress we steal progesterone. We steal the precursors to make cortisol versus progesterone. Progesterone is needed to keep histamines in check. So if you’re eating a lot of high histamine foods like tomatoes or let’s go with nuts, seeds, or maybe some aged cheese, chocolate, all the good stuff in life. All of that stuff can create more histamine reactions within the gut, which creates more of an inflammatory reaction. And now we end up with leaky gut too. There are a lot of different factors that can be contributing to this.

[00:26:11] Ashley James: It’s really interesting about histamine that it’s converted in the gut. Isn’t it converted in the large intestine? Or it’s broken down I should say.

[00:26:25] Dr. Jannine Krause: Yes. The liver and large intestine have a lot to do with histamine breakdown.

[00:26:33] Ashley James: Can you explain a bit about that? Because I think a lot of people have allergies and then they just take medication for it. But of course, my listeners want to do things naturally and actually get to the root cause and heal. I had a woman who was on medications for many years. It was a prescription drug for hay fever and having to deal with pollen. She lived up in Northern Alberta. She said that if she didn’t take her pill every day, during the spring, summer, and even into the fall, if she didn’t take it she wouldn’t be able to drive. Her eyes would itch and burn so bad her face would become puffy. She just couldn’t even see enough to drive.

She started cleaning up her diet. She cut out all the gluten grains and took in a lot of antioxidants, took in some supplements. One day,9 she’s driving to work and she realized she had forgotten to take her medication and she wasn’t having that response. She freaked out. She stopped taking the medication just to see what happened and sure enough, she couldn’t believe it. But I’ve heard this over and over again that when people cut out foods and focus on healing the gut and focus on taking care of themselves that their doctor told them, their MD told them they would have allergies their whole life. That’s it. You’ve got to be on this medication for the rest of your life.

It’s such an injustice that is done, which she actually looked at the side effects that it said that if you took this medication long-term it can cause cancer, and her doctor never warned her about that which is really frustrating that there are nasty side effects to so many medications and yet we’re just masking a symptom of a broken body and we can heal our body. Just tell us a bit more about how we can help the body to metabolize histamine correctly and correct the situation for those who have allergies.

[00:28:31] Dr. Jannine Krause: Sure. Histamine, we have a couple of different things. Diamine oxidase, otherwise known as DAO, is the enzyme that helps break down excess histamine in the body. It can do it in our kidneys, it can do it on the lining of our intestines, also helps in the liver, and this enzyme is a game-changer, but it can be blocked based on certain foods, and it can be blocked based on how irritated a gut is. What can you do? There’s a lot of foods and there’s a whole list—and I think it would be exhaustive for me to do the whole list—but often what I’m finding is having folks go through a list of the high histamine foods to just really go okay how many of these am I eating in a day and how much together?

Because tomatoes and cheese—like aged cheese’s—that seems to go together in a lot of recipes, so do spicy foods, so do things like having pineapple salsas, for example. Now you’ve got pineapple and you’ve got tomato. Two things that are super high in histamines. It’s a little bit of slipping out the histamine connection there. There’s a gal, Dr. Becky Campbell, she has a great book that I use for patients because it has four phases of helping you go through the histamine connections in the body and going okay, how many of these things do I eat at once? I joked earlier about the delicious things in life being part of the problem with histamines because what I often will find is folks will come to me after they’ve been to like a wine party.

They’ve had aged cheese. They’ve had like almonds. They’ve had chocolate. They’ve had sausages or different types of cured meats. And they’re like I’m so itchy and I don’t feel good. It’s going oh my gosh, you just ate every single high histamine food in the universe in one evening. Unfortunately, it’s overloaded, builds over time. One of the ways that we can help our body to clear these guys is to limit the amount that we have in one sitting, but also I will have folks—if you know you’re going to go to a wine party and you know you’re sensitive and you’re just like I don’t care I really just want to have fun—take a combination of nettles or quercetin. My favorite is a brand and called Ortho Molecular D-Hist. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that guy, but it’s one of my favorites for just knocking down histamine so that we don’t have a reaction when we go out for that food.

Now granted, is something happening in your gut? Absolutely. It’s not going to cure the issue, but it will help you to manage these things. Typically, as in the case of your gal that you’re mentioning, I’m usually going to find out how many of the high histamine or DAO, diamine oxidase, blocking foods are they eating and can we remove those over time while giving quercetin, nettles, and things of that nature to try to help manage this. Now, there are also ways to clear out the liver a little bit because sometimes the system you will build up when our liver’s overloaded with toxins et cetera. I will often use milk thistle, in that case, to help clear the liver out just kind of push things out of the way and detox.

Then we have the whole concept of MTHFR, which sounds like a dirty word but methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase deficiency. This is a mutation and you’ve probably had someone for sure talk about this on your podcast. This can be another issue and we’re looking at B12 and folate as being helpers to clear out some of the histamines as well. N-acetylcysteine can help. And looking just that the overall life’s lifestyle is kind of my favorite is looking at how many things that we added adding up to the system. Keep in mind that the more stress you are in general the more your body’s on surveillance mode, and histamines are your natural neurotransmitter in the body to tell the body something’s up, something’s happening.

[00:32:59] Ashley James: I love that. This is such a great example of Naturopathic medicine versus allopathic medicine. If you go to an MD—I’m not MD bashing. I just want people to understand that we have been brainwashed our entire lives by the mainstream media, by Hollywood. We have been brainwashed our whole lives to think that allopathic pharmaceutical-based MD medicine is the only doctor to go to and that all these other doctors are quacks or they’re “alternative medicine”. As part of their marketing campaign, they started coining holistic medicine alternative medicine to say that it was less than. That this is something that you would go to maybe in addition to or less than. It’s a nice alternative, but it’s not the main medicine. It’s clever but it is so it’s so misleading.

What we have to understand is that when you go to an MD, you’re given maybe 15 minutes. Their type of medicine is great for surgeries, for acute injuries, not chronic injury but acute injury, and infections. They’re great at trauma care. You want to go to an ER filled with MDs if you have some kind of trauma.

[00:34:31] Dr. Jannine Krause: Absolutely. Yes, do not come to me.

[00:34:33] Ashley James: But that’s where it ends. Or I should say, you go to more of a specialized one like an OBGYN or you go to one for those specialized care. The Naturopath where they shine is when you go to them you’re going to get a 45-minute to a 90-minute appointment, they’ll examine your entire life, and they figure out you’re not breathing. You change your breathing now all sudden your thyroid medication is working. They dissect your life and figure out—and they take labs and they’re a real physician but they figure out how can I help your body heal itself. You go to an MD they’re philosophically different. They’re reductionistic and that they’re looking to reduce you down to symptoms and parts and manage the symptoms. Whereas it’s a totally different philosophy that you have as a Naturopath.

Naturopathic medicine is looking at the body as a whole and how the system as a whole affects itself. How is something as simple as not getting enough sleep or quality of sleep is affecting your stress levels, or the fact that you ate certain foods that are triggering histamine and you’re in stress mode and now that coupled with not breathing enough, for example, is making your thyroid medication not work. These are things that an MD would never see because it’s not part of their training or their philosophy when they approach medicine.

We as consumers, we as patients need to know when to go to which doctor. You’re not going to always go to a plumber for every problem in your house. Why do we always in our society go to the same doctor for every problem? It’s ridiculous. That’s my little soapbox. I love Naturopathic medicine. Because of Naturopathic medicine, I was able to reverse some major diseases and that’s why I do the show, why I do this podcast is to keep spreading this message so that people who didn’t know that Naturopathic medicine was available could find doctors like you.

In the last 13 years, you’ve been helping people, helping support the body’s ability to heal itself. Can you tell us some stories of success where patients came to you with chronic problems and through working with you, the body was able to heal itself?

[00:36:45] Dr. Jannine Krause: Yeah, absolutely. Probably one of my favorite stories that I have, and I still see this patient to this day because we’re still working in terms of maintenance for chronic pain. Because as an acupuncturist, I do believe that. This is something too that I’d love to folks to really embrace is that we need maintenance. It’s not like we just take care of ourselves and all of our main symptoms go away, our stress goes away, and life’s perfect. We need to maintain ourselves. It’s the same with a weight loss program. You can’t lose your 100 pounds and then expect you to go right back to your way of eating.

I have quite a few folks who are on maintenance programs for helping to keep their body just in balance, little tune-ups. Today actually, in fact, I saw a fellow of mine who has had over nine different surgeries from multiple different accidents that he’s had over the years. He had very, very chronic pelvic pain to the point where he wasn’t able to urinate properly. He was just not even able to sit properly. I mean everything hurts—standing hurt, sitting hurt, laying down really flat, and still was about the only thing that he could do when he came in to see me.

We looked at his labs, we looked at his lifestyle, we looked at where he was hurting and came up with a plan. Ultimately, what happened over time with this fella, we were working on breathing and in particular, a lot of trauma stuck in his body from the multiple accidents that had really shut down his ability to metabolize carbohydrates. He was ending up gaining weight and the weight just kept going up and up and up. Of course, he wasn’t moving because he was in so much pain.

We first started working on what was going on with his stress management because the pain, of course, creates stress. It took us—and we’re about four years in. I see him about once every six to eight weeks. He just came back from a very long motorcycle ride from here over to Boise, which is a good eight plus hours. His muscles felt pretty decent, but if he had done that when I started working with him, things would have been extremely tight and tense and he would have suffered for multiple weeks.

By working with his breathwork and working with acupuncture to help with controlling pain, I also worked with some herbs to help his body to manage stress better, adaptogenic herbs. In fact, my favorite one is ashwagandha for calming elevated cortisol. I also worked with some cordyceps to give him a little bit of energy. I like to think of ashwagandha and cordyceps as giving a little gas, then putting a little bit of the pedal, and then finding what that sweet spot is for someone. We worked with that for him to manage the stress.

Now in addition to all of this with the pelvic pain, we did pelvic floor release techniques. I actually work with a public floor physical therapist with this fella as well. On top of that, he had a lot of gut issues and multiple microbiome bug infections, so a little bit of SIBO going on. In this case, we treated his gut lining, worked on getting it healthy, and then worked on what I call a weed and feed, which you may have heard from some other Naturopaths if you’ve listened to this podcast long enough. But what we did was we helped him to balance out his microbiome. We found that part of his microbiome issues really was coming from just grabbing quick foods because when you’re stressed, when you don’t feel good, and when you’re in pain, you’re grabbing quick stuff and just whatever is going to feel good at the moment and not necessarily great in the end.

We found a huge connection with this guy and his gut and inflammation contributing to the pain. Once we were able to get him eating a little closer to nature, teach him how to cook a little bit because he wasn’t so great in the kitchen on his own, we found a lot of big changes. I didn’t have to use a whole evil protocol as I call it with fancy antibiotics and things to take care of his SIBO. We rechecked it, things are good to go. It just was ultimately calm the stress down, work on breathing, work on some meditation with him, and work on visualization to work on clearing the pathways to open up the flow of blood in his body to create some blood flow for where he was having the stuck.

When I call it the stuck Qi, this might sound super woo-woo to folks, but the pain is blockage in the body. It’s energetic blockage if you get it to the woo-woos, but if you get it to more of a scientific pattern, you look at it in terms of circulation. As we’re finding with a lot of the research on coronavirus and COVID-19, a problem that a lot of us have when it relates to pain, when it relates to stress, when it relates to organ failures and multiple breakdowns in the body is circulation. Pain is a circulatory problem and so is an issue like a digestive complaint such as SIBO. Many folks have been through so many different treatments of bug-killing, weed and feed, and all of those different things and not had success. I truly believe that it has to do with circulation.

The last thing that I did with this fella is worked quite a bit on visualization with circulation in the gut and visualization with circulation through the different acupuncture channels. Taught him a little bit about where they are, how they move, and really starting to enhance that and added in nitric oxide boosting supplements to help with the circulation. And then on top of that, some vitamins and minerals to help with mitochondria. Because if we can’t get the blood circulating, we can’t get ourselves in little factories, the mitochondria working properly.

The combination of all of those together was what got him to be where he is today—riding motorcycles and doing so much better. There are some things I can’t change because of his accidents, but he is going from lying in bed and not functional whatsoever to up and about and participating in life again. That’s huge.

[00:43:31] Ashley James: I love that story and just what a contrast. Did he go to MDs before he went to you?

[00:43:38] Dr. Jannine Krause: Oh, yeah. He had been to so many different docs. I think he had said, at one point, 35 people. He had it on his list in terms of all the different consults. It’s crazy.

[00:43:51] Ashley James: And they tried a bunch of different drugs, right?

[00:43:53] Dr. Jannine Krause: A bunch of different drugs. He had been on antidepressants, gabapentin for nerve pain, Vicodin, you name it. By the end, they were just like maybe you should do some medical marijuana. Maybe that’ll be the answer to your issues and left it at that and tell him we don’t really have anything else for you. Really, his biggest issue was the pelvic pain and pelvic floor dysfunction. Even though he had pelvic PT and even though he had tried to work on it in the conventional model, the pain meds weren’t working, the gabapentin wasn’t working. They’re about to consider a biologic for him for his gut because they were like you’re headed towards Crohn’s. It was just a change in the diet. He didn’t need the biologic for the gut. It’s crazy.

[00:44:49] Ashley James: When you say biologic do you mean a stool transplant?

[00:44:55] Dr. Jannine Krause: No, an autoimmune type of medication. An immune blocking medication.

[00:45:03] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. I get so frustrated when I hear that because so many people become so sick from all the meds. The body doesn’t have a medication deficiency.

[00:45:13] Dr. Jannine Krause: He was not having a medication deficiency, and if he hadn’t gone to Naturopathic doctor, what would have happened? Who knows? I mean much like many people who have given up on their life, really. I don’t want people to give up.

[00:45:27] Ashley James: If he had seen him an enlightened MD who had sent him to a pelvic floor physical therapist, which I have a really great episode all on that by a pelvic floor specialist. It’s so cool. It’s such an amazing therapy for those that need it like women. Most women pee when they laugh and that means they should go see a pelvic floor physical therapist. Men have this problem too, right? If men have problems urinating, have pain down there, or ejaculation issues, they should get examined by a pelvic floor physical therapist because there are so many muscles down there. Often, we’re doing Kegels wrong and putting it out of balance.

If he had gone to just that, he still would have had his other problems because you addressed the root cause which was the way he ate, how he manages stress, his emotional issues around food, and managing stress. You approached his life from an emotional standpoint and a physical standpoint and then supported the body’s ability to heal itself income into balance. That’s what we all want to do. I just tweaked my diet. I eat very clean and I just made a tweak to my diet in the last week and I’m waking up two hours earlier now. I’m like whoa, I have way energy. It’s just amazing how we can make these—I like how you said it. You said less is more. We can make these simple changes in our life and get these big results.

I want to learn more from you today. I want the listeners to learn more. What kind of small changes can equal the biggest results?

[00:47:13] Dr. Jannine Krause: Okay. We’ve already talked about breathing. The next one—it seems like a duh kind of component but it is really important and often gets passed off—is really making concrete habits around drinking water. It really does make a difference. You really do need at least half your body weight in ounces of water a day. Hands down. I’ve seen simple things change just with hydration. In particular, I see a lot of pain and I work a lot with chronic pain. Having someone better hydrated—let’s put it that way—can make an absolutely huge change in someone’s quality of life, but also in terms of gut function. In terms of overall function.

Another big thing is getting outside. I just interviewed, on my podcast, Ian Hart. He’s a great fella who has a book dedicated to connecting back to nature. He and I have a very big love for folks getting outside, smelling the roses, taking your shoes off and earthing. My dad, I grew up in the middle of Illinois. Super conservative area. I was the hippie child wanting to run around with my bare feet. I love it to this day, and I find a lot of people get great, great results with just calming their nervous system by taking your shoes off, getting outside, and just really feeling the ground again or just growing some plants, growing some herbs. Whether it’s cilantro or something. I don’t know why that one just came to my head. Oregano, mint grow in the Pacific Northwest like wildfire here, but these are things that they’re very simple that we just don’t think about.

Another big one is channeling your inner five-year-old. So much of what’s gone on with our life of adulting and having to be professional and having to change ourselves and not being true to who we truly are, it wreaks havoc on us. There are a lot of folks out there who are not in careers they want to be. There’s a lot of folks out there who are not in relationships, and they’re also not in a space of their being who they actually want to be. I have folks look at who they were that when they were five and what did they love to do and playing more during the day.

You had mentioned your five-year-old son. Just looking at kids and how they play, as adults, we’re too cool for that. I don’t know why we are. We need to go back to that and really honoring. You’re sitting there and you’re like ugh, my workdays grinding. I’m not really having fun. Okay, fine. Go outside. Who said you can’t go outside? Who said you can’t walk outdoors? Who said you can’t jump rope anymore? Who said you can’t use a hula-hoop? Whatever it is. It’s something that I think is absolutely huge and can make a world of difference. It also ties into my next thing that I work with on a lot of folks.

I put folks through nine movements in my office. It’s hinging over, it’s lunging, it’s squatting, it’s reaching forward, it’s reaching back, it’s turning left to right, and using those motions to see how good is your mobility. Because if you can’t really bend over well, chances are your rib cage is locked up. If you can’t reach overhead very well, chances are that’s a rib cage and a neck issue as well. And this box your ability to breathe, but it also blocks your ability to send proper signals from your nervous system to your brain and from your brain back down to your nervous system. All of this locked up in the body we have miscommunication.

Now, we’re contributing to that vagus nerve, which is our most important nerve of regulating the nervous system for those of you folks that are listening in. But it’s also the nerve that controls inflammation in the body. If it’s telling your body like you’re hunched over, your rib cages are all collapsed in, it doesn’t rotate left to right very well, you might not be pooping very well, you might not be breathing very well, you might have gas, you might have bloating, and it’s not SIBO. It’s just that your thoracic cage is not moving well. What happens is your body can’t control the inflammation in your intestines, in your gut, in your stomach. We have a lot of things related to this.

I really, really work on mobility in my office big time with folks. I put you through the movements and we figure out how we can get you to move as best as possible within your motions. And I see a lot of change with that simple mobility.

[00:51:54] Ashley James: If they didn’t even realize it. They’re doing mobility tests and all sudden you point out that their ribcage is jacked up. How do you fix it? Do you give them exercises? Do physical manipulation? Do you send them to a chiropractor?

[00:52:13] Dr. Jannine Krause: It depends on the situation. Most of the time, I am going to work on exercises because a chiropractor love chiropractic, not knocking on chiropractic at all or not even knocking on myself because with acupuncture, it’s something I’m doing to you. But we also have to have the homework because I’m doing acupuncture and telling your body okay, this is what you’re going to do, body. Here’s the plan. The body has to go along with it and be like okay, right. I’m going to come along. But we have to have the day in day out, and the exercises are what get the results. It’s not all the manipulations. It’s not all the acupuncture.

I believe it works, but I believe that it’s focusing on the right exercises and having someone keep you accountable, but also having someone watch and make sure you’re doing it right, which where PT can fall into place. But the problem and the limitation with PT—and this is because of insurance restrictions, I know from having so many good friends that are PTs—is that we work on the body segmentally. When I’m talking about exercises, I’m not just talking about your ribcage. I’m talking about what’s happening in your lumbar and spine, what’s happening in your pelvis, and what’s happening in your neck. Connecting it all together exercises not just ribcage exercises.

I believe that exercises are the way to go, and yes I do some manipulations. I do a lot of cupping. I do a lot of Gua Sha. I do a lot of PNF kind of stretches and myofascial release. I think myofascial is one of the most amazing things in the universe, and there are so many studies in Germany. If anyone’s listening to me and going myofascial, what the heck? It’s the wrapping around your muscles. If you imagine chicken. That wrapping that’s around chicken when you pull it out of the package, that is your myofascial tissue that can be stuck to your muscles but also stuck to your skin. And it has a lot of nerves in it and it can tell you where you are in space.

If it doesn’t know where you are, if your body doesn’t know where you are in space it’s going to send a message of pain. A lot of chronic pain and a lot of chronic trauma pain has to do with myofascial connections. There is a ton of research coming out of Germany. A doc with the last name Schleip. It’s great stuff. You can totally google myofascial Schleip and you’re going to come up with a ton of info on it. And I do a lot of myofascial work because I think that is, in addition to the exercises, some of the most bang for your buck to get results.

[00:54:41] Ashley James: How do you spell Schleip?

[00:54:43] Dr. Jannine Krause: S-C-H-L-E-I-P.

[00:54:46] Ashley James: Thank you. I had this really weird occurrence in my abdomen almost like a hernia. I actually got examined by a Naturopath and he wanted me to go see a surgeon. I had remembered that I was told by an old school Naturopath, been practicing for over 25 years, something like that. He said always go to a Bowen practitioner for hernia. I went to her three sessions it took for this so-called hernia to go away. And she said it actually wasn’t hernia. It’s very common after women give birth that the abdomen splits open. I forget the technical name for it. You’re going to say it and I’ll remember it.

[00:55:36] Dr. Jannine Krause: Diastasis or diastasis recti.

[00:55:38] Ashley James: Diastasis recti, that’s right. The abdomen splits open, and she did really neat things. A lot of free range of motion. She would do a range of motion and then she would touch my clavicle and then she would say okay, lie here for 15 minutes I’ll be back. Then she’d come back, do a free range of motion, and then she would touch my shoulder. Then she would have me rest. The whole time I’m thinking this is a complete rip-off. She’s not touching my abdomen. This doesn’t hurt, it’s supposed to hurt. She’s working on the fascia, it’s supposed to be painful. She’s barely touching me. I stood up and I felt two feet taller and I couldn’t believe it.

I bought a package of four sessions. I didn’t even need the fourth session. It was done, it was corrected. My husband who had had a chronic shoulder injury that would keep coming back for 20 years, got on the table. By worked on him I mean like she would vaguely touch an area then say okay, lie here for 15 minutes then come back and just gently touch another area after doing a range of motion. Again, we feel like she’s like a witch doctor. She said she was just helping the body release the stuck fascia and his chronic shoulder pain for 20 years just disappeared. It was amazing. It was so cool. He walked out of there having a full range of motion of his shoulder and he just couldn’t believe it. Really, really neat. It’s so cool.

If I’d gone down the route of what the doctor first told me to do, I would have gone to a surgical consult. I would have gone down that road and I might have had some surgery to put some mesh in my abdomen whereas go see a Bowen practitioner. We have to know when to go to what practitioner. You’re looking at the body using physical medicine while you’re also looking at the person as a whole and their life as a whole. You had mentioned also drinking half your body weight in ounces, and for those who are on kilograms, you take your kilograms and times it by 2.2 and then drink that many ounces a day.

[00:57:57] Dr. Jannine Krause: Yes. We got to cover the Canadian folks and all of the European folks. I’m not as good at my metric system at all. I apologize.

[00:58:05] Ashley James: No, it’s fine. Maybe about 10% of our listeners are around the world and so just for those who are like I don’t know how many pounds I weigh. Basically, drink a lot of water all day long as much as you can, right?

[00:58:18] Dr. Jannine Krause: Absolutely, water. And sometimes I’ll also say if you got some really good high-quality sea salt hanging out, throw a couple of grains in there. I like throwing berries in my fruit versus the citrus because I do think it can have a negative effect on the enamel if you do it too much. But having a little bit of raspberry, a little bit of blackberry, whatever berries in season. Or even apple kind of tastes yummy in there. I like to throw a little piece of fruit, a couple of grains of sea salt and now you’ve got like natural Gatorade if you will or a natural electrolyte drink because it helps.

A lot of us, we’re burning through stuff during the day and maybe we feel dizzy, which is a super common symptom that a lot of people who are stressed out will feel. Sometimes, it’s just you need a little bit of electrolytes because unfortunately, the stress that you’re putting on your body is making your body think you’re running a marathon. What do folks need when they’re running marathons? Electrolytes. Sometimes it’s just you drink your water and throw a little bit of electrolyte trick in there and see how it goes. It sometimes can be a game-changer.

[00:59:23] Ashley James: Coconut water is great for that as well. A lot of headaches, nausea, and dizziness lately because people are wearing masks and definitely wearing masks incorrectly, but medical masks—the disposable kind—should only be worn for 20 minutes and they need to be thrown out. People are keeping them for weeks and weeks. I’m frustrated because I almost fainted in Whole Foods a few weeks ago. I was wearing a medical mask. They hand it out to you at the door, so it was a new one. I’m standing in line. I’ve been in there maybe 15 minutes and all of a sudden I started blacking out. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. I’m getting dizzy. I’m falling over. I was so terrified. My heart was pounding and it took me hours to recover. I was exhausted afterward. The rest of the day was shot. I felt so sick.

I came home and I’m thinking what’s wrong, what’s wrong? And then I read an article about hypoxia where you’re breathing in your own CO2. You’re breathing it in the mask, and these are the mask they’re handing out at the door. I’m not exerting myself. I’m just walking around a grocery store. I spoke to a gentleman at a grocery store who was helping me find something last week, and he was wearing a mask. I asked him, “Have you noticed that you or your co-workers are experiencing headaches?” And he says, “Yes. We all have chronic headaches now.” And he said, “I actually blacked out a few weeks ago.” I told him about hypoxia, but it’s very concerning especially for our state—Washington state. Our governor has now mandated that everyone wear masks in public.

I went to Amazon and googled breathable masks and I found one that’s meant for hunting. It has lots of little holes in it and it’s very breathable. I’m very afraid for people especially children because they’re putting masks on children. If I, as a healthy adult, in 15 to 20 minutes of wearing a medical mask can get hypoxia, imagine what these children—they’re going to get brain damage basically from low oxygen. Especially since now they’re talking about children wearing masks eight hours a day or six to eight hours a day when in school and when in school buses. It’s very scary and they need to know, people need to know that if you start developing headaches—you talked about breathing is so important. And lack of oxygen from not breathing correctly can lead to all these problems. What about wearing a mask? Have you seen, in your practice, people have any negative problems with masks and how do you handle it?

[01:02:12] Dr. Jannine Krause: Oh my goodness, yes. This has kind of put a wrench in some of my breathing techniques with folks that have gone back to work because obviously, they have to have the mask on. But yes, I cringed about Inslee’s comments of us having to have them on no matter what because not only am I seeing hypoxia issues, I’m also seeing a lot of sinus issues and allergy issues increasing. Because unfortunately, a lot of folks in Washington or probably in a lot of states where it rains a little bit more, we’ve got a lot of folks that have mold already in their sinuses.

We add the mask to the mix and now we’re going to have folks that are recirculating what they’re breathing, and if they’re breathing out some methane or if we’re looking at it in terms of methane or hydrogen that’s coming from bugs that are in their gut, now we’re recirculating that back through up through the nose and through the sinuses. And it makes me wonder, what are we doing to our microbiome of our sinuses and our digestive systems by recirculating air too? Not only the hypoxia component, I’m also thinking like what are we doing? Is there going to be an uptick of folks with a lot more of allergies and issues of that nature?

In my office, we’ve been doing sinus needling and we’ve been doing a lot more of reinforcing when you’re at home, that’s when you’re doing your deep breathing. As much as you possibly can, getting outside in your backyard and really trying to make a conscious effort to get the masks off more often than not. And when folks are going back to work, I’m going all right, try to take time before you go to work out in your backyard. Just breathe a little bit without that mask, and when you get home, that’s like you’re unwinding as I mentioned earlier. Taking the time to unwind in your backyard and get some fresh air that’s not recirculated before you go back inside. Because now, on top of it, one in every two homes has mold issues in Washington State.

We’ve got folks being in homes more and more mold exposure there, then you’re breathing stuff. This is a problem we’re going to have. Honestly, you’re absolutely right. We’re going to have respiratory issues that are going to compound by a lot. It’s not a good thing. It’s not a good thing at all. I’ve started to have people use essential oils in masks to help with at least opening up vasodilating and opening up the respiratory areas. I’ve been using a combination of grapefruit and eucalyptus for some people. The doTERRA Breathe works, thieves works, or anything that’s going to help to open up the sinuses—thyme, tea tree—great stuff.

[01:04:57] Ashley James: My favorite is Olbas. Have you heard of it?

[01:05:02] Dr. Jannine Krause: No. What is this?

[01:05:03] Ashley James: It’s my favorite. You can get it at pretty much every health food store, Whole Foods, wherever they sell a bunch of supplements, but I’ve been using it since the 90s. It’s been around for a long time. It’s a synergy of essential oils for breathing, the sinuses, and the lungs. I had this wicked, wicked science infection when I was a teenager. I went to the crunchy hippie, you know that smell? There are no health food stores anymore. Do you know the old school health food stores? Because I grew up in them. My mom had me on soy milk. We were dairy-free. I’ve been seeing a Naturopath since I was six years old. My mom would take me in. I was never allowed to have chocolate, but I’d get a carob or there would be this Rice Dream was the ice cream that I could have. Or they even have this frozen banana with carob coating on it or something or they would give you a little honey stick.

I remember walking in and I would smell all the herbs combined. I just loved being there. I get if I could ever smell that smell going into the old apothecary, it just brings me right back. I love crunchy hippie health food stores. Anyways, if you go into any of those, you’ll find Olbas. They now have a bunch of different things. Just get the essential oil, just get the actual drops, not anything with a carrier. I like putting three drops in a big bowl of steaming hot water, then you put a towel over your head, you lean over and make like a tent, and breathe in the vapors. Oh, it’s so great. It opens up all the sinuses. That’s my favorite synergy for essential oils for breathing.

[01:06:46] Dr. Jannine Krause: Absolutely, yeah. I’m looking at it right now. It’s got peppermint, eucalyptus—I do not know how to say that word—cajeput. Don’t know that one. Wintergreen, juniper, clove, all amazing stuff. What you just described, a steam inhalation, would be a great therapy. In fact, I just talked to somebody the other day about bringing back the steam inhalation therapy—as a breathing treatment—to help open those sinuses.

[01:07:11] Ashley James: And then I love doing colloidal silver nasal spray. Colloidal silver is really good for helping prevent viruses from taking hold. Can you tell us a bit about that?

[01:07:21] Dr. Jannine Krause: Oh, yeah. I love any type of nanosilver products because what they’re doing is they’re a great scrubber of your gut lining too. So when taken internally in the gut, they are much like the effects that you’ll see with n-acetylcysteine. They just scrub the lining. So not only do they kind of cleanse out anything that’s non-beneficial, they do the same when you do the spray in the nose, the throat. It’s just kind of wipes stuff out.

I like to use colloidal. I like to use them combined with dead sea salt. I have a thing for the two of them because I like the combination because the spray will just cleanse things and wipe out when you see it wiped out, and then the salt kind of regulates. It’s like the regulator in there. I like using both of them together and neti pots. I don’t use the silver in the neti pot, just to be clear, but I do use sea salt too in neti pots and then follow with a spray because I think it’s a great way to even things out a little bit. I think that could definitely be something that folks could add to their regimen. It kind of helps the headaches, help with preventing hypoxia, but also the side effects of having these masks on for so long.

[01:08:39] Ashley James: I wish people would not have the mask on their nose and just breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. I mean what they’re trying to have everyone do is prevent the droplets from coming out of your mouth, but if you breathe in through your nose you’re getting fresh air and then you’re breathing out the mask is no problem. I’ve seen a lot of angry people. Put your mask back on. Anyway. We’ll get through it, we’ll get through it. I want everyone to know that if they start having headaches or feel dizzy then that’s a sign that they’re oxygen-deprived and we’ve got to focus on the breathing. As you mentioned how important breathing is to staying alive and staying healthy.

[01:09:30] Dr. Jannine Krause: Absolutely.

[01:09:33] Ashley James: Let’s see. We’ve talked about—oh, mold. Let’s go back to mold for a sec. How could someone identify that mold is in their house? I’ve had a few actually really good episodes on mold. Listeners can go to learntruehealth.com and type mold in. I have two episodes on natural mold mitigation, and it’s quite interesting, by a company called Green Home Solutions. I think they might have a branch in your area, but they use an enzyme. It’s a patented enzyme that actually digests mold, so not only does it kill it but it breaks it down so that it becomes inert and doesn’t harm you anymore. Because if you just bleach mold, it still is harmful to the body. The mold is dead, but it still releases the spores which harm us. So we have to be careful with how we treat mold. Maybe talk about how do we know we have mold? What are the physical symptoms that there’s mold in the houses that are harming us?

[01:10:26] Dr. Jannine Krause: One of the big things that folks will notice is they’ll start to have more sinus issues. I mean headaches and sinus issues are usually the number one. Chronic fatigue like starting to really be exhausted. Sometimes a cough can also be a big sign that something’s not right. I’ve even had people with wheezing and they’re like I never wheezed before and now I have asthma and then we’re like hmm, yeah, that seems odd. Asthma kind of symptoms. Things of that nature can definitely be a big sign that something is not right. Ways to actually test it, there’s a couple of different ways.

You can run through regular labs IgE, which is an immediate sensitivity reaction, just to see if you’ve been exposed more or less. And sometimes it shows up, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s not a foolproof plan but because it goes through insurance, I like to test it just to see what we get. Just drag on that and see what happens. If we’re really serious about going okay, we know someone has mold. We’ve seen it in the home. If we absolutely have seen the mold in the home and oftentimes what happens and I encourage everybody to check this out.

Look at your mattresses, look behind your bed. That seems to be the hidden area for a lot of molds to hang out for some reason. Most of the time, what I find is that because the bed sometimes always ends up against the wall that is connected to a bathroom if you have a master suite kind of thing going on. But taking a look at that and then taking a look in your closet. If you can, if you have carpet, peel up the carpet in your closet see what’s going on in there because I have seen some issues there for folks. Around the windows we all kind of know but still taking looks there. If you do have smoke going on, it’s possible that you could have it in your body as well.

A really great test is a test by—I can’t remember—I think they might be Genova. For some reason, my mind just went blank on me but MycoTOX is the name of the tests. Either them or Great Plains. I can’t remember. Anyway, don’t quote me on that one folks because I am losing train of thought at the moment on that. But it’s called MycoTOX. You can Google that and it’ll come up what the brand is. That test can tell you what toxins you have in your body that are being produced by mold. You can basically take it and look back at okay it’s this particular mold based on the toxins that are produced, and that’s one of my best ways about going about it if nothing comes up from the immediate sensitivity reactions.

You can’t get testing for mold through Alcat, which is Cell Science Systems. They also will do a delayed sensitivity mold test for you to see if there’s anything that pops up on that end. And then, like you said, Green Home Solutions. There are also some DIY mold tests that you can pick up on Amazon, through Home Depot, or Lowes and just get you a really good sense of what’s going on in your home because I do think that it is something to not overlook for sure.

[01:13:30] Ashley James: Absolutely. It’s so crucial. Going down your checklist, what else is really important? We’ve got the breathing as the number one. Drinking enough water. Obviously, eating a healthy diet and stress management. What are the impactful tweaks that are just small tweaks that make the biggest difference?

[01:14:00] Dr. Jannine Krause: We talked about mobility but another big one that I think can make a huge difference is looking at your mineral status. So many of us are deficient in magnesium and selenium. Molybdenum could be also an issue. I think looking at where your minerals are at can give you a really good sense of how is the body working on a baseline level, and do you need some foods that are either rich in those minerals or do we need to maybe have a little bit of some mineral supplementation for a little bit, retest, and see how things are going. I would say, probably 80%-90% of the patients that I have tested for magnesium deficiency came positive with magnesium deficiency. Vitamin D deficiency is another big one. I’m saying minerals, I would also say looking at some of the crucial vitamins too—vitamin C, vitamin D, and vitamin E, in particular, is a biggie.

Genova has a test called NutrEval, and they have one now that you can do at home, Metabolomix I believe is how you say that one. And it looks for these things and tells us how are the mitochondria functioning. Because this is a nice little tweak that while not pro here’s your suitcase of supplements, I do think that tweaking what we might have some deficiencies in is key for helping ward off or manage what’s going on in our body at any given time. That would be something else that I would be really taking a look at.

My other big thingy is looking at heart rate and heart rate variability, which can be tweaks that if you have a wearable that tells you where your heart rates out like a Fitbit or Apple Watch, you can see the actual reaction that your body has to stress and how high your heart rate goes up, but you can also attenuate it meaning breathing down your heart rate. But you can also use your heart rate variability to tell about workouts and if you’re pushing yourself too hard.

In my practice, I do see a little bit more athletes and one of the big things is overtraining. The everyday exerciser might be overtraining themselves and burning themselves out and not know it. Paying attention to heart rate and how your heart rate changes over time can be a really big deal, plus paying attention to make sure that you are not redlining your heart rate with every single exercise because that’s at the point in which your exercising is not benefiting you. It’s actually pushing your cortisol levels up and you’re wondering like I’m working out so hard, why do I keep gaining weight, doc? Why do I keep being more tired? Because you’re redlining every single workout.

That’s another big tweak is looking at your heart rate and breathing down your heart rate and keeping it at certain levels at certain times. Part of it’s called conditioning training and that’s one of my specialties here in the office as we work with heart rate variability and keeping people exercising, even though they might be fatigued and getting them watching their heart rate so that they don’t overdo it. Because most of the time, the reason we can’t exercise and feel so tired is because we jump into a workout right off the bat and wear ourselves out too quickly.

[01:17:25] Ashley James: What kind of tweaks make the biggest difference to someone’s diet?

[01:17:32] Dr. Jannine Krause: Fiber. Fiber foods. We have the whole should you eat Keto, should you eat paleo, should you eat this, or should you eat that? Really, I tell people you should eat your vegetables. It’s probably not the most popular answer that people want to hear because I know that a lot of people want to hear intermittent fasting. They want to hear this diet, that diet is the best way to go. And honestly, if I’ve looked over my 13 years of practice, what gets me the best results in lowering cholesterol, what gets me the best results in mineral status and just overall health and gut function, it’s eating your veggies.

Of course, folks might argue, well I can’t tolerate this veggie. I can’t tolerate that one. Okay. So the other big game-changer tweak would be to cook your veggies, and I’m not talking nursing home style. Blanch them, sauté them lightly. Just something so that they’re a little predigested for you. If we’re talking about things that have lectins, then I’m going to say put them in the Instapot or pressure cook them so you can destroy the lectins, but veggies. I’m not saying be vegan. If you want to do that, great, but really five-plus cups a day, venture on the border of six to eight a day and you’re going to see some change in yourself—a lot of change.

[01:18:51] Ashley James: It is so true. Get in those vegetables. You had mentioned earlier about increasing circulation and increasing nitric oxide. I had Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn on the show, who is a cardiologist that heals heart disease naturally. I mean four clogs in the heart totally reversed with vegetables, basically. But he says drizzle your steamed vegetables with balsamic. That balsamic increases nitric oxide, which opens up the cardiovascular system, and it’s very healing for the endothelial lining of the cardiovascular system.

He has people eat zero oil because oil is proinflammatory to the lining of the cardiovascular system, and he has them eating something like six servings a day, so six bowls, basically. Six times a day eating a big bowl of steamed greens with a bunch of balsamic on it, and it tastes amazing. I didn’t like balsamic, but I started experimenting and there’s so many different balsamic out there. I had this one that’s fig and maple, oh my gosh. It’s like eating candy. It tastes so good. The Kirkland brand at Costco, that’s a good one. I like it. But there are so many different balsamic out there. If think you don’t like balsamic, I would just explore the different balsamic because there are many different ones out there. And it’s so good for you. That and beets, right? Beets help the body with nitric oxide, so they’re also great.

Any superfoods like saying have some beets every day? Any superfoods that are very healing for the body that people might not know about?

[01:20:37] Dr. Jannine Krause: I don’t know if there would be not that they know about but maybe not that they knew what they had in them. Celery has nitric oxide boosting abilities. Arugula also does. My favorite most bang for your buck veggies are microgreens because they have a ton, just packed with vitamin A, vitamin C, and a lot of folates in there because they’re like the little babies that have to grow up and get all that nutrients to a big plant, and why not eat them when they’re nice and densely packed full of nutrients. Microgreens are like my game changer solution for a lot of folks.

