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www.lynnemctaggart.com
The Power of Eight: Harnessing the Miraculous Energies of a Small Group to Heal Others, Your Life, and the World
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The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World:
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The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe
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Living with Intention: The Science of Using Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World:
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https://www.learntruehealth.com/the-power-of-eight
Highlights:
In this episode, Lynne McTaggart shares with us how the power of eight started. She shares how powerful sending and receiving intention is. She also shares how people can get over big or small traumas through time travel intention.
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. I would love for you to join my new membership that I’ve spent the last four months creating. I’ve filmed a bunch of wonderful videos and every week I upload new videos teaching you how to cook in a way that heals your body and also cook and prepare food in a way that your kids will love, your spouse will love. It’s delicious food but it is whole foods and that there’s no processed foods, minimally processed and it taste delicious. So if you want to learn some amazing recipes, even if you could just improve your health by adding more nutrition in the form of food to your life, please come join come check out the Learn True Health Home Kitchen. I would love to see you there. The community so far is loving it.
One of our members said that within five days of applying some of the things that she learned in the membership, her chronic headaches went away and that she noticed she had more energy. She was actually feeling like she could sleep at night. Come join the Learn True Health Home Kitchen and learn how to use food as your medicine to eat delicious food that also heals your body. Go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. That’s learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. You can join as a monthly member. It’s $9.97 for a whole month. You can come check it out. You can join as an annual member and use the coupon code LTH for a big discount. Come learn how to make delicious food that is also healing for your body. Learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. I hope to see you there.
[0:01:56] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 414. I am so excited for today’s guest. This has been a long time in the making. Lynne McTaggart, I have wanted to interview you for a really long time and our schedules finally aligned. Today is the day. I’m so excited. A really good friend of mine, who’s a mental health counselor about a year ago, wrote me a text saying, “You have to interview this woman. I just finished her book. It’s life-changing. Oh my gosh. This is amazing.” I really take her opinion seriously because she’s a mental health counselor and she is really grounded in what works, what doesn’t work. She has to be. She actually, after reading your book The Power of Eight, she owns a clinic and she runs the clinic. About 80% of her clientele are there to end alcohol and substance abuse. So she does individual therapy and she has therapists underneath her as well and she also has group therapy. So most of her clientele is there to end addiction. She immediately started using the tools that she learned from your book, The Power of Eight, in her group sessions.
So, when they all came together two or three times a week to do their group therapy for ending their substance abuse, addiction or healing it; all the things she learned from your book she started doing with them and started seeing some fantastic results. Then she started doing it to shift things in her personal life. I’d get a text, “Okay, at 9:00 in the morning we’re all going to put this intention out there together.” So we started this intention circle, which was so great. So finally you’re here on the show. I think that your tools are so relevant for everyone listening. So I’m very, very excited for us to learn from you today. Welcome to the show.
[0:04:06] Lynne McTaggart: Thank you so much. It’s great to be with you, Ashley.
[0:04:10] Ashley James: Awesome. Absolutely. Now, here’s another example of serendipity. I just texted my godmother and I just felt this urge. I don’t normally tell her who I’m interviewing. I just felt the urge to tell her and I said, “I can’t believe it. I’m so excited. I’m finally interviewing Lynne McTaggart today.” My auntie, I call her my auntie. She wrote back, “You’re not going to believe this. I’m holding her book in my hand.” I’ve never talked to my aunt about you at all. She said, “I can’t believe it. I’m holding her book The Power of Eight right now in my hand.” I said, “Yeah, exactly. I just knew it. Something in me knew to tell her.” So she’s really excited. So she’s going to text me a question for you while we’re doing our interview. But this is how exciting it is. Finally, I have you on the show.
All my listeners want to achieve better health emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, energetically. All my listeners want a better life for themselves and their family. This is something that you teach people. You’re considered an intention guru. It’s almost like learning how to master the ability to manifest. I am so excited to dive into this, but before we do, I’d love to hear a bit about your backstory so that we really understand what happened in your life that led you to become this best-selling author of teaching people how to control their thoughts in a way that manifests what they want in life.
[0:05:51] Lynne McTaggart: Well, I mean, I never set out to do this. My background is investigative reporting. So, when I started out my career, Ashley, I broke baby-selling rings. I was trying to put bad guys in jail kind of thing. I came over to the UK to write a book. At that point, it was a biography of one of the Kennedy sisters. I fell in love with the place, never left. At that, which was my early 30s, I got ill and I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I went from very conventional doctors to very outer rim of alternative doctors and nobody could tell me what was wrong with me. Now, it turned out I had a faulty microbiome. No big deal these days, but back in the early 80s, it was.
So, I finally realized if I was going to get better I was going to have to research this myself. So I researched what I thought I had. Then I researched the right doctor to work with me, to heal me. He was a pioneering nutritional doctor, a medical doctor who was not using drugs anymore, he was using supplements. He was using food and supplements as medicine. We got me better and I was so impressed by this that I probably got pretty boring on the subject. My husband sort of turned to me one day and he said, “Don’t tell me, tell the world.”
So, we started a little newsletter then called What Doctors Don’t Tell You. This was 30 years ago. We carried on and we still carried on. It’s now an international magazine. We run the one in America and the one in the UK. We also have its sister publication called Get Well and a Get Well show, an exhibition, a health expo that we just had in London. So, in the course of doing this work and when we started the newsletter, we decided we want to show people what’s really proven to work in alternative medicine. So, I kept coming across, when I was doing research, very good studies, studies of spiritual healing. I kept thinking to myself, “Wait a minute, if you can have a thought and send it to someone else and make them better, that completely undermines everything we know about how the world works.”
So, I set off on a quest essentially to find out what this was. Do we have human energy fields? What was going on? So, I persuaded my publisher to let me go on a journey and to write a book without a compass. I had no idea what I was going to find, but they agreed to do a book that I wasn’t even sure the content of. I started talking to scientists in quantum physics, pioneers in consciousness research. What each of them were telling me was a tiny piece of what together compounded into a completely new science, a new view of the world. So I wrote that up in a book called The Field, which was a best-seller, an international bestseller. One night afterward, I realized there was some unfinished business because there was a lot of evidence in there that actually thoughts are an actual something with the capacity to change matter.
So, the journalist in me was very curious. I kept thinking, “Well, what are we talking about? Are we talking about a tiny shift of a quantum particle? Are we talking about curing cancer with your thoughts? I wrote a book called The Intention Experiment, which was the science of intention, all the science about the power of your thoughts, but it was also an invitation to take part in experiment. I wanted to do this and test this in the biggest possible way. I started thinking about it. I knew a lot of scientists in consciousness research, scientists working at prestigious universities like Princeton, Penn State, University of Arizona, University of California. I also have lots of readers because the field was in 30 languages. So I kept thinking, “Well, if I put them together I’m going to have the biggest global laboratory in the world.”
So we did. We would set up these well-controlled experiments with scientists. Every so often I would invite my readers to all send the same thought to that target. To be honest, Ashley, I did not think it was going to work. I thought maybe we’d have some very subtle effect but we did. It did work. It really worked. I mean, we’ve run 33 experiments. Everything from trying to make seeds grow faster to trying to purify water to lowering violence of war-torn areas and to even try to heal somebody of post-traumatic stress disorder. Of those 33, 29 have shown positive, measurable mostly significant effects. There’s no pharmaceutical drug out there that has that kind of track record, but it was really the small group thing came about because I was trying to figure out how to start running workshops in this. This is back in 2008. I wasn’t really sure how to scale down what I was learning in the intention experiments.
So I was kicking it around with my husband one day and I said, “Well, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just put people in groups of eight or so and have them send healing intention to a member of the group with a health challenge.” He, being a good headline writer, said, “I love it. The Power of 8.” That is how it had started, just completely by accident. We did this in Chicago, our first workshop. Put people in groups of 8 or so. Had them send healing intention to a member of the group with a health challenge. Again, I didn’t think it was really going to work. I thought it was going to be a little feel-good effect like relaxing, having your back massage or something like that. That’s not what happened. Next day when people came in to talk about how it had been for them the day before in the workshop, they said things like this, “I have cataracts and they’re 80% better.” “I have a very bad knee from arthritis and I’m walking normally today.” “I have IBS and it feels like it’s cleared.” “I have depression and I feel lighter and better today. I feel like it’s gone.” On and on and on it went. I didn’t believe it. I really didn’t believe it. I thought, “Well, this is a placebo effect.” But I have now seen this happen in thousands of people’s where there have been healings in an instant or healings over time with a power of a group.
[0:13:19] Ashley James: That is amazing. I love that your husband came up with the name. That was some divine intervention to come up with that. So you didn’t do experiments where we did a group of six and a group of 10 and we found out that eight was the best?
[0:13:35] Lynne McTaggart: No. It doesn’t have to be eight. As I say, that was just me plucking a number out of the air. I mean, we have had groups of six, we’ve had groups of 12. It doesn’t need eight. Eight is kind of a Goldilocks figure, Ashley. It’s not too big and it’s not too small, but it works with six or five, it works with twelve. I think more than twelve it gets a little unwieldy. The point is a group, a small group of any size.
[0:14:06] Ashley James: You said that thoughts can change matter and you saw it in large groups of people. Did you do any experiments where you saw significant changes in something with one person’s thoughts?
[0:14:20] Lynne McTaggart: I mean, there are plenty of studies of that and they’re all in my book, The Intention Experiment of individuals sending intention to everything from bacteria to plants to single-celled organisms to full-fledged human beings and they’ve been able to change things. There’s no question. There’s huge, huge evidence of that. It’s without a doubt now. I was interested in the power of groups. I figured, “Well if one person has that power, does it get magnified in a group?” That was the other thing that really intrigued me. So that’s really why I wanted to do the intention experiment. I wanted to see what if there are thousands? What happens? With the intention experiments, we’ve had everything from 3,000 people to 25,000 people participating.
[0:15:19] Ashley James: This reminds me of what happened in DC several years ago where they meditated for peace and that the crime rates dropped significantly during that summer. This is the kind of experiments you were doing where you were taking many people with a single focus. Then you would see that it actually got results. Why is that? Is it that we’re all part of a morphic field? Is it that our thoughts really do create reality and matter is an illusion? Why is it that a group can get together and change reality?
[0:15:57] Lynne McTaggart: First of all, the studies you’re talking about, which were done by the Transcendental Meditation people, were very good studies, well-controlled. What they were looking at was just the effect of passive meditation. So the people who are part of that, what they looked at was, and they did it with 48 cities around America and Washington DC was one of them. They wanted to see what would happen if there were a critical mass of meditators meditating. They found when they reached a certain critical mass, the crime rate would go down. Now, these were not people intending for lowering violence, these were people just meditating. Essentially their theory, and that’s really all we get to call it, is that it creates a change in the field. When there are lots of people meditating, it really changes and calms things in the field.
I don’t know about that. There certainly are studies. Their studies are very good, but the why for them, I can’t really speak about. What I can talk about is what we did, which was a very highly focused thought. So our people weren’t meditating. They were in a state of hyper-awareness, hyperfocus, which is the state I try to get people in with intention. It’s not a quiescent state, it’s a state of a high degree of focus. I have them hold a particular thought. Our intention is that we will lower violence in St. Louis Missouri, in the Fairground section of St. Louis Missouri by at least 10%, something very, very specific. We’ve done this seven times now with violence lowering. We’ve done intention in war-torn areas like Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. We’ve also done it in very highly violent places like Washington DC, a section of Washington DC and also a section of St. Louis Missouri, which is officially the most violent place in America.
With that study, we worked with the team of scientists. One of them was a noted statistician in consciousness research called Dr. Jessica Utss from the University of California. She examined three years’ worth of data around St. Louis as a whole and also the area we were focusing on, which was the most violent part of St. Louis, the Fairground area. So we looked at both property crime and actual crime, violent crime. She found that the crime rate had been going up and up and up in all areas of St. Louis, particularly Fairground. From six months onward, after our intention, property crime continued to go up in St. Louis as a whole. Violent crime St. Louis at the whole continue to go up. Property crime in Fairground continue to go up, but violent crime, the focus of our intention, went down by about 43%.
[0:19:18] Ashley James: Wow.
[0:19:19] Lynne McTaggart: We’ve done seven and all seven have shown measurable, documented lowering of violence.
[0:19:30] Ashley James: Was it advertised and people in that area know that this was happening or was it completely oblivious to the people in those areas that this was going on?
[0:19:44] Lynne McTaggart: Yeah. We didn’t advertise it to the St. Louis people. We let our community and other communities in the consciousness that we were doing it and invited them to be part of it. We didn’t let St. Louis know about it.
So what is this? Well, I think that there’s a lot of things going on. I think, certainly, there is a power of thoughts. There’s almost like a psychic internet that gets created. I give you an example of that. With my intention experiment, one of the early ones we were doing trying, to make seeds grow faster. We were working with the University of Arizona. They would get four sets of thirty seeds: A, B, C and D as they were called. They would photograph each set, send me the photographs. When I was speaking in a particular area, we would do a new study.
So my first place that I was speaking was in Sydney, Australia. They were in Tucson, Arizona with the seeds. So they sent me the photos with the audience we chose randomly, one of the four sets. Didn’t tell the scientists which ones, sent intention to that set of seeds. Didn’t tell the scientists which ones. Let them then told them we were done. They planted the seeds and five days later after they’ve measured all four sets of seeds to see how high they grew, did we unblind the study and tell them, “Well, actually, we send intention to seeds A,” or whichever one it was. We ran that study six times. Every single time, the seed sent intention grew significantly higher than the controls. One time twice as high.
Now, unpack this for a second. That first study, we’re in Sydney, Australia. The seeds are in Tucson, Arizona, 8,000 miles away. The audience isn’t sending intention to the seeds itself, they’re sending intention to a photograph of the seeds. Nevertheless, we had an effect. So, that’s what I’m talking about with some sort of weird psychic internet. The even more interesting thing, that’s interesting, pretty amazing but not the really interesting part of the story. The more interesting part is what happened to the participants? Because once we started doing peace experiments in 2008, we started sending questionnaires, surveys to the people who would participate. We got thousands of responses back where people said things like these, “I’ve made up with my estranged relative.” “I’m getting up along so much better with my wife.” “That boss of mine, that horrible boss of mine, is suddenly being so nice to me.” “Now, I am in love with everyone I come in contact with.” That was about half of the people said that. That was the most. They were basically talking about hugging strangers in the street. There was this incredible change in them that was a kind of their lives became more peaceful. More peaceful, more loving, more connected. So that’s the thing, that rebound effect, that mirror effect was what started to really interest me.
[0:23:07] Ashley James: It’s as if they plugged into a different internet like you said. They’re plugging into this internet where the intention and the energy is about love and peace. The morphic field they were living in, the life, the goldfish bowl that they were living in has changed. They took themselves out of the petty, the angry whatever they were in and they put themselves in a different vibrational state. So then, they started seeing their entire world in a different way. It changed their perception.
[0:23:48] Lynne McTaggart: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[0:24:27] Ashley James: That is brilliant. Now in your book, The Power of Eight, you teach people and teach groups how to do this. What about individuals? So I want to talk about groups, I want to talk about individuals because individuals are listening to this. Maybe some people, like introverts, would be shy to go find a group of people to start doing this with at first and they want to build up their confidence by doing something alone. Can people practice what you teach alone and then go find a group? Should they just go find a group because that’s so much more powerful?
[0:24:28] Lynne McTaggart: Well, I would recommend that they find a group. It doesn’t have to be a group that’s physical. You can meet virtually. On my website, lynnemctaggart.com/forum, you can sign up to either join an existing group, and there are thousands of them going, or you can create one and advertise one in your time zone. Just say, “Hey, I’m looking for people to do a power of eight group with.” Yes, you can practice the rudimentary of intention, but it’s the power of the group. I’ll tell you what the real secret sauce is and why you do need a group. That is because for so many people if they’re stuck in their lives, the way that they get off of that is by getting off of themselves and sending intention to someone else. That’s why a group, small groups, are so powerful because I’ve seen this over and over and over again.
When I first started noticing that this was going on, I started looking at it from different ways trying to understand this because I didn’t believe it. At one point I decided to put people in groups, have them follow a course of mine for a whole year. I would put them in groups after they’d gone through some teaching with me over six weeks. I’d study them. I would monitor their progress over an entire year. Now, we had some amazing things and we continue to do so.
With that first group, there were 250 in the first group. About 150 continue to meet regularly week after week after week. Of those 150, pretty much 100% of them had major life transformations. We had an Allison who had vitiligo and started repigmenting. Trudy who regained most of her hearing, she had hearing loss. We had Mitchell Dean who was a psychologist who suffered from his own suicidal thoughts. He had suicidal depression and nothing had worked. He was an integrative psychologist, but when he put it out to his group to help him find the path to healing. After they did an intention for him, he was compelled to go to a Chinese herbalist who wanted to test his liver filtration systems. He found out that one of them was blocked. As soon as that was unblocked, his depression lifted.
So we had amazing stories like this. People who were in financial straits suddenly get this incredible ongoing windfall of money. Extraordinary people stuck in their jobs, like Melissa, who in her 50s ends up getting this new dream job, but some people, in the beginning, were stuck like Andy. Now Andy was a very talented marketing person and coach. She had sold her gift store and she was going through a divorce. She had two small children so she really needed a job. She couldn’t find a job no matter what they were doing, her group’s intention, all of the stuff she was stuck, stuck, stuck. So I went through all kinds of things with her and I finally just said, “You know Andy, get off of yourself.”
I had a particular person in mind for her to focus her intention on. There was a young boy called Luke who was 15. He had just broken up with his first serious girlfriend. When he was in a fit of adolescent angst, he threw himself off a 40-foot structure onto a hard ground. Luke broke every bone in his body, had nerve damage, brain damage. His stepfather and his mother didn’t think he was going to live according to what the doctors were telling them. So, they wrote to me and said can you put him on an intention circle. So I asked this masterclass that had been formed with these groups. All do a healing vigil for Luke on three successive Sundays while his parents kept a running commentary of what was going on with him.
Luke ended up healing in record time. Within a few weeks, he was whizzing around on a wheelchair. With a few more weeks he went home against every prognosis of the doctors. Now, he’s a healthy 18-year-old boy. So amazing. Was that down to us or good doctoring or maybe a combo of both, who knows? But what was really fascinating is what happened to Andy. Because Andy, the moment she got off of herself and started focusing on Luke, she gets a call out of nowhere from someone she doesn’t even know offering her the perfect job. That happened over and over and over again to the point where I started realizing that the real secret of this, the real reason why people are getting better is this thing of altruism.
Altruism is like a bulletproof vest. The science shows you that people who do things for other people, no matter how slight, live longer, happier, healthier lives. If you have an illness and you help somebody with the same illness, you’re more likely to get better. Even if you’re a volunteer you’re more likely to have a healthy life. You’re more likely to have longer life. It’s really extraordinary the science behind it.
[0:30:24] Ashley James: Now, what’s the difference between the power of eight or this group intention, the system, you’ve developed a system, that has proven time and time again to work for the intended target but also for everyone doing it, which is great. What the difference between that and prayer? You go to church on Sunday and the whole church prays for someone. What’s the difference?
[0:30:51] Lynne McTaggart: Well, I think it’s different. It’s a secular system, first of all. Secondly, you’re not praying to a supreme being where you basically say to God, “You decide. Thy will be done,” is what we say in church. You decide essentially. With intention, this is a very specific request to the universe. This is what I’d like, please. Also, there is the energy, the something, the alchemy that goes on in this group. Now, everybody, we just had a health show in London Olympia and I did a Get Well show. I put people into groups of eight and let them experience that. People talked about this extraordinary buzzing energy they were feeling. I’ll give you an example.
A few months ago, I did this at a conference. A woman, I swear to you, Maya, young woman who had had some sort of idiopathic paralysis from the neck down that occurred that was tragic because she was a dancer. She was in and out of paralysis and when she came to the show, she was in a wheelchair paralyzed from the neck down. The group did for her. She described this extraordinary buzzing, this energy that filled he with such gratitude, with such force that she felt, “I can’t keep this for myself.” So she started intending to send some of that out to one of her relatives who was ill. Anyway, the upshot is, when we were calling on people afterward who were raising their hand to say what had happen to them, she put her hand up and she thought to herself, “I got to stand.” She stood up and turned around and talked to everybody. It was just astonishing. Absolutely astonishing.