I said arugula, spinach, as long as you don’t have a histamine issue or anything going on with oxalates and kidney stones you could be good with the spinach because that’s also in nitric booster. Five ounces of spinach boost your nitric oxide. Beets, like you had mentioned too, I can’t say enough about beets. If you don’t like them, play with trying to figure out a way that you might find them delicious. They’re not what you might have imagined. At least in my age range, I used to think that beets are just like the canned, gross, and slimy things. It’s not all like that. There’s so much more to them.

And then I’m a big fan of sprouted seeds like sunflower seeds because of the progesterone boosting component for ladies in particular. I love just thinking about sprouted any type of like even pumpkin seeds. It’s got a good estrogenic effect. You can use it for balancing hormones. Those are my favorite go-to superfoods that I will typically use. Actually, one of my most favorite ones most recently, as long as you don’t have issues with the garlic family, is the black garlic. So delicious and so great for adding flavor, but also has a lot of the same properties that garlic has but without all of the pungence and the breath effect. I mean if you eat a lot of it.

[01:22:43] Ashley James: Awesome. Cool. What homework do you want to give us? Do you have any homework that you’d love to assign us that we can apply to our life today and start seeing a difference?

[01:22:53] Dr. Jannine Krause: Absolutely. I would give three things and you can choose whether to do all three or you can choose to pick one. If I had to like put all of my little tweaks that give you the most bang for your buck in order of what I see affecting folks the most that I’m going to give them to you. Number one is breathing, but breathing fresh air. If you can get outside—and granted I know that there are smug and things of that nature, but sometimes, just getting out of your home, you actually might have more beneficial air for you. If you can get out by the trees and in a little bit of natural fresh air, so much better. Bonus point to that, take your shoes off and really get back in touch with feeling nature and experiencing nature.

Then my next thing from there would definitely be going on the lines of working on finding out about your pain in terms of where does it feel stuck? Where do you feel like things aren’t moving well in your body, and either finding someone to help you with a little myofascial release, or even just starting with yourself and doing gentle massage to that area. Now, I am saying this and going I didn’t say anything about lymphatic drainage or lymphatic work, but that would be another thing for another day. But I do support it in terms of helping move your tissue.

So get outside, breathe some fresh air, and while you’re outside breathing some fresh air, see where there’s something stuck in your body and give it a little love. Give it a little gentle massage. And while you’re breathing, hold on to that spot and try to imagine taking what’s stuck in that spot and pushing it out through your feet. And that’ll give you a little technique to manage stress, get some good air in, but also work on some stuck stuff in the body so we can improve circulation over time.

[01:24:52] Ashley James: Do you have any studies that you can cite where they have proven that visualization has a physiological effect on the body?

[01:25:04] Dr. Jannine Krause: You know what, yes. In terms of the detailed ones, I might have to give you some details after we’re off the call because I don’t think I’ll be able to pull up right at the moment. But Dr. Joe Dispenza, everyone’s familiar with him. He’s done a lot of work on visualization and change in terms of results that happen as a thought of visualization. It’s not 100% related to pain, but in some cases it is. We also have a lot of data on Qi Gong. A specific style of breathing-related visualizing while doing Qi Gong, that can help with change as well. I would probably say, and I’m quickly trying to put it in my computer really quickly here if I could find something briefly that would help you, so I don’t waste anybody’s time. We could probably give you some data afterward if you’re cool with that.

[01:26:06] Ashley James: Yeah. I could totally put the studies in the show notes. Off the top of your head, do you remember the results from reading any studies where they found that visualization actually opened up blood flow, for example?

[01:26:25] Dr. Jannine Krause: One of the studies that I’ve reviewed here is the Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Journal article back from 2018. They were assessing acute physiological and psychological effects of Qi Gong in older practitioners. And what they found is that the heart rate variability, so the amount that the heart rate could be controlled over time improved. Because as I had mentioned before in the interview, heart rate variability is something that can tell us if we’re tapping into our parasympathetic rest, digest, and chill state. If we’re not getting into that state, our heart rate variability increases. How do we get our heart rate variability to keep it in check and manage it? We have to have proper circulation.

This study was really awesome in that it looked at the correlation between the amount of times that someone was doing Qi Gong and their overall effect on heart rate variability. These folks were able to keep their heart rate in check much better by performing daily Qi Gong. We’ll have the link to this article so that you can see that Qi Gong does work. It’s not so woo-woo, and we’ve got some great data behind it. And why one of the things that I recommend for folks day in day out for helping with chronic pain and stress management.

[01:27:55] Ashley James: Awesome. It’s been such a pleasure having you on the show today. Can you tell us how we can work with you?

[01:28:04] Dr. Jannine Krause: Sure. I am in Tacoma, Washington, so if anyone is local, you can come see me in person. I also offer programs online where we can do one-on-one coaching training, and I look at your labs. We go through all of that stuff to give you a great plan that helps address all of the issues that you’re dealing with. You can also find me on my podcast The Health Fix Podcast. That one is on every single area where you would find normal podcasts, and then my website is doctorjkrausend.com. You can find me over there, and I’ve got all kinds of info in terms of resources, blogs, and past podcasts. That’s a great way to get ahold of me. If you’re wanting to see my personality and a little bit more on me, you could head over to Instagram @drjanninekrause and you’ll find all kinds of fun stuff over there as well.

[01:29:01] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show. You’re welcome back anytime. Always love to have a Naturopath on the show. Any last words of encouragement for those who are on the path to supporting their body’s ability to heal itself?

[01:29:18] Dr. Jannine Krause: Absolutely. Keep in mind that you have everything in you right now that you need to heal you. You just have to tap into it and work consistently. What happened to you didn’t happen overnight so it’s going to take some time to undo what’s happened, but you have everything there. It’s just a matter of practicing and working a little bit at it, and you can do it. You’ve got the tools right there. Just tap into them. Get an advisor, get a mentor, or somebody to help you with accountability such as Ashley or myself, and find someone who’s a really good fit for you and get that work done. You can do this.

[01:30:03] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you so much.

[01:30:05] Dr. Jannine Krause: You’re welcome. Thank you.

[01:30:07] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today’s episode of the Learn True Health podcast. You can go to learntruehealth.com and check out all of the wonderful resources there. We transcribe all of our interviews, so you can scan through and read interviews. We have some really great free goodies on the site as well. If you have a friend, family member, or yourself suffer from anxiety, I have a wonderful course where you learn tools on how to eliminate anxiety. How to turn off the anxiety response in the body, how to decrease stress, and increase health mentally, emotionally, and physically.

So go to learntruehealth.com, search through the menu. You’ll see there are many resources on the site available to you there. Thank you so much for being a listener, and thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. Let’s help turn this little ripple into a tidal wave and help as many people as possible to learn true health.

Get Connected with Dr. Jannine Krause!

Website

Podcast

Facebook

YouTube

Recommended Reading by Dr. Jannine Krause

Joy From Fear by Dr. Carla Marie Manly

Check out the supplements Ashley James recommends:

takeyoursupplements.com

Magnesium Soak: Use coupon code LTH at Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com

IT'S HERE! Learntruehealth.com/homekitchen
Use coupon code LTH for the listener discount!

Check out IIN and get a free module: LearnTrueHealth.com/coaching

Beating Type 2 Diabetes with Whole Foods

https://www.learntruehealth.com/beating-type-2-diabetes-with-whole-foods

Highlights:

• How to reverse type 2 diabetes
• Importance of knowing the body well
• Recommended resources when starting a whole food plant-based diet

Some people have illnesses that they don’t know about until it has progressed to the late stages. In this episode, Eric Adams shares his story of how he got diagnosed with advanced stage type 2 diabetes and how his diabetes went in remission by changing his diet and lifestyle. His inspiring story shows that we can still turn our life around by making healthy choices.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. You’re going to love today’s interview. Please share it with all of your friends and family members who have diabetes—type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, or they’re worried about getting diabetes or their blood sugar. This is going to definitely help them.

If you’re looking to learn how to cook and eat the way that this man did to reverse his diabetes and heal all of his health issues, please go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. That’s learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. My dear friend Naomi and I have created a wonderful course. We teach you how to cook whole food plant-based so the whole family will enjoy these dishes, and that you can use your kitchen, use your fridge, use your stove, and use the food that you eat every day to heal your body. Go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen.

Please also join our Facebook group. We have a wonderful Facebook community. You can go to learntruehealth.com/group or just search Learn True Health on Facebook. Come join our very supportive and wonderful Facebook community.

If you’re looking for supplements, especially our wonderful mineral supplements, please go to takeyoursupplements.com. Fill out the form and a health coach, who has been trained by Naturopathic physicians, will reach out to you and help you get on the right supplements for you, especially the mineral supplements, which are so amazing for helping to restore the body especially when we’ve had problems with blood sugar issues. These supplements helped me along with a diet of very healthy foods, helped me to reverse my type-2 diabetes several years ago, and led me down the path of wanting to become a health coach and helping others do the same.

For learning about the foods that you can use to heal your body and how to cook that way so that the food is delicious and healing, go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. For the Facebook group, search Learn True Health on Facebook. And for the supplements that I recommend that I’ve been working with since 2011 with all my clients the supplements, the supplements that are designed by Naturopathic physicians to support optimal health, go to takeyoursupplements.com.

Excellent. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you love. Enjoy today’s interview. It’s such an inspiring one. I’m so happy that you’re here to listen to it.

[00:02:36] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 437. I am so excited to have on the show today a man who has such a wonderful history in helping the American population and helping the people of Brooklyn and also healing his own diabetes. I love your story, really excited to have you on the show today, Eric Adams. It’s such a pleasure to have you here. Now you’re president of Brooklyn. I’m originally from Canada so I don’t exactly understand all of the politics of the states. Although I live here now and I love living in America. Maybe you can just tell me what does it mean to be the president of Brooklyn.

[00:03:28] Eric Adams: That’s a great question. I don’t know if our founding fathers of the borough understood the complexity that they were going to create in history over this, but it would be equivalent to what many municipalities will call the county executive.

[00:03:48] Ashley James: Okay, got it.

[00:03:49] Eric Adams: Brooklyn is one of the counties in New York City. We have five counties and Brooklyn is the largest of the five counties. I am the president or county executive of Brooklyn, New York.

[00:04:06] Ashley James: It’s kind of like being the mayor of Brooklyn?

[00:04:09] Eric Adams: Exactly, exactly. You have to make sure all of our agencies are providing the necessary services for the residents as well as we put a large amount of money into various capital projects. It’s a very easy way for the people of the borough to be able to reach out to their borough-wide elected [inaudible 00:04:34] because New York is a very complicated place to govern, and this is a good way to do it.

[00:04:41] Ashley James: Absolutely. I love your history. I’m going to have the link to your bio in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com because the work that you’ve done through the years has been wonderful. You were a policeman in New York City. You helped co-found 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care—work that you’ve done in the past is really helping to pave the way for so many people. You also worked in the New York State Senate.

Tell us a bit about your struggle with diabetes, though. When you look at your bio, you’re so busy. I’m sure many people who develop diabetes they’re so busy. I also had type 2 diabetes, so I know. I just didn’t take care of myself. I was so busy doing other things and all of a sudden I broke—my body broke. Tell us about your struggle with type 2 diabetes.

[00:05:37] Eric Adams: That’s a great point that you raised. I remember when I was told that I was type 2 diabetic, I remember my son saying to me, “Dad, you used to drive from service station to service station to get the best gas and oil to put in your car. You didn’t put the best food in your body?” That is our narrative. We pay more attention to the things in life—our jobs, our careers, our house, what color of paint in our rooms, and the type of clothing we wear. That which we have the most control over we really ignore for some reason and we turn it over to someone else to make a determination.

That’s what happened to me four years ago when after years of just abusing my body, I was receiving pain in my stomach, discomfort. I knew it wasn’t gas. It was just really sitting still. I was out of the country and when I came back to New York, I went to my internist and told him about it. He sent me to have my stomach and my colon checked. At the time, when I came out of sedation, I was also experiencing a severe vision loss in my left eye, my right was also going as well, and tingling in my hands and feet. I learned later that I was at the late stages of diabetes, advanced stages of diabetes. It caused the vision loss and it caused the nerve damage in my hands and feet. I couldn’t even feel my right thigh.

[00:07:27] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

[00:07:28] Eric Adams: It was only after that diagnosis that it just started me on a journey to figure this whole thing out.

[00:07:38] Ashley James: Did they have you on Metformin, insulin, or both?

[00:07:42] Eric Adams: It’s amazing that we all know the names.

[00:07:46] Ashley James: It’s kind of scary, isn’t it?

[00:07:49] Eric Adams: The doctor immediately told me he had to put me on insulin right away. He told me that I had to take two other medicines as well. I was given three medicines for my diabetes when I left the doctor’s office. I was given medicine for my vision loss, medicine for my ulcer—that was the original discomfort that I felt, medicine for my high blood pressure and cholesterol. I was just given so much medicine. I went in there with no medicine, I left out with a stack of medicines that I was going to have to take the rest of my life.

He gave me a booklet, which was so significant that said living with diabetes. It gave me instructions on what to do, how to live with diabetes. I did something, I joke about this scientific. I went to Google and google reversing diabetes. That started me on a journey that I never looked at.

[00:08:54] Ashley James: Why didn’t you believe the doctor when the doctor said you had to have diabetes for the rest of your life and you had to be on this medication for the rest of your life? What kind of hubris did you have to go against the doctor to think that you could reverse diabetes?

[00:09:10] Eric Adams: That’s a great question. I think that there is something inside us that speaks to us but we ignore it too often because of the distractions in our lives. If we take a moment to sit down and allow our soul and spirit to speak to us, I think we’ll find more answers than we think because I could have easily typed living with diabetes, but that one word of living I reversed to reversing and it took me down a different road.

[00:09:45] Ashley James: Yes. I love it. I love it. When you think back, how long do you think you actually had type 2 diabetes undiagnosed? Can you look back and see the signs that you had diabetes for a long time and there’s a lot of signs that you ignored?

[00:10:05] Eric Adams: That’s a great question because the numbers are clear that there’s a substantial number of New Yorkers and Americans who go undiagnosed. It is quite possible because I was really at the last, the extreme advanced stages. When you reach the point of vision loss, nerve damage in all those other areas, I was at the advanced stages. I was probably diabetic for a good while. I would say three years probably. My body was just addressing it and fighting it. When you start getting those symptoms that means your body can no longer manage the high level of insulin resistance and it starts breaking down on you.

[00:10:58] Ashley James: You’re a very intelligent man. Looking at your bio, you’ve always been someone who takes action. You went home that day with a bag full of pills. With the news that your doctor says you’ll always have this condition, you have to manage the condition, and you have to live with the condition. That voice inside you said reverse instead of live with. What happened next? You’re googling, you’re starting to read, what happened next?

[00:11:32] Eric Adams: I’m just blown away when I started reading Dr. Esselstyn, Dr. Greger, Dr. Bonner, and other research. I’m like is this for real? Did I stumble on the National Enquirer or something and somebody’s going to tell me they found mineral on Mars. It’s just so bizarre. People don’t realize how bizarre it is to have your foundational understanding of a particular item shattered. That’s what I was going through. I was all of a sudden being faced with the foundation of understanding of life. The concept of disease reversal does not exist in our thought process in America.

It is basically you get to a certain age, you’re going to get this. Because there was a moment in the doctor’s office that when he said it I said, “Well, you knew it was coming. Your mother’s diabetic, your uncles, and others.” We in the black community we use the term that she has a little sugar. We sweeten what diabetes is. In reality, there was a brief moment that I said, “Well, you knew it was coming.” It wasn’t until he said, “You know what, you’re going to lose your vision.” I was like wait a minute, I didn’t sign up for this.

That became a motivator to find the truth. I just didn’t want to be in prison for the rest of my life with knowing I have to make sure I carried my insulin, make sure I carried my pills, and live through and benchmark my life through did you take your insulin shots before your meals. That’s not the life I wanted to live. I said, “I’m going to do whatever I could possibly do to turn that around.” I wasn’t a doctor, but I was a former cop so I knew how to do investigations, and darn it, I knew how to read. I was going to use those two assets to help me find some type of answers to the question. I was not going to be blamed for not trying.

[00:13:55] Ashley James: You start reading these doctors that layout how to reverse type 2 diabetes. Those have type 1, it’s a totally different disease. The body doesn’t produce enough insulin for type 1 so they are insulin-dependent, but according to these doctors, even type 1 diabetic can significantly improve their insulin sensitivity using this diet, this healing diet, so that their body requires less injected insulin. Type 1 diabetics who follow this protocol have seen great results and type 2 diabetics have reversed their diabetes under this way of eating that these doctors have laid out.

You start to see that these doctors are saying that you can reverse type 2 diabetes. Do you start the next day? Walk us through how long does it take for you to start eating the way they tell you to eat?

[00:14:49] Eric Adams: I called Dr. Esselstyn and told him who I was and asked if could I see him. He said, “Yes, I’m in Ohio. If you can make it down to see me I would love to.” I flew to Ohio about a week later and met with him. I was extremely excited. I remember him telling me that if I eat certain foods and do certain things that I can actually reverse my diabetes. I remember laughing and saying this guy is some type of nut. I’m going blind he’s telling me to stop eating steak. What kind of madness is this?

When I returned to the city, I started looking through my cupboard, my cabinets, and my pantry and I realized that all the food was processed. It was high in salt, high in sugar, and high in fat and oils. I was like wow. I said I have nothing to lose. After coming back to New York, I immediately turned to a whole food plant-based diet. Within three weeks my vision returned. Within three months my nerve damage went away, my diabetes went in remission, my cholesterol normalized, and my blood pressure normalized. The reason I went to the doctor in the first place, that ulcer, that ulcer went away.

[00:16:26] Ashley James: Was the last thing to go the ulcer? When did they also go away? How quickly did it go away?

[00:16:34] Eric Adams: That’s a great question because I don’t know when it went away because all of a sudden, one day, I said whatever happened to that ulcer? I don’t know if it was in three weeks, I don’t know if it was in a week, but I just remembered that just one day I just said hey, whatever happened to that ulcer?

[00:16:57] Ashley James: Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, and I’ve had him on the show before. I love my interview with him. He’s a cardiologist who published the world’s longest study on reversing heart disease using diet. His book is How to Reverse and Prevent Heart Disease. It’s a fantastic book. I definitely encourage listeners to listen to my interview with him. There’s a direct correlation between heart disease and diabetes. Those who have diabetes, and I don’t remember the exact statistic but it’s a statistic that will scare you, are most likely to die of heart disease. That diabetes causes heart disease.

Maybe the diet that causes diabetes is also the same diet that causes heart disease, but they see that those who have diabetes are much more likely to die of heart disease. You said that you had cholesterol problems and blood pressure problems, that’s leading towards heart disease. Seeing Dr. Esselstyn, what were some things that you learned from him that you applied immediately? You mentioned that you ate a whole food plant-based diet, but what specifically did he have you do?

[00:18:08] Eric Adams: The oil content, particularly saturated fat. He really had me zero in on oil. Didn’t offer meat all together particularly red meat, understanding the power of that, understanding the power of green leafy vegetables—cruciferous vegetables, understanding the power of that. For the first time, it’s just what’s unimaginable as I think back on this. Here I am, 55 years old, and for the first time, I was learning how my body operates. I could tell you everything about my BMW. I could tell you the fuel injections, the exhaust system, the engine, and everything about it, but I knew nothing about my body, nothing about the importance of nutrients and how it plays a major role.

It was through that visit that I started to listen to the foods he talked about. The power of beans and lentils. The power of different vegetables and what they do. He really started the process for me of learning of what we put in our mouths and how what we put in will impact how your body operates. Our bodies are machines and if you do not put in the right items it needs to fuel itself, then it’s not going to function.

It’s almost like a car. You could put it in bad gas, watered-down gas. It will chunk along for years, but eventually, that engine, which is the heart, is going to break down. Eventually, the exhaust system, which is your colon, it’s going to break down. Eventually, your knees, which are the wheels, it’s going to break down. People who say well I’ve been eating this for years, yes, your car will run on bad gas for years, but when it breaks down it breaks down.

[00:20:22] Ashley James: Exactly. I love the car analogy because like you said, we will take better care of our car than our body. The fuel you put into your car, the work you put into your car to maintain, to prevent problems really does save your car and give your car life. We actually have in our garage a 1984 BMW 633CSi. We’ve had it for years. My husband takes care of it. He babies it. He replaced the engine in it. He’s about to replace the suspension. He babies it.

What’s cool is that was the car I grew up in. My dad had that car back when I was a kid. I get to sit in the same car I grew up in, not the exact same but the same model. It’s so neat to have that. Because we maintain it so well, it’s in the same running state that it was over 30 years ago. How cool is that, right? That’s the same with our body. You really take care—we have 37.2 trillion cells in our body that require thousands of nutrients and phytochemicals every day to fully function.

Sometimes people just eat crap food and their car is going to break down faster. But you’re saying we choose the right fuel for the body. How do we know that the whole food plant-based diet is the right fuel for everyone? You were able to go on a whole food plant-based diet and reverse all your health problems. I’ve seen so many people do the same. If I were to talk to the Eric Adams 10 years ago though and say you’ve got to give up steak, you got to give up oil, processed food, and sugar, that would seem impossible.

I think to a lot of people who are listening, it seems impossible, but you had a paradigm shift. You had a breakthrough in your life. A breakthrough is when what you imagine is impossible all of a sudden becomes possible. You had that breakthrough and you said I have nothing to lose, I’m going to do it. You started eating fruits, vegetables, nuts seeds, whole grains, beans, legumes, and lots and lots of vegetables, and more vegetables, and more vegetables every day. Then you started to see the results come pouring in. What kind of advice can you give for people who think that would be too hard or impossible to give up some of the foods they’ve been eating their whole life and transition to a whole food plant-based diet in order to heal their body?

[00:22:52] Eric Adams: That’s such a great question because you’re right, if you would have come to me as a 30, 40, and probably even 50 years old, I would not have heard you. I would not have heard this message. Some people are much smarter than I. They can hear something important and automatically make a shift. Others, like myself, we don’t make those major shifts and what we’re doing and thinking until we reach a very dark period. Losing your sight and having the thoughts of losing your limbs is a wake-up call. Some people don’t wake at wakeup at all. They just keep hitting the snooze button. Different people are at different places.

What we must do now is to demystify what a whole food plant-based diet is. Because if you were to rattle off to the list of things that I eat, one would automatically say wait a minute those are boring foods, those are not fun foods when it’s just the opposite. The variations of my meals, of my introductions of different spices in my life, and of the way I prepare my meals, I enjoy my food better than I ever did before.

You can get the sweet taste that you’re looking for. You can get a salty taste mixing in lemon and vinegar together. You could use dates to give you a wonderful sweet taste. Fruits have natural sugars that won’t harm your body. It is about rethinking our relationship with food and then finding the entry points for people. What I found throughout this journey is showing parents how important it is to eat, to enjoy a healthy life with your children, and so your children could have a healthy life. It is alarming to know that 70% of 12-year-olds have early signs of heart disease. That’s the number one killer in America.

We send up our children up for failure. I think those are the entry points that we need to find. Each of us, we all have different entry points. Some people eat healthily for their grandchildren, some people eat healthily because they’re going through a personal experience, and some people change what they doing because they just feel it’s the right thing to do for the environment. But we need to be there to show people how they can make the transition to one, food should look good, it should be good, but darn it, it should taste good. That’s how we stay connected to a good lifestyle change.

[00:25:45] Ashley James: It’s so true. I had that fear like oh vegetables don’t taste good, and then I decided to just try broccoli. I made broccoli. I love making steamed broccoli. I just steamed broccoli and I just ate a bowl full of broccoli. I sat there and I decided to just focus on how many flavors I could experience because I was so used to oily, salty, highly processed, and hyper-palatable foods. So just getting back to what is actually broccoli with nothing on it tastes like, and by the end of the meal, I could identify at least 10 different flavors. There’s a bit of salt in broccoli, there’s a bit of sweetness, and there are layers of flavor.

If you just eat one food like just a potato with nothing on it—a yellow potato is my favorite thing in the world. You bake a yellow potato; it’s got the most delicious flavor profile. Just getting back to what does a red pepper tastes like with nothing on it, eating a mono food, just one food and trying to experience all the flavors in that food really makes you realize you don’t need to add oil, salt, and sugar to mask the flavor of these beautiful foods.

I love that you added adding lemon, lime, or balsamic. Balsamic is something that Dr. Esselstyn says to add to your food often because it is really healing for the cardiovascular system because it increases the nitric oxide. I know that you have to go so I want to honor your time. What resources do you have? Do you want to plug any websites or books? Do you have any resources that you want to recommend?

[00:27:28] Eric Adams: The starting point is really Dr. Greger’s book How Not to Die. An amazing book that really is a starting point to allow people to become smarter around food. The second favorite of mine is Forks Over Knives Meal Plan because it’s a step-by-step, day-by-day, seven-week meal plan starting with one meal of a day of what you take out and make it into a whole food, healthy, and good tasting meal. The recipes are amazing inside the book. People who like pancakes, you can make healthy pancakes. People who like rice, you can use instead of white rice, brown rice. It’s just a great meal plan that could be extremely helpful.

The combination of those two books really sets the tone of what I believe is a good first step and a first start. You can start with just meatless Mondays. If you didn’t die because you didn’t have meat, you’ll see that it is possible eating a healthy life.

[00:28:41] Ashley James: I totally agree with you. Meatless Mondays is a great idea or there’s another one where you don’t eat meat until dinnertime or something like that where you try a few meals without meat. That was the first step for me because I had never had a meal without meat. It wouldn’t even be a meal to me if it didn’t have meat in it. To have meatless meals and then go whoa, I feel full, I feel good, this is great.

You said in your story you very quickly saw changes. I really want to challenge people to try it for seven days. To go eliminate oil, salt, and sugar and to eat nuts, seeds, whole grains, legumes, beans, and tons of a variety of fruits and vegetables. Just try that. Just eat those whole foods that are obviously plants that’s why it’s whole food plant-based. Eat those foods for seven days.

In your first seven days, what did you notice? Now I noticed that I woke up hours earlier. I was not groggy in the morning, I had way more energy, especially when I incorporated more potatoes. Because I was afraid of carbs, afraid of potatoes, but when I took out the fat and the meat and I added more carbohydrates—more potatoes, my blood sugar went down and stabilized. That freaked me out because I was eating more carbs than ever, but my blood sugar became better and I had more energy. I noticed throughout the day I had sustainable energy whereas when I ate meat, I was falling asleep all the time.

We are told to be afraid of potatoes and afraid of carbs but it was the opposite. In the first seven days of you eating whole food plant-based, what did you notice? When people set out to do a seven-day challenge, what are they excited to notice in their bodies?

[00:30:31] Eric Adams: Definitely the weight loss. I started to feel as though I was not as bloated, not as constipated, and not as gassy. The lethargic feeling that used to accompany me throughout the day—my day is extremely full and busy. I would have to continuously take the sugar boost, eating some type of pastry, cake, or something that would boost my energy. Waking up in the morning just really energetic, ready to take on a day. I have a full day and I start extremely early. Being able to wake up with the right level of energy is so important because you’re interacting with people in the public, and they feed off your energy. It was just a combination of just feeling different.

I don’t even recall, when I was 21, feeling the way I feel now. My body and my mind, the clarity of mind. But within the first seven days, you’re going to notice a difference in how you wake up, how you feel, and how your body feels. That your body no longer feels sluggish and weighted down.

[00:31:47] Ashley James: Amazing. I love it. It’s so true. Thank you so much, Eric Adams, for coming on the show today.

[00:31:51] Eric Adams: Thank you.

[00:31:52] Ashley James: It’s been such a pleasure. I’ll make sure all your links are in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Your message is inspiring and I love the work that you do. It’s been such a pleasure talking to you today.

[00:32:03] Eric Adams: Thank you. Have a good day.

[00:32:04] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today’s episode of the Learn True Health podcast. Check out episode 232. It’s my interview with Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. Although the title is about heart disease, it’s the same diet that is used to reverse diabetes. In fact, it is used to help the body heal itself from many issues. Episode 232, my interview with Caldwell Esselstyn. I highly recommend you listen to it if you haven’t already.

You can go to learntruehealth.com and check out all of the wonderful resources there. We transcribe all of our interviews so you can scan through and read interviews. We have some really great free goodies on the site as well. If you have a friend, family member, or yourself suffer from anxiety, I have a wonderful course where you learn tools on how to eliminate anxiety. How to turn off the anxiety response in the body, how to decrease stress, and increase health mentally, emotionally, and physically. Go to learntruehealth.com, search through the menu. You’ll see there are many resources on the site available to you there.

Thank you so much for being a listener and thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. Let’s help turn this little ripple into a tidal wave and help as many people as possible to learn true health.

Get Connected With Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams! 

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

YouTube

Recommended Reading by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams

How Not To Die by Dr. Michael Greger

Contact Sunlighten Saunas for their Special Listener Sale during the month of June for Father's Day! Call 877-292-0020

Check out the supplements Ashley James recommends:

takeyoursupplements.com

Magnesium Soak: Use coupon code LTH at Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com

IT'S HERE! Learntruehealth.com/homekitchen
Use coupon code LTH for the listener discount!

Check out IIN and get a free module: LearnTrueHealth.com/coaching

Dr. Judy Mikovits’ Plague of Corruption

https://www.learntruehealth.com/dr-judy-mikovits-plague-of-corruption

Highlights:

• Genetically modified foods cause different diseases such as cancer
• Vaccines are manufactured as one size fits all and are injuring some people
• Vaccines contaminated with lots of viruses
• Wearing a mask causes oxidative stress after some time

Is wearing a mask necessary to prevent you from getting COVID-19? Or is it doing more harm to the body than good? In this episode, Dr. Judy Mikovits uncovers some things that the mainstream media is not reporting. She talks about vaccinations, coronavirus, and wearing a mask. She also enumerates the things we should be doing to have a healthy immune system.

[00:00:00] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 436. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have with us, for me, this is like having a celebrity on the show, Dr. Judy Mikovits. I heard your interview with Robyn Openshaw, whom I’ve had on the show before. Then I started hearing you pop up in other places and many other alternative health interviews. The information you have to share is amazing, but what I’ve been equally as surprised is the pushback from the mainstream media, how they are trying to discredit you. You have such a strong background in science, and they’re trying to discredit you. That makes me feel like you’re on to something. They don’t want people to know your information.

You came out with a book called Plague: One Scientist’s Intrepid Search for the Truth about Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and that is fascinating. So many people suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome that would love to know more about how they could support their body’s ability to heal itself and come back into balance. Recently, in April, you released with your co-author Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science. I’d love to talk about both your books today, and I’d also love to talk about wearing masks, about the coronavirus, and also about the background that you have that educates you in your interpretation of the current events that are going on. Welcome to the show.

[00:01:47] Dr. Judy Mikovits: Thanks so much, Ashley. It’s a delight to be here.

[00:01:51] Ashley James: Absolutely, yes.

[00:01:52] Dr. Judy Mikovits: In fact, our first book Plague, Kent Heckenlively co-authored that with me, it actually came out in November of 2014 and the paperback came out in 2017. What’s interesting about that is the paperback has new material in the front of the look all about what I didn’t know about the Plague of Corruption surrounding what happened to me about the events in Plague. We called it Plague because we associated a new family of AIDS-like viruses with contagious retroviruses from mice, not only with chronic fatigue syndrome. After our first paper was published about chronic fatigue syndrome, it became clear that these viruses, there was a large family of viruses, not only from mice, but from monkeys and other things that had heavily contaminated the blood supply then were associated with not only chronic fatigue syndrome but cancers, autism, autoimmune disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and multiple sclerosis—just a nightmare.

[00:03:12] Ashley James: Oh my goodness. That is revolutionary to be able to see that viruses could be the contributor of or the trigger for those illnesses. Why isn’t this more widespread? Why isn’t this information being more widely accepted?

[00:03:30] Dr. Judy Mikovits: Obviously, the problem is that the government caused it. The paper was celebrated when it came out because doctors everywhere saw it because it was published on October 8th in our science paper of the discovery of this new family of human retrovirus. What I should say is we didn’t necessarily discover it, the sequences, parts of those viruses had been described about two, three years earlier in men with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that was really not familial that appeared to be infectious. My background is cancer research, drug development, and immune therapy. That’s what I did at the National Cancer Institute for 22 years including my last job. From 1999 to 2001, before I left to go to industry, was the lab of antiviral drug mechanism.

My job, in that job at the National Cancer Institute as a director of an internationally recognized program, was to understand how HIV/AIDS-associated cancers. How to cure them? What were biomarkers? What was driving cancer in some people with HIV like Kaposi sarcoma will remember, brain cancers, some kinds of lung cancers, or leukemia? There were other viruses associated. We learned that Kaposi sarcoma, which ended up being a herpes virus, collaborating with the HIV and so you could target both. We’ve made great strides since 1999 in curing HIV/AIDS-associated, not only malignancies but other diseases such that we now know quite well, we see it on TV every day, you can have HIV and never get AIDS. This was my background that you asked for.

It’s experience started with a biochemistry degree from the University of Virginia, started to develop immune therapies. Remember, vaccines are immune therapies. What that means is my entire life’s work is based on the idea, the hypothesis, the fact now that we know is the fact that you can educate the immune system to prevent and treat infectious and chronic diseases including cancer. My first job was to purify type 1 interferon and that interferon was the first immune therapy used. It’s actually, still to this day, a fabulous prevention strategy for even coronaviruses and other retroviruses and would have been a treatment for AIDS.

But the Plague of Corruption, the reason we wrote the second book, is what we realized in August of 2014 when our first book was impressed. What I realized when I first met one of my heroes Dr. Brian Hooker who uncovered, who dogged criminal scientist William Thompson of the CDC who admitted their studies were fraud, who admitted they covered up the fact that if you gave vaccines to black boys MMR in that particular study if you gave MMR to black boys before they were three years old, they had a four-fold higher risk of developing autism and even being killed by those vaccines by SIDS.

Here in 2020, nobody seems to recognize that for 20 years from 2001 when they covered up the data in a paper that William Thompson was an author on and then they had a date a burning party, this is what Dr. Brian Hooker uncovered. He’s really the hero in all of this because had I never met him on August 31, 2014, we would have never realized that the Plague of Disease is this explosion in cancer and chronic diseases that we see today was in fact caused by heavily contaminated blood supply since the 80s, since the earliest days of HIV/AIDS through vaccines, which all liability had been removed from in 1986. They were heavily contaminated by lots of viruses, not just the family we discovered—mycoplasma, mold, think of chronic Lyme disease, and Borrelia. You don’t get a bull’s-eye, why? Because you injected it, you weren’t infected with it.

[00:08:58] Ashley James: I watched the Vaxxed documentary and that’s something I think everyone should watch no matter where they stand on vaccines. I think we need to step back and just be okay with taking in information that may go against our current belief system. If we’re holding so firmly onto our belief system that it becomes dogma, then we blind ourselves to a new truth that may arise. I’m not asking anyone to be in anti-vaxxer or a pro-vaxxer or whatever. I’m just asking people to open their minds enough to let new information in.

I wasn’t expecting to actually receive much new information going into watching the documentary Vaxxed, but it absolutely floored me when I learned about what you just talked about where you can look at the numbers and clearly see that African-American children have a huge disadvantage when given the MMR vaccine over other people with different genetics. Genetics come into play. Can you explain that a bit further? How certain people with different genetics are affected by vaccines, and why are we giving the same vaccines to all children across the board if we’re seeing that there’s more damage being done to certain people of genetic makeup?

[00:10:31] Dr. Judy Mikovits: There are genetic and epigenetic. That means environmental susceptibilities and that’s one of the saddest parts about the story Vaxxed. I appreciate you saying to watch that because, in fact, there’s a second movie called Vaxxed 2: The People’s Truth. Polly Tommey, who was in the first movie and her son severely injured by a vaccine. He was an African-American. One of the things I should clarify is that white boys had two-fold, a higher fold risk if given the vaccine before a certain age. One of the reasons goes back to those cancer-causing viruses and the susceptibilities for the prostate cancer because what happens is, genetically, we have a lot of different enzymes in our immune systems that degrade RNA viruses. This is what MMR. Those are three different RNA viruses.

We inject them in a single shot along with, for a while, mercury but certainly other contaminants, which we’ve uncovered over the last few years since there’s no liability now for 30 years and no safety testing has been done. This is another thing that people don’t realize. Anyway, your detox machinery—your liver, your kidneys, and your immune system—doesn’t fully develop until you’re at least three or four years old. As people think back, I’m 62 years old and I didn’t get a measles vaccine because I had a measles infection. I had the disease and therefore I had immunity from life. I would never, even if exposed, have an issue again. That remains true to this day.

In fact, MMR, it’s not only blacks but it’s dark-skinned—Mexican, people around the equator—they have different responses to the pathogens in their environment. They have a single nucleotide difference in one of the key degradation, so it breaks down. It’s an enzyme that when it sees RNA or RNA viruses in the blood, it just acts like a Pac-Man because RNA in the blood is a very bad thing. You want RNA in your nucleus. You don’t [love 00:13:07] your cell and it’s protected by two membranes the nuclear membrane and the cellular membrane. When RNA and DNA, your blueprints for making proteins and regulating all of your gene expression, end up in the blood and in the cytoplasm of your body, it says uh-oh, that’s a danger-associated molecular pattern—remember, I’m a molecular biologist—or a pathogen-associated molecular pattern.

It goes and uses different kinds of enzymes that recognize those different patterns and it just chews it all up like a Pac-Man. There’s a single change that makes the enzymes in blacks, Mexicans, and people near the equator have 50% less activity. That is they don’t chew up those RNA viruses as quickly. We don’t really know why. Nobody really knows why. In fact, if those data hadn’t been covered up for political reasons in 2001, we in the Cancer Institute who knew nothing about autism, which was 1 in 10,000 kids and when I graduated from the University of Virginia in 1980. My minor was in children retardation, that kind of thing, for children and looking at those kinds of things to try and understand exactly the questions you’re asking. It was educational. Why are some kids sick, developmental disorders, and things like that? Autism wasn’t even in those books in 1976 to 1980, in our textbooks.

What we learn, if we don’t cover up data that reveal inconvenient truth, is we could actually prevent so much injury. That was what was so devastating to me. The realization in 2014 is oh my God, you covered up that those data for 20 years. We didn’t understand why there were differences because we didn’t even understand RNA cells and the immune system or these pathways. New technology, new data, and new opportunities for healing diseases, and understanding the causes. We thought there was no problem with GMOs and it sounds like a good idea. We can feed the world, but in fact, you can’t genetically modify organisms without having them harm other organisms because they are they harm the gene regulation of the entire, whether it be plant or an animal. These are things that are designed by God for a purpose to be used as food.

Now we know GMOs can actually contribute and cause cancer and all of the diseases we’re talking about and this is the problem. If all you had to do was wait until black boys were three years old and wait to administer that shot, well nobody administered a single shot anywhere to me until I was five years old. I think I got the oral polio vaccine in kindergarten and of course, we got smallpox, which was then cowpox under the arm. That’s all we got in my life. We got nothing at puberty. We got nothing in 7^th grade. We got nothing to go to college. We got nothing at all. I didn’t get another vaccine until I was working with AIDS patients. I was encouraged to get a hepatitis B vaccine, which I did because I was of childbearing age but my boss at the time who was 46 or 50, he said, “No, thanks. I don’t need it. I’m not going to have any more kids. I don’t need to worry about these things.”

It’s very interesting how our world has changed. This is why I really appreciate you encouraging people to watch these movies and read these books. There is no such thing as an anti-vaxxer. Every one that is called an anti-vaxxer now is an ex-vaxxer because they were injured and the government didn’t take care of them as the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program of 1986. What that did was remove all liability from pharmaceutical manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, from doctors, and from anybody giving vaccine saying hey, we don’t understand those genetic and epigenetic susceptibilities. Vaccines are unavoidably unsafe, so for the greater good, we’re going to remove all liability. But the government is going to compensate the injured. That program has been so corrupted over the last 30 years.

As a part of that program, the government—the HHS, NIH, NIAID, we hear National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease—they were told it was their job to make them safe. To do the safety testing, to see if the combinations, to see if the age ranges, and to do the safety studies in the appropriate populations you were giving the vaccines. We learned only last year by dog at work by Bobby Kennedy in the Children’s Health Defense organization and Del Bigtree of the ICAN decide, that not a single safety test has been done. Not a single safety test or efficacy test has been done. The vaccines aren’t looked at in any way.

Every year they roll out a flu vaccine. They don’t look at it at all. They don’t do any safety testing. They don’t do any testing to see if these mouse viruses, monkey viruses, or coronaviruses. The flu vaccine they rolled out on Italy in 2019 had four different live attenuated that means weakened strain. Live attenuated, that means they make a virus, that means you make a virus, that means you’re being injected with four different strains of influenza, and they grow they manufacture the little virus factory are dog kidney cells. Dog kidney cells have lots of coronaviruses. Dogs, all animals, even a flu vaccine grown in chicken eggs have coronaviruses.

Here, we don’t look at them at all. We’re talking about a coronavirus that somehow escaped and one person traveled around the globe and hit 190 countries overnight in what really appears to be what drove this plandemic, and I’m just going to keep calling it that because it has little to do with an infectious virus that we’re exposed to by the natural route. It probably has everything to do with a coronavirus, a novel engineered virus from Wuhan, China as we all clearly know now that has in the cell line it was grown in. It was the Vero E6 kidney cells. They were manufacturing growing that virus up in large stocks and shipping it around the world to other investigators in Switzerland, in North Carolina, in Wuhan, and at Fort Detrick. All of this is funded by Tony Fauci and NIAID.

Here, you’re manufacturing that in monkey kidney cells. Well, that’s where we get HIV. That’s simian immune deficiency virus is the ancestor of humans. How do animal viruses jump into humans? That’s the big question. Our studies in 2011 said the most likely way mouse cancer-causing and neuro-immune disease-causing retrovirus contagious jumped into humans was by vaccines. Because we’re injecting them. You don’t need to be exposed if you’ve injected them. This is the problem. Nobody’s shown one piece of evidence that said the flu vaccines, particularly, in Italy and here in the United States that the program, over the last four years with contaminated while they were doing that research.

Remember, they were doing that research in the same facilities where they’re manufacturing vaccines— polio vaccines. Vero monkey kidney cells are what we grow polio vaccines in. MMR and live attenuated viral vaccines hepatitis, chickenpox, these vaccines are grown in animal tissue. What our book, Plague of Corruption, raised the horrible question. The whole thing about mixing animal tissues and injecting them into immune incompetent, meaning you’re compromised because you’re very young and you haven’t developed that machinery as I just said. You’re compromised because you’re very old and your immune system has been cleaning up these things forever and it gets overwhelmed.

What are we doing is we’re taking the most vulnerable parts of our society and we’re injecting them with animal tissues and we’re driving these pandemics literally around the world. This knowledge, all while we were doing these flu vaccines in 2012 through 2018, we were doing these studies with China in the US, in China, at Harvard, and in Switzerland and sending these cell lines, these little virus factories, containing these coronaviruses, these bat viruses, and these monkey viruses and they were recombining. Things got unleashed in contaminated water supplies, feces of animals. We don’t realize we don’t only vaccinate humans, we vaccinate our food, we vaccinate our animals, we vaccinate our herds, and their viromes then wake up and can infect humans in the form of GMOs like bovine growth hormone.

There’s a whole chapter in our book about my work in pharmaceuticals on the GMOs and how they were damaging human cells. It’s just the explosion of disease is because this has been covered up now for at least two decades.

[00:24:27] Ashley James: This cover-up must be global. I’m just thinking back to what you said about when looking at the results with those people of color that when they’re vaccinated with the MMR before the age of three, if you look at the raw data, people can see that statistically, they suffer a greater vaccine injury like autism than those who are not from the equator or they’re genetic, their ancestors aren’t from the equator or near the equator. That’s been covered up for 20 years. My question was going to be like who in the United States covered it up? But it’s not just the United States. It’s every country around the world has been using these vaccines and every country must also have been covering it up. That’s just as a global cover-up.

[00:25:29] Dr. Judy Mikovits: Think about what we’re doing right now. The WHO, sure it is a global cover-up. There have been groups in Sweden and in Somalia with the Gardasil injury and this fraud by Merck. These immune mechanisms don’t just go that way. We see a lot of people in the UK, Ireland, and Sweden because they don’t get a lot of sunlight. Vitamin D receptors are quite different, vitamin D signaling is quite different in people from the equator and people in Minnesota or Sweden because you don’t get a lot of sunlight. Vitamin D receptors have to act like amplifiers if you don’t get much sunlight because that’s how we convert vitamin D into the active form that controls more than 300 immune reactions and counting.

Yet if you’re near the equator where you get a lot of sun, your vitamin D receptors have to act as resistors. One is amplifiers, one resistor. One molecule looks like 1000 if your genetics are from certain countries, and one molecule looks like 1/1000 if you’re from near the equator. These are things we just simply don’t know about. What we do with vaccines is say one size fits all. It doesn’t fit all and we give the same. Why would we give we didn’t develop? This is always the royal we. The guy who discovered and made the hepatitis B vaccine, a scientist doctor, was horrified when he learned we gave it to hours old babies. That’s not what he intended that work to be done for.

This is the big problem is the scientists like me, the rank and file, we’re doing this to cure cancer. My whole life was to use natural products, use plants, educate the immune system, eat healthily, don’t get yourself any toxins, stay out of the way, and we’ll save everything. I helped work on those immune therapies. I developed those things. I encouraged my own family to get the Gardasil shot because we thought they’d done the right studies. We thought they’d done a saline control. They didn’t do anything at all. Worse than that, they covered up the damage done by these things.

Yes, it’s a worldwide global—most of the vaccine manufacturers aren’t in the US. They’re in Europe, they’re in China. Think about the garbage that’s coming into this country and yet nobody ever looks at what’s being injected and forced into your arm or you don’t get an education. Now they hit the big detonates switch. I believe it’s because the royal we, these groups, we’ve been fighting for decades. Brian Hooker spent 15 years dogging William Thompson—tell the truth, tell the truth.

How can anybody call me an anti-vaxxer? Really? We discovered half of the immune system in the therapies. We saved millions from HIV by our discoveries on how HIV can cause disease. We have TV commercials for HIV prophylaxis. That means pre-exposure prophylaxis. You can live your lifestyle any way you want and should you come in contact with somebody with HIV, we have therapies, we have prevention strategies. We have those same prevention strategies for coronavirus like 70-year old drug hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drugs that we know low dose is fabulous for anti-inflammatory diseases. Coronaviruses don’t hurt you by themselves. It’s the inflammation, it’s the fire. We know those mechanisms. That’s what we’ve been doing. That’s what I’ve been doing for 40 years and probably closer to 50 years because I started doing it when I was 12 years old. I never looked back from junior high school when my grandfather died of lung cancer. I’m thinking, why don’t we save somebody.

Cancer was a closet disease. Okay, you don’t smoke; okay, you don’t expose yourself to asbestos. Now we learned that they injected in the polio vaccines knowingly from 55-65, gave millions of people simian virus 40, which is lung cancer, mesothelioma, a cancer-causing virus, and many different kinds of cancers. We isolated in 2009 mouse viruses, monkey viruses, and bird gamma retroviruses. In MMR 5, a study was done in 2019 by an independent group called Corvelva in Italy. They showed dozens of human viruses, dozens of horse viruses, and dozens of other viruses. You don’t need an infectious virus if you injected it. This is why I particularly wanted to come onto your show today because if we don’t want to see round two, three, four, or five of your COVIDS, the worst thing any person can do is get a flu shot, a pneumonia shot, or a Prevnar shot.

If we get those shots this year if people don’t wake up and they say I’m going to get my shot to prevent—no. When that sign, as we drive by on the highway here in California, says save lives, act responsibly. Yes, act responsibly. Do not get a vaccine. Do not wear a mask. The mask is immune-suppressing you. The mask is causing you to activate your latent, you’re silenced, your immune system has degraded those viruses. You wake them up. You get oxygen-depleted. You make yourself sick. Every one of those viruses goes right through any one of those masks and you’re making people sick and thinking you’re helping them, but most importantly, you’re killing yourself.

If you get a flu shot or Prevnar, they give them on the same day and they act like they only gave you the flu shot, Prevnar right now is 23 different microbial antigens with a screamingly heavy dose of microbial upper respiratory infection causing pneumonia, causing antigens with a heavy dose of aluminum. You inject that in one arm, in the other arm you give those live attenuated flu cause that kind of upper respiratory infection, that cough in an immune-compromised person, in somebody, an old person who’s already on all kinds of drugs. We have no idea how much garbage is in those needles. Nobody knows what’s in those needles because nobody’s been allowed to test them, but Corvelva in Italy in 19, in 18 got samples of these vaccines and did the kinds of studies with the technologies and showed how many heavy metals.

That stuff is so caustic. They found the metal from the needle in the people’s blood. You could see red blood cells from other animals in the people in the Gardasil shot in the [inaudible 00:33:36] paper of 2017. I can provide these to you so you can post them for all the world to see, but it’s absolutely horrific what’s being done. This is why we need to talk right now and we need to tell everybody to wake up. If you’ve ever had the flu or you’ve ever had the flu vaccine, you’re as protected from getting a bad disease as you’re ever going to get. We know that the coronavirus, even this engineered SARS-CoV-2 with HIV sequences in it from that cell line they grew it in, even with that, most people are healthy. Healthy people don’t spread disease. There’s no such thing as an asymptomatic carrier.

Just as you said, yeah, it’s a worldwide effort. If your listeners, watch thehighwire.com with Del Bigtree from last Thursday, you will see the World Health Organization official who said, “Oh, wait a minute, we made a mistake. Oh, yeah, it’s very rare that an asymptomatic person will spread disease so you don’t have to wear the mask. We know that every single thing Fauci says and the Deborah Birx and Robert Redfield, they’ve gone back on and shown to be wrong. Robert Redfield said, “Well, the mask and the distancing, that stopped influenza this year.” No, it didn’t. No, it didn’t. The people that got the flu vaccine and wore the mask died and they called it COVID-19.

When you watch those two shows, you’ll watch how the brave nurses and doctors undercover are realizing they’re killing the people in the hospitals. They’re killing them with the protocols that have nothing to do with the coronavirus, with ventilators that have nothing to do with what the person is presenting with. You’re walking and then your relatives can’t see you. They cremate you. They don’t do an autopsy. It’s all a big cover-up. It’s a plandemic and a Plague of Corruption. The single most important thing we can all do to prevent round two is never get another vaccine until they do the studies and they prove everything we’re saying is wrong. That’ll take a few years and then we’ll realize we can regain our health. That’s the only thing.

I can guarantee you, I do these cases in vaccine court. The flu vaccine killed far more people this year than the coronavirus, than COVID-19. It’s difficult to sit here as a scientist. Hey, they’ll take this down as soon as I put it up. We’ve offered. I’ve sat here for the last three months and said I’ll talk to anybody, Here, show me the data. What did that WHO official do? See the data keep revealing. It’s not just my data. I don’t do any data. Hey, I lost my job a long time ago. I haven’t worked in a lab in a decade. All you have to do is read the literature. All you have to do is look around. Wait a minute, the WHO stopped hydroxychloroquine based on two fraudulent papers in Lancet. We commissioned fraud and really quickly, a whole bunch of papers come out so you mass prevent this.

What about the four decades of research, the OSHA, and the federal regulations that say don’t wear a mask if your oxygen drops from 23%, which is what’s in the air or something close to that to 17%—you do brain damage. That’s 15 minutes in a mask, or if you’re an old person, this is Peggy Hall, thehealthyamerican.org. I’m saying things that your listeners can look up. Lookup The Highwire show. This isn’t me talking. This is all of us doing every we can to save humanity and our way of life. Every measure they’ve made is based on a model that didn’t turn out to work out, and every word I’ve said for four decades is based only on data. I show you the data. I’ve shown you the data in our papers.

I’ve heavily referenced, we have heavily referenced both books, not one word from Fauci. Answer it. Don’t take science the journal and say Judy Mikovits is now a bartender because she couldn’t get a job. Yeah, I’m a chemist and yeah, I make a great drink. I’m a Staff Commodore and a volunteer at a yacht club in Ventura, California where I joined in 2000. I was the Commodore in 2006. Yeah, it’s volunteer so I make an occasional drink, but the way it’s spun is Judy Mikovits is the person who never did anything.

The data don’t show that. I don’t care what you say about me, just show the data. They won’t show the data and the news will censor everything. Show us. Your audience can think well, wait a minute, she’s right. We never wore a mask before. Why would you immune suppress? Dr. Russell Blaylock, a fabulous clinician, probably a little my age or a little older, wrote a very beautiful paper about all the immune suppression with masks. That very memory immune, CD4 memory response you need to remember you saw a pathogen before that pathogen-associated molecular pattern. That is quickly extinguished with a mask.

[00:39:29] Ashley James: Can you explain that? Can you just dive into that a little bit and explain it? Explain why wearing a mask is harmful? You’ve talked about the lower oxygen, but how does it actually negatively affect the immune system?

[00:39:43] Dr. Judy Mikovits: Because the immune system, we’re meant to live with it at a certain level of oxygen. Oxidative stress, we have lots of antioxidants in healing plants, right? When inflammation, white blood cells go off in inflammation because there’s a problem, it’s like sending fire trucks to the fire. When you’re inflamed, when you’ve seen a toxin or a pathogen, your white blood cells wake up and you go to the site of tissue injury. The major antioxidant intracellularly in between your nucleus and your cellular membrane is glutathione. Glutathione is quickly taken up when you aren’t breathing enough oxygen because you’ve created oxidative stress so now you need more of your most potent antioxidant glutathione. You make that out of three amino acids and glycine is the critical one because glyphosate, which is Roundup, now all our food is poisoned with glyphosate.

We don’t get as much healthy building blocks of those three amino acids to make up glutathione for your cells. You’re crippling your antioxidant in your cells and all of a sudden, pathogens get in. If you don’t get vitamin D and vitamin C those are your extracellular and those stimulates. When you’re wearing a mask you’re depleting your oxygen, your alarm signal goes off and says oxidative stress. You’ll get dizzy, you’ll get migraines. What is pain? Pain is inflammation. Pain is dysregulation of your endocannabinoid in your immune system so it says hey we got a really big problem over here, send out more troops. You deplete your CD4 T-cells. I’m telling you the way I hope you can see it visually and not as a chemist.

You deplete the CD4 T-cells because you exhaust them. You say I’m under siege. No, you’re not under siege, you’re just not breathing air. It goes into something called lactic acidosis so your mitochondria take oxygen in the respiratory chain through the eight different complexes in your mitochondria. The powerhouses in the cytoplasm cell that’s what makes ATP, that’s what makes energy. You’re getting less if you’re not breathing air. If you’re compromised anyway because you’re inflamed because you’ve gotten a vaccine, vaccines are made to inflame. Turn on the immune system to fight the invader they’re injecting, the antigen they’re injecting. That gives you a memory response.

If you’re compromised you can’t clear it, you can’t make enough as we’ve been talking. We’re not plants. We don’t do photosynthesis for energy. There are many, many more than one mechanism, but the point with OSHA’s safeguarding and Peggy Hall and thehealthyamerican.org will show this in Orange County, she won. She won the OSHA federal safeguards—says if you wear a mask, regardless of who you are, your oxygen blood drops below 17. You can put a little measuring thing in there and everybody’s going to be different. My husband and I have lung diseases that he’s had for years and I was born with. That’s why my voice sounds like this. I have a deviated septum, which means I can’t breathe through my nose at all.

If you drop below 17, the little alarm will go off and that’s doing brain damage. That’s going to make you dizzy. If you wear a mask sitting in a closed car, what exactly are you going to get sitting in a closed car with the person you shared spit with for 20 years? That doesn’t make any sense. That’s like driving drunk because you’ve inflamed yourself. It’s called acidosis at a point 15, 20 minutes, you’re dizzy, you’re confused, you go over the lane. You’re already 90-year-old going over the lane. I know my husband’s 82, he drives badly. It’s like really? If you have a car crash, whose fault is it? Is it the government or did you die of COVID-19?

No, you don’t wear a mask in a car with all the windows rolled up getting pollution from the car. It’s sitting in traffic in LA in the heat or think of even a healthy young man. We know people and they talk to me because I’m me, but we know people who work in your local Lowe’s store. They climb up ladders all day long and they wear that mask. They get a headache and by the time they get home at night, they’re in pain, they feel horrible, they have migraines, they can’t breathe, and they’re exhausted. The next day they go back to work and they fall off the ladder. I can’t even imagine putting a construction worker at the top of a ladder on a building and leaving him in the hot sun here in California.

No, this has nothing to do with human health. You don’t walk down a beach. You breathe air. You ground your feet in the soil, in the microbe, all those nice microbial sequences in the soil from things that naturally degrade—marine biomes, plants naturally degrade. That’s natural immune-boosting through your skin, your immune system. You don’t hide in your house with Clorox, those spray cleaners. I sat at a coffee shop where all the employees this morning had masks on because they’re required by law. In comes the Terminix guy to spray. I’m like oh no. I just pointed to a couple of doctors who were with me and I pointed at him. I could cry looking at this. I see people spraying baseball stadiums to let everybody in and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. What’s in those toxic cleaners? You’re going to concentrate that on your mask. That’s going to further inflame your throat.

People ask me, do you wear a mask? Yeah, I wore masks in my life. I wore masks in 2017 when I lived in Ventura, California, as I do now, and the Thomas fires. The smoke was so heavy that you couldn’t breathe for days. Yeah, we had lung diseases and we got those exact N95 masks to stop the smoke. You stop other things from damaging your lungs. People say well they wear them in China. Yeah, it’s heavily polluted. Yeah, they wear them in China. Places where they’re heavily polluted. Places where they’re heavily concentrated. There are a lot of people with a lot of different things in pollution. It’s not drive yourself and drive the inflammation in your throat.

I couldn’t wear a mask 10 seconds before that ringer would go off and I don’t wear one. I didn’t wear one. I worked for 25 years, in fact, it’s probably closer to 40 years, isolating those very retroviruses I mentioned. Those cancer-causing and AIDS-causing viruses from sick people. We wear masks in surgery situations to keep everything sterile, but you don’t wear them in the hallways of the hospital. You don’t compromise your own immune system. I never wore a mask working with a patient ever and I isolated HIV. I never got it either because the last thing I wanted to do was immune suppress myself.

[00:47:42] Ashley James: I felt like people were being a little sensitive when it came to masks. I kind of was like oh, masks aren’t a problem. They’re not going to lower my oxygen levels. I had this little medical mask. The kind that like dental hygienists would wear. I used it to go into Whole Foods. I’ve only been wearing it quickly, get some groceries, get out because they have signs everywhere. The times I went to the grocery store and refused to mask I would just get dirty looks the whole time. I don’t need that. I’m going to just blend into the crowd, wear a mask, and get out.

The last time I did, this was a few weeks ago, I nearly collapsed. It was really scary because I didn’t really believe that a mask could make me faint. I’m not sick, I’m a healthy person. But standing in line, I’ve been wearing it for maybe 15 minutes, I started to blackout. I couldn’t see anymore. I was fainting, basically. I tore the mask off and it took me hours to recover. My heart was racing, I was so terrified. I was just absolutely terrified. I can’t imagine what the workers who are being forced to wear a mask eight, nine hours a day are going through. Now to hear what you say that it really does lower the oxygen levels in our blood and cause inflammation, cause the body to have to eat up our glutathione, which is a very costly thing for the body to make, especially if someone’s nutrient-deficient like selenium, for example, recycles the body’s glutathione. Most people are deficient in that mineral.

Someone who may be nutrient to deplete in certain nutrients, it would cause them quickly to have ill health even further. Right now, we’re so focused on keeping the immune system healthy. If we watch the mainstream media it’s like Armageddon out there. If we follow the mainstream media we are terrified for our lives. Then we listen to doctors and PhDs like yourself who have been in this world from a scientist’s perspective for years and you’re saying masks are harmful in terms of how they’re being recommended to be used right now, that it is actually not helping us, and that we should be focusing on making sure we have our vitamin D and our vitamin C, making sure we’re eating organic non-GMO foods, making sure we’re getting out in the sunlight and fresh air.

[00:50:28] Dr. Judy Mikovits: Correct.

[00:50:30] Ashley James: What other things can we do to boost our immune system and stay healthy from the scientist’s perspective, from your perspective since you have studied the immune system for so many years?

[00:50:43] Dr. Judy Mikovits: A critical thing you just mentioned—minerals. We’re so mineral-depleted in zinc, magnesium, and manganese. Our soil has been heavily depleted. It’s contaminated with glyphosate. What you want to do more than anything is I would encourage a mineral supplement. I use products from different places but my mineral supplements are Quinton minerals and one other, I forget the name of them. You just get a really good, and I don’t just mean magnesium or manganese because you throw the balance of all of them. You want 97 different minerals mixed together just like nature in seawater. You want iodine with kelp because radiation is a huge issue in our inner health anyway, so all of these things are contributing to us being sicker, being susceptible, and being immune suppressed immune-compromised because our Earth’s been getting more polluted.

With kelp that you can buy in your health food store. Things like liver bitters and detox for your liver. Keep your liver healthy, keep your kidneys healthy, so get a good mineral supplement. I’m looking through here to see what I usually take. The best precursor to glutathione supplement I know is called ProImmune. That’s Ted Fogarty MD product HBOT, a hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Saunas to detox. Detox all you can. You mentioned a lot of simple things. Just get out in the sunshine and take a walk. Don’t over-exercise because that becomes stress. When you’re sick, certainly, stay home. I use cannabinoids to calm the flames. I call that the dimmer switch on the immune system. I get a lot of things from quicksilverscientific.com. That’s Chris Shade’s company.

[00:53:14] Ashley James: I’ve had him on the show. He’s got a glutathione as well—oral glutathione.

[00:53:21] Dr. Judy Mikovits: That’s what I was going to say. He’s got a new product that he just gave A, D, K, and E because usually you can’t get vitamins A, D, K, and E except from fats, except from meats because you’ll be deficient in those if your food is contaminated. We eat healthy farm-grown. I mean all the way from eggs and meat we know our farmer. My friend, Dr. Zach Bush, said a few years ago on a Del Bigtree show, he said, “Forget your doctor, know your farmer.” Get good healthy eggs. It’s difficult in this world to be vegan because you need A, D, K, and E, but I do know that Chris Shade just came out with a new product that has those. He has a liposomal vitamin C.

I’m not encouraging that we just supplement, supplement, supplement, just eat healthy food, but here in this day and age, we really do need to supplement glutathione. It’s from Quicksilver Scientific. They have something called ultra-binder. It’s charcoal, it’s a fulvic humic charcoal blend that I just shake. One little packet a day I think it cost, I don’t know. It can’t cost 50 cents. Maybe $1, who knows. I shake it up in the morning and I simply just take the ultra-binder in good clean water. We’ve got to have good clean filtered water. Fiji water, the brand name Fiji is great for removing aluminum. It’s a little bit of everything. That ultra-binder will even take out mercury and vaccine contaminants in things that we’ve been talking about and you can begin to detox. Just the most important thing is to keep away from inflammation. That by definition means I don’t care if the vaccine is the cleanest thing in the world, it’s intended to inflame.

See, the way coronaviruses, let’s just say if that really had anything to do with COVID-19, which I don’t believe for a minute, the way coronaviruses cause damage is first they deplete your antioxidants. Antioxidant-rich foods like we’ve just mentioned—vitamin c. I have a cup of hot lemon water every day. Make sure your food is non-GMO and organic as possible because the soil becomes contaminated with glyphosate. I use ultra-binder. Just to eat as clean as you can so that ultra-binder will take out yesterday’s toxins. Even if you can’t eat clean—most processed foods and things you’re getting from the grocery store are loaded with glyphosate.

The less processed food you can eat, the more fresh vegetables, fruits, blueberries, rich in antioxidants, the colors, the cyan, and the phytonutrients. This is the best we could do, but it’ll make you healthy. No such thing as social distancing. Please, hug people. Think of isolated babies. Think of the boy in the bubble, the those with primary immune deficiencies. Think of orphanages that we used to see visions of in Russia and things like that. They’re profoundly diseased and compromised because of a lack of touch. We’re human beings, and this is the worst thing about those face masks. No cloth face coverings. That just stops you from smiling, stops you from loving. Like you said, you get dirty looks. We’re made to smile. Anger is immunosuppressive. Fear is immunosuppressive. They’re not immune boosting. Those are horrible emotions.

We’re generating this hate and it’s driving the compromising of our own immune system such that when they release the next thing on us, we will be susceptible. Hopefully, we won’t. I could say this from a lot of experience because it really doesn’t matter what they release. I’ve worked with everything. I’ve worked with Ebola. I’ve worked with the XMRVs. When your audience reads our two books, you’ll see from the first book Plague that the lab workers got infected. In 2011, we realized these cancer-causing viruses and neuro-immune disease-causing viruses, Lou Gehrig’s, Parkinson’s, chronic Lyme disease, and other things. These viruses and ME/CFS release devastating diseases were contagious that you could literally cough them on somebody, that you could get them from the air.

I was the one in my laboratory, I made sure my students, the young people, didn’t get anywhere near the blood samples, didn’t do the work that generated aerosols that spread aerosols around. I did all the work and I got a boatload. I zero converted. I got a ton of XMRVs of these viruses in my body, in my blood. What measures do I take to keep myself well? I am not sick, I zero converted a decade ago, and I wouldn’t dare put on a mask. I hate to say it but I’m the people they want to kill. The people that they have liability for that they knowingly injected for decades with cancer-causing viruses, and I mean injected.

If you think about it rationally, yeah, if I haven’t been on a plane, if I’ve been nowhere close to somebody in China, I didn’t go to a seafood market, I never went to one of the clusters of diseases—let’s just say New York City or Seattle where there were a few ground zero. I never went anywhere near any of those people. How exactly did I get exposed? When exactly? We didn’t do this with HIV. We did tell people don’t touch them, and that hurt them a great deal, injured their disease, and immune-compromised them. I didn’t obey that then either and I’m just fine, aren’t I?

This is the point. We didn’t shut down the world. There are all the data that this coronavirus—yes, it caused a dangerous cost. Yes, there are compromised people who did die from exposure to it, but when you go watch those two shows I mentioned to you, The Highwire last week, in particular, they put the compromised in hospital wings who were clearly COVID negative in positive wings and then they stopped them from getting oxygen.

You remember the cannula of oxygen you put in your nose when somebody needs oxygen or you put when you’re in an ambulance? What do they give you? They give you that little thing to breathe oxygen. They don’t intubate you. They don’t paralyze your breathing apparatus input. You can easily look at desaturation. All these things that oxygen desaturates. Just put the little thing on your finger and you can see how much oxygen you’re getting. You can see if you’re being compromised. Why aren’t we doing any of that? Why aren’t we taking care? 

Type I interferon 50-200 units. Type I interferon in a spray form, 50 to a couple hundred. Literally, a couple of hundred units a day sprayed in your nasal passages just like you would do a saline nasal spray will prevent anything that gets into your nasopharyngeal cavity from replicating any coronavirus.

[01:01:52] Ashley James: Thank you so much for your time. I know you have to go. I am, of course, left with more questions.

[01:01:59] Dr. Judy Mikovits: I’d be happy to talk to you again. You can tap Kent and talk to him a little bit to round out this one and then we’ll talk again, no problem. We can even take questions from your audience and go again.

[01:02:09] Ashley James: That would be great. I’d love that. Yes, I definitely have more questions. I have them written down. And I know my listeners would have questions for you. I can’t wait to interview your co-author, Kent. It sounds wonderful.

Thank you so much for taking the time today to educate us. We have to open our minds. I love the saying open your mind so much that your brain could fall out. Just open your mind and take in new information because that’s how we’re going to figure out how to best support our body’s ability to heal itself. The problem is when we listen to the mainstream there’s always an agenda. We have to protect ourselves from fear-mongering, but also stay safe. We want to stay safe, but we have to support our body’s ability to be healthy.

You have so much great information. You have two books I highly recommend. The links to both your books, Plague and Plague of Corruption, will be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Do you have anything you’d like to say to the listeners? Maybe homework to give them to wrap up today’s interview.

[01:03:09] Dr. Judy Mikovits: Think about it really in a calm way and think about what I was saying as far as what do you do when you feel good? You go out to the ocean; you go out to the sand. You get tired, you get a little sunburned, you get a little exhausted, and you sleep really well. Those things that make you feel good. Just think, we never had to wear a mask in public. The silliness of you have to wear a mask when you enter here but as soon as you turn around and sit down, you don’t need one. That’s a control issue. That’s fear and anger. That’s intended to generate an emotional response. We don’t have to be emotional. We love each other. Nobody wants anybody to get sick. We want to spend our lives trying to heal people, that’s what we do. We just want to love each other. That’s how we stay well as a society and as families and individuals

[01:04:10] Ashley James: Beautiful. Thank you so much. I can’t wait to have you back on the show. It’s been such a pleasure to have you here today.

[01:04:16] Dr. Judy Mikovits: Thanks, Ashley.

Get Connected With Dr. Judy Mikovits!

Plague The Book Website

Twitter

Books by Dr. Judy Mikovits

Plague

Plague of Corruption

Check out Dr. Wallach's Supplements: TakeYourSupplements.com

The 90 Essential Nutrients by Dr. Joel Wallach

https://www.learntruehealth.com/the-90-essential-nutrients-by-dr-joel-wallach

Highlights:

• Diseases that are a result of nutrient deficiency
• The commonality of those living in the blue zones
• Why we need to stop eating barley, wheat, rye, and oats
• Why we need to avoid oil

Is eating fruits and vegetables enough to get all the nutrients needed by our bodies? In this episode, Dr. Joel Wallach talks about different diseases that were thought of as genetically transmitted but were actually nutrient deficiencies. He also shares success stories of patients that got healed from their diseases by being on his protocol.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. Today I’m interviewing my hero, Dr. Joel Wallach. He is the reason why I no longer have type 2 diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and infertility and why my husband and I naturally conceived our son after six years of trying. His approach to natural medicine and healing the body with the 90 essential nutrients is absolutely revolutionary but also comes from years and years of research.

I’m so excited for you to hear his information. Every time I hear him, I learn more and more. I’ve been following him. He’s been mentoring me since 2011. Learning from him, it is such a trip because he regularly helps people reverse diseases even to the point where they’re on heart transplant list, kidney transplant list, or they’re on their deathbed. I’ve seen him help people who were told by their doctors that they just needed to go home and die, that there was nothing left for them. I’ve seen him reverse so many diseases and help people get back to 100% health, so I’m very excited for you to learn from him today.

As you’re listening, if you’d like to buy the supplements that he has developed and he recommends, please go to takeyoursupplements.com, that’s takeyoursupplements.com. You fill out the form and a health coach that’s trained in Dr. Wallach’s protocols will help you pick out the right supplements for you based on your symptoms, your nutritional needs, and based on the Dr. Wallach protocol that would best suit you. The body responds so quickly when you fill in the nutrient deficiencies, when you fill in those gaps where your diet has been missing certain key minerals especially trace minerals because it’s so hard to secure all of the 90 essential nutrients in a diet, no matter how healthy we eat. That’s something that Dr. Wallach addresses in today’s interview. Go to takeyoursupplements.com and try Dr. Wallach’s protocol.

I have seen the most amazing results. In less than 30 days, people say they have better energy, more mental clarity, and better sleep, but beyond that, people’s blood sugar stabilizes, their mood stabilizes, and blood pressure stabilizes. I have seen people reverse conditions. I had a friend who had essential tremor, his hands shook his entire life, and that went away within days. I had another friend who had skin tags over his whole body. The skin tags fell off. I have known several men reverse erectile dysfunction with his protocol.

He has protocols for filling in the nutrient deficiencies, filling in those nutrient gaps in our diet, supporting every cell in the body with 90 essential nutrients, and eliminating certain foods that harm the body so that we can optimize health at any age and at any weight. The whole program is actually designed based on body weight so you’re making sure you’re getting the right supplements for you at the right dosage for what your body needs.

I really look forward to hearing from you. As you’re on the protocol, if you’d like to share with me how it’s going for you, you can email me ashley@learntruehealth.com. You can also join the Facebook group and share with us there. There are already some listeners who have shared their incredible experiences by adding these supplements to their life. You can’t out-supplement a bad diet. You can’t out-supplement unhealthy habits. We have to focus on a holistic way of life meaning you have to look at every aspect of life, but we also can’t exercise and eat healthy and only do those two things and expect optimal health because if we have a nutrient deficiency, even in a healthy diet, our body is still missing something.

This is one of the key components to optimal health is supplementing to make sure that we don’t have nutrient deficiency. We have to make sure that our supplements are high quality, that they’re bioavailable, the body can absorb them and utilize them, and that they’re plant-derived. That they’re not chemically man-made. That’s all the things that takeyoursupplements.com provides.

Awesome. Thank you so much for being a listener. I’m really excited for you to hear today’s interview especially because Dr. Wallach is my hero. I’ve been wanting to interview him for years and our schedules aligned, so it just became the perfect time for me to have him on the show. I hope to have him on the show again in the future. I also recommend reading his books. They’re amazing. Please check out his books. The links to his books will be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Awesome. Have yourself an excellent rest of your day and enjoy today’s interview.

[00:04:53] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 435. I am so excited to have Dr. Wallach on the show today. You have been my biggest hero in the holistic health space. Because of you I no longer suffer from diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and infertility. Because of you, I was able to conceive naturally our son who’s healthy and he’s five years old. You’re the one that got me so excited about health that I started my podcast four years ago. We have over seven million downloads and over 430 interviews.

[00:05:38] Dr. Joel Wallach: Well, thank you for the kind testimony.

[00:05:40] Ashley James: What I’m excited about is that you’re here today to share with all of my listeners that are wanting to seek true health and you’re here to share with them what I learned from you to end disease in my life. I’m so excited that they’re going to learn from you today how they can end disease and how they can reverse and prevent disease. Welcome to the show.

[00:06:01] Dr. Joel Wallach: Again, thank you so very, very much, Ashley. I appreciate your hospitality.

[00:06:05] Ashley James: Dr. Wallach, I love your story. Can you tell us a little bit about your research that led you to discover the cause and cure for 900 diseases?

[00:06:13] Dr. Joel Wallach: To make a long story short, when I graduated high school—I’m leaving out my personal stuff, which will take 15-20 minutes. When I graduated high school in 1958, I already knew that the medical system was in the wrong direction because I grew up on a farm. We didn’t have any of the diseases in the farm animals that people had because we were giving supplements to animals that prevented and reversed those diseases. We didn’t have any health insurance for them so it was much more economical to prevent and reverse them with supplements than it was to wait until they got sick and then call a veterinarian, pay a veterinarian, go broke, and sell your farm.

When I graduated from high school in 1958, I went to an agricultural school because I wanted to get a degree in agriculture. Halfway through that tried preventive medicine so got into veterinary school. I was working part-time because I had to work my way through, didn’t have a lot of money so I had to work my way through and I was working part-time for the pathology department. I realized there were so many, many things that were so simple but people weren’t being told the whole truth.

In 1964, I graduated in the University of Missouri. I had my degree in agriculture, my major was an animal husbandry nutrition. My minor is in field crops and soils. I had my veterinary degree at the time. I was halfway through my degree in pathology so I was going to Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa to finish my degree in pathology. As a high school kid, I had worked with Marlin Perkins the old Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom show because I was a farm kid and didn’t mind throwing manure out of stalls of animals in the zoo and stuff like that.

He kind of followed me a little bit. He wrote me a letter and said, “Look, Wallach, I need you to go to Africa for a couple of years and work on the white rhino conservation project. When it’s over, you come back. I can get you back into graduate school if that’s what you wanted. I can get you a job in the zoo whatever you.” You can’t refuse Marlin Perkins from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

I went to Africa and two years into it, I had caught 200 white rhino and shipped them back here. If you see a white rhino in a wild animal park or zoo, it’s either one that I caught her offsprings or the ones that I caught. At the time, there was only 470 left of the southern raised white rhino south of the Zambezi River. Today there’s 25,000 because of the game parks we established, trained people, caught the animals up north, brought them and put them in the Ranger parks, and stuff like that. I’m very, very proud of that.

Two years into that, I was prepared to stay in Africa forever, Ashley. I was having the time of my life living out in the bush, eating wild antelope and stuff like that, and fish and just working on conservation projects, but I came back here at again, Perkin’s invitation. He says, “Look, Wallach, your work when you were doing your pathology stuff I got a $25 million grant using your research papers. I want you to come back and be the pathologist on this project.

We got this $25 million grant. This was April of 1967. I don’t know if it’ll be two years, five years, ten years or what, but I needed you to be a pathologist. I want you to find the diseases that are caused by pollution that zoo animals are sensitive to in the big cities and people who live around the zoos are sensitive to. When the zoo animals start dying from the pollution we know to evacuate the city, so I want you to do it.” You can’t refuse Marlin Perkins. I came back in April 1967 to be his pathologist on the project.

To make a long story short, a 10-year project, I did 20,000 autopsies. It was 17,000 some change of over 454 species of zoo animals, 3,000 humans, and 20 million chemistries. I learned and published in a book, which is my thesis of this whole project. The thesis represents the 17,000 autopsies in these 454 species of animals, 8,000 human autopsies. They’re in another book called Epigenetics. Anyway, to make a long story short, what I found out was none of the zoo animals died of pollution, none of the human beings living within a 10-mile radius of the zoos died of pollution, there were no genetically transmitted diseases, and there were no genetically transmitted birth defects.

It was driving everybody crazy. That’s how all of this started. When that was over, I went to work at Yerkes Primate Center with NASA in Atlanta, Georgia and worked at the medical school there as a pathologist at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. I ran into the first non-human case of cystic fibrosis, proved it was not genetic, got it published, and they fired me because everybody knew psittacosis was the disease that’s a classic example of a genetically transmitted disease. I purposely saved tissue, blood, and all kinds of stuff so you can do your own look yourself and see if your results match mine. No, you’re fired.

That’s when I went back to school and became a Naturopathic physician in Portland, Oregon 1978. I was teaching for seven years pathology and clinical medicine. I graduated in 1982 and been treating people nutritionally for something like 900 different diseases using nutrients for 72 years.

[00:11:37] Ashley James: When you discovered that cystic fibrosis in the rhesus monkey was not genetically transferred but it was caused by something else, what was it caused by and why were you fired?

[00:11:52] Dr. Joel Wallach: First of all, I sent tissues on the slide, delivering the pancreas in the lungs, to experts in cystic fibrosis in the big children’s hospitals around the world, 10 of them. They all sent back with a little note saying this is a perfect example of cystic fibrosis. Thank you. I didn’t tell them it was from a monkey, but I had it all on their letterhead. I then put together my paper and brought it to the [inaudible 00:12:17] at Yerkes Primate Center and also at the medical school in Atlanta, Georgia.

They were so, which I say, involved with genetics. They still are. Medical doctors, everything’s a genetic disease, right? Back then they didn’t want to be embarrassed and so they fired. It was easier to fire me because I was just a veterinarian at the time, I wasn’t a Naturopathic physician yet. I was just a veterinarian, so they fired me to save their faces is what it amounted to.

A couple of years later I found the contravention cure of muscular dystrophy, gave that to Jerry Lewis and he got so excited because I gave him 100 charts of kids that I had cured with muscular dystrophy, proven it wasn’t genetics—simple nutritional deficiency. He took it to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, they fired him and stopped the telethon. That’s why you haven’t heard anything about muscular dystrophy or cystic fibrosis since 1978.

My most recent thing, April 16, 2013, a federal judge ruled because we kept pushing the federal courts to put this nutrient in the baby formula because sudden infant death syndrome, it was a big lie. Only 2% of the babies that died of sudden infant death syndrome were in bed with their mothers when they died, 90% were not. None of them suffocated. When you redo the autopsy you could tell they didn’t suffocate. They died from what we call hypertrophic cardiomyopathy heart disease. I have done 1,700 autopsies on kids under the age of 10 that died of that one in Keshan province China. It’s called Keshan disease, the deficiency of a single nutrient cause a sudden heart attack in these kids. I did 1,700 autopsies in six weeks, so I’m an expert in that.