It’s that group thing, there is a group feeling of oneness that people talk about all the time that is something much, much bigger than them. Like they’re almost inviting in a power even outside the group. People talk about that all the time. Light behind chairs, the chair of the circle, light being’s there. Someone who had a bad knee and afterward was able to do a deep squat after this ten-minute intention. Talked about feeling warm mitts around her he even though nobody in the group was holding on to her knee. It’s that kind of thing. There’s something bigger that gets produced.
[0:33:36] Ashley James: You’re inviting in healing angels.
[0:33:40] Lynne McTaggart: I guess you are. Who knows? Look, I’ve started recognizing that intention plays a big part of it. Group intention plays a big part of it. The group effect itself. Groups are, as one psychologist called it, a collective effervescence. They have their own amazing effect and power. Altruism plays a huge part in it. Just getting off of yourself. What happens with altruism is when you do something for someone else, it activates a thing in your body called the vagus nerve. It’s the longest nerve in your body and it starts in the neck, winds its way through all of the major organs of your body. It’s kind of a love nerve because it gets activated when we do something good for someone else like a child in need. When it does, it also makes us feel connected to everyone, even people we are nothing like, we feel more connection with the other. So, there’s an extraordinary spiritual side to this that gets activated in a group and a group that is involved in an altruistic intention.
[0:34:57] Ashley James: There are studies that show that people who are depressed and suicidal when they join a group and volunteer, so dog-walking; feeding the homeless; community gardens that time and time again, they see that depression lifts and suicidal thoughts melt away. Joy starts to fill their life and that people who volunteer live longer. They are happier people and they live longer. So you’re explaining one of the physiological reasons why because it’s stimulating the vagus nerve. It connects our two brains because they’re saying now that there’s like a second brain which is our gut. That there’s so many nerves happening in the gut. The vagus nerve is sending more signals to the brain than the brain is sending back down. So the brain is receiving all this information. We have an intuition I believe. We call it like a gut feeling. I think the gut perceives also. So when we have a really clean and a healthy vagus nerve, we have better digestion; 25% of our serotonin, I believe, is produced in the gut of a healthy microbiome.
So, there’s joy and happiness, there’s better digestion, better absorption of nutrition. When the gut, when the vagus nerve’s inflamed, they see that people have chronic depression and also have developed digestive disorders like IBS. We can do something like be altruistic, volunteer, join a power of eight group and actually have a physiological effect on calming the vagus nerve, which supports our physical health. I love that. I love that we can start to see the actual physical benefits of something mental and emotional because the mental-emotional body is connected. We’re all connected. That’s really cool.
[0:37:14] Lynne McTaggart: Yes. The amazing thing of it is, as I say, in a group, it’s not just the receivers that get healed, it’s the senders too. Now, with one group, I just organized a group in Denver with the Mile Hi Church. So we had this group of eight and one of the members of the group was a guy called Wes. Now, Wes wanted to put himself forward because he suffered from depression and he had this miserable life. He was 65 when I met him and he was there with the group and he had big hopes and dreams to become a biochemist or a doctor even. He was at university when, I think his third year, he got called up to be drafted at the very end of the Vietnam War when there were no more draft deferments for college students. So he ended up going to Vietnam getting totally traumatized by the situation, coming home deeply depressed, didn’t finish university and his life went down in a downward spiral after that. Even when he met the love of his life, had married his second wife, she didn’t last long. She died of a fast-growing cancer.
So, he got to the point by 65 where it was kind of what’s the use? He barely could get himself up in the morning. So he was there and he did this whole thing. He wanted to put himself forward but there was a woman in the group with stage four cancer and he thought she was more deserving. So he did that. That first night, he went to bed and woke up and it was almost like Scrooge on Christmas morning where suddenly he’s like this totally different person. He’s smiling. He used to avoid people. He’s suddenly smiling and saying hi to them. The grass was greener than he’d ever seen it. He had a cup of herbal tea and he said it knocked his socks off. All of his senses were really heightened.
So then, the next night goes to bed. He has this amazing lucid dream he said almost like a vision where he’s meeting his 19-year-old self. They’re back in campus and the 19-year-old self is somehow communicating to him, “Don’t worry, there’s still time.” From then, Wes was a totally different person because he suddenly started doing power walks, he started writing, he started joining classes, he started coming to his church, Mile Hi Church, and is very active in a power of eight group. He’s a completely different person after that one 10-minute session.
[0:40:05] Ashley James: Oh my gosh, I’m crying right now. I think my favorite thing in the world is hearing about people who felt hopeless and then they had a breakthrough because it’s never too late. You’re not a lost cause, you’re not broken, it’s never too late. You can have a better life even if you’ve been suffering. I remember feeling so sick. In my 20s, I was so sick I just didn’t want to live anymore at times because I felt like a prisoner trapped in my own body. I was suffering so horribly. I was able to use natural medicine to overcome it and that’s one of the reasons why I do this show is to help people who are suffering like me. There is a way to heal yourself. The road sometimes is long, but sometimes it’s short. Sometimes you do something like join a power of eight group and you have these amazing results, but there’s always hope. There’s always something there for you to learn. I believe that there’s no lost causes. This is my favorite kind of story is hearing of people who triumph. Every single person deserves that. Every single person deserves to create the life that they love.
[0:41:29] Lynne McTaggart: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that’s the thing that’s really amazing about it. When you do see studies of what happens when people do for other people and how that changes them. One of my favorite studies is a study of prayer and it looked at took a group of 400 people with depression. They put them into two groups. One group where the people who are going to get prayer for them, and the other group of 200 we’re going to be people who are going to give the prayer. So they carried out the study and afterward measured the effects. Now, the people who got the prayer did really well. They improved, but nowhere near as much as the people who had given the prayer. They were off of the charts. So that was I think one of those interesting things. Also, another study of people looking at people who have what we’d consider the good life, all the money in the world, everything that they want, go on a lot of holidays, have a lot of material things. When they looked at their immune system markers, a group of researchers, they found they had terrible immune systems. These are people who are going to die of any one of the number of degenerative diseases: heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, etc. They were going to drop like flies, they look like, at another group who weren’t as affluent but who were living a life of service, of doing for other people. Those people had robust immune systems. They were going to live forever. So, there’s another example of the power of getting off of yourself and doing for other people. It’s really extraordinary.
[0:43:26] Ashley James: That’s so beautiful. I love it. My aunt texted her question. She says, “So, I’m in a group. Based on her book The Power of Eight, there are eight people meeting once a week on Zoom. We are into our third week and plan to do eight weeks for all eight people. Each week we let each person in the group say their intention for themselves for this week and then we pick one person after that who we’ll all focus on, figure out what intention will suit that person’s issue the best and we all repeat silently to ourselves for 10 minutes. The same intention for this one person. We meditate on it. My question is, at the beginning of the call, is it a good idea for each one of us to tell our own personal intention first or is it better to only focus on the one person’s intention throughout the whole our together?”
[0:44:20] Lynne McTaggart: Well, you can talk about your intentions, your personal intentions, but if you’re doing it for an hour, I wouldn’t try to do everybody in the group in that one hour. Sometimes it’s good to just send and sometimes it’s good to receive. So, if you’ve got an hour, you might want a little time to talk about things after each intention and to break and have time. So having about three people to four people being the targets of intention would be a good idea at most in an hour. You’d want them to talk about themselves, what’s going on with them, and then everybody shares some feedback afterward because some of the stuff that I talk about is also having visualizations of success, very strong visualizations not just holding the statement and bringing it down to your heart but also holding visualizations of success.
[0:45:18] Ashley James: Maybe you could walk us through what a session looks like so that the listener went and got seven other people together, walk us through what it looks like. Of course, they’ll get your book because they’ll want to dive in deeper but for those listening today that are really jazzed and just want to go try it, can you walk us through step by step what we should do with a group of seven other people.
[0:45:41] Lynne McTaggart: Sure. I mean, it doesn’t have to be aid, as I say, you can be on Skype or Zoom or a conference call or you can be meeting in person. You design a very specific intention statement together. It helps to have one person be the leader stroke timekeeper. So, one person gets nominated as the recipient, everybody else is the sender’s. You decide together on the intention statement, make it very specific. If you want to heal the big toe of somebody’s right foot say, “Our intention is that Jane Doe will be healed of all pain in her big toe of her right foot.” That kind of thing. You hold, you then start breathing together, you then formulate the intention bring it down to your heart, send it out to the person. I’m just giving you the big broad strokes. There’s a lot of details. In fact, there are 13 keys to intention mastery. I talk about a number of them in my book, The Power of Eight, and also in The Intention Experiment. I teach these very in-depth and lots of other things about in tension in masterclasses, but these are the broad strokes.
So, we take you down to our hearts, we send it out. The person receiving just opens up their hearts to receive. I say hold it for just 10 minutes because sometimes people aren’t as proficient in focusing and it requires a high degree of focus, focusing on the outcome that person being healthy and well in every way. Imagining them running around or being blooming with good health. Hold and you don’t need to do more than 10 minutes. Lots of people do things for hours, you don’t need it. We’ve seen so many healings in an instant basically. Then you slowly come out. The timekeeper says, “Time is up.” You slowly come back in onto the call and then it’s good to have some feedback. What did the receiver feel? What did the senders feel? What did they visualize?
[0:47:56] Ashley James: So in one call, like you said, you could do three or four people if you wanted to.
[0:48:02] Lynne McTaggart: Yeah. I wouldn’t try to do all eight because you wouldn’t have enough time.
[0:48:05] Ashley James: Right. Right. Because it sounds like it would be about twenty minutes per person if you’re really intentional with the time.
[0:48:13] Lynne McTaggart: Sure. Do understand that people get healed toward the senders just as much as the receivers, in some cases more so. Remember Wes? He wasn’t a receiver, he was a sender and his life got changed in those 10 minutes.
[0:48:29] Ashley James: This makes me think about hurricanes where we’ve seen them veer off all of a sudden. There was no explanation as to why and everyone in Florida and everyone around Florida is just intending for it to move. Then there are other times where people are expecting worst-case scenarios and I wonder, have you seen negative things happen where if a group of people believe something really bad is going to happen, could we also create something negative?
[0:49:08] Lynne McTaggart: Oh, yeah. There’s a huge batch of research about negative intention and I’d like to tell you, Ashley, that positive intention is more powerful than negative intention, but I can’t. It works just as well. If you think about it, I mean Qi Gong masters use a thing called destroying mind to overcome the opponent if they’re doing a kind of a fight with them. That works very powerfully. There are other situations where they’ve done very well-controlled studies of people sending negative intention to anything from bacteria, to plants, to all kinds of things like that and they have a very powerful effect. They’ve even done studies where they do a trade. They start to do a positive thing for a while then a negative thing for a while, positive thing and it creates a kind of zigzag effect. So yeah, we can have negative intention too. So people expecting the worst, it’s like that old, I think it’s an old Buddhist story of somebody coming to a new town and eating a Buddha and saying, “So what’s it like in this new town that they were about to move in?” And the Buddha says to them, “Well, what was it like in the last town?” And they said, “Oh, it’s terrible. People were so unfriendly.” And he said, “Well, yeah. They’re going to be unfriendly in the next place.” Then somebody else comes along and they say, “So, we’re moving into this town. What are people like here?” And he says, “Well, what were like in the last town?” “They were so lovely. They were so friendly. They were wonderful.” And he said, “Well, the people here in this next town are going to be lovely too.” So, a lot of it is depending on your point of view and what you do.
I’ve actually worked with a group of intenders in Florida trying to move one of the hurricanes and it certainly missed that area. It was aiming for it and it missed it. Did we do this? Short answer, who knows, but it’s interesting and it seems to happen quite a lot.
[0:51:14] Ashley James: Oh, that’s so brilliant. Now you have an intention masterclass. I believe it started in January. Can people still join?
[0:51:23] Lynne McTaggart: Well, I’m due to do the fifth one on Saturday. These are all recorded so if people were really desperate to join, we could probably fit a few people in. They would get the first four sessions if they join this week and they could join the fifth session, which is all about how to protect yourself from negative intention. They could join it and be part of it. Now, what happens is, they get six live webinars from me, and these are also recorded if you miss them if you’ve started late too. We are putting people in groups of eight or so. We put them into more so that there will always be eight that on their calls. Then we encourage them to meet weekly with their group. Once my six are finished, and then I send them weekly challenges, advice, guidance. I also have a system to monitor their progress, every person’s progress on the masterclass. They get four catch-up calls with me where I teach them some more through the year and they get to ask some questions. We have a private Facebook page where they can ask more questions and there’s a lot of feedback that goes on.
So the real work happens with the groups, but they learn a lot from me about using intention for relationships, using intention to become a better receiver of other people’s intention, the thirteen P’s and so forth and how to be really successful in a power of eight group.
[0:53:05] Ashley James: I know that you also teach people if they feel like their choices are not in their own control, that you teach people how to use their thoughts to change that behavior. Because some people feel like, “Oh, I wish I could stick to this way of eating, but I can’t control going through the drive-through,” as an example or, “I keep wanting to go to the gym but I just can’t make it there.” It’s like they want to do something but then feel like their behavior is not in their control. That’s something that you teach as well as how people can overcome that.
[0:53:51] Lynne McTaggart: Yeah. What we also teach is, and I’ve run a retreat with my husband on this and we’re going to be in amazing place in Italy in the Piedmont area where I’m staying in a castle and we’re also going to be visiting Damanhur, that amazing spiritual community that’s been considered one of the eight wonders of the world because it has these extraordinary subterranean cathedrals in there, very, very sacred place. I’ve been working a lot with intention and sacred spaces, and some of the science does show that intention seems to work faster and better when there’ve been a lot of sacred work in certain areas. So we do that, which is really interesting, but we also work on healing the past through the power of eight because my husband has a lot of work about how the past becomes you and lives through you and creates the you you present to the world. We combine that with a lot of time travel intention and we work with people and help them get over some of the big and small traumas that have limited them in their lives from manifesting to life of their dreams. So this year we’re going to be going for, we only do one retreat a year, we’re going in early October. So there’s going to be more up about that on my website too.
[0:55:21] Ashley James: That sounds beautiful. What do you mean by, I mean I think I know what you mean but I’d love for you to explain it, time travel intention?
[0:55:30] Lynne McTaggart: Well we actually use intention through various techniques to go back to moments of trauma and essentially erase that tape. We don’t erase what happened, but we erased the tape. So we erase the footprint that is limiting you. It’s quite a complex technique, but essentially it really means what we are doing is getting rid of that emotional trauma, the emotional footprint of it.
[0:56:02] Ashley James: Beautiful. Well, I love the work that you do. I would love to have you back on the show to dive deeper into these topics. This is sort of the manual we should have been born with to learn how to use this tool in between our ears and our heart. Science now is finally starting to prove that this exists, that we can affect with our thoughts, can affect reality. I just finished an interview with a woman that had just published a documentary called Superhuman. The entire documentary is following experiments proving that thought affects the world. It’s wonderful to now interview you and get that many people, including yourself, many scientists, are all working together around the world to prove that there’s something. Thought is like an invisible arm that we have. It’s not only a sense because we can perceive. People get intuition or psychic abilities, but that our consciousness also effects. So it receives but it also puts out. In this documentary, they were at I think Stanford, she was able to within 10 seconds, by just using her consciousness, just in tension, she changed the conductivity of DNA. Then they did another experiment within 30 seconds she changed the pH, which is in increasing the hydrogen in water while it was all hooked up to electrodes. All kinds of experiments like that just to show that anyone, she was coming in blind, never done it before, that everyone has this ability. Most people are walking around handicapped because they don’t know that they have this ability.
So your books are showing them and teaching them how to use this God-given ability to create a world. We’re kind of walking around like children creating a world chaotically with our thoughts not really taking responsibility for them because we don’t realize how great of an impact they have on our reality. So we need to harness this power and focus it towards what we want.
[0:58:49] Lynne McTaggart: Absolutely.
[0:58:50] Ashley James: Yeah. So bring it together, focus it. It’s kind of like the difference between a sailboat where all the ropes are loose and everything’s flapping about and it’s just kind of going with the current versus focusing the sailboat to harness the wind to go where we want it to go. So we can use your tools to learn how to do that.
[0:59:13] Lynne McTaggart: I like that. I like the idea of harnessing ourselves. Sounds great.
[0:59:18] Ashley James: Yeah. Lynne, your website is lynnemctaggart.com. Of course, the links to everything that Lynne does, including her intention masterclass and all her books, are going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Is there anything that you wanted to make sure you taught today or anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?
[0:59:42] Lynne McTaggart: Well, just that I think the power of thoughts really should give you hope and the power of the group should give you hope because we in the spiritual community, we think we have to spend years practicing or hours priming ourselves to get into a mystical state. We did brain wave studies with neuroscientist at Life University, one of the largest chiropractic universities in the world, and they found that during power of eight groups, the brainwaves of the participants, who are just novice students, would change and not look anything like meditation. They resembled Sufi masters during chanting and Buddhist monks during ecstatic prayer as measured by the University of Pennsylvania. So, my message is just this: you don’t need a sweat lodge, you don’t need years of walking around on your knees, all you need is a power of eight group and a common intention and it’s your passport to the miraculous.
[1:00:53] Ashley James: Beautiful. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I’d love to have you back.
[1:00:56] Lynne McTaggart: I would love to be back, Ashley. Thanks so much.
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Highlights:
In this episode, Dr. John Huber shares with us how he is increasing mental health awareness by doing interviews and going on different shows. He shares various stories on how he has helped people deal with different mental health issues using different therapy techniques depending on what he thinks would be beneficial to the patient. He also shares that it is beneficial to go see a therapist once in a while so that the therapist has a record of how a patient is when he’s doing well and how he is when he’s not doing well.
Intro:
Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another episode of the Learn True Health podcast. You’re going to love today’s interview. I thought it was a very interesting interview and I think this information needs to get out there. Thank you for sharing this episode with your friends and people you care about. We need to spread this information so that people can learn that there are more tools available to them to achieve mental health, emotional health and overall a happier life. We all deserve that.
I would love for you to join my new membership that I’ve spent the last four months creating. I’ve filmed a bunch of wonderful videos and every week I upload new videos teaching you how to cook in a way that heals your body and also cook and prepare food in a way that your kids will love, your spouse will love. It’s delicious food but it is whole foods and that there’s no processed foods, minimally processed and it tastes delicious. So if you want to learn some amazing recipes even if you could just improve your health by adding more nutrition in the form of food to your life please come join, come check out the Learn True Health Home Kitchen. I would love to see you there. The community so far is loving it. One of our members said that within five days of applying some of the things that she learned in the membership, her chronic headaches went away. That she noticed she had more energy and she was actually feeling like she could sleep at night. That’s just one of the members. We’ve had amazing results.
Naomi’s mom, after eating this way for six weeks, completely lost her arthritis. She no longer has arthritis. There’s so many things that you can do with food to heal your body. So if you would love to increase your health and even mental-emotional health is affected by food. There’s many reasons for that. Come join the Learn True Health Home Kitchen and learn how to use food as your medicine to eat delicious food that also heals your body. Go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. That’s learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. You can join as a monthly member. It’s $9.97 for a whole month. You can come check it out. You can join as an annual member and use the coupon code LTH for a big discount. I wanted to make this affordable so everyone could gain access to this information that I’ve cultivated, I brought together to help you to achieve true health. Come learn how to make delicious food that is also healing for your body, learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. I hope to see you there. Enjoy today’s interview.
[0:03:04] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 413. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have on the show with us Dr. John Huber. Oh my gosh. This is going to be such a fantastic interview. Dr. Huber’s website is mainstreammentalhealth.org. His mission is to increase awareness about mental health. I think that’s really important because, as you just said before we hit record, you can take all the vitamins and you could do the perfect diet and you could do the perfect exercise and do absolutely everything perfect for physical health but if you don’t have your mental-emotional health you don’t actually have health. So Dr. John’s mission is to get us healthy in a mental and emotional way. You have so many years of experience so I’m really looking forward to tapping into that brain of yours so we can all learn how to be healthier mentally and emotionally. Welcome to the show.
[0:04:12] Dr. John Huber: Well, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. Anytime I can talk about mental health it just brings so much joy to my heart because we’ve got to do this. We’ve got to take this silent illness and make people realize that it’s not because you’re broken, it’s because you’re human. We need to be out there standing up for that.