I knew that was causing because 200 of them would have been diagnosed with sudden infant death syndrome here in the United States. Got it all written up, the usual process. Nobody wanted it, nobody would publish it, and so I went to the federal courts and said, “Look, here’s 1,700 autopsies proving what I’m saying.” They couldn’t resist the evidence of 1,700 autopsy—all the slides, all the blood. They ruled that every manufacturer of baby formula had to put this nutrient in the baby formulas. A year later, it was September 13, 2014, just about a year later, the Charlotte Observer, which is the big newspaper in Charlotte North Carolina kind of like the New York Times for New York, front-page story—I mean this is a front-page story, big bold letters like third world war starting. It said we don’t know why but sudden infant death syndrome has vanished in North Carolina.

[00:15:04] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

[00:15:06] Dr. Joel Wallach: Three months later, the state of Missouri did the same thing in their headlines in their newspapers. Three months later every newspaper in America said we don’t know why but the death rate from sudden infant death syndrome has dropped significantly by 85%-95% in all states because we put that one nutrient in the baby formula. You haven’t heard any more about sudden infant death syndrome because it’s gone. It was a deficiency of a single nutrient. I’m the guy who figured out the cause, prevention, and cure of cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, and I’m the guy that figured out the cause and prevention of crib death.

[00:15:36] Ashley James: Have you experienced pushback from the pharmaceutical industry? This is obviously going to affect their profits.

[00:15:42] Dr. Joel Wallach: What happens is, every time I get interviewed, they come along and want to have their words, say that I’m a quack, and all this kind of stuff—there’s no proof. I don’t know, 1,700 autopsies published through all these slides, lab data, and everything that seems pretty much like a hard proof to me. When I was working at the Yerkes Primate Center for NASA, when I got confirmation that that one monkey had the classic symptoms of cystic fibrosis, most people don’t know this but I got permission to do biopsies of liver, pancreas, and lungs of the 34 other baby monkeys in the same colony. All different mothers and fathers, not related in any way shape or form other than they were monkeys. They all were positive for cystic fibrosis. I knew it was an environmental thing.

It turned out that the gal who is in charge of that colony, she was a psychiatrist and she was doing nutritional studies in that colony where all 25 or 30 pairs of these monkeys, unrelated to each other, we’re having babies for her research. She was giving them different nutrients and she wasn’t giving them the standard monkey pellets. She was feeding them mixed grains and her idea of what vitamins and minerals were that’s why they all got cystic fibrosis.

[00:17:09] Ashley James: Because they had nutrient deficiency?

[00:17:12] Dr. Joel Wallach: That’s correct. It was just a simple nutritional deficiency artificially-created because they weren’t given the monkey pellets. Of course, her husband was in charge of the facility so he’s the guy who fired me because he didn’t want her embarrassed.

[00:17:26] Ashley James: What in humans in utero, what diseases are nutrient deficiencies? Everyone knows that folic acid or folate causes neuro tube defects.

[00:17:37] Dr. Joel Wallach: Yes. Here’s the deal, there are some birth defects that are caused by measles in the embryo early on, right? Thalidomide, which was a prescription drug for morning sickness would be given to women early in pregnancy and that caused 10,000 American babies to be born without arms and legs. There’s that but there are no genetic defects anymore because they aren’t any genetic defects. Here’s the experiment that proved it to most people. When I was working at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, a pair of wild-caught arctic foxes, they weren’t related, from two different parts of the Arctic but they were put together as a pair in the Brookfield Zoo. When they got to be a little rare of age they went into season and they got pregnant and had 10 babies. All ten babies were born with cleft palates.

The keepers called me because I’m doing the pathology up at the zoo hospital. They said, “Look, we’ve got 10 baby foxes with a genetic defect. I said uh-oh to myself, “Yeah, what is it?” “They all are born with the cleft palate the mothers and fathers. We want you to give them the needle with a drug to kill them because we can’t have animals or babies in the zoo that have genetic defects. They can only be perfect in a zoo.” I said, “Bring them up. Let me see them.” They brought me the babies and I say, “Okay, look, we’re not going to kill these babies because this is not a genetic defect. It is a simple nutritional deficiency during pregnancy. What did you feed the mother and father?”

“They’re meat eaters so we gave them horse meat.” I said, “Okay, did you give them any vitamins and minerals?” “No, they’re meat-eaters. We gave them horse meat.” I said, “That’s why they got this cleft palate because this is a defect of a single mineral. which is not found in horse meat. If you gave them the horse’s livers it would be okay but not the horse meat. What I want you to do is feed these babies with a puppy formula spent for [inaudible 00:19:29] puppies. I want you to give the mother and father just dog food. In six months’ time when these babies all come into heat and season, all that kind of stuff at six months of age, I want you to put one son with the mother, one daughter with the father, and the other brothers and sisters match them up. We’re going to really do some super inbreeding here. I want the mothers and fathers right now to start getting dog food, the babies are going to get this infant formula for milk replacer for puppies that are orphans. When they get to be six weeks you’re going to want solid food give them dog food.

A year later they call me up and said, “Okay doc. Between all these things we put together here, we have 100 babies from these two foxes.” “Are any of them have cleft palate?” “Nope, they’re all perfect.” I said, “I proved my point, didn’t I? They say, “Yes, you did.” I said, “I don’t want any more of these animals out there being fed just horse meat. They got to get vitamins and minerals. If it’s appropriate, wolves, coyotes, and foxes they need dog food and then there’s cat food for the small cats. We’ll figure out a diet and supplement program for the big cats, okay?”

That was published in scientific journals. It’s a big story in the book Rare Earth: Forbidden Cures. It’s the biggest story in the book Dead Doctors Don’t Lie. It’s the biggest story in several of my books with the pictures of many of these baby foxes with the cleft palates. All along the way, I’ve been able to prove what I’m saying. Now, when I go on an interview someplace, the doctors will call up and make a big hoo-ha. This guy’s a quack and you can’t prove what he’s saying. How come his thesis is in the Smithsonian Institute, is a national treasure? They hang up. They can’t even respond to that.

[00:21:16] Ashley James: You talked about curing Keshan’s disease in China. Can you tell us the story of Keshan’s disease and how you came to cure it?

[00:21:24] Dr. Joel Wallach: Keshan disease is again a deficiency of the single mineral. It causes sudden hypertrophic cardiomyopathy heart disease. 25,000 American kids died of that every year here under the age of 20. It’s the sudden heart death that afflicts young athletes in their teens and early 20s. You hear about this all the time, this teenager played football, played soccer, played baseball, hockey, rugby, whatever it was, or basketball and drops dead, that’s Keshan disease. It’s not some mystery.

If they would be giving these kids my sports drink, which has 100 nutrients in it including that one mineral and give them the 90 essential nutrients, guess what, none of these 25,000 kids would die anymore. But doctors on the sports medicine doctor here and we’re going to give them one of these things that have complete nutrition. You got 27 nutrients in it and it doesn’t have that nutrient it.

It turns out that my wife, Dr. Ma Lan, who is a medical doctor from China, I’m telling her about all the sudden heart deaths and she says, “That sounds like Keshan disease.” I said, “What’s that?” She got me all the English versions of publications of Keshan’s disease. Looking at the slides and everything, “Yeah, this is it.” She and her family, even yet today have a lot of power in China. This was published in scientific journals in three languages in 1990. They did the work in 1989 and it was published in 1990 in three scientific journals, two in Chinese, one in Mandarin, the other in Cantonese, the third one is in English is called the Journal of Trace Element Research. If anybody wants to check it out and see if I’m lying they can check it out. 1,700 autopsies have caused Keshan disease aka hypertrophic cardiomyopathy heart disease.

In fact, there was some famous athlete that just died here and he was in his 20s. He just died a couple of days ago from a heart attack. He was a basketball player or soccer player or whatever he just died due to the deficiency of a single mineral. I have people say, “Tell me what it is, tell me what it is.” I said, “No. You can’t run to Walgreens anymore because they’re shutting down, but you will run to someplace and try and buy it. You’ll give it to somebody and they’ll die. You’ll say Wallach lied.” No, because there are cofactors necessary for that one nutrient to work. Just like when people get osteoporosis the doctor says you have a calcium deficiency, take some Tums. That’s the doctor’s way to deal with osteoporosis is take Tums because it has some calcium carbonate in it. Let’s see what else does your bones need besides calcium—vitamin D3, sulfur, magnesium, copper, phosphorus, are you getting the picture?

[00:24:11] Ashley James: Definitely. You need the full complement of all the co-factors.

[00:24:17] Dr. Joel Wallach: Exactly. Ashley, do you know there’s only one class of prescription drugs that cures anything and that’s antibiotics. Antibiotics will kill bacteria and some fungus but guess what, all other prescription drugs are purposely designed to treat symptoms. I had so much pain from my arthritis for 10 years my doctor gave me the opioids in three minutes time my pain was going. I just love my doctor. Then two years later, sorry Francine, your disease kept progressing here even though you don’t have any pain. Now it’s time you have to have a double knee replacement, which is going to cost $50,000 per knee, it’s a good thing you have insurance. The doctor is able to send his two kids to college.

[00:25:07] Ashley James: But that mineral deficiency that led to the osteoporosis is affecting every soft tissue as well in all other organs and creating all kinds of symptoms as well. Symptoms that doctors will write off as normal. You have sleep problems, you have restless legs, that’s normal. Here, let me give you a drug for that.

[00:25:26] Dr. Joel Wallach: That’s correct. They send their kid to college with the money.

[00:25:31] Ashley James: But there are a lot of good MDs out there with really big hearts that really do want to help people. The problem is they’re not trained in anything that you’ve discovered. You discovered that these nutrient deficiencies are the cause of these diseases and that you’ve published this. I’ve seen you regularly reverse diseases even to the point where you’ve saved people from amputation and save people from being on the heart transplant list and kidney transplant list. You’ve reversed heart disease, kidney disease. You’ve reversed diabetes and save people from imputation.

[00:26:06] Dr. Joel Wallach: All of that. Ashley, we do this all the time. We take people who have been a diabetic for 30 years, in 30 days they’re not a diabetic. We take people who have been on kidney dialysis, six days a week they have not urinated in 10 years, in two weeks’ time they’re urinating, and six weeks’ time they’re off of dialysis because these are all simple nutritional deficiency disease. We change their diet, we put them on the 90 essential nutrients with the secret sauces for their particular disease and it all goes away.

I have a new book out it’s on the 25 diseases of the skull. When you have osteoporosis in the skull there are 25 different diseases that you would go to a neurologist for and have surgery to put implants in your middle ear and you have all kinds of eye surgeries, back surgeries, neck surgeries, arm surgeries, and all kinds of stuff. In fact, osteoporosis to the skull causes atrial fibrillation. Have you ever heard of atrial fibrillation?

[00:26:59] Ashley James: Yes.

[00:27:00] Dr. Joel Wallach: It’s the squeezing of the tenth cranial nerve, the vagus nerve which controls the rate and rhythm of the heart. You can also have degenerative disk disease and the first four thoracic vertebrae squeeze the vital nerves that control the rate and rhythm of the heart. There are two possibilities. I always speak for both of those and people who have afib. I’m going to tell you about a congressman from Baltimore Maryland, Elijah Cummings. Have you ever hear him?

[00:27:21] Ashley James: I have not.

[00:27:23] Dr. Joel Wallach: He was a black congressman from Baltimore, Maryland for 20 years, a very famous guy. A leader in the black caucuses everything else in Congress, 20 years. He gets afib, the cardiologists take him in, anesthetized him, cut him open, take a soldering iron, heat it up, and they were trying to kill the part of his heart muscle that was running away—setting off these irregular heartbeats. They killed him by doing what is called an ablation trying to kill a part of his heart muscle that causes the heart to beat irregularly. If he had come to me he would still be alive because all I would do was fix the osteoporosis of the skull, take the pressure off that tenth cranial nerve, and he wouldn’t have had the atrial fibrillation anymore.

[00:28:13] Ashley James: You’re the one that cured my husband’s afib. He was a candidate with a pacemaker. He has an acute afib for the third time, and you said put CM cream on his back. Obviously, continue taking the supplements, the minerals especially, hang upside down an inversion table and go to see your chiropractor. We followed your instructions to a tee. We also did ice packs on his back and his acute afib went away. What we figured out was anytime he lifts heavy weights it would compress his thoracic spine and he’d develop afib. It’s like clockwork.

[00:28:49] Dr. Joel Wallach: What happened was as his vertebrae get closer together compressing them, they smashed the roots of those spinal nerves that control the rate and rhythm of the heart.

[00:28:59] Ashley James: The cardiologist wanted to put him under and give him a peacemaker.

[00:29:04] Dr. Joel Wallach: Believe me, they would have done an ablation before they put in the pacemaker, which means kill part of the heart muscle. What did the doctors say when he didn’t have afib anymore?

[00:29:12] Ashley James: We didn’t go back to them.

[00:29:16] Dr. Joel Wallach: That’s why your husband is still alive. See, you’re not only beautiful, you’re smart.

[00:29:20] Ashley James: We listened to you because we’ve seen you help so many people. We’re just so grateful that we keep listening to you and learning from you.

[00:29:30] Dr. Joel Wallach: Thank you for passing on the information.

[00:29:32] Ashley James: Absolutely. It blows my mind. One client I had a few years ago she came to me for weight loss. She goes, “I’m sick. I’m 25 pounds overweight. I hate being overweight.” I said. “What happened? Tell me.” She goes, “Well, my doctor who’s my boss because I work at a clinic, and I’ve worked there for 20 years. My doctor has me on these steroids for my adult-onset asthma. The asthma is so bad I have to be on all these steroids and these steroids cause me to gain weight.” I said, “Wait a second, let’s back up. Dr. Wallach says this, this, and this about asthma.” We got her on the 90 central nutrients with extra the EFAs.

One month later she calls me up she goes, “My doctor took me off of all the meds. I don’t have any more asthma, but I’m calling because I want to help my niece who has ADD, my other family member who has this, and my other family member who has that.” I said, “Wait a second, you are off all your meds? You’ve known your doctor for 20 years because he’s also your boss. You’re off all your meds in one month and did he want to know why? Did he want to know how?” She said, “No.”

That’s happened over and over again. I’ve helped other people. You helped me reverse my type-2 diabetes. I’ve helped other people do the same and none of their doctors want to know how. They’ve had them on medicine for years like Metformin or insulin and then they finally get off of it because they’re healthy and the doctors don’t want to know. It’s so outside their realm. It’s so frustrating.

[00:30:58] Dr. Joel Wallach: See it’s not that simple. It’s a criminal act they’re doing because they don’t want to say no, it’s all my patients you get the same result that you did their income stream would stop. Their beautiful wife would divorce them, all their kids would get kicked out of school because they can’t pay their tuition anymore, and their dog would eat them. 

[00:31:22] Ashley James: They’re just stuck in this mentality of their training. Luckily, there are doctors who are breaking free from those who are becoming functional medicine practitioners, becoming Naturopaths, and focusing on nutrition.

[00:31:34] Dr. Joel Wallach: We’re keeping our fingers crossed. That’s why I started Youngevity because I knew that by myself I would not be able to have a major impact on the world, but this was too much good for too many people. We started a system—books and things, CDs, DVDs and so forth. When the audio cassette tapes first came out, my audio cassette tape Dead Doctors Don’t Lie was the first audio cassette tape to go viral.

[00:32:04] Ashley James: It did, it did. I was sitting in the backseat of my mother’s car when I was about 11 years old in 1991. My mom popped it in. I think I was at 11 or 12. My mom popped it in the tape player of the car, and I listened to your lecture over and over again. It completely changed my thinking. My parents had me see a Naturopath. I didn’t know what your name was but I heard your lecture, and I heard how important all these different nutrients were. Then I found you again back in 2011, I found you again. I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is the doctor I was listening to back when I was a kid that talked about the importance of nutrients.”

I’m sure the questions come up in listeners’ minds, why can’t I get all of my vitamins and minerals from food? I eat so healthily, I eat all kinds of fruits and vegetables, and I don’t eat junk food. Why can’t I get all my minerals from food? Why can’t I get all my vitamins from food?

[00:33:02] Dr. Joel Wallach: Okay. What if a mechanic were to say to you don’t waste your money by putting oil in your car? Put dirt from Texas or Oklahoma in your car. It’s only ten cents a quart, there’s bound to be some oil in it.

[00:33:12] Ashley James: Are we designed to get nutrients from food? Why are we getting nutrient deficient diseases?

[00:33:19] Dr. Joel Wallach: Where did God put the first human being?

[00:33:21] Ashley James: In the Garden of Eden?

[00:33:24] Dr. Joel Wallach: Eden. Why did God pick the Garden of Eden? Why didn’t he pick Oklahoma? Why didn’t he pick Maryland? Why didn’t he pick London? Here’s the deal. That’s the ultimate question. You asked the ultimate question, Ashley. I’m very proud of you. This is what we learned in the animal industry because we don’t have health insurance for animals. Here’s what we learned. I’ll ask you one more question, you’ll know the answer when I ask you this question. Is gold found equally all over the world?

[00:33:54] Ashley James: No. It’s in veins, it’s in ripples spread out unevenly.

[00:34:00] Dr. Joel Wallach: Okay, it’s found in veins. What about silver?

[00:34:05] Ashley James: It’s found in veins. It’s very hard to find these precious metals.

[00:34:10] Dr. Joel Wallach: What about iron?

[00:34:12] Ashley James: I love it. If you’re up in a plane and you’re flying across the country you can see sometimes their soil rich in iron and sometimes there isn’t. You can see the different colors.

[00:34:22] Dr. Joel Wallach: Okay. What about sulfur?

[00:34:31] Ashley James: I don’t know. I think sulfur is yellow. I think that creates a yellow tint to the earth. There’s nothing that’s equally or evenly distributed.

[00:34:41] Dr. Joel Wallach: You hit it right on the head there. Nutritional minerals, there’s not a single one of them that occurs in a uniform blanket across the earth. They all occur in veins like chocolate in chocolate [inaudible 00:34:52] ice cream. They all occur in veins like gold and silver. There are places where people live the longest. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that book and the movie Lost Horizon. The original book was written by James Hilton. He was a New York Times investigative reporter. New York Times sent him in the early 1930s, like 1930-1931. They sent him to China. He went to the Giltar Glacier in the Hunza district of China, which is halfway between mainland China and also Pakistan. The longest-lived people and it was a debate whether they were 250 years of age or 361 years of age.

[00:35:39] Ashley James: Wow.

[00:35:41] Dr. Joel Wallach: New York Times sent these guys, they got to be lying. There’s no way. They get their most vicious aggressive investigative reporter by the name of James Hilton. They send him there to investigate these people. He was able to document these ages. He wrote a report. It was such a response to the report when the New York Times published it, he wrote a novel called Lost Horizon. He invented the term Shangri-La for this mythical place where people lived forever. It was based on the true thing from the Hunza people in the Giltar glacier.

Then they made a movie out of it. It got more awards than any other movie ever. That book, Lost Horizon, is still the best-selling book ever with the number copies of the book. They made a movie that’s got the same title, Lost Horizon. The movie’s about an airplane crash of tourists in this place. Everybody is over 200 years of age and so forth. They figured out it has something to do with the soil, the water, and this and the other and so forth. That’s the whole gist of the story.

[00:36:49] Ashley James: Who figured out? Did you figure it out that they were getting minerals in their water from the glacier or the soil?

[00:36:55] Dr. Joel Wallach: They figured that out in 1933.

[00:36:57] Ashley James: Of course, there’s been talk of Blue Zones. I know you wrote a book about longevity that there are certain zones in the world like the Hunzas that live regularly past 100. They’re active, they’re working their farms, they’re fishing and they’re walking.

[00:37:12] Dr. Joel Wallach: They’re still working in the garden at 150, 160, and 170 years of age. There were all these newspaper releases in Europe and the United States. I have them in my book Rare Earth: Forbidden Cures with these guys in Hunza. They’re 168 years old, they’re out there still working in their garden, and don’t have any health problems at all. Well-documented by all the medical hospitals there in the regions and so forth. It’s like the gold of mind of nutritional minerals in those locations. Do you understand what I’m saying?

[00:37:43] Ashley James: Yeah. There’s a lot of talk about, for example, olive oil being the reason why those in Italy live so long. There’s a lot of authors out there that write books on longevity. They’ve decided the Mediterranean diet causes people to live a long life. Most of these places like the Okinawans eat a diet that contains less animal meat, for example. Then they’re saying maybe it’s less animal meat. They’re trying to make correlations, but what is the commonality between all the blue zones that really make the difference when it comes to stave off disease?

[00:38:25] Dr. Joel Wallach: Volcanic ash.

[00:38:27] Ashley James: Volcanic ash. Interesting.

[00:38:30] Dr. Joel Wallach: All these places where people live a long time, their water sources and their fields where they grow their crops are 20 feet deep volcanic ash since the beginning of time. All of these reefs are attached to volcanic island chains. Why do the reefs all start dying? Because we dammed up the rivers for electricity—hydroelectric. We blocked the volcanic ash from going down the rivers and feeding the algae, which the polyps that make the reefs ate, no more minerals, and that’s why the reefs died. Electricity is the reason that the reefs all died because they dammed up. Ashley, we have 1 million hydroelectric plants making electricity. All of them shut off the food supply to the reefs, and that’s why the reefs died. It is not carbon dioxide from fossil fuel.

[00:39:31] Ashley James: Some propose that it’s all of the pesticides or the herbicides that were—

[00:39:35] Dr. Joel Wallach: Because the environmentalists have an agenda. They will say anything they have to do to get a grant. But have you ever heard the scientific term crapola?

[00:39:49] Ashley James: I have not.

[00:39:51] Dr. Joel Wallach: Okay. Every place that there was a successful reef, it was always a reef that was attached to a volcanic island chain. Japan, Hawaii, Malaysia, and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia because all the water that came off that coast to feed the algae between the coast and the Great Barrier Reef were from the volcanic mountain chain right there in Queensland. When they put up the hydroelectric plants there to make electricity in the three rivers, there are three different rivers they put the dams in, they cut off the food supply to the Great Barrier Reef and that’s why the Great Barrier Reef is dying. If they will listen to me, in six weeks’ time the Great Barrier Reef will be back flourishing.

[00:40:35] Ashley James: We’re basically giving it a mineral deficiency because we’re taking away those minerals from that area?

[00:40:42] Dr. Joel Wallach: We’ve shut off the food supply to the algae, which the reefs ate. The reason why carbon dioxide is going up is because the algae are the things that ate the carbon dioxide, turn it into oxygen and carbon chains. Turn carbon dioxide into oxygen-carbon chains. Why aren’t the algae doing it now? The reason is, Ashley, those algae require 20 nutrients, 17 of which are minerals from the volcanic ash, and we shut off the food supply to those algae. They have enough nutrition to live, but they don’t have any nutrition to convert the carbon dioxide to oxygen and carbon chain. That piece is missing because they cut off that food supply from the volcanic ash.

I have a process. In fact, we actually have patents on now, we’ve been working on it, where we have augers that will auger the silt from behind the dams, around the dams, over the dams, or through the dams. They will dump that silt back in the water on the other side of the dam. We don’t have to destroy their electricity. We’ll just auger it on the other side of the dam, it’ll go down and feed the algae, and the reefs will come back.

[00:42:04] Ashley James: That’s amazing. That mirrors what’s happening with us, with our own bodies because you said the algae can live but they’re mineral deficient. They’re missing that silt because of the dams. They’re running only at like half 50% function, which is a lot of people are walking around mineral deficient and not fully functioning. Then they’re taking medication for the symptoms of mineral deficiency. It drives me crazy when people say they have restless leg syndrome because that’s a mineral deficiency. I get them on your minerals and within days they’re completely free of those symptoms and about 12 other symptoms they didn’t even realize they were mineral deficiencies. Yet their doctor had them on a ton of different drugs to mask these symptoms. The body is crying.

[00:42:55] Dr. Joel Wallach: He has his kids. He had to pay for their tuition for college.

[00:43:01] Ashley James: You helped a very famous athlete, Theo Ratliff. You helped him to get his career back. Because of that, you developed your sports drink, which I love your sports drink. It’s amazing. It’s full of nutrients. It’s not like just that sugary water that is sold in the grocery.

[00:43:18] Dr. Joel Wallach: Ashley, 100 nutrients. All other sports drinks are primarily caffeine and sugars. Energy drinks like Red Bull and all the other sports drink are just—

[00:43:28] Ashley James: Monster, Gatorade. They’re just sugar water with coloring. Yours is actually a healthy holistic sports drink.

[00:43:37] Dr. Joel Wallach: We have 100 nutrients in there—100 nutrients, Ashley. 78 minerals. No athlete who takes our sports drink is going to die from that Keshan disease, that hypertrophic cardiomyopathy heart disease.

[00:43:48] Ashley James: Your story of Theo Ratliff inspires me so much. Because of you, I’ve got to meet Theo and his beautiful wife, they’re amazing people.

[00:43:56] Dr. Joel Wallach: Wonderful couple.

[00:43:57] Ashley James: Yeah, they are. Can you tell us a bit about his story? Because of your supplements and your program, your protocol, you helped him to get his health back, end up being the famous Theo Ratliff that we know.

[00:44:12] Dr. Joel Wallach: He was in his early 20s and he had bone-on-bone arthritis in both knees arthritis. His cartilage popped off his right hip. He was playing for the Atlanta Hawks. Apparently, he pops off his right hip and he had surgically tacked down again. He also had a fracture in his left arm. They said, “Look, this guy’s too fragile to play ball. He’s got shooting skills but he’s too fragile to play pro ball.” They took his contract away from him. It was all in the newspaper and everything. We had one of our distributors there in Atlanta, Georgia contact him and said, “Hey, you need to let Dr. Wallach talk to you.” We talked over the phone. He said, “I’ll try anything.”

To make a long story short, we put him on our Healthy Bone and Joint Pack, but we also came up with our Rebounders for strength for him with all these 100 nutrients in it. Got him on a diet, cut him off all the bad foods including gluten, wheat, barley, rye, and oats to maximize absorption. In six months’ time, all his problems were gone, and he got his job back at the Atlanta Hawks. He made $30 million from the Atlanta Hawks before he moved on and made another $100 million with the other teams.

[00:45:10] Ashley James: Amazing, amazing. I heard a rumor that other very famous basketball players were drinking your sports drink even though they were being sponsored by Gatorade and other sports drink companies.

[00:45:25] Dr. Joel Wallach: Yeah, that happens.

[00:45:26] Ashley James: The fans started to notice, hey, Gatorade doesn’t have a color like that. They wanted to know what these sports teams were drinking. Do you know what sports teams are now using your supplements, do you know?

[00:45:39] Dr. Joel Wallach: There are players in all professional sports teams, all Olympic teams. There are players, maybe in some cases, not the whole team is drinking our sports drink, but there’s just about every serious athlete whether they’re semi-pro, Olympic, university, or professional they’re using our sports drink.

[00:45:59] Ashley James: Because you have such a deep understanding of where food comes from—the farm, understanding soil. Can you explain why is that soil is depleted of nutrients even more now than it has ever been?

[00:46:12] Dr. Joel Wallach: In some places, the nutrients have never been there at all. They’re not depleted, they just were never there. We have fertile ground and of course, the most expensive land and the land that people love to will to their kids and so forth was floodplains because these hilt from the runoff in the mountains, the minerals, would be reintroduced every spring during the floods to the land. But people who owned bottomland always had healthier cattle, healthier lambs, healthier pigs, healthier chickens, healthier kids, and they were more successful farmers because their yields were 50% or 75% higher than those trying to grow food out in the desert. Got it?

It was the re-introduction from the floods every year of those minerals in the silt. What dammed up the rivers? Hydroelectric plants shut off the food supply to these lands that get flooded every spring.

[00:47:15] Ashley James: The soil doesn’t get the remineralization every year. The Nile is a great example of that.

[00:47:23] Dr. Joel Wallach: Yeah. I don’t know how many dams are on the Nile. Just like the reefs, when you dam up the rivers for electricity—there are 1 million hydroelectric plants in the world, Ashley, 1 million. There are 2 million other dams that are for water conservation and irrigation. 3 million dams damming up the water. Guess what, they shut off the food supply to the land, they shut off the food supply to the ocean. That’s why the ocean is dying because 3 million dams damming up the rivers so the food supply is shut off to the ocean, the reefs, and the old bottomland that used to be the richest soil on earth.

[00:48:00] Ashley James: You have a product that farmers can use to remineralize their soil, and you’ve seen amazing results. I’ve seen amazing results. Even those who add the minerals to their chickens, for example, or add them to their cows. I’ve heard some amazing stories. Of course, the farmlands, crops grow stronger, healthier, and pest resistant because of the minerals in the soil.

[00:48:26] Dr. Joel Wallach: That’s correct. Of course, when they give our minerals, it has 78 minerals in there, the cows produce more milk—the same amount of grains are being fed. Of course, the chicken eggs are like 50% percent bigger. The hens their eyes get really big when they lay those eggs.

[00:48:48] Ashley James:  I love the minerals. I put it in my vegetable garden and I see great results, but I’ve also met some farmers who have used it. They’ve done experiments where they put it in one field but not in the other and you can see the difference. You can see right where they stopped laying down the minerals. Maybe you can explain it that the crops grow stronger but their pest-resistant because they’re stronger. Can you explain why is that?

[00:49:15] Dr. Joel Wallach: Ashley, not only pest resistant. Let’s say you have a nice couple. They live in Missouri and they have a kid. This kid he’s 22 years old and he’s 5’6”. His thing is playing pool on Friday nights at the bar, but they moved to Colorado. They live downstream from the mountains and their next son is 6’7” and plays basketball. One kid is 5’6” and the other kid is 6’7”, the same mom and dad.

[00:49:43] Ashley James: And that’s not genetics.

[00:49:45] Dr. Joel Wallach: No, that’s not genetics. That’s an embryo thing, the embryo got more nutrition. Also, as the kid was born, as he was growing up, he got more nutrition growing up because the food there had more minerals in it than this kid that was raised in Central Missouri.

[00:50:01] Ashley James: Can you see that there are parts of the country where people are taller because of the nutrients they had access to?

[00:50:10] Dr. Joel Wallach: Of course. You have to see where are some of the tallest people in America from? They’re from around Denver, Colorado in the mountains. They’re from Phoenix, Arizona down in the valleys from the mountains. Even Texas is famous for tall handsome cowboys.

[00:50:28] Ashley James: Very interesting.

[00:50:30] Dr. Joel Wallach: There’s also a lot of oil, gold, and silver in Texas too.

[00:50:36] Ashley James: You mean the soil is more mineral-rich?

[00:50:39] Dr. Joel Wallach: Yeah, because it’s all from volcanic stuff in Texas, all the mountain ranges in Texas.

[00:50:45] Ashley James: You’ve talked about how we can prevent and reverse disease by making sure that we have the 90 essential nutrients. The majority of that is minerals. What are the common symptoms of mineral deficiency? The people that are walking around right now that they have a mineral deficiency and they don’t even know it.

[00:51:04] Dr. Joel Wallach: I give a lecture. I’m lecturing to say 500, 600 people in a room. Out of the five hundred people, 20 of them will have gray hair or white hair. I know those people have varicose veins, they even have aneurysms, they have all kinds of weird stuff going on in their tendons and ligaments because the same nutritional deficiency that causes white hair causes these other diseases. You get a breakdown of the elastic fibers in veins, you have varicose veins. You get a breakdown of the elastic fibers and arteries, you get aneurysms.

These things don’t just happen. Our whole families died of aneurysms. Yeah. You’ve got five generations living on the same farm. Does anybody supplement? No, no, no. They’d laugh at you if you took supplements. We just eat well because we grow our own food. There you go. Our grandma, in the old days, when she felt like she was having cravings whether it was during pregnancy or they just would have cravings, they didn’t have pretzels, potato chips, chocolate bars, and stuff like that 100 years ago. What did grandma eat when she had cravings? Wood ashes out of the woodstove.

[00:52:21] Ashley James: Oh, yes.

[00:52:23] Dr. Joel Wallach: What are wood ashes? They’re minerals. Little kids would eat wood ashes out of the woodstove. Little kids would go eat dirt out of the backyard. The little ones before they were let loose on their own in the backyard, they were in their cribs they would chew on that rail in the crib. When they chewed on the crib they called it cribbing. When the horses were mineral deficient, they’d chew on the top rail of their stall. Because they were doing what the little kids would do they called it cribbing just like the little kids would do. Since I put those minerals in the baby formulas, they don’t have to put the fiberglass shield on the crib rails anymore because kids aren’t eating the rails anymore since they have our minerals in all the baby formulas.

[00:53:05] Ashley James: Can you explain why type-2 diabetes is a mineral deficiency?

[00:53:09] Dr. Joel Wallach: Sure. Because the people who have type 2 diabetes are deficient of a single mineral. Because that mineral does not occur in a uniform blanket around across the earth. It occurs in veins like chocolate in chocolate [inaudible 00:53:20] ice cream. It occurs in veins like gold and silver.

Here’s the deal, why does one neighbor not get diabetes and the other neighbor get diabetes? Where are they getting their food from? One gets it from the A&P and the other one gets it from Costco. They have different sources of those nutrients, or maybe they have a brother who has a farm 100 miles away and that brothers bring them bushels of food every week. People who are getting a source of those minerals naturally in their food don’t get those diseases. If they move away from there to another place where that mineral is not there, it’s not in the food in the grocery stores, your kids will get those diseases. You might hear doctors say it’s delayed genetics. It had to be back in her family somewhere.

[00:54:04] Ashley James: When I got on your supplements, I had taken supplements before. I bought it at the grocery store. I remember I bought supplements at Trader Joe’s and I didn’t notice the difference. I was very reluctant because I thought I’ve spent money before on supplements and it didn’t work. Why is this going to be different? But there is a voice in me that said just go for it, just try this. I had hope in me. At the time, I had out of control blood sugar. Just raging out of control blood sugar. I was hungry all of the time. When we were driving somewhere going on an errand on the other side of town, I would say to my husband pull over at the next exit and go to the first drive-thru. I have to eat now. I cried. I would burst into tears. I’d feel like a prisoner of my own body. I was always hungry. My blood sugar was out of control. I also had chronic fatigue. I was exhausted all the time.

The first thing I did was I got on your trace mineral, your liquid trace mineral, and I got on the supplement that helps stabilize blood sugar because it has the minerals in it for that. That day, I had just taken a few shots of the liquid mineral. It was 2 PM and my husband turns to me and said, “You haven’t eaten anything yet today.” I burst into tears because I checked in with my body and I realized I wasn’t hungry. Because I was always waiting for hunger to eat because I was constantly hungry. After just taking a few shots of the minerals I didn’t have any hunger and it was 2 PM. I couldn’t believe it. I was bawling my eyes out. I thought there’s something to this, there’s something to this.

I kept taking it and on day five, now I normally couldn’t wake up until about 11:00 in the morning. I’d be so exhausted all day. I woke up on the fifth day on your liquid mineral supplements, I woke up at 5:00 in the morning fully wide-awake, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed. I jumped on top of my husband, I looked him in the eyes and he says, “I don’t know who you are. You’re not the woman I married, but I’m keeping you.” I knew that there was something to this.

We called our two best friends, one lives in Toronto. You were giving a lecture that same day. I really believe it’s God’s divine intervention. God and came to help because that exact same day I called her up and I said, “Katherine Ann, I have to tell you about something. It’s amazing that’s happened to me this week. You have to go see Dr. Wallach.” She was in her 50s at the time, she had taken supplements her whole life. She had eaten healthy her whole life, but she was born with ichthyosis.

[00:56:45] Dr. Joel Wallach: Do you know what causes ichthyosis?

[00:56:47] Ashley James: I do now, but back then she was told it was genetic. She raised her hand and you said, “I bet you were told it was genetic.” She said, “Yes because my father has it and my niece has it.” You said, “The doctors were wrong,” and you told her exactly what to take. This is back in 2011, you told her exactly what to take. Three years later she has zero ichthyoses, and now, the only remnants are sometimes she gets slightly dry skin. That’s it, that’s it. Her body was covered in these giant chunks that would just fall off her and bleed and that was the ichthyosis, which means fish scales, but you reversed it. That was the most amazing thing because you proved, right there to us, that it wasn’t genetic but that her family, the whole family had a specific nutrient deficiency, it would express in that way.

You wrote a book called Epigenetics sharing that one family. If they had vitamin A deficiency, for example, would express in this way but a different family with different genetics, the genetics would express in maybe issues with the lungs, for example. You’ve shared that the root is nutrient deficiency, not genetics, but genetics express in different ways when you have nutrient deficiency.

[00:58:16] Dr. Joel Wallach: Okay. Here’s another piece to that. There’s a bottom line here, the thing that all the family members have a gluten problem. They’re eating gluten, oatmeal for breakfast so they couldn’t absorb the nutrient even if they were supplementing with that nutrient they’re going to be slow to respond, whereas if they were to get off of gluten and two weeks’ time it would be gone. Ichthyosis, psoriasis, eczema, dermatitis, rosacea, and asthma are all caused by the same deficiency. When you have a gluten problem, wheat, barley, rye, oats, that nutrient is extremely difficult to absorb. That’s why you see little kids with asthma, they got skin problems, they got eczema, dermatitis, and psoriasis. They’ll also have a bowel problem. These same people will have bowel problems. Will have irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease, diverticulitis, appendicitis, they’ll have things like colitis, and ileitis. You got it?

All those are the same disease when you look at them under the microscope. They’re only given different names because of different locations of major pain. They’re named by the location of the pain as opposed to what it looks like under the microscope because all those bowel diseases look the same under the microscope. They’re all the same. They’re the results of gluten consumption. You lose 97%, 98%, or 99% percent of the absorbent surface in your small intestines. So even if you supplement with that nutrient, you’re not going to get a full response or it’s going to take you three years to get a response that should take you only two weeks to get a response.

[00:59:55] Ashley James: Do you believe 100% of the world should avoid barley, wheat, rye, and oats?

[00:59:59] Dr. Joel Wallach: Yeah, wheat, barley, rye, and oats—the whole world should avoid it because that’s why 20 million people died in India 100 years ago from the Spanish flu. That’s why right now, Brazil got the worst cases of COVID-19. They had 1,000 people die last night in 26,000 new cases in Brazil last night because they’re all eating wheat.

[01:00:30] Ashley James: There’s a link between eating these grains and our immune health?

[01:00:36] Dr. Joel Wallach: Of course. You have to appreciate that you cannot absorb nutrients. Say you’re a three-year-old kid and you get the COVID-19 virus, you get minor common cold symptoms. After 50, 60, 70 years of eating wheat, barley, rye, and oats and now you’re, 65, 75, 85, and 90, you get the COVID you get really severe manifestations and even death. What’s the difference? The difference is over 30, 40, 50 years the people have been eating gluten—wheat, barley, rye, and oats—our intestinal lining disappeared. Even if they’re supplementing, they can’t absorb nutrients. Do you know what the immune system is, Ashley? Do you know what the immune system is made out of?

[01:01:20] Ashley James: White blood cells?

[01:01:22] Dr. Joel Wallach: White blood cells, right or the product of the immune system. The immune system is your bone marrow. When people, get to be 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90 years old, they have what’s called Wallach’s fibrous dysplasia. It used to be just called fibrous dysplasia, which doctors said was genetic. No, we’re calling it Wallach’s fibrous dysplasia because it’s not genetic. It’s a simple nutritional deficiency caused by gluten damaging the small intestine. It’s not able to absorb the nutrients so the bone marrow dies, can’t make white blood cells anymore to go kill and eat the virus, can’t make antibodies to go kill the virus, and can’t make red blood cells so these people are constantly anemic. They have to have transfusions all the time and B12 injections. They bleed to death because they can’t make platelets.

When the 20 million people in India died from the Spanish flu, they all died from hemorrhaging. They didn’t die from pneumonia. They all hemorrhaged to death because all their bone marrow was dead when the virus got them and they couldn’t make platelets, so they all bled to death. 20 million in six months.

[01:02:41] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

[01:02:42] Dr. Joel Wallach: It took me a lot of redoing all those autopsies to figure it out.

[01:02:45] Ashley James: That’s fascinating. Are there cultures that don’t eat barley, wheat, rye, and oats and they have stronger immune systems?

[01:02:53] Dr. Joel Wallach: Yes, they’re called Asians. They eat rice and sweet potatoes. Taiwan only has 23 deaths from COVID-19.

[01:03:04] Ashley James: That is fascinating. When I learned from you to remove barley, wheat, rye, and oats from our diet back in 2011, we did. We listened to you, we did exactly what you said although I don’t have celiac. A lot of people say oh I don’t have celiac, I don’t need to do that. I don’t have celiac either and I’ve taken allergy tests. I’m not allergic to it according to an allergy test, but when I removed barley, wheat, rye, and oats from my diet, I lost 25 pounds of water weight. My husband lost several as well.

He went down two ring sizes and I went down one and a half ring sizes. Our ring started flying off. We had our wedding rings custom-made for us and they started flying off our hands. We had to go get them resized back in 2011 and they’re still fitting perfectly. We had to go down that many ring sizes from cutting out barley, wheat, rye, and oats. It caused that much inflammation. We have pictures of us before and after going gluten-free but beyond that going oat-free as well. We don’t need those four grains because of everything we learned from you. Again, you don’t have to be allergic.

[01:04:14] Dr. Joel Wallach: Not an allergy.

[01:04:15] Ashley James: It’s not an allergy.

[01:04:16] Dr. Joel Wallach: It’s not an allergy. No. What I want everybody to do if they have any wheat, barley, rye, and oats in their house they need to package it up in a very nice package and drop it off as a present for their doctor.

[01:04:28] Ashley James: You are so funny. Why does barley, wheat, rye, and oats cause damage to the gut? Why does it mechanically cause damage to the gut?

[01:04:41] Dr. Joel Wallach: It’s actually chemical damage. It’s chemical damage because of the chemical makeup of the proteins in those grains. Rice does not have those, buckwheat does not have those, and millet does not have those, so those grains are all safe. It’s interesting too when you look at COVID-19 infections women have the same infection rate up until about 25 years of age as men. After 25 years of age women almost don’t get COVID infections at all and men go up.

[01:05:16] Ashley James: Is it because of beer drinking?

[01:05:19] Dr. Joel Wallach: Yeah, men drink beer. Women drink beer in college, but once they get over 35 years of age they get a little more sophisticated and they start drinking vodka, they start drinking wine, and that kind of stuff, right?

[01:05:35] Ashley James: That’s too funny. That’s true. A lot of women are avoiding those carbs because they’re afraid of carbs.

[01:05:41] Dr. Joel Wallach: Yeah. They have a reason. The men they like their beer, but if you want to drink beer drink Asian beer—Japanese and Chinese beer made from rice.

[01:05:50] Ashley James: The most important foods to avoid are barley, wheat, rye, and oats. What other foods have you found that are very detrimental to our health?

[01:05:59] Dr. Joel Wallach: Fried foods turn into trans fats, heterocyclic amines, it causes cancer, and it cause plaque in your arteries. Cholesterol is your best friend. Cholesterol does not cause plaque in your arteries or heart disease. Cholesterol is your best friend. Again, if you’re doctor wrote you prescriptions for cholesterol-lowering drugs, package them up and send them to your doctor. I love you so much. I don’t want to take these anymore [inaudible 01:06:20] throw away. I’m going to give them to you. Please use them. I just am not interested in those drugs.

Alzheimer’s disease is cholesterol deficiency. Cholesterol deficiency did not occur before the 1930s and 1940s. Prior to that time, there was no such thing as Alzheimer’s disease. There were dementia, but there are eight different dimensions doctors tend to call them all Alzheimer’s disease because insurance pays the most money to treat Alzheimer’s disease, so they call all eight dementias as Alzheimer’s disease so they get the bit maximum pay.

Let me tell you a great story. The guy’s name is Ray McGregor. He’s still alive and he’s kicking butt. I was actually in Texas at that time. This Ray McGregor had been in a coma. He had “Alzheimer’s disease” for three years, he goes into a coma, and he’d been in a coma for eight years in a nursing home being fed through a G-tube. He’s in a coma for eight years with “Alzheimer’s disease.” I put him on our program for anti-dementia including three eggs twice a day with soft yolks and our D-Stress capsules, Ultimate Niacin Plus, and Healthy Brain and Heart Pack. Grinding everything up twice a day and putting it all through his G-tube.

His daughter did this for him. In three days’ time, he gets up. He thought he was only asleep one day. He gets dressed, goes back to work at the bank. He was vice president of the bank. It’s been eight years. Nobody knew who the heck. They said who are you? They thought this guy is trying to figure out a weird way to rob the bank. He was perfectly normal after just three days on my program after being three years cholesterol-lowering drugs of statin drugs. Then eight years in a coma being fed just these liquid food replacers getting slowly worse and worse and worse and worse. They thought his end was coming. That’s why his daughter contacted me, is there anything we could do? I said, “Try this.” In three days’ time, she calls me screaming, “He’s back at work at the bank.”

[01:08:29] Ashley James: I love listening to your radio show because I hear these stories. Because people call in, you tell them what to do, and then they call in three months later. They tell you this is what happened. You’re like, “Yeah. You had followed what I said, good. Keep doing it.” But you hear these amazing stories. I believe twice I have heard of senior citizens growing back the second set of adult teeth. They lost their teeth. They’re wearing dentures for a long time and after getting on your supplements, in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, they regrew new teeth. That’s because the body now finally had enough minerals to do that. That blows my mind what the body can accomplish. I love following you and listening to everything you do.

A few years ago, when you were here in my town, a woman stood up crying and said, “I’m a nurse and a month ago I was in a wheelchair. I thought I would have to give up nursing because I have MS. I have a progressive form of MS. It doesn’t come and go, it just goes. I just was on my way out the door and I had to give up nursing and then I found Dr. Wallach. I got on his protocol, and I’m standing here today. 30 days ago I was in a wheelchair and now I’m standing here because of everything he does.” You had said that MS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease that they’re all the same disease but just presenting in different parts of the nervous system. Can you explain what you meant by that?

[01:10:03] Dr. Joel Wallach: Different parts of the nervous is do different things, Ashley. When you shut one of these different areas down you get different symptoms. That’s just a simple answer because each of those areas does different things. You shut down the one that causes you to start shaking, you start shaking. You shut down a different one, you lose your memory. You shut down a different one, you get ringing in the ears. You shut down a different one, you lose all your strength. You start eating three eggs three times a day with soft yolks, you take your Healthy Brain and Heart Pack and throw in the D-Stress capsules, and the Ultimate Niacin Plus, Synaptiv and stay away from all the bad stuff. All this stuff is in this book It’s All in Your Head! Because there are 25 different diseases that go away when you do what I tell you to do. I figure I might as well put all these head things in one book.

[01:10:59] Ashley James: I love it. I’m so excited for your new book. Is it out yet? When is it coming out?

[01:11:03] Dr. Joel Wallach: Oh, yeah. You can buy them today.

[01:11:06] Ashley James: Okay, great.

[01:11:07] Dr. Joel Wallach: This little book is going to change America. I’d say within one year’s time, this little book will change America because all these diseases that neurologists make their living off of and send their kids to college on are not going to be here anymore.

[01:11:24] Ashley James: Fascinating. I’m just so excited. I love that because of you these minerals and nutrients are now in the baby formula that wasn’t in baby formula. Because of you, we are reducing sudden infant death syndrome and we’re reducing these nutrient deficiencies caused diseases as people are waking up. One thing you say is to avoid oil and this is so controversial. So many doctors believe that we should be drinking liters of virgin pressed olive oil. Why is oil bad for us?

[01:11:57] Dr. Joel Wallach: Because they are chemical structures. They have what’s called double bonds, which are very, very fragile connections between one carbon and another. When you leave them to sit out at room temperature for a couple of weeks like salad dressing on the tables and restaurants or maybe in one of these places where you go through a line and they have the salad dressings on there. You fry in oils, you baste in oils, you cook in oils, you simmer in oils, you grill in oils, and you’re oxidizing those double bonds in the oil turning them into what’s called trans fats, heterocyclic amines, and acrylamides, which are one of the most potent poisons on earth.

They cause cancer, they cause plaque in your arteries. Cholesterol does not cause plaque in the arteries, cholesterol does not cause heart disease. It’s oil, the oxidized oil it’s either just so you could keep your salad dressing sitting on your kitchen table all the time. It will take a couple of months for you to oxidize it, but if you heat it for frying or just sautéing whether it’s fish, fried potatoes, chicken, hamburgers, or whatever it is you’re putting the oil in, you cause inflammation in the arteries and it causes plaque in the arteries. It’s the heated oils or oxidized oils that cause plaque in the arteries, not cholesterol.

It’s just like when people were told Alzheimer’s disease and there’s nothing to do about it. It’s the same principle.

[01:13:22] Ashley James: Have you been able to reverse heart disease? People come to you with four clogs in the heart, for example, or they’re on a heart transplant list. Have you been able to reverse heart disease?

[01:13:30] Dr. Joel Wallach: Thousands, thousands every day. Thousands every day around the world. One of the first recognized heart diseases is congestive heart failure. Ashely, the terminal event, that beriberi. One of those diseases that the old sailors used to die from is caused by a deficiency of a single vitamin. Congestive heart failure because doctors want to give you a heart transplant for, is a simple deficiency of one vitamin. Atrial fibrillation is caused either by osteoporosis to the skull squeezing the tenth cranial nerve, you get degenerate disc disease, and the vertebrae—first four thoracic vertebrae—is squeezing the first four thoracic nerves from your spinal cord that control your rate and rhythm of your heart.

These hypertrophic cardiomyopathy heart disease, this Keshan disease. It’s the sudden heart death in these young athletes and sudden infant death syndrome all the same thing, are caused by a deficiency of a single nutrient.

[01:14:22] Ashley James: In terms of deposits built up where doctors say it’s cholesterol.

[01:14:26] Dr. Joel Wallach: There’s no cholesterol and plaque in your arteries. There is no cholesterol in your arteries. That was the biggest lie that medical doctors have told the world. They should all be put in jail for that. Every cardiologist should be put in jail. There is no cholesterol and plaque in your arteries. Cholesterol has nothing to do with plaque in your arteries. Cholesterol has nothing to do with heart disease. It’s oils.

[01:14:53] Ashley James: I love it. What book of yours could someone read if they want to understand more about this?

[01:14:57] Dr. Joel Wallach: Epigenetics.

[01:14:59] Ashley James: Great. It’s so exciting to share this information because I’ve seen it work. You recently had sustained an injury that the doctors wanted to amputate your foot or they were entertaining the idea and you were able to save your foot. Can you tell us what happened?

[01:15:18] Dr. Joel Wallach: I was up in Canada. I was in Toronto and we had just finished one of these shows. It was late at night, dark, and we’re going to cross this field. There has been construction out there and they created a sinkhole in this field, which we had crossed hundreds and hundreds of times over the years and was just like a golf course, no holes nothing like that. There are seven of us, me in the middle, three beautiful women on one side, and three beautiful women on the other side. We’re walking because they’re rolling up the asphalt in the parking lot so you couldn’t park next to the meeting place. We had to walk across this field to get to the parking lot.

I stepped in this eight-foot deep hole and there’s rebar in there. This one foot was all punctured with rebar and it dislocated the SI joint on the right side and punctured my left foot. In three days’ time, that foot looked like a hamburger and everybody made me go to the emergency room. I go to the emergency room and they said, “Oh my god, we’re going to cut your foot off.” I said, “No, you’re not.” I got dressed and got out of there. My left foot, which had the gangrene in it and looked like hamburger, rotten hamburger, and they were going to amputate it, is perfectly 100% normal.

My right leg, which I had the dislocated SI joint in is still a half-ounce shorter than the left leg, but there’s no pain. There’s nothing wrong with it. I use a walker for balance, but I don’t need it. I walk around the house 14 times twice a day just for exercise. I can load and unload trucks and stand up behind the counter and deal with people all day just standing. No problem. I’ll have both legs when I die at 300.

[01:17:12] Ashley James: You better. Absolutely. But you healed so quickly. Did you change anything? Did you just continue on the supplements you always take and the diet you always eat or did you change anything?

[01:17:24] Dr. Joel Wallach: No, the only thing I did was I use our colloidal silver and squirted colloidal silver up the puncture wounds in the foot that I’d stepped on the rebar and had the gangrene. I just squirted colloidal silver up in the holes and sprayed it all over the outside of the foot. In 10 days’ time, it was all healed.

[01:17:40] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. I’ve seen that before where people who are on your supplements who are fully nitrified. They go in for a surgery, they heal much, much, much faster than any of the doctors expected because the body can heal itself when it has all of its resources.

[01:18:00] Dr. Joel Wallach: Ashley, doctors make their money when you have a complication from surgery.

[01:18:08] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

[01:18:12] Dr. Joel Wallach: Why would they want to avoid complications? That’s where they make their most money.

[01:18:20] Ashley James: It’s so disheartening and so frustrating. That’s why I do the work I do to spread this information so that we can help people.

[01:18:27] Dr. Joel Wallach: That’s why we love you. We appreciate it.

[01:18:30] Ashley James: My dear friend Jennifer who has healed some amazing things herself using your supplements and I have healed like I’ve shared. We started a website called takeyoursupplements.com. We help people to get on your protocols and follow your protocols to prevent and reverse disease and become incredibly healthy. Like I said, I reversed major issues. I was told I’d never have kids. I was able to conceive naturally, and we attributed all to the work that you do. Thank you so much.

A dear friend of mine, the second person I called to get on these supplements back in 2011 was my friend Forrest, who had chronic kidney stones. He was in his early 30s and he was urinating kidney stones for five months straight, unable to leave the house, he was in so much pain. We got him on your protocol and the kidney stones immediately stopped and they’ve never come back. You explained it was a mineral deficiency.  I’ve seen this over and over and over again that you regularly reverse issues.

Why is it that someone can’t just go to the grocery store and buy some generic supplements? Why is it that your supplements are unique and that your supplements are the most bioavailable that the body can absorb and utilize the best?

[01:19:42] Dr. Joel Wallach: Two reasons. Number one, they contain all 90 essential nutrients. Actually, more than that. 220 nutrients many of which will be deemed to be essential later on, but they certainly are in all our programs. We have programs for 900 different diseases. They all contain 200 plus nutrients 90 of which are universally agreed upon as essential. You see these advertisements on TV for these vitamins and minerals and these multiples. Some of them have been around since the Second World War. In fact, I used to take them as a kid.

They say complete nutrition. Order today. Complete nutrition. 20% discount because of all the COVID stuff. 20% discount, complete nutrition. You get all 27 nutrients. That’s not even 1/3 of the 90. 27 isn’t even 30. The 27 nutrients, I think 14 of them are vitamins and the others are minerals. They don’t have anywhere near the 60 essential minerals that you need. They get 7, 6, 12, or whatever it is. There you go. It’s just because their idea of complete nutrition is totally crazy.

[01:20:58] Ashley James: Your protocol has the 90 essential nutrients, but you also formulate it in the way the body can absorb readily.

[01:21:05] Dr. Joel Wallach: Yeah. We use very unique sources of these minerals, very unique sources of the vitamins, and very unique sources of the omega-3 essential fatty acids. None of our stuff is the same place any of these other companies get their nutrients from. Most of their nutrients are manufactured. The vitamins are manufactured. We have more natural nutrition than anybody else, but also, there are certain places on earth where these types of minerals occur. We’re talking about one deposit and these are places where everybody lives a long time. These are places where there are volcanic histories, so the volcanic ash is a 1000-feet deep here.

We buy the property, we mine this stuff, and is still in the plant farm. Repeat that, it’s still on the plant farm. These minerals are in plant cells. They’re organically bound as opposed to just ground-up limestone. That’s why ours are so absorbable because they’re attached to an organic molecule.

[01:22:11] Ashley James: Proof of the pudding’s in the eating by taking your supplements. I’ve worked with thousands of people since 2011 and they all noticed a difference. Everyone within days has more mental clarity, better sleep, better energy, and then they start to see those symptoms go away. The unwanted symptoms go away and they start to see better health just over and over and over again. I definitely encourage listeners to read your books. I’m going to have all the links to all your books in the show notes of the podcast so that they can read your books. Your information is phenomenal.

I love that you go against the grain. You go against the status quo because you’re showing people the truth. You’re not afraid to show people the truth. That’s why you’re my biggest hero in the health space. Thank you so much for coming today and sharing. It’s been amazing.

[01:22:59] Dr. Joel Wallach: Ashley, you are one of the greatest angels of God because you’re His work. I’ve worked with so many pastors. Actually, I have a wonderful DVD and a CD set called Praise The Lord And Pass The 90. Just a 30-second story. This pastor, Mike Freeman, up in Baltimore, Maryland. He went into a coma when the bird flu went through five or six years ago up on the East Coast. He was put into one of these terminal wards with 10 other people who were all supposed to be dead before morning. Ms. Linda, one of his great gals who does all his technical stuff, calls me and says, “Is there anything we can do for him?” I said, “Yeah. Just take our plant minerals, just plant minerals not the flavored ones, just the plant minerals. Put a face cloth on both his legs below his knees. Every 15 minutes soak them. Take a Bible in there, read the Bible to him. He’s in a coma.

In the morning she calls me crying. I said, “How is Pastor Mike doing?” She says, “Well, as predicted. 10 out of 11 were dead before morning.” She says, “Pastor Mike got up, shaved, and he’s down in his TV studio telling the world how God’s minerals saved his life.”

[01:24:07] Ashley James: I love that. I’ve heard that before that putting the minerals on the skin of people who couldn’t take it orally in order to absorb it. I love that. I’ve had experiences where I had a really, really bad sunburn to the point where blisters are coming up. I take your minerals and I spray it on. I put it on one side of my body, not the other, just to prove how quickly it’ll heal. The next day the sunburn where I put the minerals on is gone and the other side is still burnt. It just works. It really works.

[01:24:38] Dr. Joel Wallach: I remember you sharing that with me before. I want to thank you. Praise the Lord and pass the 90. Let’s do more great things together. Love you, dear. Bye-bye.

[01:24:44] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you so much, Dr. Wallach. It’s such a pleasure. You’re welcome back anytime.

[01:24:49] Dr. Joel Wallach: Okay. Thank you so much.

[01:24:50] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Dr. Joel Wallach, one of my biggest heroes in the holistic health space and certainly my favorite Naturopathic physician. Please go to takeyoursupplements.com and speak with us about what supplements are right for you. The trace minerals, their one bottle of it is about $24. It’s a liquid form of 77 trace minerals and elements. Everyone can take it. It’s affordable for everyone. Of course, to get all 90 essential nutrients that are right for you.

As he mentioned, the secret sauce. Depending on your symptoms, your health concerns, and your health goals, there are certain packages that he’s created. Certain protocols and programs that he’s created for everyone depending on their needs. We’ll help you with that. Go to takeyoursupplements.com. We really look forward to helping you. I’ve been working with everyone there at takeyoursupplements.com. I’m so excited that you can be part of it, part of helping get your health back.

If you’re a health coach and you’re interested in learning how to help people with supplements, we can also help you there. There’s a whole training program for health coaches to learn how to utilize Dr. Wallach’s protocols to help their clients. We can help you with that as well. Awesome. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you love. Remember, go to takeyoursupplements.com and have yourself a fantastic rest of your day.

Get Connected with Dr. Joel Wallach!

The Wallach Revolution

The Wallach Files

Wellness Publications

Youngevity

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Contact Sunlighten Saunas for their Special Listener Sale during the month of June for Father's Day! Call 877-292-0020

Check out the supplements Ashley James recommends:

takeyoursupplements.com

Magnesium Soak: Use coupon code LTH at Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com

IT'S HERE! Learntruehealth.com/homekitchen
Use coupon code LTH for the listener discount!

Check out IIN and get a free module: LearnTrueHealth.com/coaching

Naturopathy For Kidney Health

https://www.learntruehealth.com/naturopathy-for-kidney-health

Highlights:

• Difference between MDs and NDs
• Different types of kidney stones
• Magnesium and potassium can be helpful to calcium oxalate kidney stones
• Herbs that maintain kidney function and helps treat kidney disease
• 3 alkalizing foods: pomegranate juice, cantaloupe, and pinto beans

Most people think that if you have kidney disease, it can’t be reversed anymore, but that is not always the case. Dr. Devin Miles, a Naturopathic Physician specializing in gastrointestinal disorders and kidney disease, joins us to share more information about kidney health. She enumerates different types of kidney stones and provides information on how to prevent kidney stone formation as well as how to treat kidney stones.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I can’t believe it’s already June. Can you believe that? Time really flies. I’m so excited for you to listen to today’s episode because we focus on kidney health. Prevention is the most important thing, so if we can adjust our lifestyle and diet now to support kidney health, we can encourage our body to have a longer, healthier life. By supporting healthy kidneys, as what’s discussed in today’s episode, you’re actually supporting every organ of the body, so prevention is one thing. But if you have kidney disease right now, regardless of what stage you’re in, you can do things to support optimal health. No matter what, you can do things naturally to support yourself in achieving optimal health, and we discuss that in today’s interview.

There are a few exciting things happening this month because Father’s Day is coming up. I’ve talked to my favorite health companies, and we have some really exciting sales for you for Father’s Day. One really exciting sale is from my favorite sauna company, Sunlighten. I talked to them and talked to them and talked to them and whittled down a really, really great deal, so I’m very excited for you. For the month of June, right now they’re running some kind of special sale, but for Learn True Health listeners, on top of their already current sale price for their saunas and their solo systems, you’re going to get as a Learn True Health listener $200 off your sauna and free shipping. Shipping for a sauna system like a big wooden sauna system is over $500. They’re going to give you free shipping, and they’re going to take $200 off. If you get a solo system, they’re going to take $100 off.

Usually, in addition to that, for the Learn Truth Health listeners, they throw in some things like their bamboo towels and stuff like that. I really like the special, non-toxic pad that you sit on in the wooden sauna. I love their 3-in-1 system. I’ve had several episodes about it. I’ve interviewed a cardiologist that uses saunas for heart health. I’ve interviewed the founder of Sunlighten. She talks about why she started the company. I’ve interviewed an employee of theirs that shares some really cool stories of success. The reason why I chose Sunlighten out of all the other sauna companies in the world, for me to buy my own personal sauna from them, is because they have a 3-in-1. It’s a full spectrum of light whereas most saunas are just the far-infrared. The Sunlighten is the near-infrared, the mid-infrared, and the far-infrared. There are benefits to healing the skin and actually reducing wrinkles, reducing scar tissue, decrease in chronic pain, and decrease in inflammation on all layers through the skin and into the soft tissue.

You can sit in it at a lower temperature and get a really great sweat, so it increases your core temperature while still breathing comfortable air instead of breathing stuffy hot air. There are general benefits that everyone gains from using sauna therapy such as decreasing stress, decreasing inflammation and pain, and stabilizing blood pressure into a more normal range. All these things are great for overall health, but specifically about the kidneys.

There are many articles in PubMed and other studies that you can find that healthfully using sauna therapy can benefit those with liver and kidney disease. One particular study showed that the concentration of ammonia in the body was released through sweat. That we also release urea through sweat as well as high levels of nitrogen. Using sauna therapy in the study, they were able to take the load off the kidneys by allowing us to sweat through the skin instead of having to have the kidneys do all the work.

The reason why I bought a Sunlighten two years ago is because my doctor told me to. She said that my liver was having problems and that I should support my body in detoxifying, especially heavy metals. I’ve been using a Sunlighten to detoxify heavy metals, but also support my body in releasing these metabolites like ammonia and urea through my sweat. Lots of nasty byproducts of our metabolism can sweat it out, and then we’re giving our kidneys in our liver a break.

Of course, if you’re under the care of a physician for a disease like a kidney disease, you should definitely work with your doctor, but add to your team. Find a naturopathic physician, find a functional medicine practitioner, and find more doctors and experts to add to your team to give you different opinions and of course all science-based. Dr. Andrew Weil, who’s a very famous medical doctor that specializes in holistic medicine, is quoted as saying that he regularly tells his patients with liver and kidney disease to sweat in a sauna two to three times a week. That the increase in blood flow is so good for those organs—the detoxification that happens in the sauna but also that it lowers blood pressure and that’s really great for the kidneys as well.

There are several reasons why sauna therapy is great for the kidneys. I love the Sunlighten is a very gentle form of sauna therapy. But of course, work with your doctor and make sure that sauna therapy is right for you if you have a disease. There are some cases where sauna therapy is incredibly beneficial, and there are some cases where it’s not recommended, so make sure it’s right for you. There are many reasons why I love Sunlighten. If you go to learntruehealth.com and type Sunlighten or type sauna into the search bar, you’ll find several episodes where we’ve gone in greater detail but why I love Sunlighten.

I wanted to let you know that this Father’s Day sale is going on right now, and it’s such a perfect gift to give to your whole family, but especially give to your father or your husband for Father’s Day. The smallest wooden system is like a phone booth. It looks quite small on the outside, but you can actually sit in it with your spouse. My husband and I can sit in it comfortably and then our five-year-old comes running in sometimes. He likes to be in there for a few minutes, and it’s safe for a few minutes for children to be in there. Typically, it’s one minute for every year of age. He gets to be in there for about five minutes and then he jumps out, but my husband and I can sit in there comfortably together. It fits in the corner of one of our rooms.

You can get the wooden system, but if you don’t have a lot of space, you get the solo system. The solo system is ultra-low EMF and non-toxic. It’s very comfortable to lie on. Then you wipe it up and put it away in the closet when you’re not using it, so that’s very exciting that you have those two options. Then of course they have larger systems and they have different kinds of wood. I got the cedar because I love the smell of cedar, but if you’re hypersensitive to smell they have different types of wood depending on that.

Give them a call. Just google Sunlighten and give them a call. Mention Learn True Health with Ashley James and they will give you that discount. They know that this discount is for you guys, the Learn True Health listeners, and they’re more than happy to answer your questions. It’s a wonderful company that’s based in the United States. I just really, really love the quality of their products and their customer care.

If you have any questions for me about my experience with them, I’ve been working with them and using their system for about two years now, you can always reach out to me in Facebook or you can email me ashley@learntruehealth.com. Stay tuned for the other Father’s Day sales that I’m going to be letting you guys know about. Medterra CBD, which is my favorite CBD company because of the quality of their CBD. I’ve had them on the show twice to talk about that. Of course, my favorite magnesium soak and there’s going to be others that I will be letting you guys know about. I’m going to let you know about it in the intros of the next few episodes, but I’ll also be letting you know more details in the Learn True Health Facebook group. Go ahead and join the Facebook group by going to Facebook and searching Learn True Health, or you can go to learntruehealth.com/group and that’ll take you straight to the Facebook group.

Thank you so much for being a listener. I’m so excited that you get to learn more about how you can reverse and prevent kidney disease. That includes kidney stones. That includes even if you have scar tissue in the kidneys, we talk about how to reverse that, which is really exciting. Please share this episode with those you love especially those you know who have high blood pressure, have diabetes. These are conditions that harm the kidneys and that could lead to kidney disease later on. We really want to do everything we can to support our kidney health as much as possible. If you’re healthy now let’s stay healthy, and if you have some health problems now, if you have symptoms now, let’s get you back on the road to health. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day and enjoy today’s interview.

[00:10:01] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 434. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have Dr. Devin Miles on the show who is a Naturopathic physician that specializes in gastrointestinal disorders and kidney disease. I’m really excited actually to talk about kidney disease today. Out of the 400 and something episodes we’ve had, we’ve never done a whole episode on kidney health, and that’s something I’ve been really excited to discuss. I’m very excited to have you on the show today. So many people are on dialysis needlessly that we could support everyone’s kidneys now to prevent dialysis. I have heard Naturopaths helped people get so healthy that they no longer need dialysis. I’m very excited to have you on the show. Welcome.

[00:10:57] Dr. Devin Miles: Thank you, thank you. Good to be here.

[00:11:00] Ashley James: This is going to be a lot of fun. Before we jump into kidney health, how to reverse kidney stones, and prevent them and all the different kinds of kidney disease that we can reverse and prevent, I’d like to get to know you a little bit. What happened in your life that made you want to become a Naturopathic physician?

[00:11:16] Dr. Devin Miles: I started having digestive issues in my senior year of college, I was 21 years old. For me, it was just out of the blue. I had not had any digestive issues. Just one day, I noticed my lower abdomen was just bloated, then I had constipation, then I had more constipation, more bloating, more gas, and then it was foul gas. I started noticing I was having food sensitivities that I never had before. Fast forward, I was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. There wasn’t much of a resolution in terms of cure or even understanding what it was. I was introduced to this health food store in my neighborhood at the time and told the guy what I got diagnosed with and he had had the same thing. He was the first person that really gave me hope about what to do about it.

It really started as trying to figure out things for me. Then I started to realize that I was way more into researching about health than I was at my job at the time. I was like okay I think I want to make a career out of this. Eventually, I found naturopathic medicine. That’s when I was like yeah that’s it, that’s what I’m going to do. Then I went for it.

[00:12:55] Ashley James: I love it. You just dove right in and never looked back.

[00:13:00] Dr. Devin Miles: My body spoke to me in such a way that I had to listen. It was too much. When I found out about Naturopathic medicine, it was from a book that my parents gave me that they were reading at the time. That was significant because that was the first book, probably since the first grade, that I wanted to come home and read every evening. Outside of that, I was not somebody who read for leisure. My only time of reading was for educational and work purposes, that was more than enough. The fact that I actually wanted to come home and read that book every night, that really spoke to me.

[00:13:43] Ashley James: That’s so cool. I know exactly what you mean. I’ve got one right here I can’t put down. It’s called the Encyclopedia of Healing Juices. That’s not like a book you’d read like a novel but it does. I can’t put it down. Like you said, when your body speaks to you and when you’re really into health, when you’re really on the right path everything aligns. I just love that you couldn’t put that book down. What was the book?

[00:14:14] Dr. Devin Miles: It was called 21 Pounds in 21 Days. That was written by Roni DeLuz. She is actually on Martha’s Vineyard. She has her own retreat up there, which actually does incorporate a lot of juicing. She’s a Naturopath as well.

[00:14:35] Ashley James: I imagine her program isn’t about just losing weight but about losing the inflammation.

[00:14:41] Dr. Devin Miles: Yeah. It really can apply to everyone. My mom picked it up of course because she was trying to lose weight. Dr. DeLuz’s people from all walks of life are not just weight loss.

[00:14:54] Ashley James: Very cool. As you went to the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, what times blew your mind? As you’re going through it, did you have these aha moments? Like oh my gosh, I couldn’t believe that we can reverse this disease or we can reverse this. Because we’re raised to believe, if our family traditionally went to an MD, we’re given drugs, we saw our family members given drugs for diseases and told that they’re just going to have them for the rest of their life. That’s just the way it is. 

We’ve watched Hollywood and mainstream media and we’re told this is just the way it is. Then you go to a Naturopathic school and you realize my gosh, we can reverse these diseases naturally? Did you have any of those aha moments?

[00:15:45] Dr. Devin Miles: I’m guessing that whatever I read prior to going to school made me walk into school with the expectation that I would find out how to reverse those. It wasn’t so much an aha. Reading Dr. Roni’s book, going to see her, and talking with her was very pivotal for me to believe that I could probably find the solution to anything. It was more so an expectation, but I will say the first quarter of school was very majestic for me. I was very much like ohh, wow, ahh type of thing. It wasn’t an aha moment, but I was just enjoying what I was learning that first quarter.

[00:16:39] Ashley James: Can you share with us something that you just really, really, really enjoyed learning in Naturopathic school?

[00:16:46] Dr. Devin Miles: I feel like the philosophy of Naturopathic medicine. I feel like that first quarter we went into that quite a bit. Just understanding how the body works and how connected it is, I really started to harness that mindset when I was in school. I realized that what we have is we’re trained to have a certain mindset that is understanding that the body is connected, that it works as a whole, but it’s not a rigid framework. 

I was recently quoted by the Institute of Natural Medicine about that that I have, what I consider, an open-minded framework. There’s some structure but there’s a way for you to be open to other things that you may learn that could also be pieces of the puzzle. I think it helps you to know where to put those pieces. First, you can accept them, and then second, you can figure out where to put them in the puzzle that you have already started to create.

For instance with carpal tunnel syndrome. I remember learning that, I think it was, vitamin B6 was helpful for that. Then there was something within acupuncture that was also really helpful for carpal tunnel, and I linked those two things together in such a way that I understood why both of them worked for a carpal tunnel because I knew one and then I could put in the other one after that. Just being able to link things like that and be open to how it works and that it does work I think is what’s been really, really nice.

[00:18:45] Ashley James: Awesome. I also know that there are certain minerals that when we’re deficient in can exacerbate carpal tunnel, can help when we supplement with certain trace minerals, and can help to alleviate, I’ve seen that before. The fact that you are not closed off like this is the only way. What’s the difference in terms of philosophy? Because this is really the key to healing our bodies is our mindset about what direction we’re going to take when it comes to our health protocol. What’s the difference between seeing an MD, a medical doctor, and seeing an ND, a Naturopathic doctor? What’s the difference in the philosophy of healing?

[00:19:30] Dr. Devin Miles: Medical doctors, MDs, have a standard of care that is I think quite rigid.  It’s more rigid, it’s more strict than a Naturopathic doctor. Naturopathic doctors have standards, but as I mentioned before, they have a framework that they can really build upon and branch out from. It allows them to be more receptive to learning new things, in my opinion. 

There are more tools in our toolkit for addressing different things. When you go to a Naturopathic doctor, if you go to one and then another you might notice that they use different approaches to get to the same result. That’s really why I think Naturopathic medicine came about because this German guy named Benedict Lust who put all of these pre-existing therapies together because he saw the synergy of them being put together. In other words, these therapies were around because he saw that they were effective, but they may not always be effective by themselves and different people need different things.

I think naturopathic medicine allows you to have a broader framework from which to choose what is going to work for that person. It helps you to figure them out better. We use things that the body better understands them. We as human beings are of nature. When we use things that are from nature, the body understands that better because it works with it versus if it’s something synthetic, the body knows it’s synthetic. The body is probably missing something that it needs for that to fully work. When we use things in Naturopathic medicine, we’re helping to resolve the issue versus forcing one piece of it to just work better.

For instance, if it’s hypertension, if I put somebody on hypertensive medication yeah their blood pressure would probably come down right, but if you take that person off of a blood pressure medication, the blood pressure’s going to go right back up. Versus if you adopt a lifestyle that is conducive to reducing hypertension and you use different herbs, homeopathy, and some other nutrients that can keep the blood pressure down, the body is very understanding of that and it’s getting what it needs to keep the blood pressure low.

You could say well if you get off of all those things of course the blood pressure comes back too. That can be true, but the reality is the difference is that your body has what it needs to be in balance. It’s not that the drug is restoring total balance to your body, it’s balancing you for the sake of your blood pressure. But is your whole body in balance? Probably not. 

That is the difference when we are working with a Naturopathic doctor. It’s not just about your blood pressure, it’s also about getting your whole body in balance. If you come to me with one condition, you probably have eight other symptoms that you may or may not be telling me that you might notice go away when you start to work with me because I work on the body as a whole.

[00:23:21] Ashley James: I love how you put that restoring total balance. Using the example of high blood pressure, the body is speaking to us in symptoms. So many Naturopaths who have come on the show have said that we need to listen to the language of the body, and the body is speaking and symptoms. If someone has high blood pressure and they just take medication for it, it’s kind of like if your car was making a really loud noise like maybe a belt is about to go or something and your mechanic gives you earplugs. You’re like here this is going to stop the noise. You put these earplugs in and then you’re not going to hear that noise. The car is still going to break down. 

I believe there are statistics, and maybe you could speak to this, but there are statistics that for people who are on high blood pressure medication long-term they have shorter lifespans. All cause mortality. For those on high blood pressure meds will not live as long as those who figured out how to naturally support the body’s ability to heal itself and maintain optimal blood pressure.

[00:24:31] Dr. Devin Miles: I was going to say I think that applies to a lot of different medications even outside of blood pressure.

[00:24:36] Ashley James: Right. There are certain medications. We always have to say this, certain medications save people’s lives, certain medications are really necessary. I’ve even talked to Naturopaths who say they would prescribe blood pressure medication in the short-term while they’re helping the person to make lifestyle changes, nutrient changes, and figure out more in-depth. My husband had out-of-control high blood pressure a few years ago. He’d always had borderline high blood pressure but then it went through the roof. We figured out it was—and this is going to lead to kidney issues. 

We had done the ketogenic diet under a Naturopath’s care for three months. After that, we did blood work and my liver was very damaged. It took me years to recover and my husband’s kidneys were incredibly damaged. We had to do several tests to find out. As a result, we ended up going whole food plant-based and focusing on herbs and supplements to support his kidneys. He was temporarily put on two blood pressure medications. It was a water pill and a blood pressure medication in order just to bring it down, but it only brought it down eight, nine points. 

Then the Naturopath worked with him. At that time, we were seeing one that specialized in cardiology, a very interesting guy. He figured out that my husband just runs in stress mode. He’s always stressed out. He had him on Carditone and that immediately dropped his blood pressure, which is really interesting. By that time, his kidneys were healed, he got off of his blood pressure meds very quickly. Everything’s good now. His blood pressure is totally fine. But it’s interesting though if he gets stressed out or starts worrying about something he can raise his blood pressure.

For him, even though yes he has to eat a healthy diet that’s conducive to kidney health and heart health. It’s just as important as his diet to lower his stress levels and to do that internal work to not work himself up, so it’s interesting to see. If we had gone to just an MD then he would have just put him on meds. Whereas the Naturopaths we went to address his stress levels, his lifestyle, his emotional mental health, his sleep, his energy, his kidney health, his heart health, and his diet. There are so many more facets of his life that have been enriched by Naturopath care than an MD would have. 

MDs have their place, they’re one piece of the pie of medicine, but they’re not the whole pie. In the mainstream media, we’re taught that MDs are the whole pie, that allopathic medicine is the whole pie, and everything else is like this alternative dessert. It’s not the case, right? It’s not the case.

One Naturopath I’ve worked with calls it allopathic reductionism. He says that MDs are trained in philosophy as reductionistic thinking. If you come to them with a kidney problem, they’re just going to look at the kidneys and focus down on that, reduce it to that, and not look at all the other symptoms of the body. Whereas a Naturopath, like you said, you’re looking at all the other symptoms. 

When you’re supporting someone in that vitamin deficiency they might have had for their carpal tunnel, you’re actually supporting them in their sleep, in their energy, in their mood, and their stress. You’re supporting them in all those other areas of their life because a mineral, a nutrient, or a vitamin deficiency will create hundreds of potential symptoms. You’re not treating a symptom, you’re treating the body as a whole and what the body needed. I

I feel like Naturopathic medicine should be the main medicine that we go to, and we should go to MDs for emergency medicine because that’s where they shine. Go to Naturopaths for prevention and for chronic illness because that’s where you guys shine.

[00:28:59] Dr. Devin Miles: Right. I am in full agreement with you that yes, sometimes medications are helpful. Sometimes Naturopathic medicine and conventional medicine do need to get used at the same time. It also depends on their stage of life, what they know, what they’re exposed to, and what answers they have. That’s also why I like to be on different media platforms so that I can expose people to what is out there, to what is possible. I know what it feels like to be on a journey of knowledge. You’re doing the best that you can at each point.

There was one guy, when I was in clinical rotations, who had schizophrenia. He was better managed, not just on his medications, but on medications plus acupuncture. That is what finally got him to a much more stable space. Even with my clients, I would say maybe half of them are on medications. I don’t tend to touch the medications. 

On top of that, I am in a state where—there’s about 22 states that are licensed where Naturopathic physicians can practice medicine. I’m in a state that is not that. It’s pre-license. I definitely don’t touch their medications, but I tell them that—especially if it’s something like blood pressure—you need to be taking your blood pressure every day. Being mindful of that, what I’m doing may drop your blood pressure further. We have to be mindful of episodes of hypotension because you can get symptomatic of course if you have hypotension. 