[0:04:35] Ashley James: Yeah. I love that you said that. People feel often like there’s something wrong with them, that they’re incomplete, that they’re not whole and that they feel this guilt and shame when it’s totally human. It’s absolutely human. I was really amazed to hear in the history of Hawaii, which the ancient Polynesians took little canoes across the ocean to get to Hawaii. They’re pretty awesome people. But there was zero recorded history of mental illness until the Christian, Catholic people came in their ships and told them they should feel ashamed for being naked. But there was zero mental health issues. It was just amazing. After they changed their diet and took on religion and started to feel guilt and shame about their bodies and their culture, changed basically everything about what they were doing. All of a sudden then there was recorded events of schizophrenia. That it had never happened before in their culture and other mental illness.
So, it’s just really interesting that when we’re in perfect harmony with ourselves that were we’re really like going with the flow and everything’s good. But when we’re out of harmony with ourselves, I think mental illness is a symptom like our brain is saying, “Hey something’s wrong here. Something isn’t right.” So I just thought that was really interesting about the history of the Hawaiians. Now, you have many years of experience and you taught clinical forensic psychology. What was that like?
[0:06:18] Dr. John Huber: Well, I taught a lot of classes, but I’m a forensic psychologist, clinical forensic psychologist. I was lucky enough to be in a university that actually had brought in as I was becoming part of the faculty a forensic minor in psychology. Now, an undergraduate level that just kind of gives you some introductory stuff. You don’t have a license or you’re not skilled to go out and be able to do work for a police department or anything like that, but it starts getting people’s you know fingers and feet wet in what’s going on. Because when I got into this there was three schools in the United States at the doctorate level that didn’t require you to get a law degree and a Ph.D. to be a clinical forensic psychologist. I didn’t want to be an attorney. I wanted to be a practitioner that I could help people. One of the things I know about myself and I’ve known it since I was a young child, I get bored really easy. So I have to kind of create my own environment you know that I function in. One of those things is I need to be able to, okay if I start to feel myself getting tired or bored with something I need to move on and do something else for a day or two and then I can come back to that other thing if I have to continue working on a project or something like that.
So, for example, right now I’ve got my nonprofit. I do 1,100-1,200 radio interviews every year. I do approximately three to four hundred television interviews every year. I have my own podcast. Several hundred podcasts out there, I haven’t actually stopped to count them. I’m working on a book that I want to get out there. So, that’s just my nonprofit part right there. Then I have privileges at two medical hospitals where people get surgeries and they don’t understand why we have to cut a foot off or they’ve come to you and say, “I’d rather have my life go and be dead than have no leg.” I’m sitting there go, “Look at your grandkid right here, he’s three months old. Do you want him to remember you?
I get really bizarre answers from that because people have these preconceived notions about how everybody else sees them. It’s kind of like stage fright you know. People don’t like to get up in front of the audience and talk, but when people realize whether you’re singing, playing music, talking; that if somebody else wanted to come up there and talk they could talk to. You’re not keeping them from talking if you’re up there talking. Everybody has their own choices to make. A lot of people would rather sit back and listen and in some cases criticize after the fact. That’s okay because their opinions don’t change my opinion. If they bring me facts and research and data, then I look at the data and I do that. But an opinion, that’s just an opinion. They have a right to it, I have a right to mine.
I’m no better than they are there, they’re no better than me. If they’re willing to come listen to me, well I’m definitely going to give them an earful. I mean, that’s what I do. I’ve had people challenge me. I’ve had students challenge me. You get 500 students in there and a student asks you a question and you don’t know the answer to it. The student, “Well, you’re the professor. Don’t you know everything about psychology?” I’m like, “You know, there’s so much in psychology I wish I really did because I wouldn’t need to be here teaching you guys. I’d be teaching the teachers to teach you guys.” That kind of thing. This guy one day would just not leave it alone. He kept asking me about déjà vu, déjà vu, déjà vu and it was about the time the Matrix had come out. Finally, I just turned it, “You really want to know about déjà vu?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” I go, “It’s the Matrix resetting.” And the whole class, the whole class just like, “Did the professor just say that. He quoted the Matrix?” This kid is like, he’s dumbfounded. He doesn’t know what to say because he doesn’t have a rhetoric to that. I gave him an answer.
[0:10:28] Ashley James: That’s funny.
[0:10:29] Dr. John Huber: The rest of the class got it. He just kind of sat down and didn’t say anything else. About three weeks later he raised his hand and he goes, “Dude,” and the whole class turns around and looks at him like, “Did you just call the professor dude?” Then they turn around to look at me. I had corrected him. I said, “Excuse me, that’s Dr. Dude.” It’s not my ego. I’m there to teach them. I want them to learn. We know a lot of things about learning. If you put an emotion with learning, you remember it much better. I know professors who believe that, “Well, I’ll just make all the class angry at me because it’s easy.” I’m like, “No. I’d rather have them be laughing and enjoying the conversation because they remember that good feeling and they keep that with them when they study psychology from then on and out.” To this day, I’ve got students that are doing you know they’re residencies in thoracic surgery in New York State and all over the United States. I get emails and calls. I’m going to be in New York next week and I’ve got a couple of them going to introduce me to some of their surgery supervisors and want to go out to dinner and all this kind of stuff. You know how that makes me feel? It makes me feel like I did my job and I’m proud of those kids.
If you knew some of the stories and I see the successes. I mean these kids that were failing out of school and I pulled them into my office and, “Hey, I need you to do something for me,” and I give them a responsibility in the class. All of a sudden, their grade comes up to an A in my class. Then they’re like, “Man, I’m struggling in this class.” “Well, have you tried this? Go talk to the professor.” Then they end up graduating with 3.8-3.9 four years later. They’re telling me I’m the reason why they finish school.
[0:12:13] Ashley James: Wow.
[0:12:14] Dr. John Huber: Because I just give them a little bit of support. I give them some skills, some coping skills which is what I try to do in therapy. I want to create a patient who comes in and needs help a set of coping skills, a set of management, life management tools that they don’t ever have to come back to me. That’s my goal. They still do. They come back. I might not see one for three or four years and they call me. “Oh, hey. Can I get in next week?” “Sure, let’s come on in.” They just wanted to touch base. That’s awesome. I love that. Yeah.
[0:12:49] Ashley James: That’s so cool. It sounds brilliant that you have had that impact for so many years with thousands, thousands of young professionals that have gone on to help so many people. I love that ripple effect. That’s really beautiful. You mentioned this one thing about being on stage. This worry we have sometimes about what will other people think of us. I think sometimes it’s so ingrained that it’s like second nature this fear of what other people think of us or that person that would rather die than have them be an amputee. He couldn’t get over the hump, like in his mind like he needs a little bit of help getting over the hump of like you’ve got a whole life like you’ve got people that love you and you could have a really fulfilling life. Who cares you don’t have a leg.
[0:13:50] Dr. John Huber: Well they care.
[0:13:51] Ashley James: Yeah, of course.
[0:13:52] Dr. John Huber: But they care.
[0:13:53] Ashley James: But look at how much life you could have. They can’t even see past the no leg to all the love and joy and fulfillment that they could have.
[0:14:05] Dr. John Huber: Oh, but I have my ways. I have not lost the patient because they wouldn’t have an amputation.
[0:14:11] Ashley James: Well, that’s really cool.
[0:14:12] Dr. John Huber: In almost 10 years. It depends. I can remember specifically I had this one lady, 40 years old her daughter was 20 expecting her first baby. So grandma, she going to be a first grandma at 40 years old. She had uncontrolled diabetes and she ended up with gangrene on both her feet. We were going to have to amputate her feet. She’s like, “Let me die. I don’t want to bring a new baby up to look up to a gimp in a wheelchair the rest of their lives.” “A gimp?” “Yeah.” I go, “Okay, so you’re ready to die. I’ve got some friends that are really interested in the end of life thought processes and death and dying. Can I bring them in here? They’re actually here.” “Oh, yeah. Sure.” I ran down to the outpatient rehab department because there were three gentlemen in there who are double amputees who have amazing abilities on their prosthetics. They run around no canes nothing. They can run and jog and walk. You never know they have amputations. I’d met them because I’ve been at the hospital for a while and they’ve been in and out and now they were in outpatient.
I go, “Hey guys, I can’t tell you the patient’s name but she wants to die and I want you guys to act like you’re interested in dying and death and that kind of stuff.” “What? What?” “Well. She doesn’t think anybody can have a normal life with prosthetics,” and they just started laughing. “Sure. We can do that.” These are guys, 60-70 years old. They’re happy to be alive. They got their families. Literally, we’re walking down the hallway and we got one more room to go and one of the guys stop for a second, bent down on one knee and untied a shoe and walked in there. So they start asking her about death and dying. “So, you’re going to have an amputation here?” “No. I’d rather die. I don’t want to be a gimp.” The guy who untied his shoes was a little bit further away. “Oh man,” and he made a big deal about his shoe being untied. He propped that foot up there on there and his pant leg came up and you saw the steel rod of the prosthetic. “Well, okay. Well, maybe you know but they want both of my feet. You’ve only lost one.” He reached over and pulled up the pant leg on the other leg. She’s like, “What?” All three of the guys go, “Yeah, we’re all amputees, double amputees.” Let’s just say she was there for her grand baby’s birth.
[0:16:41] Ashley James: That’s awesome.
[0:16:44] Dr. John Huber: Changed her perspective, give her a different point of view. We get so stuck and this is the way things are and it’s not that way. Everybody has two eyes, hopefully, they’re functional to some extent, but we all see different things.
[0:16:59] Ashley James: Yeah. We all perceive the world in a different way. You and I could go to the same movie and walk away with a different experience.
[0:17:06] Dr. John Huber: Exactly. Me and my wife did that with, what was that, the Twilight series. She’s like, “Oh, man. It’s fantasy and it’s Beauty and the Beast and the vampire,” and I go, “No. It’s an emo girl who’s trying to decide if she’s going to experience bestiality or necrophilia.” Yeah. My wife didn’t think I was that funny.
[0:17:31] Ashley James: That’s exactly it. You mentioned that we’re worried about what other people think. I had a recent experience a few months ago where someone I’m really close to, I found out that she had a very negative viewpoint of me and of things I’ve done. Actually, it was completely untrue. It was just a completely untrue viewpoint. At first, I was very, very hurt because I had poured a lot of time energy and money into supporting her and helping her and doing everything I could to help her get over a certain difficulty in her life and she turned around and she made it mean. So many nasty horrible things. So at first, I was just kind of taken aback. Then I felt like my brain broke, like something in my brain snapped. I started laughing because I could have never in a million years predicted the things that she would have come up with.
I’ve spent my whole life worrying about what other people think of me, but no one has really ever actually come up to me and fulfilled my worry. I’m worried about what people think about my shape or my hair color or whatever. Like, “Oh, I’ve got some gray hairs,” or “I didn’t pluck the hairs on my chin,” or whatever. Whatever I’m worried about. No one has ever actually come up to me and fulfilled my worry, but people come up with the things like I could never even imagine, right? Something in my brain snapped because I got that no matter how much I worry, I could spend the rest of my life worrying about what other people think but those people will never actually think the things I’m worried about because they’re going to come up with their own stuff that is so weird that I could not possibly predict worrying about those things.
[0:19:33] Dr. John Huber: Oh, you know that reminds me. I was doing a presentation once with about 600 people there. My daughter was about two and a half, my son was about six but he was sick so I had to bring her with me. She’d been to the auditorium before and she picked the seat she wanted to sit at right down the middle, middle aisle. So people have their assigned tickets and all that kind of stuff. They come in there and here comes the person for that seat. She informed them that that was her seat. She walked them down to actually where we had a seat for her on the front row, this person got a front-row ticket. So they weren’t mad. They sat there. But I I’m one of those speakers, I can’t stand behind a podium. So I’ve got my wireless mic and I’m running circles, laps around this place while I’m doing my presentation. Finally, my daughter gets up while I’m talking and she kind of meets me at a crossroads. She grabs me by the hand and I got this wireless mic on and she goes, “Look, dad, you’ve got to calm down or these people aren’t going to be able to follow you.” She walks me up to the front and sits me down on the chair that’s right up next to the podium.
The place went crazy. It was hilarious. Yeah. Then she actually asked somebody for paper so she could keep taking notes while she was listening to my presentation.
[0:20:55] Ashley James: That’s funny. Well, of course, that was her perception.
[0:20:58] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[0:21:00] Ashley James: Right. Because if no one was following you everyone would have been stir-crazy.
[0:21:05] Dr. John Huber: Right, but I love the fact that with that mic, I can walk up and I can put my hand on anybody’s shoulder and go, “So what do you think about…” and I don’t lose anybody that way because I do that. I’m one of those guys.
[0:21:17] Ashley James: I can tell. So, you have Mainstream Mental Health Radio, that’s your show. Is that the name of your podcast?
[0:21:29] Dr. John Huber: Mainstream Mental Health Radio, yes that is the name of my podcast. The website is mainstreammentalhealth.org, but we also have an extra way to get there by going to drpsycho.org. That’s DRPSYCHO.ORG and people remember that one. The minute I started using that man.
[0:21:49] Ashley James: Dr. Psycho.
[0:21:50] Dr. John Huber: Yes. We get slammed on our bandwidth there, but that’s fine. That’s what it’s for. We talk about anything mental health. I mean, I’ve had porn stars on. I’ve had the president of the APA. I’ve had professional wrestlers, actors, politicians, accountants, massage therapist, therapists. I’m trying to think. Man, I mean, just about anything. American Indians. Man, probably my most unexpected most exciting show I did was with Gerry Cooney, the boxer.
My dad passed away in 1994. So he never got to see me doing any of this stuff, but I remember my dad and I were big sports fans together, football. My dad really loved boxing so I would watch it. I didn’t necessarily care too much about it at that point in my life. I didn’t really see the skill I just saw the brutality. I know football’s brutal, but I could see the skill. I could see the athleticism in that. Now, I’m a third-degree black belt and I do see the skill because I have had to develop some stuff, some skills. But they offered, they say, “Hey. This guy Gerry Cooney wanted to come on and do your show.” I’m like, “Gerry Cooney, oh my God. I remember watching him fight when it was like 1980 or something.” He won. The first time I saw a fight finishing in less than a minute. I mean, I think it was 54, 56 seconds. I may be wrong but I think it was Leon Spinks. He walked in. It was in Vegas and bam, the whole thing was over. We planned on being there like three hours for 15 rounds. It was like, “Oh, okay. So now we get a listen to sportscasters hem and haw for the next two hours.” Yeah.
Now, 20 years later, 30 years later I get to interview this guy. I’m like my dad would be so excited. So I was excited and we start talking. Not three minutes into that interview, the hair stood up on the back of my neck and it stayed that way the whole time. This guy was amazing. He was so brutally honest. After that fight, he got offered a chance because he became the US heavyweight champion. He got offered a chance to fight for the world heavyweight champion. I want to say it was Muhammad Ali at that time but don’t get me on the actual statistics, but he had such a problem with alcohol. He had 180 days to sign the contract and he was too drunk those 180 days to sign the contract.
[0:24:29] Ashley James: Wow.
[0:24:31] Dr. John Huber: He then explained to me the way he was able to fight was he would go out in the ring and they would bump gloves and he would go back to his corner. When that bell would ring, he would turn around and it was his dad’s face on that boxer.
[0:24:44] Ashley James: Wow.
[0:24:45] Dr. John Huber: He would go pummel his dad’s face.
[0:24:49] Ashley James: Geez.
[0:24:50] Dr. John Huber: Then we started talking about it exploring his alcoholism and all this kind of stuff. He’s a recovering alcoholic. He’s got an amazing show on Friday and Monday nights on XM radio doing all the fight game and all this kind of stuff. He’s an amazing guy. I had dinner with him this past summer when I was up in New York. He came back on my show again. He always teased me, “Okay, you’re a black belt. Let’s spar.” I’m like, “Okay if you’re willing to make it a fundraiser for my nonprofit, I’ll let you knock the crap out of me.” Then I actually got to meet him and his hands made my hands look like I was a three-year-old. I’m like, “Okay. Well, maybe I could do a spit.” No. His arms were longer than my legs. I’m just dead. He’s like, “Oh, come on. I’m 14-15 years older than you.” I go, “Yeah. It don’t matter. I know better. I got a lot of education.”
[0:25:48] Ashley James: No kidding. What does your charity do? What does your nonprofit do?
[0:25:54] Dr. John Huber: Well, we’re kind of in phase one, which is we want to get people talking about mental health. I think we’re doing a really good job. I mean, I’ve been on Jenny McCarthy show. I’ve been on your show. I’ve talked with Dr. Drew several times on his show. It’s funny. All summer long, I had politicians calling me from Washington DC, from other states calling me up, “What’s your opinion on this? I got to go talk to these people. It’s like wait, people are actually talking about it now and they’re hearing me. I feel like I’m finally getting to that point. Our next goal is we want to do something for our first responders and our veterans. What I mean by doing something for them, we have a lot of great practitioners in the VA, for example, but we don’t have enough. We’re underfunded. They throw money in there but then they got to build infrastructure before they can put more therapists in there, more psychologists. It’s just, man, we’re fighting an uphill battle.
What I’d like to do is create some sort of system. We’ve got a model ready to go. When we get to this point, we would like to create a website where basically the veteran would log in and they would create an account. Within that account verify that they’re a veteran for sure. Then they get a code number. They take that code number to any licensed therapist in their community and that code number is what they log in with. It pairs them up. They send me the HIPAA consent from the patient and a summary of the notes. I don’t want details, just a summary of the notes so our auditors can make sure they’re actually doing psychotherapy. We pay them for their therapy services. For Central Texas, we think that if we had about 13 million a year, we could take away enough of the therapy from the VA that there would not be any delays at the VA in Central Texas. Nationwide, we’re looking at somewhere between $160-$180 million dollars and that’s nothing. I mean, it really is.
When you think about Planned Parenthood, it gets 800 million from Congress. Then they get 800 million from donations, another 600 million or 307 million from corporate America and they’re giving birth control pills out. I want to go out and stop what we have right now is 20 to 22 veterans killing themselves every day. We had one here in Austin two months ago. He walked in, he needed therapy. Now, to get a veteran to say, “I need therapy.” Think about the environment that they lived in as a military personnel where you are dysfunctional, you are a threat to the unit if you have mental health issues. So they hide everything, but that veteran finally gets to a place where his life is so distraught, so much in upheaval that they’re willing to go to the organization that’s supposed to be helping them and say, “I need a therapist.” They usually go when it’s at that dire point and they get told, “Oh, we’ll get you in 120 days. We got you an appointment set up with Dr. Smith.” That patient here in Austin, Texas walked over sat in the waiting room for a couple hours. The waiting room was full. He pulled out a gun and blew his head out. That is not unusual.
I’ve had veterans call me and say, at different parts of the United States, at different times I’ve been doing this now for four or five years. At one point there was an area the United States where there was a 13-month wait when you walked in and said, “I need a therapist,” before they could actually see one. That is, I mean, is so disgusting in so many different levels.
[0:29:40] Ashley James: Yeah.
[0:29:41] Dr. John Huber: These veterans put their lives on the line so we can have our independence, have our safety, have our freedoms and we can’t even get them a therapist. That’s phase two. That’s what I want to do. Right now, we’re making some headway, we’re getting some airplay. I think we’re starting to stir things up. Like I said, this past summer I was amazed at how many phone calls I was getting from politicians and things like that. I’ll tell you something. Also amazing, Bob Salter who is a sports broadcaster for WFAN in New York City, the largest all-sports radio station in the nation. The first NBC’s benchmark studio. He had me in this summer. He introduced me for five minutes and he opened up the mics and we talked mental health for two hours straight. Not one question about sports and the fans were asking the questions. I got home and for the next four months, I was getting handwritten letters from people thanking me. Thanking me for going. I didn’t get one derogatory statement. I didn’t get one person saying, “Hey, why didn’t we talk about the Giants?” I’m back on the air in two weeks on Sunday morning and they’re giving me two hours again.
[0:31:04] Ashley James: Oh, I love it.
[0:31:05] Dr. John Huber: So, it’s exciting and people are listening. People are taking a hit. That’s the first step. We got to get this. If you think about it, go back to the 80s, early 80’s. Childhood cancer, it was shameful what we were doing. We had a 15% survival rate. That means 85% were dying. There were some specific cancers that we cured better than others, but in general, 15% overall, 85% death rate. Today we have a 15% death rate and an 85% survival rate. What did we do? We started getting the histories of these kids. What was going on in their lives? What type of activities were they doing when they were six months old, when they were two months old, when they were two years old? Then they got their cancer at 6, 7, 8, 9 years of age, they had this really great history. We’ve been able to sit there and see, “Hey, these are some signs that we need to start watching these kids.” So, when they go in their pediatric checkups the pediatricians are going, “Hey, how is he doing? Is he turning over? Is he doing? Wait, let me go check this out.” And they start looking for things. You catch it before it ever becomes a terminal situation.