These are times when you need to start going back to your physician to be like hey, can we reduce the dose? The goal, of course, is for you to eventually not need the medication, right? Everybody’s in their own path and they got to find what works for them, what keeps them stable, and all of that. I respect that.

[00:31:13] Ashley James: That’s actually progress because when I first got into working with Naturopathic doctors, I was being mentored by Naturopath as a health coach. Back in 2011, only 17 states were licensed. I know that Naturopaths have been fighting for being able to be licensed in other states. That’s great, that’s progress to go from 17 to 22 in the last few years. That’s great. I’d like to see, obviously, all 50 states. I’d like to see all the provinces of Canada. I’d like to see every country in the world recognize Naturopathic medicine. It’s going to be one state at a time. The fact that there are 22 states that recognize Naturopathic physicians as doctors that could prescribe drugs and are at the same level and be able to use insurance with Naturopaths for those states. It’s good. It’s growing, it’s growing. This is what we want. Absolutely.

[00:32:15] Dr. Devin Miles: I enjoy what I do here in—I’m in Texas right now. Austin, of course, is a city that I think is much more receptive. That’s where most of the Naturopathic doctors. I am in Houston at the moment. So It’s a different dynamic, but I enjoy it when I get to educate people. When I first got here most people were like what? Wait, what’s the word again, Naturopath? I feel like now, for whatever reason, not as many people are responding in that way. They’re like oh, okay, okay. Cool. That’s good.

[00:32:59] Ashley James: Very cool. Back in 2011, I started working with a Naturopathic doctor and he was training me. One of my friends, who is in his early 30s, had kidney stones—chronic. He, for five months straight, was urinating kidney stones, passing kidney stones. For a man, that’s more painful for a woman just because they have a little longer urethra, so he was in agony. He couldn’t leave his house. He said the only thing that helped was to sit in the shower with the hot water beating down on him, and that’s just what he did all day for five months. 

I called him up and I said, “I am working with this Naturopath. He has a protocol for kidney stones.” My friend said, “Sign me up.” He got on these supplements, specifically very bioavailable minerals including bioavailable calcium, and his kidney stones immediately stopped and they have not come back.

The Naturopath that I worked with explained that, and of course, there are different kinds of kidney stones and you’re going to go into this today that there’s not just one kind. This Naturopath, actually, he’s 80 years old now and he’s still practicing. He’s really cool. I just had him on the show, Dr. Joel Wallach. He said that when we are deficient in calcium in our diet our parathyroid glands, which are the four little dots in the thyroid, the parathyroid glands will continue to release this hormone telling our bones to release minerals, like calcium, to the soft tissue. 

Over time, those will just do too much because we’re not getting enough from our diet and then it would collect in the kidneys. By supplementing with a bioavailable calcium that has all the other mineral cofactors, then the parathyroid gland stops doing that. That supplementation satisfies the soft tissue—the calcium and all the minerals the soft tissue needs. The kidneys stop creating the stones. I know this is very simplified—what I’ve said is very simplified. I’m sure he has a more medical explanation. 

It worked. My friend never had kidney stones again, and I’ve since heard many other stories of people who have had the same result. But if you go to an MD, if my friend had gone to an MD at the time, the MD might have checked his calcium levels in his blood, seen that it was high, and would have told him to stop eating things that contain calcium because he has too much calcium. The MD sees it under the reductionistic lens and says you have too much calcium, not looking at the whole picture. Whereas the Naturopath understands the whole picture and would say, no, you actually need more calcium. 

There’s a big difference. If he had gone to an MD, he might have gone on drugs, and surgery whereas the body was crying out for a balance of nutrients, and that’s what it needed. Have you experienced that? Obviously, you had great success with reversing kidney stones, but I’d love for you to dive in and explain the different kinds of kidney stones and speak maybe about my experience with my friend and his kidney stones that were actually a mineral deficiency.

[00:36:28] Dr. Devin Miles: I haven’t seen that particular story but it brings to mind something that I have seen in a different form. I won’t go too in-depth because we’re talking about kidneys and that’s digestive issues, but the theme of deficiency and overcompensation due to deficiency. I’ve seen that in different walks of life in different behaviors. That’s the theme that I pick up from that if you have a deficiency of calcium and then the parasite just over supplies calcium because of that. 

I would love to get into the kidney stones and talk a little bit more about some of the different types. It sounds like that might have been, of course, coming from too much calcium in the body from the parathyroid. I want to talk about what a kidney stone feels like first. You talked about it a little bit but I wanted to mention that a kidney stone is going to feel like back or loin pain radiating down into the groin or the side. It’s excruciating pain. You would probably know that it was a kidney stone because it’s that type of picture that goes with it. 

You can also have blood in the urine as well as an urgency to urinate. The way that this can be discovered is through an ultrasound. Your story that you mentioned before about the guy that was dealing with for five months, anyone who’s listening I would definitely urge not to wait that long.

I’m glad he didn’t have complications from it but you can definitely have complications from having a kidney stone. You can definitely have a blockage of urine and that could of course go further up and cause problems. Anyone who is listening and is thinking that they may in fact have a kidney stone, please go get that checked out right away. 

Some risk factors for having kidney stones. There could be a bone disease as you mentioned with the one guy, hyperparathyroidism, there could be hypercalcemia. That’s of course too much calcium in the urine. You could have too much cystine in the urine. There could be some sort of low-grade infection and I’ll talk about that in a little bit. There could be some abnormalities in terms of the structure of your body that creates poor urine flow. Then there could be different components that are in the urine that are in larger amounts in it that they should be. It creates a supersaturated urine and that can form crystals, and that can form kidney stones.

A couple of ways that this might happen could be changes in your urinary pH. If you have acidic urine, and we’ll talk about that more, that could be a reason why you create kidney stones. Decrease urine volume. This is why if you are prone to having kidney stones you want to drink a lot of water on a daily basis to keep the urine from getting too saturated to where it would form crystals. If you think about salt for instance, if you put a lot of water in the salt and you stir it up it dissolves, but if you only put a few drops and water in the salt it’s going to mainly just stay crystallized. 

That’s a good analogy for understanding why you need water to keep things dissolved so that they can pass instead of forming a crystal. Again, if you only put like a few drops in that salt, you can easily make a clump of salt because you’d only have enough water.

Bacteria could also form it. Inflammation or scarring within the urinary system. Another risk factor is being elderly, being sedentary. Sedentary, of course, can apply to any age, it’s not just the elderly. Cadmium exposure. One of the top reasons someone might be exposed to cadmium is through smoking. High intake of alcohol, oral contraceptives, and then long-term use of diuretics. Diuretics is any substance that can make you have to go to the bathroom more. 

Some medications are considered diuretics especially if you just have a lot of water on your body that’s not supposed to be there. A diuretic is what would be used to get the water off. Of course, going back to hypertension, some of those are in fact diuretics too. Not all of them but certain classes are diuretic medications.

Calcium oxalate stone contributors. This is one type of kidney stone—it’s calcium oxalate. This is the one that I think is more well known by the public is calcium oxalate stones. That can come from when your body is in a state of hypercalcemia, so there’s a lot of calcium in the blood. This could be from a bone disease, as well as sarcoidosis, and tuberculosis. This is called primary/enteric hyperoxaluria secondary to bone disease. Because of the bone disease, you can have too many oxalates within the body. When they say enteric they’re talking about the intestine. It could also be high calcium in the urine without high calcium in the blood. This could be a hyper absorption, so too much absorption of calcium happening in the intestines. There is a compromise in the amount of calcium that the kidneys absorb.

Your kidneys are filters and they’re also absorbers of certain things at different processes along with their function. There could be an issue in terms of how the calcium gets reabsorbed. Also, increased uric acid excretion. The uric acid crystals themselves can form different calcium oxalate compounds. That could happen within what’s called the collecting ducts of the kidneys. There could also be more oxalates in the urine. This could either be genetic or caused by enteric or intestinal diseases resulting from intestinal over-absorption of oxalate.

There is in fact a link between the gastrointestinal system and how well your kidneys function. I think sometimes this can be missed again when you’re only looking at the reductionism factor. There’s a particular test that I run on my clients with digestive issues. It’s a urine metabolite test. Within that test, you may see that you have a high oxalate count. It doesn’t mean that you have kidney stones but there’s something about your body that is producing a very, very high oxalate count. In that case, it can be important to address that then before you even have something like an oxalate kidney stone. Actually, I have noticed that people with autism can also have very high oxalate counts.

Hypocitraturia is also a cause and that can come from chronic diarrhea as well. That’s considered idiopathic. For me, as someone who focuses on digestive health, I’ve had clients come to me with chronic diarrhea. That will be also in the setting of bloating, food sensitivities, and all of that. When we work on those things diarrhea can slow down and they can have better-formed stools. 

I’ll probably say this later but I’ll say it also now, one of the things that I hope you’re that you’re picking up as you’re listening is the fact that it is important to figure out why you are in fact forming kidney stones. This is like Dr. Wallach did with the guy that you mentioned. He figured out it had to do with the deficiency of calcium and it was causing hyperparathyroidism. You have to figure out what type of stone it is and then why you’re creating that stone to be able to get to a solution that works for that person.

On to the next type of stone is the uric acid stones. That essentially, going back to what I said before with the crystals, it’s because you have high uric acid in the blood. That can prosper of course in acidic urine. Lastly, there are the ones but I just wanted to focus on a couple, cystine stones. This is more genetic and it also forms in acidic urine. The first client I had with kidney disease he has cystine kidney stones. That’s actually a more rare type. Most people, as I mentioned before, have the oxalate type of kidney stones. For cystine kidney stones, what can be really helpful is alkalinizing the urine, but we’ll go into that as well.

In general, when you’re dealing with kidney stones, the pain treatments that are usually prescribed by physicians in terms of medication would be antispasmodics. That is designed to help keep you from spasming. When a kidney stone is in there you want to try to loosen up everything so that it will be able to pass better. The antispasmodics can be helpful in that regard. Hemostatic is another type of medication that’s designed to help stop the blood. 

A hot soak bath, as you mentioned with your friend, is that the hot soak baths may be also helpful for pain. A few other things to keep in mind, going the more Naturopathic route, is to reduce large amounts of meat. If you’re having a lot of meat, it can create a very acidic environment. If you’re having way too much of it can cause a lot of problems and it’s not the best thing for your kidneys, especially if you already are having kidney disease, that is a very common thing for me to tell someone is you definitely need to reduce your protein. Particularly animal protein, in large amounts, can be quite damaging for kidneys. If it’s already damaged, it’s even more important for you to reduce it, but if they’re not damaged you want to only have a moderate amount. You can’t be meat, meat, meat all day long.

[00:48:10] Ashley James: It also depends on the type of meat. Dr. Wallach was a pathologist. He was given diseased kidneys after they were removed for patients who had kidney transplants. He looked at the kidneys and said why did you send me a healthy kidney? The doctor said what are you talking about? I removed the diseased kidney. He said there’s nothing. I can’t find anything wrong with this. He ended up getting the strongest microscope he could and looking at the nephrons of the kidney. What he figured out was that the kidneys were being clogged by nitrates and nitrites. These preservatives that are in deli meats and smoked meats—the molecules are large enough that they actually clog the kidneys, the nephrons in the kidneys.

The kidneys are kind of similar to the eyes in that they’re incredibly vascular. Kidneys and eyes are the first to go. If we have a vascular breakdown, people will lose their eyesight, they’ll start losing their night vision, or they’ll need stronger glasses. Same with the kidneys because they’re very vascular. So vascular that only one blood cell can pass through at a time. That’s how narrow it is. If those passageways are inflamed or damaged by certain chemicals like sodium nitrite, potassium nitrate, or however—it’s the nitrates and the nitrites. The bacon is the most common example but hotdogs and any kind of smoked meat, that, Dr. Wallach found, will absolutely over time, not only damage the eyes but will damage the kidneys and damage the vasculature in the body where the capillaries are so thin that only like one blood cell pass through at a time. 

That’s where the nitrates and the nitrites do their damage to us. They’re not needed for preserving meat, they actually just prevent the meat from looking gray. When someone goes to buy hotdogs or bacon, if they see the hotdogs are gray, we think oh it’s gone bad. That’s actually what meat normally looks like if it’s sitting there for a few days or if it hasn’t been frozen. So many meats have been preserved with these chemicals that are harmful to the body to make them look appetizing.

That’s what Dr. Wallach does. The first thing he does with someone who has kidney disease is he says no nitrates or nitrites, no fried food at all, 100% remove fried food. There are about 12 foods that he removes from the diet that cause damage to the vasculature of, not only the kidneys but the whole body, but it’s most important in the kidneys because of the concentration of vasculature. Then he focuses on high amounts of antioxidants and then he gets them on certain nutrients to make sure that they get the 90 essential nutrients—all vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids. That’s his protocol no matter what. No matter what kind of kidney stone the person has, no matter what kind of kidney disease because he’s looking at supporting the kidney’s health overall.

It’s very interesting when you start to see how an experienced Naturopath treats someone’s kidney disease versus how an experienced medical doctor would treat someone’s kidney disease because the medical doctor is not trained to heal the person to the point where they no longer need medication. The medical doctor is trained to manage someone’s disease state. Manage them, make them comfortable, obviously, make sure they don’t die and get them on dialysis that kind of thing. But a Naturopath’s goal is to get them to the point where they’re disease-free. It’s a totally different philosophy. It’s very interesting.

I like that you brought up alkalizing the body, drinking plenty of water. Depending on which kind of kidney stone or kidney disease they’re going to see more benefit, but in general, wouldn’t everyone across the board, wouldn’t all kidneys benefit from a more alkalized urine or alkalized diet and drinking enough water? Is there a time when a kidney wouldn’t benefit from that?

[00:53:02] Dr. Devin Miles: In general, the body does better when it’s—I wouldn’t say just so far alkaline. At one point I saw alkaline urine but the person was still having a lot of problems. I wouldn’t use the urine as a marker to say everything’s good because my urine is alkaline. There are other things that can be out of balance. It depends on what the person is dealing with, but yes, in general, if you stay in a more alkalinized way of life compared to what the standard American diet is, you’re bound to see some improvements in your health. Because the standard American diet is very, very acidic. That’s why this push into a more alkaline diet can bring you back to the balance that you need to be at.

[00:53:58] Ashley James: We have to understand that kidney disease or kidney stones is actually a symptom and not the problem. It is a problem but it’s not a problem. All the symptoms we’re experiencing are not the root cause. The body is speaking to us, my body is out of balance, something’s going on. We have to go deeper and find the root cause and the root cause is always going to be how do I support the body to balance itself out? Because the body knows how to heal itself when we remove the things that are hurting it, give it the nutrients it needs and it’s important needs so that it can do its own work the body does its own healing. We have to figure out what we’re doing to hinder that healing and how we can support that healing. That’s why I love how flexible Naturopaths are because that’s what you’re looking for. How can I support this body to heal itself?

[00:54:53] Dr. Devin Miles: Yeah. Going back to what you said about the nitrates and nitrites, chemical and heavy metal toxicity is a significant obstacle that needs to be removed. That I think is a huge piece as to why Americans and I suppose Canadians as well, I can’t speak to Canadians, but in general, I think why our world is getting sicker and sicker. Because it’s in addition to I talked about with medications being synthetic, chemicals themselves are foreign to the body. They’re not supposed to be there. When we’re consuming them through our food, our water, and our air all of these things also need to be looked at. 

Not too long into when I started my business, I’m on Instagram @drdevinmiles, and another organization reached out to me. They were advocating for farmers. I think it was Central America, but apparently, there was something about the practices that were going on down there that was giving people kidney disease. It was a chemical within the crop that they were farming.

[00:56:15] Ashley James: It was probably glyphosate which is in Roundup. I’m only saying this because in Sri Lanka, the whole country banned glyphosate which is in Roundup. At the time it was Monsanto, they banned Monsanto’s Roundup because the farmers who are working in the rice paddy field so if you’ve ever seen rice fields it’s like a marsh and the farmers— their skin is exposed to the water. Before they used Roundup they were using arsenic as a way to combat pests. That was working, I guess. I don’t know how they didn’t have arsenic poisoning but that was working, and then they used glyphosate. 

The problem with glyphosate is that it’s a chelator. It binds to certain heavy metals and then it will release them when pH changes in the body. When pH changes in the body it’s when fluids change from one to another so blood to cerebral spinal fluid, blood to urine. That’s why, all of a sudden, all farmers in Sri Lanka developed kidney disease because the glyphosate which had bound to the, I believe it was arsenic, metals in the water and then was releasing them quickly into the kidneys. If you can imagine running a country and all of your farmers who are working in the rice fields become sick you want to take action. 

Luckily, they detected it was that and they got rid of it. Unfortunately, Monsanto or now Bayer has been pressuring the country to let them use it again. I don’t know where that stands, but that’s the problem with glyphosate. I’m sure there are other ones but glyphosate in particular is a nasty chemical that is put into our crops because it is a chelator that will bind to heavy metals and then deposit them into our brain and into our kidneys. Kidneys more so than the brain, from what I’ve heard. I’m imagining that’s what it is. Like you said, chemicals are man-made are foreign to the body. We did not evolve for hundreds of thousands of years with these chemicals.

[00:58:36] Dr. Devin Miles: Right. I would just like to also say when it came to these farmers these are like 28-year-old men. Sometimes we look at kidney disease as something that may happen to people later, and that’s not necessarily the case. It is important to keep a diet that is conducive to kidney health and also to be mindful of the different chemicals like the nitrates, the nitrates, and glyphosate to make sure that you’re avoiding those things as much as possible. 

Of course, if you can have more of an organic diet you’re going to reduce the amount of chemicals that you’re exposed to even through eating things that are per se from scratch or fresh produce. Because, of course, there’s going to be higher amounts of pesticides, fungicides, and all of these, there’s going to be higher amounts if you are in fact eating non-organic produce. I particularly tell people who like to juice, when you’re juicing juice organic because you’re getting a higher amount of everything—the good and the bad. Just make sure when you’re juicing that you’re juicing organic.

[00:59:48] Ashley James: Absolutely. That’s very important. Even go so far as to grow your own produce and juice it or a friend or a farmer locally that you know that you can get to know the quality of the produce. That’s awesome. Are there any other? I know we got side-tracked there. You’ve got a list, you’ve got a list. Okay, let’s continue on your list.

[01:00:15] Dr. Devin Miles: In addition to large amounts of meat, restricting alcohol, coffee, and black tea. One thing that I would say about coffee is that coffee is in fact a diuretic. When you drink coffee, you have to make sure that you’re balancing it out with even more water because coffee is going to make you lose water. If you’re trying to protect your kidneys and you’re trying to avoid kidney stones you have to compensate with drinking more water if you’re in fact going to drink coffee. But in general, it’s better to get off of having too much coffee in your life. Again, you would have to figure out why someone’s drinking. I’ve seen some clients drink like half a pot of coffee, that’s way too much. Helping you to get off of coffee is going to be really important for you, as well as black tea.

One of the things that can be helpful for calcium oxalate stones is magnesium, and the reason for that is because it increases what’s called the solubility of it. Getting back to making sure that it does not clump and form a crystal in the urine. Magnesium helps to decrease that chance of that happening. Also, potassium can do essentially the same thing. It helps to reduce the saturation of calcium oxalate and it helps to decrease crystal formation. 

Stopping smoking. As I mentioned before, if you are a smoker you’re getting in more cadmium and that can increase your chances of forming stones. Of course, that’s easier said than done but starting that path. This is another reason why it would be worth starting that path. Reducing caffeine intake and in general, hydrating to the point of two liters per day of output. That’s what I mean when I’m saying drinking a lot of water.

I have a lot of clients who when they first start coming to me they’re only drinking about two glasses a day. You hear everybody say drink water, make sure you hydrate yourself, but there’s a lot of people on a day-to-day basis who are not doing that. I would just encourage everyone, not just people who have kidney stones or kidney disease, to drink a good amount of water every day. I try to make sure people are getting at least eight glasses a day, it just depends on what they’re coming in for, but particularly for kidney stones, kidney disease you need to be drinking a lot more water.

[01:02:45] Ashley James: Could we stop there for a sec? How much is enough? I’ve heard drink ½ of your body weight in ounces. If you’re 200 pounds you should drink 100 ounces a day. I’ve also heard you could drink 1/3 of your body weight in ounces but then add 8 ounces for every vice. Every time you’re stressed out, exercise, smoke, or drink caffeine or alcohol. What’s your philosophy on how much water we should drink?

[01:03:17] Dr. Devin Miles: I usually try to get people to do half their body weight in ounces. If it’s somebody who’s overweight, that can be an astronomical number for them. I just try to get them to drink as much as possible. When I say half your body weight in ounces, I find that to be something that has to be worked up to. I’m always just trying to get my clients to get to that level. I mainly just keep it at half your body weight in ounces. I try to talk to them about the type of water that I would like them to drink. 

If they have like a reverse osmosis filtration system I’m going to suggest adding more minerals, or at the very least, adding some sea salt to the water you drink or some lemon juice, cucumber, or lime juice to put minerals back in the water. Because when you drink just water that is reverse osmosis, it’s less nourishing to your system because water is not just something to help with solubility and increasing filtration, it’s also supposed to be very nourishing to the body. It supplies some of these minerals, right? Having something like spring water, alkaline water, or putting things in your water to increase the mineral content is something that I do suggest and just making sure that they’re drinking half their body weight in ounces. At a minimum, eight glasses a day.

I’m somebody who needs about eight glasses or so in terms of my body weight, I’m a smaller person. When I put that rule out there, I know that that’s roughly the minimum. That’s why I’m always trying to just get people even to that point.

[01:04:59] Ashley James: It also depends on someone’s diet. Someone who eats a carnivore diet versus a paleo diet versus a whole food plant-based diet, it’s going to get different levels of fiber. I’ve known people who’ve switched over to eating more fiber and all of a sudden they became more dehydrated because they didn’t realize that fiber binds to the moisture. If you’re going to start eating more fiber eating more fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. Especially chia or flax, you definitely want to add a lot more water to it. 

If you don’t get enough fiber, there’s a whole separate discussion on the long term damages that the body will undergo if we don’t get enough fiber. Of course, not enough fiber and not enough water combined—you’re setting your body up for disease. We want to increase fiber and increase water. If you increase fiber you’ve got to increase water even more.

[01:06:00] Dr. Devin Miles: Another way that some men might be able to gauge their water intake is by their ejaculation fluids. Sometimes it can be very, very clumpy if they’re not drinking enough water, and other times it’s more fluid if they’re drinking enough. That could be another quick way to tell.

[01:06:24] Ashley James: That’s interesting. I didn’t know that. I learned something new.

[01:06:31] Dr. Devin Miles: The other thing that I wanted to mention was some things that can be helpful for the cystine stones because that is more rare, as I mentioned before, alkalinizing the urine is important. I had a client who was forming kidney stones every single year for the past 30-something years. He had to get lithotripsy to dissolve them and break them up. That’s a procedure you would go in the office to get the skinny stones broken up. 

He would notice that every time he would get those procedures done his kidney function would go down. Now that he’s very focused on keeping his urine alkaline, which he does test through the pH strips, through his diet he does this. Ever since he’s done that he has significantly reduced how often he gets kidney stones. At one point he was not getting them at all. Just recently he had a little pinch of something but nothing compared to what he used to get every single year.

For people with kidney stones that are cystine, just know that if you are very committed to alkalinizing the urine you can see some results that way from preventing the formation of kidney stones. Of course, just restricting the amount of sodium that’s less formation of different crystals within the body as well. I was just going to talk about a few herbs that can be helpful for kidney function as well, is that where you like me to go next?

[01:08:22] Ashley James: Yeah.

[01:08:23] Dr. Devin Miles: Okay. All right. Cool. Of course, the next step is how are your kidneys in general? If you’re somebody who’s forming kidney stones a lot there may be a propensity to do kidney damage. One of the things that I implement with my clients who have high-risk factors for kidney disease and then I also would implement it for clients who also have kidney disease are herbs that can be protective of the kidneys and also help to restore function to the kidneys. 

When I said to address the cause, hypertension and diabetes are two top reasons that people might have kidney disease or get kidney disease in the United States. Just remember that, in general, you have to look at the cause of kidney disease. Kidney disease usually happens because of something else going on in the body. Even if it’s very much kidney related, there’s some sort of imbalance going on in the body that needs to be addressed.

Milk thistle is an herb that most people know about for the liver, but milk thistle is also very beneficial for the kidneys. It helps to reduce blood glucose. It also helps to reduce your HbA1c as well as serum creatinine. Creatinine is a marker that you can look at to assess kidney function. It’s often looked at when you get routine blood work. It could also reduce uric acid in urine volume, and it does help to regenerate the kidneys. Milk thistle itself is an antioxidant. I do want to mention what you said about what Dr. Wallach said about increasing antioxidants. In my studies of kidney disease, the main theme that I pulled from that was you have to reduce the inflammation and you have to improve the antioxidant status of the person’s body.

Inflammation can feed free radical damage, free radical damage can feed inflammation. It’s important to reduce the inflammation and boost the antioxidants at the same time. Milk thistle can be helpful with improving antioxidant status within the body. Secondly would be cordyceps. Cordyceps isn’t actually an herb, it’s more like a fungus but it could also help to reduce blood urine nitrogen. 

Again, another marker that is often used to assess the kidney function, reduces creatinine, and increases protein in the urine. Protein in the urine is a common sign that people look forward to assess if the kidneys are damaged. When I talked about kidneys being a filtration system, the kidneys are not supposed to be filtering out protein in such a way that it would be picked up on a urinalysis. If there’s protein in your urine, there’s some sort of compromise going on with the kidneys.

Cordyceps also, just overall, improves the immune system, it can help with improvement in anemia, and also is good for kidney regeneration. When we talk about kidney regeneration I highlight that on purpose because in conventional medicine, if there’s not that idea that the kidneys can regenerate themselves is non-existent. The liver is very well-known to regenerate. It has the capability to regenerate itself. 

In modern conventional medicine, that belief system is not there unless you’re at extremely early stages of kidney disease. They may see that oh you’re having some protein in your urine. It may be something having to do with your blood pressure is too high. If you start to correct things very quickly in that moment like an MD, you can see some reversal and get out of kidney disease. But if you’re at kidney disease stage 3, they’re not trying to tell you that we can get you out of kidney disease because they have this idea that the kidneys cannot regenerate.

This is where Naturopathic medicine can come in and help to start to bring back function to the kidneys. A lot of people do call me when they’re at kidney disease stage 4 or stage 5. I want to bring that to people’s attention as well. I launched a free ebook for people to start to learn how to monitor their own kidney function because it’s like there’s some sort of disconnect between the position telling them hey you’re at kidney disease stage 1, 2, or 3. It’s like they don’t really tell them until they’re at stage 4 or stage 5. Even before that, even if they know they have kidney disease, the physicians are saying things like oh you’re fine, it’s not that bad. 

Around stage 4 or stage 5 they’re like hey you’re at stage 4 or stage 5, you need to be considering dialysis. I think that the educational piece is not there. I find it important to put that back on the public to be like hey this is what you need to be looking at when you get your routine blood work and it’s only a few markers that I educate people on to look at and to look at it regularly, especially if you are at higher risk for getting kidney disease [inaudible 01:14:13] thing because you have something like hypertension, lupus, or diabetes so that you can bring that to your physician and be like hey what do we need to do about this? This is what’s going on. That’s really important.

The milk thistle can be helpful, cordyceps can be helpful, and then flaxseed can also be helpful as well. It helps to reduce the inflammation and can be very helpful in the case of lupus nephritis. Any other questions you have, Ashley?

[01:14:47] Ashley James: Yeah. I’ve definitely heard of herbs being used to soften the kidney stones and herbs used to support the kidney function and decrease inflammation. These are all tools that MDs have no training in. Of course, Naturopaths, this is where you guys shine. What about homeopathy or other forms of therapies or therapeutic interventions to support kidneys? Have you seen homeopathy be successfully used?

[01:15:19] Dr. Devin Miles: I have not used homeopathy for kidney disease. I’m aware that it has been used, I just haven’t used it myself yet. I’ve been more focused on the herbs for helping with kidney disease. Unfortunately, I can’t speak too much to that, but I do know that in some cases like homeopathic mustard seed might be helpful for kidney disease.

[01:15:43] Ashley James: Interesting. That’s cool. Awesome. Do you have any stories of success you’d like to share?

[01:15:53] Dr. Devin Miles: The main one is the guy with the cystine kidney stones. As I mentioned before, when we alkalinized his urine, he stopped having kidney stones. In addition to that though, when he did start to have more of an alkalized diet, he also was someone who was dealing with hypertension and high uric acid. He has not had to take as much hypertensive medication. His uric acid also went down. Of course, by the time I started working with him he was already at like stage 4 kidney disease. I did put him on a blend of herbs that also included cordyceps.

Another one that can be helpful is nettle seed. We hear about nettles more so from the standpoint of seasonal allergies but that is nettle’s leaf. When it comes to herbs, you have to also know what part of the herb that you need to bring about the result that you’re looking for. Nettle seed is also helpful for improving the function of the kidneys. It was that as well as gotu kola can also be helpful for reducing the scarring of the kidneys. That’s something else to keep in mind is that when the kidneys are scarred, that is another area where conventional medicine does not have a solution for. Once it’s scarred it’s scarred. But with herbal medicine, you can in fact start to see a reduction of scarring within the kidneys.

[01:17:44] Ashley James: Gotu kola is not a type of soda pop.

[01:17:48] Dr. Devin Miles: No, no. It is not a type of soda pop.

[01:17:50] Ashley James: It sounds like a delicious drink, gotu kola. It’s an herb, right?

[01:17:57] Dr. Devin Miles: Yes, it’s an herb. Kola is spelled K-O-L-A. This is an herb with multiple benefits—as most herbs are. Most herbs have multiple different things that they are capable of doing. In school, we had a garden of herbs in the back. Some of the students would just chew some of the gotu kola leaves before they went for an exam because it can be helpful with cognitive function. It’s also helpful for situations like venous insufficiency. It’s a good toner for the vessels. When we’re talking about kidney disease, of course, we’re also talking about the blood vessels as well. It may be indicated in that way as well, but I particularly use it if I am looking to help reduce the scarring of the kidneys. 

That would be my main one where I saw not just the blend of herbs that I used on that client did help to increase kidney function. It was at a point where he was very concerned about going on dialysis. This was somebody who really wanted to avoid dialysis. He had a commitment to staying on the herbs, sticking to his diet. That would be a big thing that I would tell people with kidney disease is that you have to be very, very proactive about it because, for years, this client was not. 

He ate a lot of meat. He took his blood pressure medication but at one point he wasn’t taking it the way he should and all of these things. You just have to make sure that you’re very committed to helping make sure that your body stays in balance and taking the different herbs that people are suggesting or the different minerals and being consistent with that.

Just speaking up, if for some reason something is not working for you, particularly with men. I have noticed that sometimes they will stop taking something and not tell you something about it—I felt sick or something like that. You have to be able to voice that so that the doctor can adjust things because there’s a lot of different herbs that can be helpful for kidney disease. It’s not like I’m just sticking with just one. It’s just important that you are very much communicating what you need with your doctor so that you can get to the goal of restoring kidney function.

[01:20:27] Ashley James: I love it. It is possible. It’s possible to support the body’s ability in healing itself. Just to come at it from a different angle, my cat who is 16 years old has kidney disease. I was seeing a traditional vet and there were very little resources she had. Then I went to a holistic vet. I guess this is kind of like the Naturopath of vets. He’s been a vet for over 30 years, and he uses natural medicine for animals. I know him because a friend of mine, he reversed a chronic disease in her cat. Her cat lived, I think something like 21, very healthfully. 

I brought my cat to him and he immediately found so many issues. He found a parasite that was actually never seen in cats, it’s only ever seen in dogs, so we treated that. He adjusted our cat’s food and gave him a supplement. He said I don’t expect it to completely go away, but I definitely expect us to go back to like early, early stage. That’s what’s happened for our cat, who’s a senior—as a 16-year-old, he went from almost end-stage kidney disease to very, very beginning kidney disease. Our vet believes that now he’s going to live a very long and healthy life.

We are animals. Our bodies are just like animals. If we can do that, if we can reverse and prevent disease in animals, we can do it to our own body. Bringing back up Dr. Wallach, his background is on a farm. He was raised on a farm. He saw as a child, he asked his parents why do we give supplements to the cows but we don’t take supplements. Our cows don’t wait to get sick and then go to a doctor and then get put on a bunch of medication. His farm wasn’t like a factory farmer; those cows got to go outside, get exercise, and eat grass. 

They were also given supplements. He read the ingredients and he saw well there are vitamins, there are minerals in here. They make sure the calves are given all these pellets with all these minerals. He thought it was really odd that the system of medicine for animals was to prevent disease because preventing disease is cheaper than waiting to get sick and then having to pay for medication.

Can you imagine if our animals were in the same medical system as all of us, right? A burger would be $5,000 because the animal would have to wait to get sick and then be put on all these medications and have all these surgeries. It’s kind of ridiculous but it’s because it’s for-profit. Because it’s for-profit, it benefits the farmer to make sure they prevent disease in animals. Why isn’t our focus in medicine to prevent disease in humans? Because it’s for profit. 

We have to remember that the funding that these universities have, and have had for over 100 years, are from the pharmaceutical industry. That there’s a lot going on in the background that has the system set up in a way that is for-profit. I’m not saying that individual doctors are evil and looking to profit from our sickness, but that the system as a whole is set up to profit from people being sick and not profit from preventing illness.

If we can look at that, how do farmers keep healthcare costs down on the farm? Again, I’m not saying factory farms because those are incredibly sick and damaged animals, but the farms where the animals roam free. What are the farmers doing to keep animals healthy and prevent disease, and why don’t we adopt the exact same philosophy? Have access to clean water, get plenty of outdoor exercise, get really healthy, eat lots of plants, and also take supplements when needed to fill in those nutrient gaps. 

That’s what farmers do to prevent disease on the farm is to make sure that there are no nutrient deficiencies in the animals. When there is, there are documented cases of the disease. That’s the same as humans. It’s very clear that the philosophy of health and medicine make a difference when it comes to seeing a Naturopath versus any other kind of practitioner.

[01:25:23] Dr. Devin Miles: Just kind of an overall thing that I think our society, the way that it’s built, is that there were things built upon that needed adjustment. When you build something and you’re not flexible in the building of it to create an environment that allows for adjustment, I think that is maybe where some of the problem lies especially if it’s lucrative in how it’s built. When we’re talking about the system of health in this country is not what it should be, it’s a system that was built. You have to be able to break that down and to adjust it. When people are finally willing to break it down and do it again, I think that’s when you’re going to really see some change.

[01:26:22] Ashley James: Those that are listening right are those who their thinking is in the right place. They want to do everything they can to support their body’s ability to heal itself, they want to nutrify their body. The 37.2 trillion cells in their body are crying out to be detoxified, filled with nutrients, hydrated, and treated with love. That’s what we want to do, it’s what our listeners want to do. They’ve learned so much from you today. I’d love for you to give us some homework. Set us up with some homework that we can do every day to optimize our kidney health and prevent kidney disease.

[01:26:59] Dr. Devin Miles: A few things that have been helpful for alkalinizing the urine—one of them is pomegranate juice. Making sure that you’re getting a very high-quality pomegranate juice is where you’ll see the most benefit from that. Cantaloupe is another one. Pinto beans, which was like oh really. Pinto beans can also be another one that can be helpful for alkalinizing the urine. Getting pH strips if in fact you do have kidney stones or kidney disease and regularly testing your urine to make sure that it’s staying in the alkaline range. 

You will be able to start to notice what acidifies your urine, what makes it more alkaline. Through that process, you’ll be able to have a more balanced diet. I’m not saying that you can’t eat meat, but it needs to be most likely more moderate if you have very acidic urine. That’s the same with, of course, coffee, which is in addition to being a diuretic it’s also very highly acidic. Looking at the things that cause acidity, it’s not just about knowing what alkalinizes the body, it’s also about knowing what makes it acidic and having a better balance between those.

Pomegranate juice, cantaloupe, and pinto beans are three foods that you can start incorporating more to achieve better alkalinity. Water, water, water. I cannot stress that enough because I really feel like most people take that part for granted like it’s not that important but it is very, very important. Just remembering that magnesium can also help increase the solubility of these different compounds that can form crystals. 

Magnesium can be helpful for constipation. It’s also helpful for reducing muscle spasms. When we were talking about the prescription medications that are called antispasmodics, magnesium can also help to be an antispasmodic. The three alkalizing foods: pomegranate, juice cantaloupe, pinto beans. Remember to drink half your body weight in ounces with water, and then keeping in mind that magnesium can be very helpful if in fact you have a kidney stone, or if in fact you have constipation.

Again, remembering if you have a digestive issue you have some sort of intestinal problem, that also needs to be addressed so that you can reduce forming different types of kidney stones.

[01:29:47] Ashley James: Before we hit record, you had alluded that there’s a connection between gut health, maybe in the microbiome, and kidney health. Can you go into that a bit?

[01:29:58] Dr. Devin Miles: If there is an imbalance within the intestinal tract, sometimes you can have increased absorption of certain compounds like intestinal over-absorption of oxalates. When you have that happening, then the kidneys have to filter that out. If you’re putting too much in the kidneys in terms of different compounds that are conducive to forming kidney stones, again, that’s another situation where it’s too saturated. It’s important from that standpoint, in terms of understanding where this excess amount of compounds going to the kidneys is coming from, it may in fact be coming from a compromised intestinal mucosal layer. 

In that case, I would be concerned about okay, do you have good digestive health? What’s your secretory IgA levels? Do you have food sensitivities? Do you have gas and bloating? What’s your mental health like? If clinically, something is a little bit imbalanced mentally, that could also be something simple as you need to stop eating gluten because gluten and mental health have been very much linked, and of course gluten and digestive issues have been very much linked. It’s about figuring out okay do you have a digestive component to kidney stones? Do you have a digestive component to kidney disease?

[01:31:37] Ashley James: You mentioned earlier oxalates, should everyone monitor their oxalates and reduce them, or only those with kidney disease? Do oxalates cause kidney disease? How can some people eat pounds of spinach and be totally fine, and other people barely look at spinach and get a kidney stone?

[01:32:02] Dr. Devin Miles: I think some of that could in fact be genetic. Going back to maybe someone has a deficiency of the calcium and so they’re forming calcium oxalate stones. Maybe it has more to do with the calcium versus the oxalate. If they have digestive issues, I do think getting tested to see if you have high oxalate amounts could be a good idea, especially if kidney stones were running in your family, there’s a chance that you might be more prone to making them. 

So no, I don’t think everyone needs to be monitoring their oxalate levels, but I think people who might have conditions where there’s a propensity to monitor oxalates, then yes, it would be a good idea for you to monitor them. As I mentioned before, if it’s increased uric acid excretion that’s forming the calcium oxalate stones, then decreasing the uric acid would be really important as well. B6 is another vitamin that can be helpful for reducing calcium oxalates as well.

[01:33:15] Ashley James: Excellent. You mentioned magnesium and I got to say, my favorite magnesium—my favorite source, is Kristen Bowen. I’ve had her on the show a few times. She has a magnesium soak that is from the Zechstein Sea and it also has other cofactors in it. You absorb 20 grams of magnesium when you soak in it for an hour. 

The first time I soaked in it I felt drunk. I actually felt like I was getting a Myers push. I felt like I was getting IV magnesium, and I couldn’t believe it. I felt it in my body. I’m like whoa, this is amazing. If anyone’s ever had like a Myers push or had like an IV magnesium, you kind of feel drunk. You feel high, you feel very happy, and very relaxed. That’s exactly how I felt in my first time doing her foot. It’s easy just to put your feet in it and soak, but you can also soak in a whole bath. That was probably about two years ago. I’ve had her on the show. 

It’s very interesting, she’s done thousands of labs with her customers over the years, over the last I think 13-14 years, and she has people test their magnesium RBC levels before starting and then they do a 30-day challenge where they soak every day for 30 days in the magnesium and then they test their magnesium RBC levels again. 76% of people reach full cell saturation of 5.0, which that’s not the ideal number. Ideally, you want to be more closer to 7.0, but being at 5.0 is good. We’re out of the deficiency. We’re no longer magnesium deficient. The other percentage just takes longer and take more time in soaking. 