I know because I’ve worked with kids. I started my career as a school psychologist working with preemies, 16-18 months old, three years old before they ever get to school. Seeing these people dealing with developmental delays and how we are so underprepared for how to treat and interact with those kids. Then, historically we’ve just kind of thrown them in the classroom.
[0:32:43] Ashley James: Yeah.
[0:32:45] Dr. John Huber: And we’re playing catch-up. In the late 90s, they turn around, “Oh, we have to do research-based.” Well, there wasn’t a lot of research-based interventions actually. Everybody’s like, “Oh, it’s out there.” Well, where is it? Show me the math. Show me. What do we know? Drill and practice worked really well, but people hate drill and practice. So schools don’t like to do that, but if you go into a special education classroom you’re going to get drill in practice. That will breakthrough because you do the same problems over and over and over and it becomes automaticity. They don’t have to think about it. They know that one plus one equals two or you divide this fraction by this and this is what you get because they’ve done it enough. That all of a sudden makes the rest of the math easy. So, we start doing that and we break it down into really simple steps. All of a sudden these kids start having good lives at school. They actually like being in class. They’re not afraid if the teacher calls on them because they got some kind of answer, whereas before they would hide and they didn’t want to be known because the teacher was going to call on somebody to read in front of everybody. Well, I don’t have any sound-symbol relationships so I’m going to sound like a baby. What happens is people would rather be and a mean person who is a bully than somebody who’s considered dumb. That’s a shame.
[0:34:07] Ashley James: To clarify what you said before was it a $153 million a year to be able to cover the psychotherapy for all veterans?
[0:34:17] Dr. John Huber: Well, it’s not for all but it’s a big enough chunk that the VA would be able to take care of the rest. Actually, nationwide what we’re looking at is between $160 and $180 million. Somewhere in there. Because there’s a lot of management of audits and making sure people are following up and actually doing what they purport to do because I don’t want people to not help our veterans. So we have to have a mechanism in place. It’s kind of self-serving. Once the veterans register, they can basically go to anybody. They just have to present to us a copy of their license and their liability insurance so we know that they’re covered. Then we want them to submit a summary of their treatment and the billing information and we’d like to be able to pay them.
You think about that, that sounds like a lot of money and it is to an individual, but to this nation, it’s not. When we spend how many billions every year $1.2-$1.3 billion in Planned Parenthood. The tax dollars we give to Planned Parenthood’s about 800 million, between $600-$800 million every year. I don’t know what it is this year. I didn’t look at the budget. But just thinking about that, think about what they give for dry cleaning uniforms in the Navy. I mean, hey, wear them one more time before you dry clean them and save a little bit that way and use that money for your budget. Yeah. When you talk about trillions and trillions of spending in this country, less than $200 million dollars is a drop in the bucket. It’s a shameful experience to sit back and know that we have veterans that are asking for help and not able to get it because we don’t have enough therapists. When we try to hire new therapists, we don’t have the physical space for them. Then they go to a culture, the military culture, where mental health issues are considered so taboo that you’re broken, you’re a liability then to your platoon. Nobody wants to be around you so nobody admits to having any of those issues.
The strangest thing, in real life, in civilian life, men and women, they say men have about half, for example, depression that women do. I think what happens is I think about half the men aren’t willing to admit to it. They end up with anger issues, which is one of the ways that men tend to express depression. They have anger issues. Then they have adult-onset attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. They can’t focus, they can’t attend and guess, what? Those are symptoms that kids exhibit when they have depression. So, does it make sense that maybe adults might have depression? You notice, the pediatricians in my community they start going, “I’m not going to give him Ritalin. Let’s give them some Zoloft and see how they work first.” So why give them pharmaceutical grade crystal meth when their behavior will improve, it’s a Band-Aid. It’s not going to actually kind of fix what’s the underlying problem.
So, I think men actually have just as much depression and mental health issues as women. We’ve just been taught that there’s one emotion that is okay for us men to have and that’s anger. So, we turn everything into anger and nobody questions whether we are mentally healthy or not. He’s just mad. It’s a hard life being a man. It is. It’s a hard life being human period male or female across the board. I think we end up with a lot of people who should be getting help that aren’t. Women go and get help except the female veterans. They’re actually as resistant as male veterans are at getting psychotherapy. The female veterans are 10-20 times more resistant to getting psychotherapy.
[0:38:21] Ashley James: Sure. That makes sense because they have something to prove.
[0:38:23] Dr. John Huber: They have something to prove and not one of them that I’ve talked to, they’ve all said this one way or another, they don’t want to be the poster child for why women should not be able to go to combat because they wanted to go fight for their country.
[0:38:36] Ashley James: A really good friend of mine was held hostage at knifepoint by her friend, female veteran, who had seen horrific, horrific things. Dead children, just really, really horrific things in the Middle East. She just snapped one day and she held my friend hostage at knifepoint until the cops were able to calmly talk her down and get her admitted for help. There was a lot of signs that she was ramping in that direction. She wasn’t willing to get help. Luckily they were all able to talk her down and get her calm. It’s making it normal to seek help is the first step. I love that that’s what you want to do, you want to normalize that it’s human and normal to go get mental health, to seek it, to seek mental health. That it’s okay if you’re having suicidal thoughts if you’re depressed. If something is off, you’re not broken, you’re not wrong and bad, there’s nothing to be ashamed of.
The most healthy thing you can do for yourself is go get help. Like you said, the female veterans don’t want other women to be deterred from going into combat. You know what, by holding on to your mental illness you’re actually going to deter other women, but by seeking help, you are showing that you are strong and that you knew what you needed when you needed it. Because you’re going to come out of therapy, maybe months or years later, you’re going to come out the other end strong, sure of yourself, healthy. You’re going to come out the person you know you are in deep inside and you will be a prime example of what a healthy veteran does for other veterans.
In the moment, when we’re in mental illness, we’re so afraid of what other people think. We have to remember like the lesson that I got a few months ago. We have to remember, people will never actually be thinking about what you’re worried they’re going to think about. Because they’re coming up with their own stuff.
[0:41:03] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely.
[0:41:04] Ashley James: They’re going to be like making fun of you because your eyebrows are too close together. The stuff that you’re worried about they’ll never actually think about.
[0:41:13] Dr. John Huber: Not at all.
[0:41:14] Ashley James: But they’re going to come up with stuff that even you can’t even predict and you can’t even prevent because everyone’s got their own filters but all you can do is make sure that you are the healthiest person that you can be for yourself and for your loved ones. You mentioned that there’s a deficit of therapists. Is this just in the VA or is it across the board? Are we seeing that the United States and possibly other countries just don’t have enough mental health counselors?
[0:41:41] Dr. John Huber: Well, it’s hard to be a mental health counselor education-wise. Then you turn around and in the health care industry, it’s one of the lowest-paid areas. I mean, you’re sitting there talking with somebody. So the insurance companies that are driven by the funding of the drug companies don’t see any value in that.
[0:42:03] Ashley James: Because you’re trying to keep people off drugs.
[0:42:05] Dr. John Huber: Well, yeah. I used to be a hard no, no way, but man I’ve seen so many miracles happen from the right medication. That’s a whole another topic. I think we’ve got a new industry in the DNA testing. I’ve seen it over the last four or five years. I’ve had patients that struggled for decades, couldn’t find the right medication. Hey, let’s go get one of these DNA tests for psychotropic meds. Literally, me and his psychiatrists were like, this is like the drug it’s recommending is one we wouldn’t give to our cat because we’ve never had a patient be efficacious on it and have it benefit. But we did it and amazing. There was no six to eight-week turnaround for this person. In 48 hours they were like, “Wow. This is what normal is supposed to feel like?” They’re calling us and leaving messages going, “This is awesome.”
So, I think having that access to our DNA and that human genome and knowing that hey you don’t have enough receptor sites for this or you don’t have enough glands that are making the right neurotransmitter for you so we need to use the reuptake inhibitors so that there’s more of it floating around in your central nervous system and your body can use it. Man, that is amazing. Right now, I don’t know of any insurance company that actually pays for the test. The test is right around $300, but the patients who do it are usually at their wit’s end or their family is. They pay out of pocket for it. Four out of five patients that have used it it was a life-changing event for them.
[0:43:43] Ashley James: How does someone know when they would benefit from a drug or when it’s simply something they need to process and work through? I’m getting that drugs are a tool in our tool belt but they’re also a last resort, not a first resort.
[0:44:01] Dr. John Huber: Well, I think there’s other drugs that are further down the road. I think ECT is a last resort. We use it. I’ve seen it work, but what I like to see actually because I’m kind of weathered I’ve done this for a while and I’ve worked with a lot of different patients. I’ll come in and I’ll start working with a patient without drugs if they don’t want that, but there comes a point when I see, okay, the pathway they’re on is a pathway to failure. What I need them to do is even if it’s just for six or eight or ten months so I can get them on the right path to let me get them on the right medication with their physician so that they can kind of get a break and they can quit struggling with that depression all on their own and that is all-encompassing of them. Then we can start changing on the effects of changing how you think, your cognitive, reframing restructuring and develop skills that hey, if I go this way if I talk about this and I don’t separate myself and compartmentalize myself from this I’m going to get encapsulated in it and I’m going to fall into a deep depression. So I either should not be talking about it or I need to prepare myself and find a way to train myself through that conversation so I realize it’s not personal to me.
[0:45:20] Ashley James: So you’re helping them with the skills and you see that there’s certain people that are just trapped and that the medication is going to help them. You don’t want to put someone on meds for their so life necessarily, but you really want to use it as a tool to help them get over that. What’s ECT?
[0:45:35] Dr. John Huber: Electroconvulsive therapy. If you ever watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s still done. I know my experience here in the state of Texas when I was at the State Hospital, we went through and all of the doctors had to sign off on it before. If anybody was dissenting it wasn’t going to happen basically. Then we sent it up to the Department of Health and let them sign off on it, the medical doctor at the top there. We didn’t do it a lot, but we had people who would walk in and have file charts that if you stood him up on it would be six-eight feet high. They’ve been getting every type of therapy known, every type of drug and nothing seemed to work. They were just miserably depressed. It was a last resort.
Now, along those lines in more recent history, I’ve been working with a gentleman, Dr. Carl Bonnett. He is the clinical director at Klarisana, which is a ketamine clinic. Starts with a K, klarisana.com. We have, over the years, been doing different treatments. We started primarily with our veterans. Dr. Bonnett was an emergency room director and physician for the VA for several decades and had access to a lot of data. We would sit there and look and watch these gentlemen come through there with PTSD. When they were given ketamine for something else they were better. So we started and worked and now we’re probably doing 400-500 veterans a year between all the clinics. Clinic in Denver, San Antonio, Austin, there was one in New Mexico and Wyoming I believe at this point now. We have a program where we give them an infusion. I know there are other clinics out there and some of them use intramuscular like just a shot in the shoulder or whatever. We have a lot of success with the IV pump where it’s just kind of free-floating. We monitor exactly how much ketamine is going into them for a certain amount of time. We don’t want them ketamine as used as anesthesia medication. We’re not putting it in a bolus type setting where they’re going to be knocked unconscious. That is not our goal. In fact, our facilities are not set up for any kind of sedation type stuff. We are there treating and using that medication psychotropically, like a psychotropic, like an antidepressant or antipsychotic.
The whole idea when we bring in the therapist side of it is we’re able to drop those individuals’ self-defense mechanisms and we can get right to the heart of the matter. But with the PTSD, the post-traumatic stress disorder, the advantages we have with that is one of the advantages it has as an anesthesia is that it has an amnestic quality to it. In other words, it helps people forget things they don’t want to remember.
[0:48:45] Ashley James: Permanently or temporarily?
[0:48:47] Dr. John Huber: Well, if you just get one or two infusions it’s going to do temporarily at that moment and I’ll talk a little bit more about this in a minute, but we do a series of them. We have a program designed. We talk about it being a 30-day but it’s actually more of a 12-month program and that we like to have the patients and do most of the work in the first 30 days. Then we have them come back once the next month. Based on that interaction we predict do they need to come back in four weeks or five weeks or six weeks the next time. We see them sporadically over the rest of the year. What we see is a permanent change for most of these individuals. It’s in my opinion, it’s kind of miraculous in fact. Why do I say that?
Well, think about your memory. When you use your memory you go in and you think of a childhood memory, in elementary school or whatever. You pull that out of that memory storage center. Only one part of your brain can use that memory at a time. No other part of your brain is doing it but your recall and you’re trying to focus on that, but as you recall that you remember the emotions and you start feeling those emotions and you remember the smells and you start having those smells. Then you start maybe somebody is standing there that you like maybe one of your kids and so you start telling them your story. Your kids kind of look at you and they ask you a question you never thought of and you go back to that memory and you change that memory just a little bit because of that input.
Now, what that’s like is going into an old analog Dewey Decimal System library and you’re looking for this book and you find the book and you pull it off and you stand there in the middle of the stacks and you flip the pages and you read this little chapter right there and, “Oh, wow. But that reminds me.” Then you write a little note in the margin. Then you put that book right back up in the library space when you’re through reading it. The next person comes and checks that book out, but this time they read your note as well because you’ve changed that memory. That book will never be the same because you added that in there and maybe they’ll add some to that memory. Then they put it up in the bookshelf again until you go back and pull that memory off again.
We can go through that process with the patients about their trauma event and get them to change that trauma event, their perspective on it to essentially, in some cases, have them you know drive part of the negative stuff out of their memory. Now, we can recover that memory. It’s not like they’ll never have that again ever again, but now they can function. Because when they think about being at a marketplace in Kabul, they don’t think about that IED blowing their friend’s leg off.
[0:51:58] Ashley James: What do they think about?
[0:51:59] Dr. John Huber: Well, everybody’s different. Everybody’s different. That’s part of the beauty of that. They remember that there was a firefight there maybe and they just don’t remember the specifics. Then when they see their friend then they remember it at that moment but then they go back to living their life. When they talk about it, they talk about the firefight, not their friend getting his leg blown off. So we alter their memories, but it’s not under my control really it’s under the patient’s control. They’re like, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I don’t know how to do this.” Well, the drug doesn’t care. That’s what I like about ketamine. Ketamine doesn’t care whether you think you can or not. It’s going to help you do it. One of the things we use it for, and this is what convinced me, is pain management, chronic pain management. Now, I broke my shoulder playing football in high school and trying to play in college. At 18 years of age, I have still pins in my shoulder, my left shoulder. I’ve had chronic pain since I was 18.
Well, when Dr. Bonnett and I got together, we were talking about all these different things. He started mentioning pain. I go, “Oh, man. My shoulder over 20-something years I’ve had this chronic pain.” Well, he’s a smart guy and he’s like, “Well, why don’t you come down the clinic and watch some of my patients go through the infusion and just monitor things. Maybe it’s something you want to do, maybe it’s not.” So I watched the day and there were some people in there for pain management. I came in the next day and one of them was a 20-something girl who had a degenerative bone disease that started affecting her about 14. By the time she was 16, she couldn’t sleep without heavy opiates every night because pain was so great. She walks in the front door, we’re sitting there you know having our little cup of coffee out of the Keurig. She walks in and she’s crying. I’m thinking, “Wow. This isn’t good.” Bonnett is just like, “Hey, how you doing? Pretty powerful experience yeah?” Like this is normal. So she starts saying, “Oh my God. It’s the first time since I was 16 years old I slept through the night without one narcotic.”
[0:54:10] Ashley James: Wow.
[0:54:11] Dr. John Huber: She came in and she got it. We do follow up with little microdosing and things like that. You don’t always have to keep coming back for these heavy infusions. But after I watched all that, Bonnett’s like, “Well, you want to try it for your shoulder?” I took one infusion and my chronic pain stopped.
[0:54:33] Ashley James: Forever?
[0:54:34] Dr. John Huber: Well, I take microdoses every once in a while. I’m a third-degree black belt. I do stupid things that somebody my age probably shouldn’t be doing, jumping off things and smashing things with my fists and my feet and knees and things like that, playing with swords and six-foot fighting staffs and like that. Then turning around and some sixth or eighth-degree black belt who’s you know pushing seven he knocks me on my backside. I’m like, “Oh, what? You’re a skinny old man. Why did you do that? How did you do that?” So I get some bumps and bruises and most of them go away or I set my hot tub for 20 minutes and it goes away, but when it gets back to my shoulder and I heard something there it starts bugging me. So I take one of the microdoses and I go to bed. I wake up in the morning and it’s like, “Wow. My pain doesn’t hurt. It’s gone.”
What we found out, and we’ve gotten the research on this from I think it was Johns Hopkins did this, they found out what happens. When you do those infusions in the right timing, your brain takes those nerve signals from your peripheral nervous system and feeds them through the lower brain stem. There’s a filter process in there that says, “Okay. This is pain, this is pain. Nope, this is normal. This is pain. This is pain.” And it sends them to the right places. Well, the ketamine resets that and says, “Oh, this is a chronic pain.” Every time you had this infusion you’ve had this pain and there’s no new damage there.
So it gets that homeostatic mechanism to actually no longer receive that as pain. It just says, “This is normal pain.” But if you rehurt yourself, that new pain is there and you know it’s there. Whereas an opiate would just kind of block the pain and you could go and get hurt by continuing to play with a bad torn muscle or something like that. It actually makes the pain go away too. My experience with opiates whether it was OxyContin or Norco or any of those things is what happened was, I just didn’t care about the pain it didn’t ever really go away but with the ketamine, it actually went away.
[0:56:47] Ashley James: What’s the mechanism of this drug, of ketamine? I mean, what is it? Can you explain a bit more about how it affects the brain? How it’s working on us?
[0:57:02] Dr. John Huber: I’m not a neurobiologist and a neuroscientist. I’ve sat through. We’ve had two medical ketamine conferences. The first one ever on ketamine for physicians in the United States was in Austin Texas two years ago in September. The last one was 2019 in Denver. Present for both of those and amazing research that’s been out there. Amazing thing. Most of the research has been done since the late 60s, early 70s is actually from Russia, but most of that technology and the ability to convert technical Russian language into technical English there aren’t people who can do that. So people haven’t had access to it. So Dr. Bonnett and myself were sitting there going, “What are we going to do?” and Bonnett is like, “Well, let’s try and call them.” So we got to hold of them and they speak fluent English and they were able to tell us what it was. It was like, “Wow.”
So, actually, we have a couple of them sitting on our board of directors, some of these researchers. They’ve told us some of the issues with their government because they’re trying to become more capitalists. Nobody owns a patent for the general ketamine. So, they’re not fostering research in that area because none of the drug companies are going to be able to capitalize on it so to speak.
So, they basically kind of had their research ended, but they have so much experience on it. We’ve been able to detox alcoholics, other drugs. We’ve detoxed heroin addicts with their help. We’ve been able to do heroin addicts without any significant withdrawal effects at all using the ketamine because the receptor sites that are used by heroin are also used by the ketamine. So they drop in there and then we basically replace that with the ketamine. Then we can easily wean them off the ketamine because it doesn’t have the withdrawal effects.
[0:59:07] Ashley James: That was my next question was about I’ve heard that ketamine has been used successfully for addiction. Besides withdrawal, how does it help people on the mental and emotional level with addiction, with overcoming addiction?
[0:59:22] Dr. John Huber: Well, you got to think about a lot of addiction. One of my patients was telling me that he had some bad things happen to him. He’s really depressed. He casually drank pretty much his whole life. Then one night, he was really depressed. He poured himself a drink and he took that drink and when he finished that drink he felt normal. For the first time in weeks, he felt normal. So he spent the rest of the night trying to duplicate that feeling and finished off a bottle and woke up three days later. He got up and what he wanted to do is feel normal again. So he went after that. Went down and got him another bottle. That first drink felt good but then he chased that first drink the rest of the night, that feeling. Okay. Then it got to a point where he became physiologically addicted to the alcohol. Then it became a 20-year issue and end up losing jobs, divorce, all this kind of stuff. So it took over his life.