What she finds is that then when people—through the skin, when you’re absorbing through the skin, they’re obviously bypassing any digestive issues with absorption. Those people then, they’re sort of burning their magnesium faster than they can absorb either through chronic fatigue, or there are other things going on that their body’s sort of using up more magnesium than it can take in and it just takes them longer to soak in it to get to full cell saturation. It helps them to understand underlying issues. 

That’s been my favorite source of magnesium. If you want, I’ll send you some information on it. I’ve had over 2,000 listeners use her magnesium soak and absolutely love it. Many of them have shared in the Learn True Health Facebook group their experiences with it, that it’s been life-changing.

My whole family, including our son, loves it. It really helped him with his sleep because we had a really hard time getting him to sleep until he started soaking and putting the magnesium in his bath. He now goes to sleep much easier, which is great. Any parent who struggles with a child that won’t go to sleep it’s like a lifesaver. It’s a magnesium soak and it can be found at livingthegoodlifenaturally.com and then use coupon code LTH for the listener discount. I know that’s like the world’s longest URL, livingthegoodlifenaturally.com. Coupon code LTH.

Your website is easy to remember, however. It’s drdevinmiles.com. Of course, the links to everything you do—your Twitter, your Instagram, your Facebook, and your YouTube—it’s all going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. 

It’s been great talking to you about kidney health. Everything that you talked about, in terms of supporting kidneys would support the whole body. Drinking more water supports the whole body. Focusing on making sure digestion is optimal. Making sure we’ve got the right vitamins, the right minerals. Making sure that we’re adjusting the diet to include more plants, more fiber. Taking some herbs that not only support the kidneys but support other functions of the body. 

In terms of taking those herbs, I would hate for someone to take too much of it. Is there a dosage or a way? Would you rather have them take it as a tea, a tincture, or a dried herb in a capsule? Could you get into that?

[01:37:43] Dr. Devin Miles: That’s varied per person, to be honest. There’s definitely such a thing as too much of an herb. When it comes to dosages, it really is dependent. It’s like what you were saying before with people with digestive issues, they sometimes may need more, sometimes they may need less. It really does depend. When you’re talking about the magnesium, one thing that can be helpful for people with digestive issues is instead of a tablet, having more of a capsule, a powder, or a liquid [inaudible 01:38:18] so much further with them versus something that’s like one more thing that’s hard for them to digest because the powder or the liquids are going to get into their system much quicker. 

But when it comes to kidney disease, usually what I try to do is the tinctures, which is a liquid so that it can get into their system much quicker. Especially when you’re doing herbal combinations and you’re doing at least five herbs, doing it in the liquid form is going to be much easier for them to take versus five different capsules of herbs. It just depends on the person though because I could say that and then they may be like no, I’d rather capsules. It’s also about listening to the person in what they need. In terms of dosages, it really just depends on the person.

[01:39:10] Ashley James: Got it. It’s best to work with a Naturopathic physician who’s experienced in working with supporting the kidneys.

[01:39:18] Dr. Devin Miles: Yes, yes, yes.

[01:39:20] Ashley James: Like yourself.

[01:39:21] Dr. Devin Miles: Yes, you know what I mean? It brings to light the hope that things can change. We’re more educated in this realm of possibility. It’s that yes, these things can in fact help your kidneys. You don’t have to just wait until dialysis happens. You can be doing something in the interim to support kidney health. 

That’s one thing that I’m always trying to help people to understand is that what I do is empowering. I’m not just here to help per se fix you. It’s not just about that. It’s about teaching you how to help yourself, and that’s really what I’m doing. I’m a teacher, and I like being able to teach people.

[01:40:10] Ashley James: Right. The root for doctor is doceri, which means teacher, so you take that very seriously. You can’t come home with us, make us take our supplements, cook our food for us, make us go for walks, and make us drink our water. You have to teach us so that we go do it ourselves. The hope needs to be installed, needs to be shared. We really need to believe. The first thing we need to do is believe the body can heal itself. 

The things I’ve seen the body heal are so miraculous. Using Dr. Wallach as an example, he has helped thousands of people get off of dialysis—no longer need dialysis when they were told they would be on dialysis for the rest of their very short life. We can heal our body to the point where it recovers even when we’ve told it won’t ever recover. So who are they to say you can’t heal yourself.

We first have to decide that yes, there’s always a point of bifurcation, there’s always a point of no return, right? There’s always that, but are you there yet, and who’s to say that you’re at that point? We should never give our personal power over like that. We need to fight right to the very end. Doing things like supporting the body’s ability to heal itself, even if you’re on dialysis, change your diet. Work with a doctor that knows kidneys and know dialysis and so that you can take the supplements that are in alignment with you right now, but take the herbs. Change the diet, change the lifestyle, and do it in a way to support your kidneys. Maybe your body will get so healthy you no longer need dialysis, or maybe you get so healthy your dialysis gets cut in half. Either way, you’re supporting the body as a whole.

It’s just so important that we don’t give up and give our personal power over to someone and just say okay whatever this doctor says this is just the way it’s going to be. It’s ludicrous. We’re giving over our personal power when we do that. We need to fight, keep educating ourselves, and keep learning from doctors like you who have alternative information that is science-based and that empowers us. 

We have to question, why is it that not all doctors have this information? We have to advocate for ourselves and go to different doctors. Go to different holistic doctors, go to all sorts of different professionals who have different perspectives and different pieces of the pie so that we can help our body heal, but never, never take no as an answer. Never believe that our body is just breaking down and we’re done.

It upsets me when I hear someone with type 2 diabetes was told they’ll always have type 2 diabetes. They just have to be on this medication for the rest of their life, they’ll always have it. That should be a crime. It should honestly be a crime to be told that when it’s reversible and easily reversed all the time under the care of the right physician, under the care of a Naturopath or under the care of a doctor that practices holistic medicine. Under your care, you’re supporting your clients and your patients in having optimal kidney function at any stage.

[01:43:40] Dr. Devin Miles: To second what you just said, the theme that I want the listeners to keep in their minds is stay curious. If somebody says no this is not possible—just stay curious and go look somewhere else because you’ll probably find the answer that you’re looking for. This world is a very, very large world with a lot of different opinions. 

The US is not God when it comes to healing information, they’re certainly not. There are different things that are great here, but if you’re not finding the answers that you’re looking for—stay curious. That would be the thing I would definitely want you to keep in mind because that has really been helpful for me.

I think a lot, and I was curious, and so I just went for it. I didn’t even think about it, honestly. When I was doing all these things in my 20s, I just did them because I saw the possibility. As I learned more, I realized there’s more and there’s more. Just stay curious.

[01:44:51] Ashley James: Stay curious. I love it. Awesome. Thank you so much Dr. Devin Miles for coming on the show today. It’s been such a pleasure having you here.

[01:44:59] Dr. Devin Miles: You’re welcome. Thank you for inviting me to be on the show. I just want to mention to everyone that I am doing telehealth consultations. Even if you’re not right here in Texas I am reachable.

[01:45:15] Ashley James: Fantastic. That’s great information especially nowadays when we can’t even see our doctor in person. Might as well call you up.

[01:45:25] Dr. Devin Miles: That’s what I mean. Go find the answers that you need even if they’re not right in your neighborhood, they’re somewhere else.

[01:45:35] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Dr. Devin Miles, holistic Naturopathic physician, and how you can support your overall kidney health. I did mention the supplements that Dr. Wallach created. The mineral supplements that have the very bioavailable form of calcium that’s really supportive of the kidneys, and in some cases, helps to even prevent stones especially when the person has a mineral deficiency.

If you’d like to try those supplements and talk to an expert on them please go to takeyoursupplements.com. You will definitely love those supplements. I’ve been on them since 2011, and they have helped me to reverse my health issues and conceive our child naturally. I have a whole story I’ve shared in the past. 

I’m going to be publishing very soon my interview with Dr. Wallach who just turned 80 years old and is still a very active and practicing Naturopathic physician. He is my hero, he’s my mentor, and he is the creator of the supplements that I take and the supplements that we sell at takeyoursupplements.com. Please go to takeyoursupplements.com and check them out. I absolutely love them. I highly recommend them. They are bioavailable, all-natural supplements so that we can make sure that you have all 60 minerals in your life, in your body so you don’t have a mineral deficiency.

Excellent. Thank you so much for being a listener and sharing this episode with those you care about. Let’s help as many people as possible to learn true health.

Get Connected with Dr. Devin Miles!

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

YouTube

Recommended Reading by Dr. Devin Miles

Practically Healthy: Step-by-step Guide To Better Health

Dr. Greger's site NutritionFacts.org

IT'S HERE! Learntruehealth.com/homekitchen
Use coupon code LTH for the listener discount!

Check out IIN and get a free module: LearnTrueHealth.com/coaching

How Not To Die

https://www.learntruehealth.com/how-not-to-die-dr-michael-greger

Highlights:

• Foods that we should be adding to our daily diet
• Benefits of whole food plant-based diet
• Diseases reversed by whole food plant-based diet
• What people in Blue Zones share in common

What is the best diet that provides the best outcome for everybody? Dr. Michael Greger, author of books How Not to Die, How Not to Diet, and How to Survive a Pandemic, shares with us the best diet for everybody. He also talks about some of the foods we should eat on a daily basis and what lifestyle changes we need to do.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I’m so excited for you to listen to today’s interview with Dr. Greger. He only does half-an-hour interviews so I had to be very on point with my questions, to get as much information out of him as possible. One big message that he brings is how you can heal your body and prevent disease with food. If you have a disease, you can actually reverse it with nutrition.

If you’d like to learn how to cook in a way that heals the body that is in alignment with how Dr. Greger teaches, please join the Learn True Health Home Kitchen. I designed a membership where I teach with my friend Naomi how to cook food that is delicious, that’s healing for the body, and that your whole family will love. Come join the membership and check it out. You’ll also be supporting the Learn True Health podcast and helping me to continue to produce interviews like this when you join the Learn True Health Home Kitchen. Go to learn to your learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. That’s learntruehealth.com/homekitchen.

Come check it out and just learn how to bring more nutrient-dense foods into your diet to heal your body and support your body’s ability to prevent and reverse disease. Excellent. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you love. Enjoy today’s interview.

[00:01:32] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 433. I am very excited for today’s guest. Dr. Greger, you are quite an honored guest to have here today. My best friend and I are both whole food plant-based. She just wants you to know that if you ever become single she would leave her husband for you. You’ve got a lot of fans. You’ve got a lot of fans here. We’re big admirers of your work, your books—How Not to Die, How Not to Diet—and then you have the latest one, How to Survive a Pandemic. I can’t wait to talk about that. Your website nutritionfacts.org is fascinating. I highly recommend everyone go to it and use it. How do you do everything you do? You’re constantly pumping out books, articles, and videos. You must have a huge team to support you. You either that or you have a troubling meth problem. I don’t know. You’re just always producing amazing things. We’re really in awe of you.

[00:02:43] Dr. Michael Greger: That’s very sweet. I do indeed have this fantastic staff, not only 14 folks on staff in the non-profit Nutrition Facts, but we have about 200 active volunteers at any one time. We have this tremendous team of folks—all churning out wonderful life-changing, life-saving information. That’s what it’s all about.

[00:03:09] Ashley James: Absolutely. It’s quite controversial asking people to change their diet to reverse and prevent disease especially since the government puts out their recommendations. According to what they put out, that’s a disease-causing diet. There’s so much controversy. MDs are not trained in nutrition. You have to go above and beyond as an MD to learn how to heal with food. Can you tell us about what happened in your life that made you want to help people heal with food?

[00:03:41] Dr. Michael Greger: Sure. It was really all thanks to my grandmother. I was just a kid when the doctor sent my grandma home in the wheelchair to die. She was diagnosed with end-stage heart disease. She basically already had so many bypass operations. The surgeons basically run out of plumbing at some point, confined in the wheelchair, crushing chest pain, and her life was over at age 65. Pretty sure you’ve heard about this guy Nathan Pritikin, one of our early lifestyle medicine pioneers. What happened next is actually detailed in Pritikin’s biography. He talks about Frances Greger, my grandmother. They wheeled her in and she walked out. In fact, within a few weeks, she was walking 10 miles a day. Thanks to [inaudible 00:04:22] though she was given a medical death sentence at age 65, thanks to a healthy diet she went on to live another 31 years till age 96 to continue to enjoy her six grandkids including me. That’s why I went into medicine. That’s why I started nutritionfacts.org. That’s why I wrote the book How Not to Die and why 100% of the proceeds I get from all my books are donated to charity. I just want to do for everyone’s family what Pritikin did for my family.

[00:04:49] Ashley James: How do you make an income then if everything you do seems to fund amazing charities?

[00:04:54] Dr. Michael Greger: I’m on staff at nutritionfacts.org. I’m the Chief Science Officer. Those who make donations to the 501(c)(3) non-profit Nutrition Facts, they are helping me put kale on the table.

[00:05:14] Ashley James: I love it. Speaking of kale, you’ve mentioned kale as being one of your favorite superfoods, what other foods should we eat every day or at least every week and why?

[00:05:24] Dr. Michael Greger: That’s the second half of my book How Not to Die. The first half is just 15 chapters and each of the 15 leading causes of death talking about the role of diet. [Inaudible 00:05:32] preventing, resting, and reversing each of our top 15 killers, but I didn’t want it to just be a reference book. I wanted it to be a practical guide. I’m translating this mountain of data into day-to-day grocery store type decisions. To that end, the second half of the book centers around my recommendations wherein a daily dozen checklist of all the things that try to fit into my daily routine. For example, berries every day the healthiest types of fruits, greens every day the healthiest types of vegetables, 1 tablespoon of flaxseed, and ¼ teaspoon turmeric. The best beverages, best sweeteners, and how much exercise to get. Basically, just try to motivate people to include some of the healthiest of healthy foods into their daily diet.

[00:06:13] Ashley James: You discuss Blue Zones or at least we see that there’s so much information coming out of Blue Zones and there’s a controversy because some Blue Zones consume meat, there’s one that doesn’t. The one in Italy is all about olive oil. Apparently, olive oil is the cure and the best thing we could ever do. We don’t know what the driver is. We have to look at the similarities. Obviously, you pore through the science. You’re all about science-based nutrition. What is the commonality in all the Blue Zones that really make the difference that if we applied the same principles to our lifestyle and diet we would get the same result?

[00:06:51] Dr. Michael Greger: What they all share in common, again, Blue Zones are areas with the greatest long human longevity, the most centenarians per capita. For example, the people who live over 100 years old. What does every single one of them share in common? They eat a diet centered around whole plant foods and their primary source of protein is some form of legume: beans, split peas, chickpeas, or lentils. For example, the Okinawan Japanese, the second-longest living population in the world, it’s about a 97% plant-based diet. Actually, 70% of the calories of sweet potatoes, basically a vegetable centered diet. The only formally studied population that lives longer is the Seventh-day Adventist vegetarians in Loma Linda California. They live longer than anybody else, and they don’t eat any meat at all.

[00:07:45] Ashley James: I just heard a really troubling statistic. I was listening to a White House presentation this week about lowering the cost of insulin. I heard that one in three senior citizens are on insulin. That really disturbed me that the level of insulin use is that high. The level of type 2 diabetes continues to rise. Now there’s so much controversy because, in the mainstream sugar, carbs, and sweet potatoes would be the cause of insulin issues or needing insulin in diabetes, but you propose that a plant-centered diet would actually help to reverse diabetes. Can you explain why?

[00:08:26] Dr. Michael Greger: It’s not controversial in the medical literature. It’s just controversial in internet land where even the roundness of the earth is in question. But no, the science is very clear. Type-2 diabetes and pre-diabetes is caused by insulin resistance. Your body’s resistant to the effects of the insulin that your body produces. What’s that caused by? This is not controversial. If you look at the peer-reviewed medical literature, it’s caused by what is called an intramyocellular lipid. This is fat that’s stuck inside your muscle cells and inside the liver cells in the context of excess calories so it’s caused by fat. Now that can be fat in your mouth that’s going in your mouth, or it can be excess fat that’s on your body. Either way, we have high levels of free-floating fat in the bloodstream, which clogs up your muscle and liver cells, impairs their ability to respond to insulin, and you can end up with type 2 diabetes, which is the leading cause of adult-onset blindness, amputations, and kidney failure.

It’s no good. Now, we have two pandemics colliding. A pandemic of obesity and diabetes colliding with an infectious disease pandemic. It’s important to realize that the underlying risk factors for COVID-19’s severity and death are obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes all of which can be controlled or even reversed with a healthy enough plant-based diet and lifestyle.

[00:09:59] Ashley James: What about this keto phenomenon? It used to be Atkins back in the day, right? Then it was paleo and now it’s keto. I think people like to think that they can reverse disease if they eat a bunch of meat and fat and avoid those really evil carbohydrates. People see really good results in the short-term with keto, but that’s increasing fat. According to what you just said, wouldn’t that increase insulin resistance and have poor outcomes in the long term?

[00:10:30] Dr. Michael Greger: Within the short-term, within days you increase insulin resistance with a ketogenic diet. In fact, the largest chapter in my book How Not to Diet I talk about the ketogenic diet. The data is very clear. People love hearing good news about their bad habits so any book that comes out and tells people to eat bacon and butter, obviously, are just going to sell better than those that come out and tell people to eat broccoli, but the science is very clear. In fact, switching to a ketogenic diet actually cuts the rate of fat loss in half after switching to a ketogenic diet because you’re actually cannibalizing your own protein, but you get the loss in water weight, which flushes out the ketones. Looking at the bathroom scale, the ketogenic diet seems like a smashing success, but what we care about is not a loss of water or protein. What we care about is the loss of body fat. Actually, body fat loss slows down. That’s why CrossFit trainees placed on a ketogenic diet, their leg muscles shrink as much as [80%] within 2 months. Exercise is supposed to make your muscles bigger, not smaller but that’s what happens when you’re on a ketogenic diet, not a good idea.

[00:11:56] Ashley James: Originally, the ketogenic diet was created to mimic fasting so that children with epilepsy could stay on it long term. What about fasting? There are so many health benefits to fasting being promoted out there. What are your thoughts on fasting and should we do it on a regular basis?

[00:12:12] Dr. Michael Greger: I talk about all types of fasting: alternate-day fasting, intermittent fasting, 55-2 fasting, 25-5 fasting, fasting-mimicking diet, and time-restricted feeding. Bottom line, there are benefits from early time-restricted feeding meaning narrowing your eating window 12 hours or less, but critically, that’s in the morning rather than the evening. If anything, you skip supper not breakfast. That has a variety of benefits both chrono biologically based on our circadian rhythms as well as metabolically. We talked about all the benefits. It’s really quite extraordinary. We should not be eating after sundown. I encourage people to fast after 7:00 PM and try to wait for their greatest caloric intake towards the beginning of the day.

[00:13:03] Ashley James: You have a book How to Survive a Pandemic, is it out already or are you still releasing it?

[00:13:09] Dr. Michael Greger: It is out as of Tuesday, May 26.

[00:13:13] Ashley James: Very cool. Tell us about How to Survive a Pandemic and why should we read it.

[00:13:18] Dr. Michael Greger: I try to cover everything there is to know to protect ourselves and our families from the coronavirus. Everything from optimal [inaudible 00:13:26] and hand hygiene, surface disinfection, masks, and how to make your own and hand sanitizer, but the best way to survive a pandemic is to prevent it in the first place. The bulk of the book actually centers around tracing the origins of the COVID coronavirus and what we can do to prevent even greater infectious disease threats in the future.

[00:13:45] Ashley James: Based on your research, because you love to look at the science and then decide what is the best route based on the results, you’re not choosing diet dogma. I think that doctors who like to share that a plant-based diet is healing for the body tend to get criticized because those who see that there’s look, there’s a study that says that this meat is healthier, this fish is healthier, this dairy is healthy, and then they like to discredit them. But you like to look at the science and the results and go and then share that and go listen, don’t listen to me listen to the results, listen to the science. But based on your research, is there a one diet fits all? If we put 100% of the population on one way of eating, would we be able to reverse all disease, or do there need to be certain tweaks? Let’s say, someone who’s a bodybuilder versus a 90-year-old grandmother versus someone with fatty liver disease, should they all be on slightly different diets based on their nutritional needs?

[00:14:46] Dr. Michael Greger: The good news is that we have a tremendous power of our health, destiny, and longevity. The vast majority of premature death and disability are preventable with a plant-based diet and other healthy lifestyle behaviors just like smoking is bad for everybody. It’s not some people that smoking is good for. Eating a healthy diet is good for everybody. There are things that are good for your body and bad for your body. Some people have allergies to a specific food. Are peanuts bad for you? If you have a peanut allergy, it could kill you, but otherwise no. The same kind of thing. The people that are lactose intolerant that would affect some people will have different caffeine metabolism rates, so coffee affects them a little differently. But it’s not like there are people out there where hotdogs are good for them or broccoli is bad for them. 

If you go to truehealthinitiative.org, this is an initiative set forth by Yale’s Prevention Research Center which asks hundreds of the top nutrition scientists in the world to agree on a consensus statement as to what the healthiest diet is. Just like you want to know about climate change, you go to the IPCC. What do climate change scientists have to say, right? So the same thing. You can see that there’s a consensus as to the core tenants of healthy eating and living going back decades, and that is centering one’s diet around whole healthy plant foods. 

[00:16:18] Ashley James: You have given many video talks and lessons on your website nutritionfacts.org, which one of all of them are you the most proud of?

[00:16:30] Dr. Michael Greger: Oh, wow. What a great question. Thousands of videos. If I can remember half of them that would be… Every time I put out a book I do a new talk, an hour-long presentation where I pick all the most akin of practical, groundbreaking, interesting bits together. Then it gives you this broad overview. Those are probably my favorite talks. I have one for How Not to Diet. I have one for How Not to Die. Those are probably the talks I’m most proud of. Though I yet have to have an hour-long presentation about How to Survive a Pandemic, but I do have about three hours’ worth of videos coming up—17 videos starting at the end of May running through July on nutritionfacts.org.

[00:17:36] Ashley James: We’ll look out for them for sure. As a doctor, as you’ve been taking your own initiative to study nutrition outside of school, because that’s what doctors have to do in order to really, really learn the truth, and as you’ve been helping people, what one story stands out for you? What healing story surprised you? Someone who actually healed their body that you were really surprised that they were able to heal using nutrition.

[00:18:05] Dr. Michael Greger: Those diseases for which we didn’t think that they were reversible. For example, we didn’t think heart disease was reversible until Pritikin came along and showed that was indeed the case. Diabetic retinopathy, diabetic blindness, we thought that was irreversible you go worse, worse, worse and you go blind. No, that can be reversed with a healthy diet. There are two case reports that just came out suggesting that, caught early enough, even type one diabetes may be able to help with a healthy diet. There was the first case report in enclosing spondylitis, this horrible autoimmune condition attacking the spine. Never had any data on that, but no, plant-based diet helps with that too. No surprise an anti-inflammatory diet helps an inflammatory condition. Those are the most exciting things, these kinds of reversal. We have new data on lupus, which is another autoimmune condition with beneficial effects not just for kidney function, which we had already known, but for other symptoms as well. Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, these are just really exciting to see diseases for which there were no good options. Where the traditional approaches have such downsides in terms of adverse effects. That’s really the most exciting work out there.

[00:19:30] Ashley James: What question am I not asking that you would love to answer?

[00:19:34] Dr. Michael Greger: I don’t know. What’s nutrition facts? Nutrition facts is a free, non-profit, science-based public service providing daily updates in the latest nutritional research via bite-sized videos—more than 1000 videos. Nearly every aspect of healthy eating with new videos and articles uploaded every day—are the latest in evidence-based nutrition. What a concept—nutritionfacts.org.

[00:20:00] Ashley James: For those who are not used to the whole food plant-based diet but are intrigued, can you share what do you eat? What do you eat? What have you eaten in the last 24 hours? What do you eat? Maybe you could share a recipe, one of your favorite recipes that would get people excited about trying to eat more plants.

[00:20:22] Dr. Michael Greger: The daily dozen is what I eat. That’s the reason the Daily Dozen came around because I wanted to eat an evidence-based diet and so I’m just sharing that with everybody. In terms of what I eat in 24 hours, I had a big bowl of miso soup for lunch and some cherries. It’s cherry season and oh my god they’re delicious. Then this morning I had my prebiotic mix, which is a combination of oat groats, purple barley, rye berries, and Beluga lentils mixed with cocoa powder, dark sweet frozen cherries. It was kind of like choco berry cherry action with some nuts and seeds. That was delicious. What did I have last night? Last night I had these blue corn tortillas, which I toasted mixed with a fajita mix, which was onions, peppers, black beans, salsa, and some hummus to make it kind of creamy with some adobo sauce, and some smoked jalapeno peppers. It was nice and spicy. Threw a whole bunch of greens in there. A tortilla kind of action.

In terms of what might be particularly motivating, I think it’s important to realize there’s only one diet ever proven to reverse heart disease in the majority of patients—it’s a plant-based diet. Anytime anyone tries to sell you on some new diet, do me a favor, just ask them a simple question. Wait a second, is this new diet improving to reverse heart disease, the number one reason me and all my loved ones will die? If the answer is no, why would you even consider it? If that’s all a plant-based diet could do—reverse the number one killer of men and women. Isn’t that going to be the default diet to be proven otherwise? In fact, that can also be so effective in preventing resting reversing other leading killers like high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. It would seem to make the case for plant-based eating simply overwhelming.

[00:22:46] Ashley James: I love that you mentioned your app, Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen. I have that on my phone. I think it’s a really cool app and I definitely recommend it. I’ve had Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn on the show. I just love, love that he so clearly says here’s the way to eat to reverse heart disease—being a cardiologist still practicing. I think he’s 86. I’m sure you guys are friends. But what’s really frustrating is I’ve had other cardiologists on the show who say we should drink a liter of olive oil a week, that it’s the most healthy thing we could possibly do for our heart. I’m really frustrated because when I learned the damages that oil can have on the body, can you just talk about is oil healthy, is it not healthy? How do we get healthy fats? Could we become fat-deprived by not eating fat? Can you just demystify fat and oil for us?

[00:23:37] Dr. Michael Greger: Oil is kind of the white sugar of the fat kingdom. You take something like a sugar beet, which is really healthy. You remove all the nutrition and you’re left with just sugar, so it’s empty calories. Same thing. You take a walnut, remove all the nutrition, you’re left with walnut oil, and it’s just empty calories. There are a few fat-soluble nutrients like vitamin E, but basically, just throw a lot of fiber, throw out the minerals, and throw out the rest of the nutrition. It’s like why would you do that? If you want to eat olive oil, fine, eat an olive. The problem is, there’s too much sodium in it, so eat an avocado, eat nuts and seeds, or eat whole food sources. How are we going to get carbohydrates? Whole plant food sources. How are we going to get proteins? Whole food plant source. How are we going to get fat? Whole food plant sources. Are these the healthiest? Not only because the stuff that doesn’t have cholesterol, saturated fat, and hormones—all that blah, blah, blah, blah. There are all the beneficial things that you want like antioxidants, fiber, and vital nutrients.

There are some essential fats: omega 3s, omega 6s, but that’s one of the reasons I recommend people to eat a tablespoon of ground flax seeds today to get their alpha-lipoic acid and omega-3 fatty acid, which is important for protecting against cardiovascular disease.

[00:24:51] Ashley James: My dad died of obesity and heart disease, but he survived my mother who was seemingly healthier—died of cancer at age 55. That was the shocker in our family. She died very quickly of liver cancer because she was very healthy on the outside. We want to obviously probably prevent heart disease—being the number one killer. We obviously want to prevent infection. That’s the big focus right now. Many people are turning to comfort foods and alcohol to just get through this crazy time, which in turn is actually hurting them more. Cancer is one of those big things that looms over us, at least over me. Something even scarier than heart disease. What can we do to reverse cancer? If someone has cancer, what evidence-based nutrition should they do to reverse cancer?

[00:25:47] Dr. Michael Greger: After Dr. Dean Ornish conquered our number one killer, heart disease, he moved on to killer number two, cancer. Took a group of men with early-stage prostate cancer, put them on the same kind of diet that reversed heart disease. For the first time ever showed that diet and lifestyle intervention could reverse the progression of cancer as measured by PSA levels, which is a proxy for tumor volume. In the control group that was told to just eat whatever your doctor was telling you, the tumors continued to grow. Whereas in the group that was randomized to a plant-based diet and lifestyle program, the tumor shrank on average— first men ever shown. The nice thing about diet is regardless of what other choices you make in terms of whether you are doing radiotherapy or chemotherapy, you can always eat healthier.

[00:26:37] Ashley James: Very interesting. Should we limit the amount of nuts and seeds like the plant-based fats or could someone go eat as many peanuts, for example, as they want to? Even though it’s plant-based, is there a ratio of carbs to fat to protein that is optimal?

[00:26:56] Dr. Michael Greger: The most important thing is a source, not the quantity. As long as you’re getting your macronutrients from whole plant sources, that’s the most important thing. I mean the only way you could overeat nuts is if that’s all you ate. Obviously, that wouldn’t be a good thing. But I encourage people to eat an ounce of it a day. It’s like a palm-full of nuts. A critically important one of the few foods along with dark and leafy from vegetables associated with literally years of an extended lifespan.

[00:27:28] Ashley James: Peanuts are not nuts, they’re legumes, right?

[00:27:31] Dr. Michael Greger: That’s true but they’re nutritionally similar enough that they actually have the same type benefits. The downside is that when we expose nuts and seeds to high dry heat, it produces these advanced glycation end-products. When you expose high protein fat foods to high heats, you get these AGEs, which we want to minimize. That’s why I encourage people to eat their nuts and seeds raw, but you can’t really find raw peanut butter, for example. But you can find raw almond butter, so that would be a better choice.

[00:28:00] Ashley James: You can make your own if you have a Vitamix or something.

[00:28:03] Dr. Michael Greger: You can make your own, exactly.

[00:28:05] Ashley James: That was my question was the high heat or the roasted nuts. We just need to basically eat the raw ones to preserve healthy fats. My last question, because I know you have to go, autoimmune disease is on the rise. Some autoimmune conditions are exacerbated by nightshades and some grains. What do we do to help people with autoimmune disease to recover?

[00:28:28] Dr. Michael Greger: You put them on a whole food plant-based diet. The most powerful intervention that’s ever been published in the peer-reviewed medical literature for multiple sclerosis and autoimmune disease where you take your own nerves. The most powerful intervention for Crohn’s disease, an autoimmune inflammatory bowel disease. We now have data for benefits for ulcerative colitis, lupus ankylosing spondylitis, rheumatoid arthritis. You name the autoimmune condition and the odds are, we have data supporting an anti-inflammatory diet, which is essentially synonymous with a plant-based diet. It’s true, there’s an autoimmune disease known as the celiac disease for which gluten can be an inflammatory trigger. For those rare 1 in 140 or so people, need to stay away from gluten-containing grains like wheat, barley, and rye, but those are healthy foods for the vast majority of people. People with joint pain, about 1 in 20, feel better after cutting nightshades out. So hey, might as well worth a try, but if it doesn’t help your joint pain, I would put those super healthy foods back into one’s diet.

[00:29:51] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you so much, Dr. Greger, for coming on the show today. It has been such a pleasure to have you here. Leave us with some homework. Leave us with some actionable steps we can take today to improve our health.

[00:30:01] Dr. Michael Greger: Oh my God. You should go to your local public library get How Not to Die, How Not to Diet, and How to Survive a Pandemic.

[00:30:10] Ashley James: And go to nutritionfacts.org and pour through your thousands of videos.

[00:30:14] Dr. Michael Greger: Do it.

[00:30:16] Ashley James: Thank you so much. It has been such a pleasure having on the show today. You’re welcome back anytime.

[00:30:21] Dr. Michael Greger: Keep up the good work.

[00:30:25] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Dr. Li. Please share it with those you care about. Let’s get this information out to help as many people as possible to learn true health. Come join the Facebook group. Search Learn True Health on Facebook or go to learntruehealth.com/group and join the Facebook group. It’s a wonderfully supportive community. We’re all in this together to learn what we can do to tweak our diet, our lifestyle, supplements whatever we can do to just switch it over to build the body into a place that develops health instead of disease. We can heal the body. The body has an amazing ability to heal itself. Even if you’ve been told you’re going to have this for the rest of your life, I have met so many people, myself included, who have reversed diseases and illnesses that they were told by doctors they’d always have for the rest of their life.

So don’t give up hope. Instead, dive in, listen to more episodes of the Learn True Health podcast, and come join the Facebook group. There is hope. As long as you’re living and breathing, as long as you have a pulse, your body can heal itself. You can do many things to support your body’s ability to heal itself. I’m so happy that you’re here to learn how you can optimize your health through every meal, through every breath. There are so many things you can do mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and energetically. That’s exactly what this podcast is here to help you with.

So please, dive in, keep listening, and make sure that you share this episode and share the podcast with those you love so we can help as many people as possible, and come join the Facebook group so that you can keep learning and keep asking questions and keep growing. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day.

Get Connected with Dr. Michael Greger!

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Books by Dr. Michael Greger

How Not To Die

The How Not To Die Cookbook

How To Survive A Pandemic

How Not To Diet

Check out Dr. Li's book: https://amzn.to/36AN9Mu

IT'S HERE! Learntruehealth.com/homekitchen
Use coupon code LTH for the listener discount!

Check out IIN and get a free module: LearnTrueHealth.com/coaching

Eat To Beat Disease

https://www.learntruehealth.com/eat-to-beat-disease-dr-william-li

Highlights:

• What holobiont is
• Five defense systems: angiogenesis, stem cells, microbiome, DNA repair, and immunity
• Akkermansia muciniphila
• Soy can help to prevent cancer and can also help people fight cancer
• Organic foods have more bio-actives

Can food really be used as medicine? In this episode, Dr. William Li, author of Eat to Beat Disease, shares some interesting research about how foods have helped to beat different diseases. The key is eating whole foods rather than processed and fast food and also eating in moderation. He also talks about the things he’s been eating and taking during this COVID-19 era to ensure that he mounts a healthy immune response to any viruses.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I am so excited for you to hear today’s interview with Dr. Li. He has some wonderful information about healing the body with food from a medical standpoint. I know you’re going to love it. 

If you want to learn how to cook really healthy delicious healing foods, come join my membership. You’ll also be supporting the Learn True Health podcast and you’ll be learning from me and my friend Naomi. We’re all really great in the kitchen, focusing on using foods that heal the body and integrating them into your diet. Go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. That’s learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. Enjoy all the wonderful and delicious videos, recipes, and lessons there because we love to use the kitchen as our pharmacy to heal the body and prevent disease.

I know you’re going to love learning some great tips today on the foods that you can eat and drink to support your overall health with Dr. Li. Enjoy today’s interview.

[00:01:06] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 432. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have Dr. William Li on the show, best-selling author of Eat to Beat Disease. He has an amazing TED Talk, Can We Eat to Starve Cancer? I love it. It has over 11 million views. You are a scientist first and a doctor. We’ve had a wonderful discussion before we hit record on COVID-19, so I’m interested in everything that all the science that you’ve been poring through, any advice that you can give to us on staving off disease, which is what your specialty is. Welcome to the show. This is going to be a really interesting discussion.

[00:02:03] Dr. William Li: Thank you, Ashley. It’s really a pleasure to be here, and certainly an interesting time in history. Generations from now, people will be referring back to 2020 at that time. The difference between now, that time, and the medieval ages where people were running from the plague and other deadly health scare is that we really have a lot of science to put wind in our sails. I think that’s really how we’re going to dig our way out of the mess we’re in right now, which is to use science to find the way.

[00:02:43] Ashley James: We need to find the science and look at that. I think what’s going on is we’re listening to the interpretations of the science and the predictions. We’re listening to a lot of predictions. I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s a lot of fear-mongering. I would love for people to be grounded in science instead of grounded in their fear. Because we want to empower people to take appropriate steps to remain healthy, but being in fear mode is actually harmful to the immune system. That’s the thing we have to avoid is staying in that fear mode.

[00:03:22] Dr. William Li: That’s right. I’m a physician—internal medicine, I’m a scientist, I study blood vessels, I’m a vascular biologist, and an author. I wrote a book called Eat to Beat Disease. One of the things that I started my career doing is, like every other medical researcher, studying disease, and trying to understand what makes diseases similar, different from one another. Then I started to realize that studying common denominators that united different diseases could be really a powerful way to really make advances because if we could pull the bow back and send a single arrow through the common denominators of disease and of health, we could actually make a lot more progress.

What you’re talking about which is that fear with which is a really primitive response, it’s hardwired in our brain. Whether it’s a spider, a rattlesnake, or a saber-toothed tiger our fear nerve endings allow us to actually react smartly to get out of the way of something that could be damaging. But the problem that we’re all having right now with COVID-19 is that there’s really no break from this right now.

[00:04:47] Ashley James: It’s constant.

[00:04:48] Dr. William Li: This virus came out of the blue, took everybody by surprise, and put an entire civilization down on its knees. Every country, more than 180 different countries, have been affected. Pretty much organized economies around the world. There might be some aboriginals and the jungles of Borneo or Brazil that are actually just going about their way, but I think every other organized modern society has had to pause. When you pause, you’re actually more heightened to your emotions. Emotions of fear really have to do with uncertainty, lack of knowledge, and the feeling of lack of control. That’s really where science helps us because the more we study something we don’t know the more confident we are that we can actually navigate our own position with that threat that we are just starting to understand. I think that’s coming through with COVID-19 as well.

What started as this mystery illness from bat to wet market to human to air passenger and around the world, we’re beginning to really throw down the tools of biotechnology and medical research to understand, not only what is the virus like, but what does it do in our body. As we’re beginning to understand that we started to realize some interesting things. First of all, COVID-19 is a coronavirus, and coronavirus is the same kind of virus that causes the common cold. It’s very different from the influenza virus, which causes the flu. Lots of misconceptions out there that this is just like a bad flu. In fact, this is not even related to the flu. It’s more related to the common cold. Imagine if a common cold were potentially lethal, that’s really what we’re dealing with.

Again, even that piece of understanding allows us to actually put pieces into their place as we start getting deeper and deeper. One of the things that I am doing as a COVID-19 researcher is trying to get to the bottom of what do we know, what are the facts about this disease, and what possible ways do we have to protect ourselves to fort the damage it can cause. For people that are actually sick and maybe have recovered, how do we actually repair and heal ourselves more quickly?

[00:07:35] Ashley James: I’m really looking forward to you diving into that and sharing with us how we can prevent it, what we can do to support the body in mounting a healthy response, if we do come in contact with it, and how to then recover quickly. What I’ve seen in the last week is interesting information coming out of Italy. A pathologist was doing autopsies on over 20 people who passed away in the hospital—of COVID. They saw that there was a similarity that they all had blood clots in the lungs. He says that it’s not pneumonia that is causing blood clots in the lungs, and so our approach to treating it is all wrong. That we should be treating it with blood thinners, antiviral, and anti-inflammatories. Have you seen this? Have you seen any science to support this? What are your thoughts on that?

[00:08:35] Dr. William Li: Yeah. I actually know a lot about this because that’s exactly in my wheelhouse. My background is in vascular biology. I study blood vessels, which allow blood to flow or—when they’re damaged—blood to clot, which clotting is a good thing. If you’re wounded, you want the bleeding to stop. It’s a bad thing if you are not wounded and blood clots in your body and then you can’t get oxygen or nutrients to the rest of your cells in your body and then you wind up having big problems. That’s something that I have studied a lot. Here’s the picture of what we’re putting together. It’s not black or white, either-or, one person’s right, and one person’s wrong.

What I would tell you is that COVID-19 is a coronavirus. Like the cold virus, it’s a respiratory virus. We become infected by breathing it in. If you think about breathing in a virus and how easy it is to catch a cold, you can see how infectious this COVID-19 can be, which is one of the reasons of trying to wear masks is because if everybody wore a mask, then we would be cutting down the likelihood that the droplets—the water droplets that the virus hangs out in—would actually leave our mouths, and that would be yours and mine if we were in the same place at the same time, so we would be less likely to infect each other.