Now, not everybody is specifically that way. There are people who just have that addictive personality. We know a lot of things about alcohol and drug use and drinking. For example, something like 94% of college students, at some point, in their college career go into binge drinking. We know that about 3% of those people continue binge drinking 10-15 years after they’re out of college and they’ve got an alcohol problem. So binge drinking might have happened one semester for you, “Wow. I’m not going to be able to finish college if I keep drinking like that,” and you get your drinking under control and you go on. But for some people, that’s how they feel normal. It could be because of some trauma whether it’s abuse, watching some horrific thing happen, living in a house where the parents are very violent with each other, violent towards the kids, maybe there’s sexual abuse that neither of the parents know about or maybe they both do. There’s so many reasons. The reality of it is I can’t say there’s one thing, but I could say trauma because all of these things that we’re talking about are some form of trauma. Whether you’ve seen somebody get hurt or somebody’s violated you or abused you or you’ve watched somebody else’s being abused. It’s all a form of trauma.
So there’s some trauma somewhere in there. The alcohol was allowing this individual, when they had the right amount, to not feel that and actually feel normal, but then they chase that normal feeling with the next 15 drinks.
[1:02:05] Ashley James: Right. The same could be said for food.
[1:02:10] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely.
[1:02:11] Ashley James: Look at chasing the dopamine. Eating food is the only time I feel happy, normal, safe, secure. It’s socially acceptable. It is socially acceptable to drink alcohol, but it’s socially acceptable obviously to eat. Less socially acceptable to do meth but that still doesn’t stop people from seeking it, and I have a client who is in and out of rehab because she says it is the only time she feels normal is when she’s on meth. Any other time, she feels incredibly depressed to the point of just not wanting to be here. She’s fighting it. She’s fighting it. She’s sober, but it just it really for me I’ve never done meth so I don’t know. I don’t know this. She said the first time it was amazing, but then it made it so that any other time she was sober, it was her life had lost all of its luster.
[1:03:09] Dr. John Huber: That’s what of my patients said about heroin. He’d been detoxed 13 or 14 times. We went through the detox with him and used the ketamine. He said, “This is the first time. Somebody jacked with my mind.” We’re like, “What do you mean jacked with your mind?” He used other profanity words and stuff but I’m like, “What do you mean?” He goes, “This is the first time when I got off the heroin that I didn’t even think about I need more heroin. All the other times I wanted more heroin.”
[1:03:43] Ashley James: That’s really fascinating. I prefer to do things holistically not with drugs but I see that this is really a powerful tool that can help people get to the other side. I would rather see someone on a drug and alive than not on a drug and dead, obviously. So, it’s like get the best tools for the job.
[1:04:09] Dr. John Huber: Get the best tools because you could do methadone but now you have a harder physiological addiction. What I see with the ketamine is that it changes their thought process. It changes how their brain takes those stimuli on. For example, last year we had about 14 alcoholics come through our program. All but one of them 100% sober. The 14th one just for lack of a number, he fell off the wagon. Now he’s, as of yesterday’s, five months sober. We got him back. We gave him a few booster bumps with the ketamine and he’s five months sober. I can tell you that because we have truck drivers, their companies can put those breathalyzers on their trucks and stuff like that. Well, we got him a portable one and said, “If you want to stay on our program you have to blow on this anytime it blows off.” It goes off randomly, anytime. Sometimes it’ll go off three times in an hour other times it’ll go off five times in 24 hours. It wakes him up at 2:00 in the morning to blow. He doesn’t know when it’s going to happen but he agreed to that because we’re trying to support our stuff with research. So we’ve got this stuff going on and it’s working for him. It takes a nice little picture of him. So we know it’s him blowing into the machine and he didn’t train his dog to blow into it or anything like that, which I kind of like to see. He’s now five months. He actually sat down with me yesterday. He said, “You know the last time I was five months sober or longer?” I’m like, “No when?” He goes, “I was in middle school.” This guy is 60 years old.
[1:06:00] Ashley James: Geez. Talk about achieving some mental clarity.
[1:06:06] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely. It’s so funny because like the last three months, his thought process has started to become, for lack of a better word, more adult-like and less ten-year-old like.
[1:06:17] Ashley James: Yeah. I bet.
[1:06:18] Dr. John Huber: It’s just amazing what’s going on with him. I had to wait until he left. I mean, I had tears on my eyes. I was like, “Oh my god. This guy’s finding his life back. He’s getting it back.” He actually said he’d gotten a new job. He went out and got some new clothes. His first day at the job, he got up to go get dressed and everything else his wife have gotten out before him and pressed everything. He goes, “In whole marriage, she never once did anything like that for him.” She was so proud of him being sober. He decided he didn’t like that other job because it was reminding him of drinking stuff so he made a change. He goes, “I got home and there were notes all over the house how proud she was of me.” He even goes, “That was amazing.” He goes, “You just don’t know when you’ve never gotten that before from anybody.
[1:07:21] Ashley James: So, for people who’ve struggled with depression, post-traumatic stress, chronic pain or some form of addiction and other forms of therapy they’ve tried it’s not worked, they’re struggling. You’re seeing really great results with ketamine. Also coupling ketamine with mental health counseling. You’re not just giving ketamine to people and then they just leave and that’s it. You’re actually you’re addressing the underlying issues as well, right?
[1:08:00] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely. That’s so much a part of it. Now, we’ve treated I think last year I treated, not me specifically but the clinic. We treated about 400 veterans with PTSD. They all didn’t get psychotherapy counseling. I mean, that’s a hard thing to push when we’re talking about that culture. If we couch it right, if they do it right, they don’t necessarily have to have the therapist right there, okay. Now some of them go in there and they’re all, “I’m not going to need a therapist.” They go find and they do halfway through it and then we get a call and one of us needs to go in and work with them. Because either they’re not getting the results they want or they’re getting results and they know that they need to, they’re putting this money in this and they need to take advantage of it and so let’s go ahead and get the therapist in there. It facilitates things much, much more quickly.
[1:08:57] Ashley James: Interesting. Are there any side effects of ketamine that people should be aware of? Obviously, they should do it under the care of a physician.
[1:09:08] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely.
[1:09:09] Ashley James: The clinic that you work with where it’s a lots of experience but are there things we should know in terms of the dangers of using it because it is a drug?
[1:09:21] Dr. John Huber: It is a drug. It’s actually an extremely safe drug, but just like water, there are problems. You can drown with water. So, we lose 1,200-1,300 people every year to bathtub drownings. So water can be dangerous even though we have to have it for life. So, taking that into consideration, ketamine was a drug that was designed originally the government, the federal government, went in and sent their laboratories to work to make a synthetic opiate and ended up creating this drug called PCP. It had some really great advantages but had some really bad things going on with it too. So bad on the street that’s called angel dust. So, they went back to the laboratories and they started cleaving off parts of these molecules and testing them and seeing what they could find out. One of them happened to be ketamine.
It has a very short half-life, 15 to 30-minute half-life. So, when we stop the IV or if you take the microdosing, let’s say. You put it on your tongue, it dissolves, you swallow it. Anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes later, you start feeling the effects of the ketamine. When you start feeling those effects, it’s going to be done in about 40 minutes. So whatever goes on, and one of the things that goes on actually are you start misperceiving the environment. You start hallucinating, okay, but it’s not out of your control. What we find is that if you start feeling like you’re losing control and it scares you, if you open your eyes the visual ground around you the visual images are strong enough that it’s a mild, relatively mild hallucinogen. You can actually even stop the hallucinations all together just by focusing on say a picture frame in a room. We also think what we call the shamanic experience, kind of letting that hallucination go through, allows you to roleplay some of those traumas.
So we want to encourage them to do that. We know though that less than an hour it’s going to be over. Once the patient gets that and they realize, “Okay, I’m going to let go of that. I’m not going to fight that. I’m going to let my brain weed this stuff out and get rid of the chaff. I’m going to sit there keep my eyes closed. If it gets too scary for me I can always open my eyes.” Then all of a sudden the experience is over. Now, Timothy Leary pushed LSD that, “Oh, we can do this with LSD.” The problem with LSD, it has a minimum, a four-hour half-life. That means you’re going to be going for eight hours. You’re going to be physically, emotionally exhausted. From the moment they take their microdoses until it’s no longer creating that shamanic experience for them they’re not reliving that trauma. We have this expectation of them that they’re going to let this thing roll. Because we’ve done it in the clinic with them and when we do it with an IV push, we keep that push going for at least an hour. So when we stop at that point it’s going to continue for that 15 to 30 minutes until the rest of it’s gone off, okay. But what happens along the way is you have some severe psychomotor retardation, your balance is completely off.
[1:12:57] Ashley James: You’re talking about LSD?
[1:12:59] Dr. John Huber: No. I’m talking about the ketamine.
[1:13:00] Ashley James: Okay, you’re talking about the ketamine now. Got it.
[1:13:02] Dr. John Huber: So, until that has been able to flush out of your system, we’ve got to wheelchair you there, we’ll take you to the bathroom and all this kind of stuff. We have some rules. After you get the ketamine, whether it’s a microdose, you’re not allowed to make any kind of decision. No financial decisions, no relationship decisions whatsoever. When we’re doing the IV push in that in that initial treatment dates, we make you sign a commitment that you will not watch news: cell phone news, internet news, television news, radio news. No news. Because by taking this ketamine, you’re letting your defense mechanisms down and we don’t want you to incorporate the negativity of news, because that’s how they sell it, in you. So, we prefer to have them in one of our facilities where we have massage therapists there and we have cordon bleu wannabe chefs who are going to the school doing their internships and cooking for and things like that. Got a nice hot tub and a pool and they can relax and we do yoga and we don’t have TVs there. They’re like, “Why you got everything else but there’s no TV?” Because you don’t need them.
[1:14:16] Ashley James: You take their cellphones away from them?
[1:14:18] Dr. John Huber: They get one hour a day and it’s supervised because we don’t want them going to the news, but that’s part of the thing. We pick them up at the airport. We want to have a car for them. They can Uber. They could if they wanted to, but again, we have their phone for an hour day so we would know about it. We want them to just chill. We want to teach them how to be human and that’s not being attached to a computer whether it’s a flat-screen TV or your computer. The interesting thing is most drug rehab programs, they want 45 to 90 days. Well, the average person can’t take three months off for vacation, unless they have a drug addiction then you get permission for their business then everybody knows their business.
So, we get CEOs who can take a 30-day vacation and they’ll take it with us and we’ll get them off their alcohol. Then they can come out for their follow-up one-day visit on a weekend or whatever and they’re set and they’re good to go. We’re having really good success rate about, 80% success rate for alcoholism, which if you talk to Dr. Drew Pinsky, I’ve talked to him several times. Been on his show several times, he’ll tell you that the best, at average success rate, for a regular 12-step intervention for alcohol rehab is 8%.
[1:15:43] Ashley James: Geez.
[1:15:45] Dr. John Huber: That’s what the research shows. Some of it shows as low as 2% or 3%. I’ve seen a few studies that went as high as 16%, but Dr. Drew told me on the air it is 8% as far as he’s concerned. So that means there’s 92% failure in that system. They know whether it’s this rehab or your rehab, that 92% of the patients are going to be back within three years.
[1:16:09] Ashley James: Well, that’s a lucrative business.
[1:16:10] Dr. John Huber: It is a lucrative business. So, people don’t really want us doing our business because we had 14 patients last year one of them fell off the wagon and now he’s at almost six months. A little over five months right now. We just did a little jumpstart with him and he’s there. So, our data shows about an 80% success rate. When our patients come in, for example, for PTSD one of the things they do is self-medicate. Whether it’s heroin, cocaine, marijuana, alcohol. We get that report. We’re not there to file charges on them and it’s not our job, but it’s funny when we go back and look at our raw data, those patients who weren’t even there for alcohol or cocaine or marijuana, 80% of them stopped.
[1:16:59] Ashley James: Wow. That’s huge. So your program is a 30-day program always or just for alcohol? How does that work?
[1:17:09] Dr. John Huber: No. It’s very specific. There’s reasons why ketamine is not appropriate for you. So one of the things we want to do is we want to do a psych eval on you. We can do a quick one and know within 24 hours whether this is an appropriate treatment for you. It costs us money so we charge you for that eval. You get your deposit for the rest of the 30 days back if you’re not appropriate, but the cost of that actually incurs some cost for us. We’ve learned what’s not appropriate. One of the things that obviously is not appropriate for ketamine treatment is if you have a history of psychosis, active psychosis especially if you have drug-induced psychosis it depends one of the drugs and how you were using and things like that. Just regular schizophrenia active psychosis or maybe bipolar disorder with psychotic episodes during your mania phase and things like that are not good indications that you’re appropriate for that. We have some cut-offs levels on you know the MMPI and the MCMI and like that that we use that have turned pretty good for us. We get pretty good shot at it. We don’t want to put anybody into a bad situation, but we also know that a lot of people are coming to us because nothing else has worked. So we want to try and get as many people as we can too.
We know, like okay, everybody who’s had these scores when we gave them they were not any better. Now they were out the $35,000-$40,000. They’re hurting because of that so it’s not appropriate for us to follow through with that. So, here’s your money minus the psychological evaluation. We’ll write you a nice report. You can take that with you if you’d like. Then we follow up with an evaluation at the end. We see pre and post-treatment intervention effects and it’s just amazing. We talked about that before the show, before we started taping. I really can’t get into too much of that, but it’s totally floored me. It’s made me go back and look at my 21 years of teaching graduate students and undergraduate students. Wow. If I’d only know then what I know now.
[1:19:37] Ashley James: Yeah. There’s some stories you can’t tell right now for legal reasons, but there will come a day when you can and I wanted to have you back on the show for sure because those stories need to be told. The listeners need to hear them. They’re pretty amazing, but for legal reasons right now, we can’t. We can’t talk about it unfortunately on the air, but one day you will be able to share these beautiful, beautiful stories. For listeners who are interested in going to the clinic, you work with that uses ketamine, what website would be best for them to look into that further?
[1:20:14] Dr. John Huber: KLARISANA.com. We have one in San Antonio. We have one in Austin. I’m doing more work with the Austin one. San Antonio is a really long drive for me. I have gone down there and done it. I know everybody in that clinic who works there. I know all the clinic here. My staff works up at this one mostly. We do occasionally again go down there. There is a Klarisana in Denver. That’s kind of become Dr. Bonnett’s home clinic. We all kind of bounce around between the three places as needed. We have Dr. Bonnett’s license in all the states that we’ve got. The therapy team here only does actual therapy in the states where we’re licensed, but we can supervise and teach therapists in other areas where we’re not licensed in different states how to do the appropriate intervention and stuff with that. We do supervise that.
[1:21:21] Ashley James: There are so many different, just coming back to your wanting to normalize mental health.
[1:21:27] Dr. John Huber: Yes.
[1:21:28] Ashley James: One of the first steps is also people understanding that the services that are available to them. On my show, I’ve had many Naturopathic physicians on the show. I’ve actually had listeners write to me and say to me, “I never knew that there was anything other than an MD that I could go to. I didn’t know that there was an osteopath and a chiropractor. I didn’t know that they could do the things they do.” Also, Naturopathic physician. So, I’ve actually had several listeners write to me and say that they were in pre-med and they switched to becoming a Naturopath because they didn’t even know a Naturopathy existed. Sometimes it’s a matter of letting people know that their services are out there. That there’s more than just the thing they’ve always been going to.
So, I know that there’s many different kinds of therapy, but maybe the listener doesn’t actually know that because we learn a lot from the mainstream media. Everyone’s heard of Freud so we think that the Hollywood version of therapy is we’re just lying on a couch complaining and sort of worrying about being judged by this person with a notepad. We haven’t really been given a very fair viewpoint of what therapy actually is by Hollywood or by the media. People who haven’t been to therapy don’t know what it’s like and what kinds of therapy there is out there besides the very stereotypical Freudian therapy. Could you go through and talk about what kind of therapies are out there? Especially talk about the ones that have better success rates.
[1:23:16] Dr. John Huber: Well, there’s a lot of different types of therapies out there. One of the interesting things, I’m currently working on a book right now on what it’s like to go to therapy for the first time. Because a lot of people are afraid to go to therapy, “They’re going to brainwash me. They’re going to have some kind of mind control over me.” The book will get into that, but the problem with that is it’s got to be a short read because if you’re depressed, you need to go see a therapist. You don’t want to sit there and read a novel. So, it’s been really a challenge. It’s coming along though. I’ve got a game plan. We’re working on making some adjustments. Maybe I can send you a copy of that and you can see if you want to have me on. We can talk about that as well too, but what we know is that there’s cognitive therapies.
The cognitive therapies are there to change framework, change positions, change language. For example, using absolutes. There’s no real absolute in this world is there except for what? You’re going to die. You can try and avoid taxes, but if you get caught, but you know you’re going to die. I mean that’s an absolute. We use things like everybody hates me. One of my favorite things, you know the seven billion people on this planet? That’s pretty amazing. How do you know all seven billion people? You know they hate you and then all the languages you’d have to master. So, we know that’s a fallacy, but we have to get the person to stop using absolute language. Because absolute language is very destructive to our psyche especially if you’ve got some bad things that have happened to you. If the dominoes have fallen just right in the recent past or maybe in distant past, but they continue. Little ones keep falling and it keeps reinforcing that belief set that you’ve created. So we want to change that cognitive restructuring.
Then we also have different types of psychoanalytic. Of course, we know Freud. Why is Freud so important? Why is he something that we always bring up? Well, Freud basically, he believes that everything resorts back to these unconscious conflicts between sex and aggression. So that becomes very seductive in storytelling when you can use aggression or sex. I mean it’s just we think about the good in the dark. The dark side is very seductive and the light side is it’s nice and warm and loving and it’s got its own seduction for that piece that we want to have there too. So, it’s seductive also but we all openly discuss wanting peace. We don’t all openly discuss that, “I wonder what it feels like to do something evil to somebody.” Everybody goes, “Oh, you’re sick.” “I didn’t do it. I just talked about it. Does that make me sick? You were telling me the other day how that person cut you off on the road and if you’d had a gun you were going to shoot him, but you didn’t have a gun so you didn’t shoot him. Does that make yours sick?”
Thoughts are not inherently sick. Your actions when you actually take action on them can be. So we have to kind of watch what that is, but we also then, they’re in between those two that cognitive you have other things like behavioral where we don’t really care what you’re thinking. We just want to reinforce certain behaviors so we can get those things to change.
Then we have blends, cognitive-behavioral. Now cognitive-behavioral and behavioral work really good. Insurance companies love them as a therapist because you can count and measure really well and you can make progress and we know. “Hey, they’re making progress. They’ve made three out of seven goals. We’re going to make two more in the next week and we’ll be done here in four weeks.” They love that. They don’t complain and argue with that, but at the same time, with the right patient and the right situation, I’ve had insurance companies say, “No. You do as much therapy as you want with those patients.” It was all the right things.
I had a young lady who was mauled by a pit bull and had peeled her face back and chewed her nose. They got there, got the dog off her, got her an ambulance and the plastic surgeon rebuilt her face. From that day forward, every day she looked in the mirror there was somebody else in the morning looking back at her. The insurance company’s, “Nope. Do all the therapy you need.” When I first saw her we were going three days a week. We ended up getting it down to once a month over a period of years. Then we stretched it out and then she did a couple of six-month checkups. Then the last time I heard from her she sent me an invitation to her wedding.
[1:28:09] Ashley James: Nice.
[1:28:11] Dr. John Huber: Exactly. Man, we had to use a very eclectic kind of thing because she was having all these intrusive thoughts because this is a stranger looking back at me at the mirror, but she was also having all these Freudian things about aggression. “I’m not mad. I love dogs.” It took me about 18 months for her to on her own decide she needed to get rid of the big dogs that she got after she got mauled trying to prove to herself she wasn’t afraid of dogs.
[1:28:41] Ashley James: Wow.
[1:28:44] Dr. John Huber: That changed her whole life perspective. Just one thing after another, I have to give it to that insurance company. They never once balked at any extension at all. Not one time. They didn’t give me a hard time. They didn’t say, “Oh, we need a copy every one of your notes.” It’s like, “Give us a summary what you’ve done so far.” That’s the way it’s supposed to be, but if you come into to my office because all your kids have gone off to college. Now you have no meaning in life. You were taking care of the hamster, but the hamster died. Now you just want to go commit suicide because a hamster died. It’s like, “Okay, first of all, you can get a new hamster. They have about three-year life expectancy anyway.” It doesn’t symbolize those children that left. They feel like that they’re not there anymore. So there’s some connections there.
Freud does all that symbology and how it replaces one thing for another and then you go to Carl Jung and all the images and the patriarchal matriarchal models and things like that and the collective unconscious. All these things that seem very mystical, but it’s really funny. I did my last doctorate degree, I did it at a school that had one of the researchers who had worked with Hermann Rorschach putting together a Rorschach test. He was not a young man, but he made me push my boundaries and made me learn the Rorschach test probably better than I wanted to be at it. When I have patients who come in and the cognitive stuff doesn’t work, the behavioral stuff, the cognitive-behavioral doesn’t work. When I start using thought stopping and Albert Ellis and all these and nothing’s working, I pull out some Freud and all of a sudden this person’s life changes in a matter of weeks.
[1:30:48] Ashley James: Wow.
[1:30:49] Dr. John Huber: It’s like whoa. This was right. This was right for this person. I had a guy who was very suicidal. He dropped out of school right before his senior year. His family knew the school board. I was working in Miami Dade County Public Schools then. They sent him into my office. They called me, “Can you see him?” Three out of the eight people on the school board and knew this person, the family personally. I’m like, “Okay. I cleared my plate. Get him here on Friday.” He comes in and he’s just like stone cold. There’s walls all around this guy. I pulled out the Rorschach chart or flats and I started using them therapeutically. About halfway through them, I knew exactly what had happened. This man had been sexually assaulted.
[1:31:39] Ashley James: What’s the Rorschach thing you’re talking about?
[1:31:42] Dr. John Huber: The inkblot test.
[1:31:43] Ashley James: Oh, inkblot. Okay. Really? You knew. So you’re holding up weird inkblots and he says, “I see a giraffe. I see a lizard.”
[1:31:50] Dr. John Huber: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said all the things and I’m like, “This guy’s been violated.” So I put the cards down and I said, “So when were you raped?” The guy turned white I thought I was going to call an ambulance. He’s like, “Who told you?” He goes, “I told nobody. Nobody knows this. How do you?” He just kind of freaked out for a few minutes. I let him vent. I go, “Well, that’s why they pay me the big bucks. I got all these. See all those degrees on the wall? They’re actually good for something.” I was able to get this guy to give us a shot.
Miami Dade, as big as it is and all the problems it has with being big, that has some amazing things. For example, they have high school campuses on some of the community college campuses there. Adults can go there and get a high school degree through their Community College. It has a community college transcript and all that kind of stuff, but they’re actually working for high school degree. Then they can take their college credits to their bosses. So adults who didn’t finish high school are going back and finish high school.
Well, I picked up the phone. One of the psychologists I worked with who was stationed at one of those schools inside one of the college campuses. I’m like, “Hey, here’s what’s going on. If his parents find out what happened to him he’s gone.” I mean this kid, he had demonstrated that he would do it. I mean there was some history there.
[1:33:17] Ashley James: He’d commit suicide?
[1:33:18] Dr. John Huber: Yeah. So, the guy goes, “Let me talk to my principal.” We sat and talked to the principal. Principal said, “If you two psychologists are willing to this, I’ll do everything I can. I don’t need to know what has happened with this young man as long as this is the right placement for him.” So we had our admission review and dismissal meeting. We went through and we figured it was just going to be the parents, him and a couple teachers. We walked in and there’s almost 30 people in there because it’s a college campus. These college professors don’t know what’s going on. “I want to see this.” We’re like, “Oh my goodness.” So, me and the other psychologists sat next to each other. We just kind of mumbled through stuff and just started signing paperwork and passed it around. Everybody acted like they knew what they were doing. They signed the paperwork. We got the kid in. He graduated. I got a phone message left on my answering machine in my office that next summer. It was about seven minutes long. He started off by telling me, “I planned on killing myself the weekend after I met you.” He went from there to, “I can’t thank you enough. I just got a full ride to a major university.” He gave me the major university and all that kind of stuff. “You gave me my life back.”
[1:34:33] Ashley James: Yeah.
[1:34:34] Dr. John Huber: So when people criticize psychoanalysis, man it’s not right for everybody but when it works it works. The Freudian inkblot tests and all that kind of stuff. There’s a place for that and we need to need to show it respect. The reason why though that we really push that and you see it so much besides us being seductive it was the first time somebody had put together and organized theoretical orientation for psychotherapy. What went on before then was there was this guy called Emmanuel Church. He would go around and he was kind of the Oprah of the day. He would go to town theaters and people would come in there. People would come up and talk and their families would go up and he’d do family therapy in front of the audience.
[1:35:23] Ashley James: Wow.
[1:35:24] Dr. John Huber: Of course, who could afford to go? You got all your doctors and attorneys and your businessman and all this kind of stuff. So they were paying this guy tons of money. People would volunteer and be a victim and he would actually help them work through things. The doctors were sitting and going, “Man, look at how much money I could be making,” but the Hippocratic Oath says we either have to have research proof or we have to have strong theoretical orientation and we had neither one of them. So this guy could do it as entertainment and made lots of money. Then all sudden we had this book that come translated from German called Interpretation of Dreams by a guy named Sigmund Freud. He’d written a theoretical orientation for talk therapy. Now doctors could go do that. He was the game-changer.
[1:36:16] Ashley James: Yeah.
[1:36:17] Dr. John Huber: We went from there to okay let’s break this down. What if this is really working? We found out some specific things. Even if you go to a psychoanalytic school where they’re going to teach you psychoanalysis, the first techniques they show you are Carl Rogers’ person-centered therapy because if you can’t get your patient coming back to therapy, it doesn’t matter if you’re the best therapist in the world if they’re not there to do therapy. What do we know about Carl Rogers is that he makes that person feel valued and empowered and they want to come back. So you start with that and then you go do your orientation, whatever you do best at that point. So, it’s just a lot of skill. The best predictor though of whether you’re going to be successful in therapy is not what orientation the therapist has.
[1:37:03] Ashley James: Really.
[1:37:04] Dr. John Huber: It’s how long the therapist has been doing therapy.
[1:37:07] Ashley James: Really.
[1:37:09] Dr. John Huber: Because just like I told you, when people say what is my orientation? I’m a cognitive-behavioral therapist when it comes to therapy, but I know how to use eclectic psychotherapy. I can use Freud. I can use Jungian therapy. I can use Gestalt therapy, but I don’t start with that. I start with my patient. What is my patient going to respond to the best? How do I know that? Experience. I find out through my structure of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy that okay, this isn’t working, that’s not working, this get a little bit of benefit from here so we’re not going to throw that out but I need to tweak it a little bit. I have to keep the same goals in mind the whole time. The cool thing with, again cognitive behavior, I can count and measure and I can make progress. So, I tend to keep part of that cognitive-behavioral perspective in there even if I pull in psychoanalysis or hypnosis or something like that into my treatment of the patient. Because then I’ve still got that benchmark that I can say, “He’s making progress,” or “He’s not making programs.”
[1:38:19] Ashley James: I imagine hypnotherapy or any of your therapy actually would be really positive while working with someone who’s doing the ketamine because their resistance has been dropped.
[1:38:34] Dr. John Huber: Their defense mechanisms have been dropped. I use that word specifically because that’s one of the things Freud talks about, our defense mechanisms. We lie to ourselves. Even in cognitive behavioral therapy, we lie to ourselves. We lie to ourselves that, “You know, I’ve been smoking for 15 years. I’m not going to get cancer.” We lie to ourselves, “Oh, it’s not going to happen to me. Those rules don’t apply to me. I’m John. It’s not going to happen.” It will. It’ll catch up. You play the game long, enough you’re going to get hit with a flag.
[1:39:09] Ashley James: My friend is in marriage counseling and her husband is coming up with these lies. She’s just staring at him. She’s kind of dumbfounded. She doesn’t even know what to say to the therapist. She’s just so, in the moment, she’s not a type of person to fight or argue. She’s just observing and kind of shocked because he believes his lies. He’s saying these lies that are just like totally not true, like measurable. He said, “We’ve gone on seven family vacations,” or whatever he’s mentioned. She’s like she can count three. She’s like, “No.” He says, “I always take the kids to the park on the weekends.” He’s done it three times in seven years like that kind of thing. He believes his lies. It’s just really amazing to sit back and then go, yeah, how much do we lie to ourselves and believe it? “I’m going to go to the gym tomorrow.” “Just one chocolate bar.”
[1:40:06] Dr. John Huber: Yeah, exactly. That’s the crazy thing about lie detector test because if you believe your lies you’re not going to show up as lying.
[1:40:12] Ashley James: Wow.
[1:40:14] Dr. John Huber: So that’s why that’s not what we should be using. With the best lie detector test we have is that jury of your peers and that judge up there not some machine. Because you get all these other perspectives. You don’t just get yours when you go into court. We have other witnesses there. We have DNA testing there. We have drug testing. We have alcohol testing. We have fingerprints, whatever. We got all this other stuff there. It’s not just you and that machine, because again if you truly believe or heaven forbid you’re a truly antisocial personality disorder, a true sociopath and don’t mind the fact that you may have harmed somebody significantly, you’re not going to have a physiological reaction to that. So a sociopath is less likely to fail a lie-detector test. That’s who we want to try and catch, right? Then why do we keep using them? Well, we keep using them because the whole game is we want to scare the person enough to make them think that we really can tell they’re lying so they just cop a plea and tell us what really happened.
[1:41:27] Ashley James: Wow. I did not know that about lie-detector test that if you believe the lie that you won’t get caught. Right. I guess, yeah. Because it’s measuring the stress response.
[1:41:40] Dr. John Huber: Exactly. Your heart rate, blood pressure, galvanic skin response, respiratory. Yes.
[1:41:46] Ashley James: Psychopaths would not have that.
[1:41:49] Dr. John Huber: Yeah. Unless you maybe hurt their car and then you’ll see a physiological response.
[1:41:56] Ashley James: Right. Don’t they believe that they own people like inanimate objects like a car?
[1:42:04] Dr. John Huber: Well, the inanimate objects have value to them. People are just objects to be used to get certain things they want. So when you’re through getting what you can get out of that person you throw them away. It doesn’t matter what happens to them.
[1:42:16] Ashley James: How do we know we’re dealing with a psychopath? What if someone goes, “I wonder if I’m married to one or I wonder if my boss is one or what if my coworker is a psychopath?” What are the signs to be aware of?
[1:42:28] Dr. John Huber: Why don’t you just him bring down in my office and for a specific sum I’ll just figure that out for you. I’m pretty good at it. What you want to look at, what I told my college students, the people when they’re dating whether a man or a woman if they let their friends call you all sorts of names and put you down and demean you but they blow up if they touched their car wrong or they slammed the door too hard on their car or they have a favorite hunting knife or a gun or something that they treat like it’s the Holy Grail, red flag. Don’t walk away, run away. Because that inanimate object is more valuable to them than a living person. Run away. Another thing, it’s funny how it happens, dogs. Not just one dog but every dog this person comes around doesn’t really like that person, red flag. Dogs pick up on our physiology. That’s why seizure dogs, true helping dogs that are trained, can pick up on your seizure thirty to forty-five minutes before it actually happens.
[1:43:48] Ashley James: Wow.
[1:43:50] Dr. John Huber: You’ll be safe. You got a seizure dog, oh, it’s time to go. So they’ll take you and sit you downtime. Go lay down on the couch over here. They got their patterns of behavior so we have to train the people to read the dog’s movements too, but it’s pretty amazing when that happens. You get patients that are no longer slamming their heads on the corner of the coffee tables because they started having a seizure and were expecting it.
[1:44:15] Ashley James: Right. Very interesting. Dr. Huber, I could talk to you all day long. Yes, I definitely want to have you back on the show, but you knew that. You’re such a pro. Every show you’re on they want to have you back. You’re very entertaining and educating. That’s the perfect combination, right? To be entertained while you’re learning. So, you’re an excellent guest. I definitely want to have you back especially when you published your book, especially when you can share more formation about ketamine that after some things have happened in the near future, hopefully. It’s been such a pleasure having you on the show. I love your mission that your nonprofit is here to normalize mental health. That going to a counselor should be like we take a shower, we want to have physical hygiene, we go to a mental health counselor to make sure we have mental hygiene, right?
[1:45:22] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely.
[1:45:24] Ashley James: Just make it normal. Normal, healthy people can go to therapy.
[1:45:27] Dr. John Huber: They should, even if it’s just a check-up. I tell people that. “Why? I don’t have any problem.” Think about it, your world is going great. If you go see a therapist just to kind of know what you look like when world’s going great and then the bottom falls out, that therapists already has a history with you and they know where you need to be. But more important than that, if you’re one of those people who tend to not have problems for real and you cope and you manage, your friends come to you all the time for help. There’s been more than one time in most of those people’s lives where they go, “Hey, buddy. Why don’t you go see a therapist?” They’re going, “Oh, okay.” But instead of saying that, “Why don’t you go to my friend John? I’ve talked to him a couple of times.” They’re more likely to go see me then instead of let’s just pull up a phonebook and find a therapist here.
[1:46:15] Ashley James: Ah. So get a relationship with a therapist so that you could even help your friends and send them to your friend the therapist you’ve been seeing. It’s good to have one in your pocket.
[1:46:26] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely. One more therapeutic tool for you to help function and cope. I’m not saying you have to see them. You can go in there and meet them one time. You feel comfortable with him, you talk a little bit, you just want to, “Hey, things are going pretty good right now, but if something happens I want to have it. I know my kids are getting ready to graduate from college. My daughter is talking about getting married. I just don’t know how I’m going to react to all that. So I want somebody who kind of I already know. I don’t want to have an introductory session that’s been three sessions trying to figure out what my life looks like normal before we start therapy.”
[1:47:02] Ashley James: I have a friend who’s a personal chef in Seattle, very busy woman. She has a boyfriend and she has a daughter with this boyfriend. The daughter’s about four or five years old and she’s a very busy woman. She’s a busy mom. Every day is driving to a different person’s house and cooking for them. That she cooks five-days-worth of food in one afternoon. She’ll have maybe two clients a day. So it’s just like go, go, go, go, go. She made a post on Facebook that was really beautiful. To all her friends she said, “Listen, you guys say I’m a great mom. You say I’m a great entrepreneur. You say like wow you’ve got your whole life together. How do you do this? How do you pull it all together? How do you have a successful career and have a great relationship and you’re also like a really attentive as a mom? How do you do this all?”
She goes, “Listen, I do it because I see my therapist three times a week. I sometimes see them more than three times a week. My therapist helps me stay successful and stay sane.” She goes, “Everyone should have a therapist. Everyone should have a mental health counselor. It should be like going to the gym. You go to the gym three times a week. You go to your therapist.” She goes, “That’s why I don’t explode at my boyfriend and that’s why I don’t completely like go off the rails with my kid. When my kid’s frustrating, when my boyfriend’s being crazy and when my life is being insane I don’t take it out on the wrong people. I don’t take it out on people. I don’t blow up at people because I am able to like deal with it and work through it with my therapist. Then I am a loving attentive mom that is present to my daughter. I don’t bring my work home with me. I’m able to be intimate and loving and vulnerable partner with my boyfriend because I don’t take my frustrations out on him.”
So she just basically said to all our friends the same mission that you have. She wants everyone to know that healthy human beings go to therapy. That if we’re not going to therapy it’s sort of like not taking a shower and not going to the gym. If you’re not really having that like checking in with yourself a mentally and emotionally, then there’s like some like dirty laundry being built up in your closet basically. So, I love that she pointed out that we could use therapy like a mental gym and just keep ourselves fit and healthy mentally and emotionally.
[1:49:46] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely. That is what we’ve got to do. I take my own advice. I tell my patients, “Look, you’re spending too much time on your cell phone.” Two years ago I took a 60-day break from internet on my cell phone and all that. It’s hard doing what we do and not having connections online. I can do it, you can do it.
[1:50:14] Ashley James: I love that. Yes. I know you have a whole talk about the phone and how it increases, it’s been shown to increase anxiety and depression. We want to, even though people are probably listening to this on their phone, but we want to spend less time with electronics and spend more time with real people, more time with connecting with ourselves. Before we hit record though you said something beautiful about going outside. Would you like to wrap up today’s interview with that?
[1:50:40] Dr. John Huber: Well, that’s where I was going to go.
[1:50:41] Ashley James: Is that where you’re going. I knew that’s where you’re going. Awesome.
[1:50:42] Dr. John Huber: That’s where I was going to go. One of the best things, we have to get connected. We have to get back to being human. I do it. I mean it’s 28 degrees outside and my wife just thinks I’m nuts. I go outside, I take my shoes and socks off and I put my feet on the ground. I just breathe, focus on the stars, focus on the possum running across the fence line down the road. Just be and breathe.
There’s research out there about being in physical contact with the ground and what it does to your neurochemistry and your brain. My goal is to make about 20 minutes. Sometimes it’s really cold, but cold and rainy is the worst. I don’t know if I do five minutes on some of those days, but I try to do it every day. I got my little chairs sitting out there right next to my hot tub so if it gets real cold I can jump in a hot tub and keep my feet on the ground. Sometimes I’m out there for an hour and a half with my feet in the ground. My dogs love it. They come curl up around my feet. It’s really funny because when I first started doing it they didn’t know what was going on. We have rescue puppies who’ve been abused and stuff like that. Now, man, they come in they get between our legs and kind of wrap themselves around us. It’s like they’re trying to help us make that connection, it’s like they picked up on what we’re doing.
[1:52:10] Ashley James: I want you to listen to, I’ll send it to you. I have an interview with Clint Ober on grounding and earthing. He did, I believe it was 24 scientific studies where they prove that –
[1:52:23] Dr. John Huber: Yeah, I read some of his studies. I haven’t read all of it.
[1:52:24] Ashley James: You did? Okay. Awesome.
[1:52:27] Dr. John Huber: I would love to hear the interview.
[1:52:28] Ashley James: Yeah. He has a great story that when we ground ourselves or you could use a grounding mat if you don’t want to go outside, but the going outside part is fantastic. You’re connecting with the Schumann resonance, you’re connecting with the earth energy, but when you put your bare feet on the ground you’re releasing electrons. So there’s an actual measurable anti-inflammatory effect that happens because we’re releasing all these excess electrons that are causing damage. That’s the connection between the mental and emotional body. The physical body and this energetic body that we have. You’re bringing it all together in that moment when you’re spending time outside in nature breathing, feeling your body, connecting back with the earth just releasing and letting go of all that excess energy and connecting with the universe. Then you can start to process your day in a way that is cathartic.
So, it’s beautiful. I love that advice. I think we should all do it. We should all get out in nature more and put our feet in the ground and just breathe. Thank you so much, Dr. John Huber, for coming on the show today. Listeners can go to mainstreammentalhealth.org to check out your nonprofit. Of course, all the links to everything that Dr. John does is going to be on the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Is there anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?
[1:54:02] Dr. John Huber: I always like to say and remind people that you should always leave something for somebody and a good something. For example, the things I’ve learned today about your interview style made me feel extremely comfortable. I think it helped me open up a lot. So I really appreciate you giving me that during the interview. I want to remind everybody that life is really what happens while we’re making plans so just buckle up.
[1:54:31] Ashley James: Buckle up and love yourself and love each other. Thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure. I can’t wait to have you back on the show.
[1:54:40] Dr. John Huber: Awesome. I can’t wait to be back.
[1:54:43] Outro: Are you in to optimize your health? Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com, takeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.
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Highlights:
In this episode, David DeHaas shares with us what colon hydrotherapy is. He shares different stories and testimonials of people that have undergone colon hydrotherapy. He shares how the health of the people who have undergone colon hydrotherapy has improved.
Intro:
Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. When it comes to building true health, no stone should be left unturned. Today’s episode is going to turn over a few stones that might not have been on your radar and it’s very exciting. Colon hydrotherapy is something that for some people is the missing link, the key, the final step to helping them get to the next level in their healing. So, it’s very exciting that we have on the show with us a man who specializes in colon hydrotherapy. He teaches us everything we could possibly want to know about cleansing detoxifying and restoring our health using colon hydrotherapy. We just jump right into the interview. So when we start, it’s just jumping straight in. We just start going, hitting the ground running so I know that you’ll really enjoy this wonderful conversational interview today.
I want to let you know, if you’re interested in becoming a health coach and it’s something I’m very passionate about. I think everyone can benefit from going through the training that IIN provides, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. They have an excellent special going on right now and for listeners, they give us a significant discount. I negotiated with them. I asked them to give the Learn True Health listeners a great discount. So they do provide and a wonderful discount. Now, starting next month, starting in March, the price of admission for their online year long and also accelerated six-month health coach training program goes up by $800. So the best time to join is now. If you join by payment plan you receive $1,500 off by mentioning the Learn True Health podcast. If you sign up as a paid in full for your admissions you get two thousand dollars off. So that’s a very big count.