Mask-wearing actually, which was really confusing for a while, is now becoming so obvious how important it actually is. Most of the countries like Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, or Hong Kong are now beginning to demonstrate with real scientific evidence that wearing masks is not lip service, so to speak. It’s actually cutting down the risk of transmission. This airborne virus we breathe in can block with a mask, but if you breathe it in where does the virus go? Like a cold virus, it actually goes into the mucus in your nose. That mucus is what you blow into a handkerchief or a Kleenex. Our mucus in our nose is full of antibodies. We actually—what we call IgA—it’s like the nonspecific defense antibody line of first defense.

If it probably weren’t for COVID, a lot of the battle is fought and won right there in your nose just like the regular cold virus, but this thing is sneaky and it’s pretty aggressive. If it manages to get through your mucus and into your mucous membranes, the cells in your nose, it starts to be able to track into your body. We do know that it goes down to your lungs. When it’s in your lungs, let me be very clear, we do know that it causes pneumonia. Although it’s not the classic pneumonia you would get with a bacteria, it’s a viral pneumonia. That basically means an organism is causing massive inflammation and response and causing an interruption of your airflow. There’s no question this thing actually causes pneumonia. When it actually causes pneumonia, most people get over it but some people actually succumb or their breathing gets worse and worse.

For the people that are unable to make it back home make it at home, they have to be admitted as a hospital. Some percentage of those people actually wind up really crashing and they need to go on a ventilator to have artificial support or their breathing hopefully until their body actually is able to overcome the attack of the virus. This is an epic battle between the virus and our bodies. When our bodies start to win, we can get off the ventilator, we can leave the hospital, and we can go back home. Hopefully, if we win early enough meaning the security in our host is really, really solid, we won’t even go to the hospital at all. We might have something even as mild as a cold or a little bit of a viral syndrome and not downright crash.

What you’re hearing from Italy is now being seen around the world and verified by the research I’m actually doing. I’ve also looked at autopsy tissue from people who have died of COVID-19 and gone way deep to take a look at what is actually going on. What we are seeing is something really amazing. When the virus gets into your lungs, in addition to causing pneumonia, one of the first things it does is it makes a beeline for the blood vessels in your lungs. When it gets into the blood vessel lining, it causes that lining to be damaged. It damages that lining. Anytime a blood vessel has damaged lining it becomes what we call prothrombotic or more likely to clot. Then the blood vessels kind of go into a tizzy trying to recover from the blood clot and they start to respond in ways that make the blood more sluggish, the immune response tries to clear out the virus and the blood vessels, and the blood vessels get damaged kind of a collateral response.

Think about the SWAT team trying to rescue some hostages in a bank. There’s a lot of bank robbers there and when you’re trying to rush the bank, some of the hostages wind up getting killed. This is the thing that also happens with our immune system. It’s not that we have an autoimmune response. It’s that we have the right immune response, it’s just that it takes out a lot of healthy tissue along the way. We think that that contributes to even further likelihood of blood clotting. When blood clots in your lungs in small blood vessels, which is what you’re seeing, it becomes a problem because even if you’re moving air in and out, you’re not getting that oxygen from the air into your blood vessels to deliver to the rest of your body.

We’re beginning to see how these clots are actually responsible for some of the problems of breathing and circulation that we’ve observed. Of course, now we’re seeing blood clots in the lung, the brain, and other parts of your body as well. This respiratory virus does cause respiratory infection, that’s for sure, but what we now know is that this respiratory infection—the virus goes further to cause a whole-body—a systemic illness. That’s really where we are right now. That takes the research to present-day where we’re now diving even deeper into understanding what’s actually happening in all these other different parts and organs of the body including the blood vessels.

[00:15:59] Ashley James: If a patient has the infection, should they be put on a blood clotting drug to prevent the clot? Should anticoagulants be used preventively as their body’s fighting this virus?

[00:16:21] Dr. William Li: An article came out in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology two weeks ago showing that people who were in the hospital who are on anticoagulants and in fact with COVID-19 definitely had a better outcome. Now, based on that observation, which makes sense with the research that we were just talking about how the virus causes blood clotting, now the studies are being done to actually put people proactively on blood thinners to protect them. An interesting question is if you’re infected at home, should you be taking a blood thinner like an aspirin? Obviously, that’s an over-the-counter medicine. Anybody can go to a drugstore to pick up an aspirin, but like anything, medicines can have effects and side effects.

One of the things that’s happening in this pandemic of the virus that’s leading to a pandemic of fear is leading people to actually just knee-jerk and try to go out to buy everything they can and try to self-minister. Again, this is where teaming up with your doctor, and having medical researchers work on this is really important. Even something as simple as aspirin, which may indeed be life-saving in this particular case with COVID, can cause stomach bleeding, can cause other side effects. I’m one of the doctors that basically I don’t discourage my patients, people that I know, from taking their health into their own hands with things that are as safe as food for example, or even dietary supplements. But when it comes to medicines, really, I think it’s important to track along, follow along with real medical researchers. Because it’s only through the data that we get from science that we can actually know if what we’re doing has more benefits than risks.

[00:18:15] Ashley James: The people that were in the hospital that the journal wrote about, were they already on blood thinners, or were they put on blood thinners because they were infected?

[00:18:27] Dr. William Li: Most of the first reports were basically for people that were already on blood thinners. There’s a lot of people that are already on blood thinners. For example, if you had a heart condition like atrial fibrillation or if you had a valve replaced where you need your blood to be thin, many of those people are walking around on blood thinners all the time. If you’ve ever had a stroke in the past you probably were put on a blood thinner. Lots of reasons that people actually are on blood thinners. Of course, there are some genetic conditions where people are extra clotty so they wind up on blood thinners as well. I think this is where the science of observation—even observation can be a science, but the science of observation is really picking up patterns.

I think that this is where being alert in a situation that is foreign to us—this is called a novel coronavirus because humans have been walking around for 200,000 years and we’ve never encountered something like this. There’s no way you can Google all the answers. There’s no Wikipedia page that tells us everything. We’re learning as we go along—making observations, doing the research, going to the deep dive, we’re much better now than we were a month ago, and definitely much better than we were four months ago when all this started to break. I think it’s a very, very important advance to understand the importance of making sure blood doesn’t clot in people who are infected with COVID-19.

[00:20:16] Ashley James: My friend’s father is in the hospital currently. He’s had four brain surgeries because unfortunately, his doctor had him on aspirin and a blood thinner after a heart surgery he had for a valve a year ago. He had massive headaches a few months ago, went into the ER, and the ER doctor said, “You’re having a brain bleed. We have to get you into the emergency surgery right now.” That doctor said, “I can’t believe your cardiologist has you on this amount of blood there and an aspirin. This is what caused your brain bleed.” They took him off of the aspirin, they reduced his blood thinners after retesting his clotting factors, and he is still having brain bleeds, so they’re chasing with several procedures. That’s an example of if you’re on too much of a blood thinner, you can have a major problem.

We wouldn’t want to just arbitrarily get on a blood thinner like you said. You definitely want to work closely with a doctor. I’m wondering though if someone who has COVID could then be given a blood thinner if that would be fast enough to kick in, and if there’s any evidence to show that as of yet?

[00:21:35] Dr. William Li: I think that’s what’s going on right now. We don’t know yet. I would tell you that if you were concerned about it to talk to your doctor. I imagine that this is going to be one of the recommendations in the future. If you can document that you’ve got the infection and you have risks that might set up for a blood clot that the medical community will recommend that you go on a blood thinner. That’s probably right around the corner. What’s interesting when it comes to diet and lifestyle, there’s a school of thought that foods that contain vitamin K like spinach, kale, and many other greens that can thin the blood might not be good for all people to take. But here’s a situation where it might be actually beneficial to eat more foods, more whole green plant-based foods that actually contain vitamin K to keep you, not only healthier from all the other good stuff—the bio-actives that plants have, but also as an additional benefit that they might be able to keep our blood a little bit thinner.

[00:22:46] Ashley James: This is the funny part is he eats a whole food plant-based diet. He eats tons of vegetables, tons of leafy greens, and they brought this up to his cardiologist and his neurosurgeon or vascular surgeon. I’m not sure what the classification is for the person who’s working on closing up the vessels that are bleeding in his brain. They brought this up to his doctors and they said listen, he eats a whole food plant-based diet. They had never heard of that. They didn’t know what that was. They had to explain how he ate and they said that just sounds like eating healthy. His family said this is a diet that thins the blood naturally. His doctors said diet has nothing to do with this. You can’t affect the body with food. You can’t affect blood vessels with food. I was just floored, but so many doctors think this way that you can’t affect blood clotting or even the health of the brain or the blood vessels with eating.

[00:23:48] Dr. William Li: To some extent, you can’t blame doctors who haven’t been educated. Nutrition has really, until recently, not been a part of medical education or not adequately part of it. One of the reasons that I got into food as medicine, and I’m one of the people that are actually doing the research to study foods just the same way that we would study medicine with a lot of rigor and using the same type of testing systems is because—look, I was taking care of patients at a Veterans Hospital. Some of my favorite patients were people that used to serve the country in the Armed Services. They would receive these really terrible diagnoses from me. They were in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. Many of them were overweight, had cancer, heart disease, or diabetes. All kinds of problems.

After I gave them the diagnosis, wrote the prescriptions, and gave them referrals to the other specialists, a lot of these guys would put on their jacket and walk out the door. I would turn around to do my notes. They would turn back and come and pop their head in the door and say, hey doc, one more thing. What should I eat? Is there something I can do for myself? At that moment, I started realizing that I didn’t have the answer to that because I was never taught that. That just seemed wrong to me and that sent me really on this journey to understand how does diet actually works and what answers could we be giving people when they need to know.

The other thing that was interesting I thought from my experience that the Veterans Administration is some of these people that were in terrible shape—out of shape and in terrible shape—they might be morbidly obese, and really their bodies were a wreck let’s say in their 60s or 70s. I realized when they were in their 20s, they were the cut, fit buffs, perfect specimens that they couldn’t even get into armed services in the military unless they were in perfect shape. What the heck happened between the time of 18, 20, and the age 60 really are diet and lifestyle.

That really only underscored for me the importance to really dig deeper and try to answer that. Not surprisingly, this is not the typical experience of most medical doctors. I really believe that food as medicine is a concept whose time has come. I think more and more, the medical community realizes how important it is. The older doctors who’ve been out there longer who definitely weren’t taught this in the 70s, 80s, and even 90s, they’re struggling with the idea even though each of them do know, on a personal level, how important diet could be. They just don’t have the intellectual framework to know what to do with their own instincts. This is getting back to basics in some ways, but now applying science to it, we ought to be able to make people more confident in understanding how food can be medicine.

[00:27:02] Ashley James: I love it. How have you changed your lifestyle? How have you changed your diet after diving into all the research?

[00:27:13] Dr. William Li: I’m a little bit of an unusual creature because between college and medical school, I did a gap year. In my gap year, I went to the Mediterranean long before the Mediterranean diet was popular. What I was interested in was the Mediterranean diet. I was interested in how foods in a particular part of the world shaped culture, and how that culture actually helped to inform the way that arts and sciences emerged from history. I was always interested in the history of regions. I was interested in the history of the Mediterranean and of Asia and trying to understand how do these old, old cultures, how did people live in the land, grow and assemble their foods into meals that today are regarded as amazingly delicious combinations and healthy to boot? How did that kind of life and lifestyle help shape things like painting, drawing, sculpture, mathematics, physics, and biology? It was an interesting thing.

I went to Europe. I lived there in Italy and in Greece. I was exploring diets. Again, this is long before anybody really knew what a Mediterranean diet was. I was living it. I wasn’t talking the talk, I was just walking the walk back then. For decades, I’ve actually lived a pretty Mediterranean style life. I have an Asian background so I grew up eating a lot of Asian-inspired cuisines. I’ll tell you what the common denominator of these old ancient healthy cuisines. They all tend to rely mostly on whole plant-based foods as their backbone. They tend to use fresh foods as opposed to a lot of prepared foods. There are very few ultra-processed foods involved in their diet. 

Fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds are common. Fish, not just salmon, but all kinds of fish—mostly seafood. Fish and shellfish also are common along the coastline, as you might expect, and very little meat. Not the absence of meat. Some people don’t realize this but the Sardinians, which is one of the blue zones where people routinely live to above a hundred, the villages of the Sardinian Blue Zone are in the mountains were nowhere near the sea. They need a fair amount of meat too, I mean they eat meat.

One of the things is that it’s a very naturalistic integration of plants that are easy to grow, seasonal, eaten fresh, cooked in combinations, incorporating different ingredients that are tasty, making you want to eat more, and diversity of cuisine. I would say between the Mediterranean and Asia, those are the common denominators. I’ve really just embarked on that type of a lifestyle for the last 20, 30 years. It makes me feel great.

[00:30:50] Ashley James: What isn’t in your diet that’s in the standard American diet?

[00:30:55] Dr. William Li: Look, I grew up in America. I grew up probably eating the same stuff that everyone has eaten—the stuff out of boxes. I’ve had a Twinkie, I’m not ashamed to say, when I was a kid, right? I wouldn’t have one now, but I certainly had them when I was growing up. I would tell you what I’m very careful to avoid—I don’t eat a lot of meat. I try to cut down or cut out red meat. I try to stay away from processed meats of any sort. I try not to eat foods that come out of boxes. I do look at ingredients when I shop for things. If I see a whole bunch of Greek and Latin words that refer to chemicals, I try to stay away from the ultra process stuff. If I have a choice between having something that is pre-made versus freshly made, I will go hands-down for the fresh stuff.

By the way, I would say the other thing that I tend not to do is really do a lot of errant snacking is what I call it. We know that actually restricting your calories is actually healthy. It re-primes your immune system. It actually slows down your cellular aging, it lowers inflammation and helps fight cancer by cutting off the blood supply. Lots of things that caloric restriction does. That’s the opposite of let’s call it the Vegas buffet mindset. Let’s go in there and stuff our face. The other thing I don’t do is I live a life where if I miss a meal or two because I’m busy or I’m doing something else, I’m okay with that. I don’t try to make it up by stuffing my face. Those are some of the things that I don’t do. I really don’t do fast food. Like I said, I grew up doing that kind of stuff, but I can’t remember the last time that I went to a drive-thru or picked up fast food. I would rather not eat, and I’m okay with that. I’ll find something healthier when I get home.

[00:33:11] Ashley James: Your mission is to teach people how to use food as medicine. The number one killer is heart disease. That’s number one. Heart disease is going to kill more people than all infections combined and yet we focus so much on worrying about infection when most people statistically will die of heart disease. What can we do to prevent heart disease?

[00:33:37] Dr. William Li: Heart disease is really interesting because it’s really not just about the heart, it’s about the blood vessels supplying the heart. That comes from my field of angiogenesis or how the body grows healthy blood vessels. The heart, of course, is part of the circuitry, part of the plumbing of our blood vessels, but most people don’t know that there are 60,000 miles where the blood vessels are packed inside our bodies. Think about a ball of yarn that’s 60,000 miles long. Literally, if you unspool that yarn, you could have a string that would wrap around the earth twice, right? That’s your blood vessels. That’s your garden hose in your body. Our heart, which is the pumping machine, actually just really jets out oxygen and nutrients through our blood to every single cell in our body.

If it has any problem sending out that oxygen and nutrients, then the heart winds up struggling. If it can’t pump, you wind up having heart disease. There’s a lot of ways that the heart can have trouble. For example, the muscle can get weakened by itself. The blood vessels feeding the heart can get clogged. Then the vessels, the circulation that the heart pumps blood into can go from being kind of soft and elastic to being really hard and rigid. Imagine trying to blow into a long metal pipe, you know how hard that is. If your blood vessels are really hardened, the heart has to work really, really hard, which tires it out, wears it down, and causes it to actually eventually fail. 

All that means that to prevent heart disease we need to take good care of our blood vessels, prevent them from actually getting hard hardened, prevent them from clogging up, and make sure that these cells lining our blood vessels are as healthy as possible. Sleep, exercise, lowering stress, staying away from smoking, not drinking in excess, and physical activity. All those things are common-sense things. When it comes to food, here’s really where some really interesting research is happening. We used to think about heart health in our diet as cutting things out—no butter, no meat, no this, no that. You’re a bad person if you eat that. If you’ve got heart disease you got to cut out everything right away. It was really like guilt, fear, and shame mindset, an elimination program if you wanted to avoid heart disease. 

Now what we know with science is that if you want to protect your heart and you want to avoid heart disease, you should be adding things to your diet. Yeah, sure, stay away from the bad stuff but really focus on the good stuff. We want to have good fiber in our diet because good fiber feeds our gut microbiome and our gut bacteria actually helps. When our gut bacteria are healthy because we’re feeding it fiber, those bacteria digest the fiber. As part of the byproducts of the bacteria’s own digestion—the metabolites—they create particles that actually lower our cholesterol, which then prevents our blood vessels from getting hardened. 

They actually help our body metabolize cholesterol and sugar better so we can be able to use our blood glucose better. It’s like our bacteria is like our diabetes for better. Eating plant-based foods with a lot of fiber is super healthy for your heart. We also know that there are foods that, believe it or not, can actually help the lining of our blood vessels regenerate themselves and continuously repair themselves so they’re not quite as clotty. They don’t clog up or they don’t clot up quite as much.

Some of these things are, for example, omega-3 fatty acids, which you can find in nuts. You can find them in seafood, but you can also find them in nuts. You can also take it as a dietary supplement. A surprise would be cacao—dark chocolate. The cocoa bean actually can is used to make cacao. Cacao is the basis for making chocolate. Dark chocolate is where you have mostly cacao. That’s Mother Nature’s blood vessel helper.

What’s amazing is there’s been a study that was done in individuals who had heart disease, this was out of UCSF, where they gave two groups either a placebo drink or they gave people hot chocolate made with dark chocolate—dark cacao. The placebo, by the way, had the flavonoids and polyphenols were low, so it’s got low versus high. Then they fed the people we’ve known heart disease just two cups of hot chocolate a day for 30 days. Then they measured the number of stem cells in their bloodstream at baseline and compared it to the end of 30 days of drinking two cups of hot cocoa made with dark cocoa. They found that the people who had the dark chocolate version of hot cocoa had doubled the number of regenerating blood vessel cells, stem cells, in their bloodstream. They had better blood flow as well.

Again, human studies, plant-based foods, heart-healthy, these are the kinds of things that we should be leaning into and embracing. Now, for heart health, it’s all about leaning into the good stuff while, keeping in mind, we need to kind of cut down on the bad stuff as well.

[00:39:41] Ashley James: I love it. There’s a school of thought that consuming mass amounts of virgin olive oil is very, very healthy for the body, and just like the Mediterranean diet, every time I think of the Mediterranean diet we think of drinking gallons a year of olive oil. Then there’s a school of thought that we should not consume any oil once it’s been processed away from the plant, so we should eat olives not olive oil. For example, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who’s a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, says that oil harms the endothelial lining, which is the skin on the inside of the blood vessels. He sees that consuming oil and animal fat harms it, inflames it, and that we should eat our fat from a whole food source and not from the processed source. Have you sided with either side? What does science say for you?

[00:40:43] Dr. William Li: There’s a couple of ways to look at this. First of all, consuming anything in gallon form is probably not good for you. My first position on most things when it comes to food is that more is not necessarily more. There’s actually a biological concept called hormesis, which describes this which is that a little but isn’t enough, a little bit more is good for you, even more is even better, and then a little bit more than that gives you the optimal amount. But then if you keep on adding more, you start losing the benefits. You keep on adding more, even more than that, you start losing it. It’s the classic upside-down u-shaped curve where there’s an optimum amount where you get the optimum benefit, but if you keep on going beyond that you actually lose it.

I know Caldwell Esselstyn. He’s an amazing guy—a friend. We worked together on a couple of projects. Really smart, and I think he’s right. You do not want to damage the lining of your blood vessels. That’s my field of angiogenesis as well, but here’s what I will tell you. Not all oils are created equal. Saturated fats are clearly more damaging to the blood vessel lining—the endothelial lining of our blood vessels. Polyunsaturated fats have less damage. Obviously, if you go too high in concentrations, I mean anything is bad for you in excess. But olive oils are polyunsaturated, for the most part. It has less to do with the processing. If you think about it, eating an olive out of a barrel is a plant-based food. That is packed with olive oil, right? A little bit of olive oil such as you would use in a dressing or use for in cooking, not bad for you.

Actually, most of the study has shown that if you actually have up to about three tablespoons of olive oil a day, that’s probably okay—and or less. If you use olive oil in cooking, you’re probably in good shape. Don’t forget, it’s not about the fat that’s the good stuff in olive oil. The fat of olive oil is less bad for you, but in fact, olive oil has these bioactive compounds like oleic acid and hydroxytyrosol. These are some of Mother Nature’s secret weapons that happen to be found in plant-based foods. For example, hydroxytyrosol has been shown to be one of those olive oil-derived substances that can actually improve your immune response. 

In this COVID-19 era, we pay attention to things like that when we hear something is good. The next time you’re actually sautéing something I would say it’s okay to use a little bit of olive oil, don’t take too much of it. Never have gallons of anything.

[00:43:54] Ashley James: You said someone could be safe taking up to three tablespoons a day, what if someone does more than that? Could they be damaging their blood vessels, and is there a way to get all those great nutrients in a different form? Because you’re saying olive oil really isn’t a great way to get fat. You’re not actually taking the olive oil for the fat, you’re taking it for the medicinal extracts from olives. Whereas it would be more concentrated in an olive itself, wouldn’t it?

[00:44:21] Dr. William Li: It could be. By the way, a lot of the good stuff in olive oil, in olives, actually is not the oily part of it, it’s in the liquid part of it, which when you press an olive to make olive oil what comes out of olive is a liquid, which then is drained away, but the fat actually floats to the top and that’s what’s collected. In fact, there’s a lot of really great stuff in the olive water that gets drained away. That’s a whole other sustainability issue.

[00:44:47] Ashley James: Olive juice.

[00:44:48] Dr. William Li: Yeah, exactly.

[00:44:49] Ashley James: Why aren’t we drinking olive juice by the gallon?

[00:44:52] Dr. William Li: I love olive juice. Have you ever had it by the way? It’s just fantastic. It’s super concentrated olives. It’s like all the goodness of olive without the fat.

[00:45:02] Ashley James: Oh my Gosh.

[00:45:04] Dr. William Li: I’m actually not saying that olive oil is a bad fat. What I’m saying is that it’s actually a pretty decent fat, all things considered. By the way, if you look at clinical trials and if you look at population studies, people who live in regions where olive oil tends to be the predominant fat tend to be a little bit healthier. The [correlate] between consuming olive oil is healthier than not consuming olive oil. You’re asking though are there any other ways of getting healthy fats? I mean look, many nuts and flax seeds all contain healthy fats. 

We probably shouldn’t be having a ton of fasts to begin with. There’s no food that is really just only the fat, right? There are other things that are good with it. We have to take a more considered approach to what we’re putting in. For example, if you’re having olive oil, it’s not just the polyunsaturated fats you’re having, you’re also getting all these other bio-actives. If you’re having a saturated fat, there’s probably nothing good that you’re taking in with it.

[00:46:15] Ashley James: Got it. This olive juice, this olive water, the extract that’s not the fat, that’s where all the polyphenols are, all these chemicals that you’re talking about. How would one go about getting this into their life? Just by eating olives or is there a place to buy olive juice?

[00:46:38] Dr. William Li: It’s a great question. I know that I was traveling once in the Mediterranean. There was, for the lack of a better word, an olive bar. I’m trying to remember where it was, but it was amazing. You could get little shots of pure olive juice from different types of olives. I’ll tell you, it was just such an amazing treat to sample that. Be on the lookout. I suppose, if you have time in a lockdown mode to actually try out different baking recipes, maybe we should try to make our own olive juice. I’m sure there’s a way of actually doing it.

[00:47:23] Ashley James: There’s a ton of people baking right now. We should be cold pressing olives and drinking the juice instead. That sounds delicious and so nutritious. I’m predicting in the next 20 years that’s going to be a big health trend like goji berries and kale. We’re going to have little bottles of olive juice. That’s really cool. You focus on food as medicine, you focus on preventing disease because it’s more important to prevent a disease than treat it. At least, we have more tools to prevent a disease than we do to have to treat it because by the time someone is so sick that they have the disease it’s much harder to reverse it. What actionable steps could we take today? What specific steps would you tell us to start doing today to prevent disease?

[00:48:19] Dr. William Li: The one thing that everyone needs to know is that we actually have, from the time we’re born, all the defensive weapons we need to stay to live long healthy lives. Our body really craves health. Health is not just the absence of disease, it’s really a result of our own bodies—hard-wired health defense system—working as hard as it can—I call it firing on all cylinders—from the time we’re born until our very last breath. Some people say I know somebody who developed cancer or heart disease, why did they develop that? I would turn it around to say why don’t more people develop cancer, and why don’t more people develop diabetes or heart disease?

It’s because when our body’s defenses are working at full capacity, full throttle, they naturally resist cancer growth, metabolism going on haywire, blood vessels clogging up causing heart disease. Actually, even fat cells growing to ridiculous sizes our body kind of knows how to do what it wants to do. The problem is that once we’re born and we’re living on planet earth, life itself exacts a toll like the tax we pay for living on this planet is that we’re continuously assaulted by ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Modern life, we’re surrounded by off-gassing from furniture and carpets. I always tell these damages our DNA and cause all kinds of problems. 

I always tell people if you still drive a car that uses petrol or uses gasoline and you get to fill your tank, do you stand upwind or downwind? A lot of people go I haven’t even thought about that. How about you, Ashley? Do you actually stand upwind or downwind when filling up your tank?

[00:50:16] Ashley James: I sit in the car while my husband does it.

[00:50:19] Dr. William Li: All right, the smartest one of them all. I’ll tell you what I do. I stand upwind because I realize that if I stand downwind and I can smell that gas, those solvents are actually going into my lung damaging my own DNA. Something like that, just even a small thing like that, is an assault on your body. The question is, how come we don’t have lung cancer every day, the next day, or the next week after we fill up a tank of gas? Because our body fixes itself. 

The number one thing I think is super important is that our body already has the secret to actually stay healthy. Number two is that those defenses have to work harder and harder as we get older because there are so many cumulative stresses that we’re subjected to, our body’s defenses have to work harder and sometimes they can break down. The third thing I would tell you, so you want to sort of stay away from those dangers.

This is like wear sunscreen, stay physically active, avoid solvents and toxins, but there’s even more which is that we can actually do our health defenses a favor by feeding them because foods can activate, support, and even enhance our health defense system. What are those health defense systems? I wrote about five of them in my book Eat to Beat Disease. There’s angiogenesis, our circulation, that’s 60,000 miles worth of blood vessels that deliver oxygen to all of our cells. There’s our stem cells, the regeneration. We talked about regeneration a little bit. Our stem cells are actually found in our bone marrow. We got tons of them even as adults.

When we were kids, we were told that starfish and salamanders regenerate but people don’t, humans don’t. Well, that playbook’s been thrown out. We have a new chapter written. We know that humans do generate very, very slowly. Foods can actually make that regeneration happen from the inside out, and we can speed it up and make it more efficient. Our microbiome, gut bacteria, we got 37 trillion bacteria in our bodies and most of it’s in our gut. 

When I was in medical school I was told bacteria are bad, kill the bacteria, prescribe antibiotics, and now we know, in fact, most of the bacteria in our body is good. Occasionally, there’s a bad actor that calls itself out. Sometimes, you need to actually bust out the pharmaceutical police to take care of that, but for the most part, we have a good ecosystem of healthy good bacteria. By feeding our good bacteria, it affects our mood, our brain, our emotions, our immune system, how good our skin looks, how fast we heal, whether or not we’ve got inflammation, our metabolism. 

It’s so important, our bacteria, that we actually realize that we’re not even fully human anymore because we’ve got 39 trillion human cells, we’ve got 37 trillion bacteria, so we’re like 50-50. Half of us isn’t even human. By the way, Ashley, the term for an organism that’s made up of different species like we are, humans and bacteria, is called a holobiont. That’s what you and I are. We’re all holobionts. We’re an ecosystem walking around. The bacteria are just walking around inside our human shell. That’s really important and foods can actually boost that.

DNA is another defense system. We’re all taught that DNA is our genetic code, and it makes proteins, absolutely. That’s true, there’s no quarrel about that, but many people do not realize that our DNA is a defense mechanism that protects us against environmental damage. For example, we know that if you go out to the beach and lay out you’ll get tan and you’ll get burned if you stay out too long. If you get burned that can actually lead to skin cancer because it damages our DNA. We know if you want to speed up that damage you should go into a sun tanning booth and bingo, in an hour you’ll have done 20 years of damage to your skin—really a bad thing to do. 

Did you know that actually even sitting in a car stuck in traffic on a beautiful day with the sun shining in through the windshield or with your arm out the window coming in stuck in traffic that also causes damage. Being in an airplane. Pilots receive huge amounts of ultraviolet damaging radiation just by sitting in a cockpit flying the plane. As do the passengers.

The fact of the matter is our DNA knows how to fix itself. It repairs itself, it can rebuild itself when it’s damaged, and our DNA is kind of a fuse like, a life fuse, that burns itself down in our cells so that the longer the fuse is the healthier and longer-lived we are. When our fuse burns down really short, they call these the telomeres that are protective they’re like the caps of a shoelace at the very end—the plastic tips. What happens when your shoelace loses the cap? Your shoelace frays open and immediately it starts to fall apart. That can happen to our DNA. Our DNA protects ourselves against damage including aging.

Then finally, our immune system. Everybody now thinks about immunity as one of the most important defenses against COVID-19, but listen, we’re surrounded by viruses, bacteria, molds, and fungi all the time. Our immune system does more than resist attacks from the outside, which is what we’re thinking about with COVID. Our immune system prevents us from being attacked from the inside by cancer cells. In fact, we know that the immune system is so powerful that even if you were in your 80s or 90s, like an elderly person, their immune system is powerful enough to completely wipe out cancer even if it’s spread if you give it a chance.

We figured this out through one of the biggest breakthroughs in medicine in the last couple of decades, which was immunotherapy for cancer where you can now treat cancer some cancers with medicines that don’t actually kill the cancer cells directly. Instead, what they do is they actually help the immune system discover cancer and get rid of it by itself. A great example is President Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States and one of the oldest living presidents now. He actually had melanoma. 

He was one of the most amazing people that after his presidency dedicated himself to building homes for people that needed to have homes constructed. He and his wife Rosalynn would go out and build houses in Habitat for Humanity. A lot of sunshine in the state of Georgia. Got a melanoma, spread to his liver and his brain. It was thought that someone in their 90s would never survive a melanoma that spread to the brain, but he got immunotherapy in the 90s that didn’t kill the cancer cells. All they did was rip open the cloak that cancers try to hide from your immune system. His 90-year-old immune system said aha, I see you, I’m going to get rid of you. His own immune system wiped out all visible traces of cancer. Amazing. I never thought we’d see that happen, not in my career, but here we are.

Five defense systems: angiogenesis, stem cells, microbiome, DNA repair, and immunity. The great news is that our diet can be used to activate these, so you can, in fact, Eat to Beat Disease.

[00:58:28] Ashley James: I love it. Your book is just full of the science-based evidence showing us that every single time we walk into the kitchen we’re walking into our pharmacy. That every time we put something in our mouth we can be healing our body or we could be harming our body. We really want to maximize the nutrition, the nutrient density of every meal to support the body’s ability to heal itself and maintain optimal health no matter what our age is. The more you dive into this and help people to shape their diet to support their overall health, what illnesses have you been surprised that were able to be reversed with diet?

[00:59:17] Dr. William Li: One of the most surprising is in fact cancer. We talked a little bit about this earlier. I’ll tell you about the experience. This immunotherapy that I told you about there’s a bunch of different treatments that are out there like this. Even the best ones sometimes aren’t effective, and we don’t know why. Some people who actually wind up getting immunotherapy will have this incredible, amazing, and complete response. Back to baseline—they just regain their health back even after cancer has spread. On the other hand, some people don’t respond at all. Getting the treatment doesn’t do them squat—diddly-squat. What’s going on?

My colleague, Dr. Laurence Zitvogel in Paris did this amazing important study. She took 200 cancer patients who were being treated with the immunotherapies. She just separated them out into people that actually had a good response and people who didn’t respond. Then she dove deeply to figure out what the differences were between the people who are responders and non-responders. It seems like a really simple logical thing to do, but in fact, it’s quite a complicated thing if you really wanted to look for differences.

What she found, when you accounted for sex, age, comorbidities, medications, other risk factors, diet, lifestyle, and all kinds of other things, the only difference between someone who responded and didn’t respond is one bacteria in their gut—one bacteria. If you had that bacteria, you responded. If you didn’t have that bacteria, you didn’t respond. That bacteria is called akkermansia muciniphila. It’s a normal healthy gut bacteria that we now are beginning to realize it actually governs and helps to control. It’s like air traffic control for our immune system—it conducts surveillance.

Here’s the amazing thing about that bacteria, when she took out the bacteria from patients who were responders to the treatment and went to the lab to figure out—she took lab animals, mice, who actually didn’t have any bacteria and put them in there—if she put a tumor on there and then treated them, the same thing that you saw in patients. The immunotherapy would allow the mouse’s immune system to completely wipe out cancer. If on the other hand, she put the bacteria in there, the animal had a tumor and she gave an antibiotic and wiped out that bacteria, no effect of the immunotherapy.

Powerful, powerful concept of a single bacteria helping your immune system function, but where the surprise is for me when it comes to diet has to do with the fact that you cannot actually eat this bacteria. There’s no probiotic for akkermansia. The only thing you can do is to eat foods that actually cause your own gut, your own intestines to secrete the mucus that this bacteria love to grow in. By the way, what is the food? Pomegranate juice, cranberry juice, and Concord grape juice. They cause our colons to secrete mucus. When that mucus is secreted, the akkermansia loves to grow. It’s like putting fertilizer into your garden. The flowers start blooming, and you can actually put yourself into a situation where you can then have the best possible chances of responding.

This isn’t a food versus medicine. This is food and medicine. To be able to get that kind of impact from diet, life, and that situation to me was a delightful surprise.

[01:03:13] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. That makes all the difference. It’s funny, I googled akkermansia muciniphila. Is that how you say it?

[01:03:22] Dr. William Li: Exactly.

[01:03:23] Ashley James: I googled it and the first thing that comes up is a bunch of probiotics, but as you’re saying, you don’t want to take a probiotic. You want to eat food to support the gut in creating the environment that then this bacteria comes and lives. Does it have to be grape juice? Can you eat grapes or grape juice is the best way to do?

[01:03:48] Dr. William Li: The studies have been done so far with grape juice, but obviously, the juice is just coming from the grapes so you might as well eat the grape too and you get all the other good stuff that’s good for other parts of your body including your blood vessel health and metabolism. I always go for the whole food if you can get it, if you can eat it, but the juice isn’t a problem either. I would say many people are concerned about the amount of sugar that’s found in fruit juices. What I would say is that number one yes, sugar is found in some fruit juices, and yes, having too much sugar, from any source, is bad. But sugar in a natural fruit juice is better than added sugar in a soda or in a cup of coffee. You choose your weapons, you choose your sugar wisely.

The good thing about fruit is that you actually wind up having a lot of other good stuff that comes along with it. If the sweetness of the fruit makes your mouth water and it makes you want to eat more of it, that’s not a bad thing necessarily. Again, moderation.

[01:05:02] Ashley James: Moderation is key. It’s interesting to know that fructose is the only carbohydrate, I believe, that will not trigger satiation. That’s why an 18-year-old could consider drinking two liters of Coke, but they would never drink two liters of milk in one sitting. The fructose does not trigger that satiation, so people tend to want to binge on or the brain wants to binge on fructose. It’s part of our mechanism for when we were hunter-gatherers. It’s just good to know for people who maybe have addictive tendencies that when they start drinking juice or start eating even just fruit or any form of fructose, it can help to trigger more of their addictive tendencies. But if you stay in moderation, like you said, everything in moderation, you have someone drank a few ounces a day of cranberry juice, which is very tart, I can’t see anyone wanting to over-consume that.

You said concord grapes, pomegranate juice, or cranberry juice, or someone could eat pomegranates. It’s kind of hard to eat cranberries. I actually have made a really delicious cranberry relish that didn’t have any sugar in it. It was raw cranberries diced in a food processor with a bunch of orange and orange zest. It’s very delicious.

[01:06:36] Dr. William Li: If you were to put cranberries with some mango, or cranberries some banana—I’m trying to think of other things you could actually blend with cranberries. I think you could actually find other ways to sweeten it. You don’t have to just do the old Thanksgiving recipe of dumping a cup of sugar with a cup of cranberries, as tasty as that might have been when you were a kid. Maple syrup is another kinder, gentler way of actually putting a little bit of sugar in something. I know you’re from Canada originally. It’s the home of maple syrup.

[01:07:13] Ashley James: Maple syrup courses through our veins.

[01:07:17] Dr. William Li: Exactly. I think it’s all about moderation.

[01:07:24] Ashley James: Right. That’s amazing. You’ve seen people reverse cancer with diet, but just understanding that those who consumed those foods so that their gut could have that bacteria made all the difference to them. Are there any other keys that you were really surprised to uncover?

[01:07:47] Dr. William Li: What was really amazing to me is that if you were to compare the potency of food side-by-side with a cancer drug or even a non-cancer drug, you can really get the sense of how powerful foods are. We did this actually with green tea where we tested green tea in the same system for doing cancer drug development. We found that it was at least as active as about half the cancer treatments that we had tested. What was also interesting, that was kind of a surprise to me, is when it comes to food and health, there’s a lot of science—more science to be done—but there’s also a lot of ideology, there’s a lot of belief system, there’s a lot of pride of thinking that’s out there. Sometimes that’s confusing with science.

What’s interesting is most people would say that tea is good for you and that green tea is really good for you and that black tea might not be so good for you because it’s been fermented and a lot of the polyphenols have been destroyed, but actually, we found in angiogenesis assays would say that in fact—and then people will say with green tea, that Japanese tea, is the best. When we actually were agnostic like we had no ideology. We said let’s just test some green tea from Japan and other places like China. Let’s test some black tea as well. 

A big surprise for me was we found that jasmine tea from China actually was more powerful in an angiogenesis assay for blood vessel health than Japanese tea. But even more surprising was that a black tea, Earl Grey, which is black tea with bergamot which is kind of a citrus type of citrus peel was more potent than any of the green teas. What was even more surprising is when we did something unthinkable culturally, which is to mix, blend Japanese and Chinese tea together, we actually found that when you tested that combination that was even more powerful than any of the teas.

So it opened their ideas of food synergies, right? Because nobody eats food by itself. We really tend to mix things together. What don’t we know? I mean we know tomatoes are good for you, we know that olives are good for you, and we know that some spices or herbs are good for you, but do we know what happens if you mix them together? Does 1 plus 1 equal 10? That’s the kind of research that lies ahead that I’m super excited to be doing.

[01:10:48] Ashley James: Absolutely. What was the Japanese and Chinese combination that made the biggest difference?

[01:10:53] Dr. William Li: It was a Japanese Sencha, which most people revere. I mean it’s got a great taste, I love Sencha. Then we tested it against Chinese jasmine tea, which they call Dragon Balls. Teas rolled together with jasmine flowers. We tested either those, side-by-side, in an angiogenesis assay. A big surprise to me was that the Chinese tea was more powerful and potent than the Japanese tea, but then when we actually mixed the two together we got actually an effect that was more powerful than either, and even more powerful than the black tea. If you counted the potency, it was definitely synergy. They were more than additive. They actually did something yet different again. What’s the impact on the growing conditions, the soil from which they came, or the age or the season in which the leaves are picked. All these are amazing questions that need to be asked.

[01:11:57] Ashley James: When you did this study, did you figure out how much? What was the optimal brewing and consistency of the tea and how much someone would need to drink every day to maximize the benefits of drinking it?