They also have other sales going on. So just when you call IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, talk to the salespeople there. They’re low pressure. They don’t pressure you. Most of them are health coaches. In fact every time I’ve talking to someone on the phone there they are health coaches themselves and so they love talking to people and helping them to plan out their goals. So if you just want to plan, a goal planning session with one of the admissions staff there, you can talk to them and plan it out and see how becoming a health coach either for personal development, personal growth reasons or for professional reasons or both can benefit you. So you can pick their brains, you can ask for more information.
You can also go to learntruehealth.com/coaching. That’s learntruehealth.com/coaching, which gives you access to a free module of IIN so you can get a feel for their program and see if it’s right for you. I highly recommend just googling IIN. That’s just the letters IIN and then calling them and talking to them and just getting more information from them and picking their brains and have them help you to see if health coaching is right for you and if the health coach training program is right for you. Because they are wonderful people. This entire program is designed to help us understand how to heal the body physically with food as medicine, mentally and emotionally help you do it for yourself and for others. So the best time to join is now. The best savings is now.
If you want to know my personal experience of going through their program or you have any questions for me, please feel free to reach out to me. You can reach out to me on Facebook. Come join the Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook group or you can email me ashley@learntruehealth.com. I’d love to hear from you. Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. It makes a really big difference to our friends of family to help them, to give them all the tools, to help them achieve true health. Let’s turn this ripple into a tidal wave and help as many people as possible to Learn True Health. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day.
[0:04:40] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 412. I have been on your site but I forget, what town are you in?
[0:04:54] David DeHaas: Boise, Idaho.
[0:04:55] Ashley James: Boise, right. Idaho, that’s not too far from me.
[0:04:58] David DeHaas: Where are you at? You’re in Seattle aren’t you?
[0:04:59] Ashley James: Yeah, yeah. I mean it’s still a day. I could drive there in a day.
[0:05:06] David DeHaas: 19 hours. Yeah. You’ve been doing this a while. You’ve been doing this for what? You got about 300 something episodes?
[0:05:13] Ashley James: Yeah. We have 407, I’m publishing 407 today. I started four years ago in March.
[0:05:22] David DeHaas: Wow.
[0:05:24] Ashley James: Yup. 2016. March 2016.
[0:05:27] David DeHaas: So, I just started a podcast a bit ago. Had some of couple of cool people on. You know who Ann Louise Gittleman is?
[0:05:35] Ashley James: Yeah, yeah. I’ve interviewed her. She’s awesome and her husband. You got to interview him too.
[0:05:39] David DeHaas: What? I don’t know anything about him.
[0:05:41] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I interviewed him too. You got to definitely check him out. He beat cancer. You should listen to my interview with him because it’s wild. He escaped the hospital. They were killing him with the chemo. He actually broke out of the hospital and drove away. He’s like, “I am never going back there.” Anyway, so he healed his cancer after that. His journey of health is what led him to meet Ann Louise. So now they’re together, but he now interviews people on YouTube who have beat cancer. He has this one interview that is wild and will blow your mind. This guy healed his cancer with an $8 deworming medication used in animals. Apparently, it really works. A ton of people, tens of thousands of people have used it and reported that their cancer went away. So they figured out there’s five reasons. It actually turns back on the body’s, the immune system’s ability to detect the cancer. But the pharmaceutical knees don’t want you doing it because it only costs $8 and it’s over the counter.
[0:06:51] David DeHaas: Well, it’s kind of like me. I used red salve. Cost me what, $10.
[0:06:57] Ashley James: Well we should get into that in the interview. That would be interesting. So anyway, yeah Ann Louise Gittleman. That’s great. You got her on the show. Now that you’ve had her on your show you should interview her husband because he’s wild. Well I mean you could contact them and get his information, but I can give it to you too. Yeah. James Templeton is his name.
[0:07:17] David DeHaas: Yeah. When I had Nicholas reaching out to people, reaching out to you for example, yeah. I didn’t get to talk to him of course. She was a blast. I mean I’ve watched her on because I think she’s a member of I think I-ACT. I’ve spoken there many time International Association of Colon Hydrotherapy.
[0:07:37] Ashley James: Well, I knew her because when I was like 10 years old or nine years old or something like that, our family got worms. So we got tested. The test show that we got one parasite from Mexico and two parasites from owning cats and dogs. My mom brought home her book Guess What Came to Dinner. We read it and we got on a cleanse. Isn’t that funny? So, I’ve known her for so many years. So to interview her was kind of a trip.
[0:08:09] David DeHaas: Yeah. I’ve had that book forever. In fact I thought the book – yeah I’ve had it for a long time. Did you know that when she was a young gal, she was in New York City and she was telling me in the podcast she said, “So I was at New York City. I was working in this hospital, this kid come in. He had leukemia and I determined he had whipworms and heavy metal poisoning.” She says, “We did a lot of colon hydrotherapy, a lot of cleansing,” and I go, “Whoa, whoa, who. You mean the hospital had a colon hydrotherapy?” She goes, “Oh no. They didn’t.” I had to go and search really hard to find a colon hydrotherapist because this was in the 1970s. She says, “So he got completely cured,” and she says, “And I got fired.”
[0:08:48] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. Of course she would get fired.
[0:08:51] David DeHaas: It devastated her. She went away for a year and then she said, “I’m going to go back into this field. I’m going to get back on the horse,” so to speak. Yeah, isn’t that wild?
[0:09:00] Ashley James: Oh, that’s so wild. What’s the name of your podcast?
[0:09:03] David DeHaas: Detox with whole body cleansing.
[0:09:06] Ashley James: Great. Well, we’ll make sure the links to your podcast is in the show notes. Yeah. In the show notes of this episode. So listeners can check it out. Normally I do a really formal start to an interview, but since you and I just got chatting and it was so cool I think I’m just going to include our chat in the interview. So, we already got started. David DeHaas, it’s so good to have you on the show this is going to be so much fun. I know you’ve listened to my show. You know my interview style is a casual conversation where we get to really dive into some interesting information. When your office reached out to me to come on the show, I was thrilled. I love colon hydrotherapy. It’s a tool that not many people know about. I think a lot of people are really afraid of and there’s a lot of misconceptions. So I’m really happy that you can demystify colon hydrotherapy and show us that it’s actually a very powerful tool that we can use for healing and it’s safe and effective and gentle. So, welcome to the show.
[0:10:15] David DeHaas: I’m glad to be here.
[0:10:17] Ashley James: Absolutely. You’re really passionate about holistic health. You yourself have a story. Can you share with us your journey that led you to want to specialize in colon hydrotherapy and Naturopathic medicine and helping people to heal their body naturally?
[0:10:36] David DeHaas: Yeah. I didn’t choose to be here. I think I’m more of got chosen, but backing up years ago when I was a young lad, I started having children. We had an issue with my daughter. She had been vaccine injured. Our house cleaner says, “Go check out this guy. He’s a homeopath.” I go, “What’s that?” This is 1991-ish, somewhere in there. So it began there and then it was like, “Oh, there’s a whole another world here.” I was always kind of sick, not sick. I mean, if you looked at my physique you’d say, “Okay, this guy is really healthy,” and doctors would tell me that, but yet I was always tired, aches and pains, walk like an old man in the morning. I mean, I hurt all the time. I love to play basketball. I was just, it take me an hour to warm up to play. It was like, “What’s going on with me? I’m 30 years of age.”
So, eventually I met a gal and get this, she had no credentials. She was learning iridology and herbology. She was in a little farm in Dietrich, Idaho and a little a single-wide trailer house on a little dairy farm, seven kids. I went and sat on her couch and she looked at my eyes she says, “Oh my gosh.” She says, “How often do you go to the bathroom?” I go, “I don’t know. Maybe once a day, once every three days sometimes. Why?” She goes, “Well, you need to cleanse. You need to do some colonics.” I go like, “What’s a colonic?”
So, she shared with me. So, I said, “Okay.” I mean I’m always been the guy that’s, “Okay, what else is out there?” I’m always the curious cat. I’ll try anything once, maybe twice. So, I was looking to get better. So then I met a lot of cool natural, like all-natural healers. Many of them didn’t have any degrees, no backup but they were very very wise, very very sharp. So that’s where I began with colon hydrotherapy model myself and I actually started in my own home. In the meantime I was transitioning from a real estate career to a career in network marketing talking about nutritional supplements. So that path kind of led me to explore, got me to traveling. I got to travel around the world and I got to meet a lot of really cool people that knew a lot more than I did and other people did.
I mean one time, I had fungus on my feet so bad my feet were black, it itched like crazy. I was like, “What am I going to do about this?” The doctors looked at me and says, “I don’t know what that is. It’s not fungus.” I’m going like, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s fungus.” So finally I realized, I got to figure this out on my own. I had to become the master of my health. So I’m a voracious reader. I read all the time. I fall asleep at night reading all I can about health and nutrition because I had to get well. I knew that one day I might have cancer. I’m lying in bed at 38 years of age thinking like, “Am I going to live to see my kids graduate from high school? Am I going to be able? Am I going to be on earth in 10 years?”
Eventually I found out I did have cancer. By the time I knew I had it, I already knew what I would do if I had cancer. So I didn’t go the medical route, I went David’s route. Part of that was doing deep tissue cleansing with colon hydrotherapy. So, long story short, eventually I thought I set this business up for my daughter to run, which we did, but I was only going to be referring people to her. I was going to be involved at all. That was not my path, I thought. Anyway, long story short I was just watching the amazing changes. I got all of Dr. Bernard Jensen’s books. I was reading about Dr. Bernard Jensen. In fact, I just interviewed Dr. Ellen Tart Jensen a few weeks ago. Oh my gosh, amazing stories. Anyway, divine intervention basically inspired me to stick around here and do more than just be the connector. I mean, I’ve always been a networker. I’ve always been the connector, the one who’s telling the story, who’s getting people involved in whatever it may be. So, now here I am teaching and leading the world to understand that colon hydrotherapy is an easy, effective, it’s not embarrassing, it’s very private, it’s easy to do. Once you do it, it’s no different than showering. It’s just basically a shower on the inside. Here we are.
[0:14:41] Ashley James: Right. A lot of people who are don’t realize that the gut is on the outside of us. We think that when we put something in our mouth it’s now inside our body. Anatomically really, the gut is just another part of us that’s outside of us because it hasn’t been absorbed into the bloodstream yet so it’s still technically outside of us. It’s an interesting way to think about it like the inside of a doughnut is still outside of the doughnut not inside the doughnut. Thus, cleansing the colon, you could think of it like washing your skin. Cleanse your colon. People who have eaten the standard American diet often have the fecal matter caked on. It dried up and caked on. There’s a very unhealthy biofilm that can accumulate parasites and be an environment for unhealthy things to thrive in our intestines.
So I love that you said, you take a shower on the outside then we should do some colon hydrotherapy. Can you tell us a bit more about the history of colon hydrotherapy? Because obviously, cavemen weren’t washing their colon. So, how did this get started?
[0:16:06] David DeHaas: Well, doing enemas and cleansing actually goes back into the age of the Egyptians, in the Essene Gospel of Peace back in Jesus’ time. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, they actually discovered that back in that day the Essenes advocated for cleansing. I don’t have the script in front of me, but basically it said this, go out and find a long trailing gourd the height of a man, clean out its inwards and fill it full of water warmed by the sun and stick it in your hinder parts. Let it run every day until the water runs as clear as the rivers foam. You will see every evil foul-smelling thing of fear come out of you. Fear, false emotions appearing real. So, there’s a whole emotional connection to this as well. So, 2,000 plus years ago there was not 80,000 chemicals, right? There wasn’t cars and automobiles. Why were they saying you should need to cleanse? Because we have fear and our autonomic nervous system runs 95+ percent of our innards, our insides. That colon in the small intestine can get twisted and distorted. The average person listening to this podcast, that’s you out there, is packing 12 to 15 pounds just extra gunk plus parasites.
What’s amazing about the intestinal tract is you have the surface area the size of his tennis court in your intestinal tracts. It’s about 30 some feet long. More neurons in it than your spinal column. Every organ and part in your body, whether it be your eyes, your ears, your spleen, your heart, your kidney, your liver, your legs, your arms, your ears, connects to the intestinal tract. So basically, how it lives is how you live. If you’re packing around parasites, which every one of us are. If you’ve eaten pork you got parasites. If you’ve had sushi, you definitely got parasites. Have you walked barefoot, have pets, have sexual relations you’re just passing parasites back and forth. So, we all have parasites. They outnumber us. You cannot avoid them, but we want to minimize the amount that we have. They’re pooping and peeing in us and maybe create their own energy. You definitely get rid of them.
I mean, think about full moon. Full moon, those parasites are birthing new babies. What happens on full moon? Well, if you ask the hospitals, the police departments, the fire departments they’re busy because people are doing things they normally wouldn’t do because the parasites, their beings, their energy and they will make you do some crazy stuff. Some more than others. So, it’s really important to understand that that 30 to 36 feet of intestinal tract is very important to know how to manage it. Back in the early 1900’s you had two amazing pioneers, Dr. Harvey Kellogg who was a gastroenterologist himself. Who after doing 20,000 surgeries says, “You know what? There’s got to be a better way. Well, what if we do cleansing?” So, he’d bring people to Battle Creek Michigan where he would do enemas and do all his cleansing and teach them how to eat right. After that, most of his patients all but after 40,000 treatments, all but a handful needed surgery.
So you’ve run 20,000 surgeries to just a handful after doing 40,000 treatments. Then he have Dr. Bernard Jensen. Dr. Bernard Jensen was very sick and he discovered cleansing and was one of the developers of developing the current day Colema Boards and Colon Hydrotherapy systems. So, it saved him from his disease. So he began teaching others. Here, he became a chiropractor and of course became known to create the iridology charts. He treated over 350,000 people in his day. Most amazing story about all this is at age 88, Dr. Bernard Jensen got prostate cancer. Now, I have seen many people who through bowel management and deep tissue cleansing using colon hydrotherapy have healed their prostate cancer including my dad, which I’ll share that story in a bit.
So anyway, he gets at 88 years of age. He gets down to 88 pounds after having prostate cancer and he gets hit by a car. He’s paralyzed in the waist down. Now, when you get down to 88 pounds at age 88 the doctors told him chemo wouldn’t work. Well, first he healed himself from prostate cancer then he got smashed by the car. So, now he’s down to 88 pounds and the guy says, “Okay, well it’s going to be a lucky boy for you to live.” He says, “Okay, I’m a lucky boy.” So he went, get this, he went to North Idaho. Sought out a doctor friend of his to help him out and be his coach. Now, the moral of this story is that everyone needs a coach even everyone who knows what to do. Basically, this guy coached him through Jensen’s own process. He needed to get away. He need to get to Southern California where his ranch was. He get away from everyone to just focus on healing his body. He healed it, he did. He went back to work. I have met some of his students who in the early 2000s, prior to him passing at the age of 93, took classes from him in iridology.
So he completely healed. His daughter-in-law, Dr. Ellen Tart Jensen, told me that she says, “Yeah. I think he would live to be far older than that but he had so much he wanted to express, so much he wanted to get done. He began teaching. He was a tireless worker. He just worked all the time.” But anyway, he recovered and lived until 93. God bless him. Amazing person that brought this technology to us. Of course since then, the colonic beds had become really very sophisticated and very easy to use, very private. Much easier than what they used to do in the old days. So, pretty cool story.
[0:21:54] Ashley James: I bet. Very cool. One of my mentors, Dr. Wallach, who was a veterinarian and a pathologist before becoming a Naturopath says that prostate cancer, men who die from prostate cancer die from the treatments not from the cancer. It is such a benign form of cancer that is so, it’s one of the most easily reversible forms of cancer. The best thing to do is to wait and watch and not let them poke it and prod it and administer the chemo and surgery and all that. He says that if you have it, that’s the kind of cancer you go really slowly into any form of treatment like you just sit and wait and watch and do natural medicine because he has seen so many men reverse it. That the men that give in to the chemoradiation, surgery will die within five years. The men who don’t do that and do natural medicine survive. He says you could live years with prostate cancer because it’s not it’s one of those ones that are very benign. It doesn’t metastasize quickly.
So, he really warns people to just slow down and don’t jump into the chemoradiation, surgery route, the cut, burn and poison route, but to slow down and look at all your options and see if you can use natural medicine. Of course now there’s Naturopathic oncologists out there who will work with their patients and help them to navigate natural medicine. You mentioned that you had cancer yourself and you healed it. I didn’t catch, what kind of cancer did you have?
[0:23:40] David DeHaas: So my cancer showed signs of exiting on my back in the form of a mole, but it also was connected around into my liver. Let’s go back to prostate for a hot moment. I got two great stories to share with you. The first was when we were just getting involved in this, there was a guy that came and he had his PSA number was over 42. He’d been measured by the University of Utah at least three times. He was trying herbs and different things, parasite cleanses and so forth, which is all fantastic. He did the deep tissue cleansing with the colon hydrotherapy and he went back and he got measured and his PSA number had dropped to zero. So, the doctors looked and says, “Must have made a mistake. Let’s measure him again.” So they measured him three different times. They say, “Well, either our machines were all wrong the last three times you were in or you’re a miracle.” He says, “Yeah. I guess I am.” He didn’t tell them what he did.
My dad’s story though, my dad was amazing. My dad knew something was up, went to a doctor, doctor says, “Yeah, your PSA is about 13.” Within about a month it’s up to 38. So of course they say, “Well, it’s fast-acting…” I talked to my dad and I say, “Well, yeah there’s an oncologist here, but I think what you need to do dad is you need to get back on and do some more cleansing.” So, he’d already done some cleansing. I think he had already done a couple of 10-day treatments, but he went to the oncologist and says, “Yeah, with spot radiation we could probably get it down to about seven-eight but it’s going to come back. When it does, nothing we can do.” So my dad says, “Okay. All right.” So he started the spot radiation and he started cleansing same day.
Before he was finished with his 10-day protocol, the numbers had already dropped significantly. The doctors looked at him every day going like, “This guy’s just changing so fast.” They gave him two years to live. My dad has lived 12+ more years. Very healthy, very active. He can do anything a 50-year-old can. In fact, he and my sister put up 10 cord of wood in three days last fall. His PSA number has been 0.00347 ever since. He just did another 10-day cleanse. He’s 86 years of age and he’s looking great.
[0:26:04] Ashley James: That’s cool. It would have been interesting if he had done the cleanse and then waited to do the radiation to see if he even needed it. Because now it’s like someone could argue, “Oh, the radiation was what did it and everything else is just placebo.” The fact that he is still here 12 years later and still super healthy. I could not do that. I couldn’t cut that many cords of wood. So, he’s definitely healthier or more physically fit than I am right now.
[0:26:32] David DeHaas: Yeah. The doctor looked at him and says, “Do you want to just do your own thing?” Dad says, “Well, maybe I should do both.” Anyway, it was a hard decision for him to make.
[0:26:42] Ashley James: Yeah, it is. A hindsight, yes, but you know what, he made the right call. He’s still here today. He’s still healthy. So, he listened to his gut. I think that’s really important to listen. Don’t go to a doctor that tries to pressure you into anything but instead educates you on all your choices and allows you to listen to your own intuition after giving you fully informed consent. So, the fact that he wasn’t pressured into anything and that he was given his choices and he got to make his own choices and he was empowered as a patient is really important. I think that also helps with outcome, patient outcome when they believe in the process that they’re going and they’re actively part of choosing it. So, I love that you shared that.
Interesting about PSA numbers for the men listening and for the women with men in their life, Dr. Wallach says that now, this is something they didn’t always used to do, but just watch when a man who’s about 40 or 50 years of age, that’s when they start to get their prostate tested by their doctor. You bend over and cough and all that. What Dr. Wallach says is now, doctors will test. Basically put the finger up the rectum to palpate the prostate, which irritates the prostate. Then they take their blood work. He says that artificially will elevate PSA levels because you stimulated the prostate. So he says to get accurate levels, get your blood work done before you have your prostate checked. So, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that, but I thought that was really interesting because you can get some false positives from taking the blood work after getting the physical exam or falsely elevated.
So, yeah. Can you just explain what a colon hydrotherapy session is for those who have never heard of a colonic before?
[0:28:45] David DeHaas: Yes. So most people have heard of an enema. So, this is a lot more than an enema. An enema you’re going to put a little tube with a bag full of about to two pints of water, maybe a quart. You’re going to get on the floor and insert the tube in your rectum and you’re going to put the water in there. Then you’re going to go, “Oh my gosh, I got to get on the toilet and let go of this.” Now, in a clinic session you’re in the privacy of your own room and you’re on a specially made bed. There are two filters that filter the water and kill all any bad things that should be in the water. There’s a rectal tube, it’s going to be inserted into your rectum about an inch, inch and a half. The farthest that tube can go in is about three and a half, four inches at best so it can’t hurt you, it won’t harm, it can’t poke a hole in you. There’s no danger.
[0:29:31] Ashley James: It’s the size of a pencil so it doesn’t hurt.
[0:29:33] David DeHaas: Size of a pencil, yeah. Size of a pencil. Then you’re going to turn on the water and you have on there, our systems we use you have control if you want to turn it off but now that water comes in. In a session, about 45 minutes to an hour, you’ll have about 15 gallons of water that’s going to gently go in and go out. So it’s kind of a washing machine action if you will. So water is going to go in and the fecal matter is, anything that’s in there very hard, if you’ve got pockets of diverticula for example, that’s going to help dissolve that. Those can pop out of there. You’ll begin basically to create peristalsis. Most people, is listening, are constipated. Now, they may go once a day well the problem is, that’s not enough. If you eat, what’s that food doing? If you eat three times a day you should be pooping three times a day. If you’re eating twice a day you should be eating and evacuating. Most people do not and so what happens is because of stress, the colon gets distorted, twisted. The colon should be about three inches in diameter. It get as big as sixteen.
[0:30:36] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.
[0:30:37] David DeHaas: It can also become what we call spastic colon, which it can get down to maybe half-inch, inch. So now we’ve got a blockage especially if you’ve got hard stuff. We’ve had clients come in I mean regularly. This is a regular deal we’re doing. Have them go in once every three or four days, once a week, once every two weeks. I’ve had a client that came in here, once a month. I mean that’s just shocking to me. How do you go once a month?
[0:31:07] Ashley James: Wait a second. They only pooped once a month?
[0:31:11] David DeHaas: Once a month.
[0:31:12] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. That’s really dangerous.
[0:31:16] David DeHaas: Especially in women, a lot of women got taught that you shouldn’t fart, you shouldn’t have anybody smells. So they will hold on. When you do that holding on, which is what I used to do that’s what created my constipation I think, part of it. Now you’ve taught that colon to constrict and you get constriction in your colon. Some people are embarrassed to go poop in public. I’ve known schools where teachers go, “No, you can’t use a bathroom until we go to recess. You got to wait until you go to lunchtime.” Of course lunchtime where they give you 15 minutes to quickly eat, go out to recess and get back and sit in the seat. So, you don’t have time to properly go evacuate. So we create this from 3our children the taboo of not going in public, not going using a public restroom. I know many people I’ve interviewed that said, “I’m embarrassed to go poop at work or when I was going to school.” That’s usually when it starts. A lot of people for severe constipation started sometime as a young child or maybe in their teen years or a lot of people in their college years when they had some emotional traumatic event happening. Maybe it was a bad deal with a boyfriend or a lot of stress in the classes at college.
It’s pretty amazing to see people get on the colonic bed. What that’s going to do, that whooshing action is going to re-get that muscle start to push back and recreate peristalsis. First, you got to clean out that 12 to 15 pounds. The average person on a 10-day cleanse loses about 12 pounds, the average.
[0:32:48] Ashley James: That weight loss, you’re not saying is fat. You’re saying it’s caked in fecal matter that is toxic and fermenting and decomposing inside of them causing toxic buildup.
[0:33:01] David DeHaas: Right. So think about the neurons. You have more neurons in your gut than your spinal column. Neurons are like little cellphones. What would happen, Ashley, if you cover up your cellphone with poop? Would you be able to get a call? Well, no. So, in your gut these neurons aren’t firing and wiring the nerves. So, if those nerves aren’t firing and wiring, you’re going to have an issue in your body. So it’s triggered by there. Give you an example, I referee a lot. I had what I thought was a groin pull. My left leg hurt. Now if you look on an iridology chart, the connection to the groin is just on the, if you feeling your left side of your body down low on the left by your leg, that’s the connection in the colon to the groin. So I think like, “Dang it. I can’t referee this week and I got nine games coming up. This kind of bummer.” I had to lift my leg in and out of bed. It really hurts. So I thought, “You know what, I’m going to do a colonic.” I did a colonic. I got it done and I went home and thought, “Wow, 85% of my pain is gone. I think I could referee.” So I went out two days later and I refereed. I refereed nine games. I was like, “Wow. That’s amazing.”
I had a hip pointer same thing. Those aren’t very sore. I was refereeing one night then, “Oh gosh, I can’t run anymore.” Same thing. Came to the office late at night, did a colonic, pain next day was gone. So it’s amazing to see the connections. I’ll give you another example. I had a contractor. Been swinging a hammer with his left arm and shoulder for 40 years. Now he couldn’t do it. So for four months he went away and he did parasite cleansing, which is great. He did some chelation therapy. That’s all fine, but the problem was he had an issue in his colon. I said, “Look, until you clean this out, it’s not going to get better.” He says, “Well.” He’s just so embarrassed to come in. He’s just so embarrassed. So he didn’t want his friends to find out. So I talked into doing three colonics. Did three colonics and says, “Oh, I get it. I’m feeling starting to feel better.” Five days later, he walked in the office and he could swing his shoulder and swing a hammer again.
[0:35:07] Ashley James: I love it. That’s really interesting that there’s this connection between the colon health and the health of the rest of the musculature and the nervous system.
[0:35:19] David DeHaas: We’ll watch face color change as we’re going around that. We take 10 days to do our 10-day wellness retreat. Each day they’re getting deeper and deeper and deeper. We’ll literally watch the color on the face change like the sun coming up in the morning. We’ll see it go all the way around the face. It’s pretty amazing.
[0:35:36] Ashley James: Wow.
[0:35:37] David DeHaas: So a little bit more about digestive. So people don’t realize this, but in your small intestine, well first of all most people don’t chew well enough, right? That’s where everything starts. Your mouth should be your blender. I got a little ditty. I say, “No. The thing you got to do is chew, chew, chew because it’s the right thing to do. Chew, chew, chew cause it’s right thing to do.” Make your mouth be your blender. Masticate that food, the saliva comes up. Now starting to the digest. Enzymes are being created down below. The pancreas is getting fired up saying, “Hey, I got some stuff coming my way.” The gut acids are starting to be produced. Now, when the gut or the stomach receives, it’s starting to do its thing.
People who have acid reflux, for example. What do the doctors give them? Stuff just to decrease acids. You want more acids. You want those digestive acids, juices to help break down the food and then flow into the duodenum and then to the small intestine. Once it gets in the small intestine, now we got the food. What happens, it breaks down further. The gallbladder, if you still had your gallbladder, has squeezed out some bile to break down fats. Things are breaking down. Now you have about the surface area the size of a tennis court of what I call shag carpet.
So shag carpet is what is called a villi. Villi is what absorbs the vitamins and minerals that have been broken down from the food you eat, into the bloodstream to go the cells. Because at the end of the day, what we got to heal? We got to heal the cells. Let’s heal the cells. But the highways to get there, the small intestine, the colon and the blood, the blood if you’re getting stuff dropping into the blood that shouldn’t be there, well you’ve got a problem in your intestinal on tract. They call that leaky get, in other words the junctures between those shag carpets, the villi, gets really big and now stuff drops in there and the body says, “What the heck? This is bad,” and attacks. Now you get a label called leaky gut or I’ve got food allergies or food sensitivities or I’ve got lupus or fibromyalgia. No. What you’ve got, you got a very toxic body.
Let’s reduce those toxins. Let’s clean up the blood. Who cleans up the blood? The liver, but the poor liver, the poor thing, it’s like the furnace filter. If you never change your furnace filter in your home pretty soon that furnace is going to blow up because there’s no airflow. If you don’t change the oil filter in your car, guess what, eventually the car’s going to break down. So that liver does about 2,000 different transactions and one of us cleaning up the blood. So people now are changing, “Well, I got a thyroid issue. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, my hormones are out of balance.” Yeah. They are because your blood is dirty. The poor old liver can’t do everything it needs to do.
So pretty soon you’ve got, and I see this in young kids today, teenager, young adults. I’ve got fatty liver. Well, a fatty liver is a toxic liver. In other words, your body is really toxic. Pretty soon the liver says, “Well, geez, I’m full. Let’s see, what else I can do here. Oh, I know. I’ll create fat. I’m going to create some fat stores.” Now people are gaining fat. They’re going like, “Oh my gosh, I need to go into weight loss. Maybe I’ll do this diet or that diet.” Maybe they’ll lose some weight and they gain it back. They go, “Why am I gaining my weight back?” I tell you why, you’re toxic. I’ve seen people with gastric bypass. Oh my gosh. They come in here they go, “Yeah. I did well. I lost 180 pounds, but now I’ve gained back 30.” I’m looking at them with their dark circles under their eyes and their skin is very patchy and greyish. I’d be like, “Yeah. It doesn’t surprise me at all. You’re really, really toxic. We got to drop the toxic load. You’re never going to be able to keep off fat.”
So, I always say first order protocol, the amount of heavy metals and pesticides and all these parasites pooping and peeing in you all this toxicity, let’s clean out that. Let’s clean that stuff out. You’ll feel better. You’ll have more energy. Your joints won’t hurt. It’s just going to change. I remember when I first cut to do my first one, I walked onto the court, played basketball. The thing that hit me was like, “Oh my God I didn’t have to stretch out for 45 minutes.” I didn’t have to jog for a while. I just went out and played. When I got done I had no body odor. I went, “Whoa, no body odor. Wow. That’s amazing.” So, yeah. Getting this deep tissue cleansing is the best amazing gift. The coolest thing is, because I see people come in here all the time and they’ve got arthritis.
So let’s just take Megan. This a great case. Megan came in, 32 years of age, about a year ago. Deep dark circles under her eyes. Had two kids, basketball player in college, amazing athlete, but now, all of a sudden, she started getting fatigued and not feeling well. Gets married and has two kids, she’s teaching school and she could just barely get through the day. Her dad’s a physician. He tried everything. They put her on Adderall at one time to give her energy. Of course, they gave her the diagnosis, “It’s all in your head. You’re depressed.” Well, heck yeah she’s depressed. No one can figure out what’s going on. She tried all kinds of different things. I mean long list. I walked in, I looked at her. Of course I knew right away. She filled out her intake form. I looked at it. Of course the first question we ask is, “How do you poop? What’s it look like? What’s the smell like? What shape is it in? Is it diarrhea-type? Is it fluffy-like? Is it little rabbit pellets?” So, she of course explained that to me. I go, “Yeah. No one’s ever ask you how you poop before have they?” All these years she goes, “No.” I say, “Yeah. Basically Megan, you’re full of poop and you need to do some cleansing.”
So she did. Everyone wants to stick their toe in the water and say, “Okay. I’m kind of nervous. Should I do this?” Then they go and they do their first colonic. They come down and go, “Okay. It feels a little better.” They do a couple more. She did our 10-day protocol a year ago. Oh my gosh. She went from pooping once every 3 to 4 days to pooping daily. Dark circles went away. We then nicknamed her Miss Sparkle. Her mother and father looked and went, “Whoa. What happened to you?” Kids had their mom back. She’s able to get through the day easier. I mean before, she told me when she went to the zoo with her kids for a day she’d have to sleep for three days. At age 32. There’s lots and lots of people like Megan. So if you’re like Megan listen to this. You got to find a colon hydrotherapist. You got to do some deep tissue cleansing and not just one or two. You need to do more than one or two. When you’re constipated, I tell people that you’re going to have to do 7 to 10 immediately and then it’s going to take a while to rebuild that muscle and get that back. You’re going to get it back. Everyone’s different. I don’t know how long it’s going to take you. But I can tell you this, I did a bunch of colonics early on and then we figured out this whole 10-day process. I have now done 500 colonics. Someone say, “David, why have you done 500 colonics?” Because I keep feeling better and better. I’m 62 years of age and I’m doing stuff I couldn’t do when I was 30.
[0:42:16] Ashley James: I love it.
[0:42:17] David DeHaas: Four years ago I refereed 55 basketball games in the span of three weeks, 21 days. I figured I ran about 15 plus miles a day and went skiing on Sunday”. I thought, “Oh my gosh. That is such amazing that at 58 I could do that.” I know. I’m like this old miracle. I’ve done a lot of research of course throughout the years. I’ve met people who’ve been in the industry a long time. We all get reinfected of course with the ball of pollution we have. You’re going to get reinfected, it’s just life. So, think about it, the Essenes were saying 2,000 years ago, “Let’s cleanse.” I say to you today, if you want to be well, your first protocol, bowel management. What’s the bowels look like? How do you poop? Let’s get that well first? Because what if it does work? It’s so cheap. It’s so inexpensive compared to everything else. I mean everyone comes in here they spent, like I did I spent lots and lots of money, hundreds and thousands of dollars to try to figure out how to get well. You can do some colonics for very, very inexpensive. Average cost of colonic across the country is probably around $100-$125.
[0:43:23] Ashley James: It’s a lot cheaper than getting on medications and needing a surgery and being depressed and sick.
[0:43:30] David DeHaas: Oh my gosh. I had a gal come in here. Oh my god. This is a cool story too. So she came in on a Monday. I showed her around. She says, “Okay, I want to do your 10-day wellness retreat.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “But I got seven doctor’s appointments this week.” I said, “Okay.” She says, “Can we work around this?” I said, “Well, are they really necessary?” She says, “Well, they’re all checkups.” I say, “Well, your choice but if it was me, I’d probably hold off. I mean, that’s about 14 hours of your time. Wait 10 days. Let’s see what happens.” She says, “Okay. I’m in.” So she jumps in, 10 days later different lady. Didn’t have to go to the doctors, which doctors don’t want to hear that.
I always say to people, “Look, this might not be a totally a 100% fix, but if we get your gut clean, if we get the body functioning, you’re able to absorb the nutrition then you’re going to be able to change. If you go to your Naturopath or whatever, you’re going to give absorb those nutrients. The amount of money you spend is going to be a lot less and you’re going to make your Naturopath, your homeopath look like a champ because you’re getting absorbed. Chiropractors, same thing. I got some chiropractors in town who know what we do. They’ll talk to their clients, they’ll find out, “Oh yeah, the adjustments aren’t working, right?” He says, “Hey, well how often do you go poop?” They’ll tell them, “Oh you got to go see the poop guy,” which is me. Dr. Rosie calls me Dr. Pooper, the poop daddy, yeah.
[0:45:00] Ashley James: That is so funny.
[0:45:01] David DeHaas: Anyway, so we get them in here. Then they go back to her or their chiropractor and guess what, the adjustments work because neurons are firing and wiring. You got to get things firing and wiring. If you’ve got toxic gut, it’s not going to fire and wire properly. We got to get that clean, get the gut clean.
Lymphatic fluid. How many people that you’ve interviewed have talked about breast cancer? People don’t understand that lymphatic, taking out lymph nodes. Lymph nodes are not an accessory. They are a very important part of your anatomy. So think about lymphatic. To paint a picture, you’ve got about 800 lymph nodes in your body. What it does is it basically, think of it kind of as a fancy sponge with a kind of suction tubes and there’s these little nodes. They’re kind of a one-way flusher. Then what they do is they pick up the intestinal fluids from around the capillaries of your body. It sweeps it up and it takes it up and it dumps it in your vein. Now, for it to get there there’s no pump. The pump is us jumping up and down and running and moving. Most of us don’t do that enough.
So, we have a machine, we have a vibration machine. We put people on and help move that lymphatic fluid. Most people get done they start itching. I go, “Yup, that’s a sign. Your bucket’s full. Your toxic bucket’s really full.” So now that dumps that fluid, 45 pints. Now you got 10 pints of blood, so put that into perspective. The blood’s got to pump, it’s got the heart. Lymphatic doesn’t have that luxury. So we got to be moving. Most of us don’t move. So it’ll be a mini-tramp, these vibration plates like what we sell here and use here, awesome. Two minutes on that is like one hour of work. So, they’re great. So we put them on there, we’re moving that, we’re getting that lymphatic fluid cleared out, it’s dumping into the blood, poor liver’s getting hit with more toxic soup, but as we do that those lymph nodes are not going to get stagnant.
We had a guy come in and he had, I mean, really a lot of blockage and his lymph nodes under his left arm. So we put on that vibration plate and had him basically wipe his hand across his armpit and in five minutes he had stuff moved out of there. Of course you need to do some liver cleansing. So, that’s the other part of what is really important to be doing but you can’t do liver cleansing until you’ve done colon cleansing. Because if you’re doing coffee enemas for example which, is pretty popular today, what that does, coffee enemas basically help you stimulate the liver to kick out bile, which is great but if your colon, small intestine’s toxic, guess what, the liver says, “Oh my god. There’s some toxic stuff down there in the colon. I better reabsorb that.” Now you could get sick.
[0:47:29] Ashley James: Let’s break that down though. I think you’ve hit so many important points and you spoke so quickly. Those that have never heard this before may not have fully gotten the lesson. The liver removes toxins from the body. Actually, we’ve had a few guests discuss this in detail, but there’s a really interesting system where it’s almost like part of the immune system that tags, like attach a tag to a toxic chemical to be removed from the body like pesticides and also even hormones. When women are finished with estrogen, the liver converts it into a non-active form of estrogen to get rid of it. Too much of that though can become a toxic level of estrogen and have estrogen dominance. So we have hormones that the liver has to get rid of. We have metabolites the liver has to get rid of. Then we have all of the 80,000 chemicals in our food, water and air plus the artificial crap that’s in our food today the liver needs to get rid of it.
So the liver is getting rid of healthy, though doing healthy functions, but then also all the unhealthy stuff that’s in our diet the body tags it, the liver detects it, the liver pulls it out of the blood, puts it in the bile to then be released into the small intestine and to hopefully exit the body quickly through our poop. But if we’re constipated, meaning if we are not pooping three times a day, we’re constipated. If the poop slows down then it gets reabsorbed because bile is a very costly thing for the body to make. So the body is really smart, it will reabsorb as much bile as it can. The problem is that when we were invented, when God invented us or however we arrived here, there weren’t all these chemicals so it was safe for our body to reabsorb some bile. Now, there’s obesogens and Bisphenol A and microplastics. All of these horrible chemicals, 80,000 plus chemicals in our environment and in our food and water, that the colon cannot tell the difference between healthy bile that it’s allowed to reabsorb and bile that actually has attached into it these toxins.
So by having a slower poop basically, having slower bowel movements, we are now reabsorbing these toxins. If we are really constipated as women, we can reabsorb toxic form of estrogen that it gets reactivated and it’s an unhealthy form. So there’s a lot of bad stuff that can go on by the bowel not moving healthfully enough. So we’re obviously, most people are not eating enough fiber, that’s one thing. Most people are chronically dehydrated, that’s another. But then you’re saying most people don’t have a really great diet, most people don’t have a great microbiome, a healthy microbiome, most people have dysbiosis of some way like bacteria, parasites, fungus, yeast. They’ve got some kind of overgrowth, some kind of imbalance. If you’ve gone on antibiotics you likely don’t have a healthy gut biome, unless you really, really, really worked at building a healthy gut biome. So we have that going against us, then they have years and years of eating highly processed crap food, the standard American crap diet like dairy and meat, will rot in the intestines especially if they have constipation on top of that.
So, we have toxic foods. We have toxins getting reabsorbed into the body. We have gut dysbiosis. Now, the colon itself, the muscles have been overstretched, like you said, don’t have tonicity. So now physically we have a problem plus all of the nerves that are around the gut and 70% of the immune system that surrounds the gut that has now been compromised. The microvilli that you mention or the finger-like projections like a shag carpet that help absorb nutrients are not functioning because they’ve been whittled down. Also the small gaps in between them, those junctions in between them, have been compromised. So now there’s leaky guts. We are absorbing partially digested particles, which the immune system is reacting to creating these illnesses like you mention, creating the immune system to overreact to foods and create allergies.
I know many people that heal their seasonal allergies after changing their diet and cleansing. So, all of these things domino. Changing one thing may not make a huge difference like, “Oh, I ate more fiber,” or “I drink more water.” You’ll notice actually people do notice some positive results, but it’s really this is accumulation of a lifetime of toxic colon that has just tipped over. Now the person is in pain and stiff and feels like they’re 90 when they’re 30 and is fatigued and just downing the Starbucks every day because they have to just get through the day. They don’t know what’s wrong with them and they go to their doctor, which MDs have almost zero training in nutrition. They have something like five hours of training. They don’t have the tools to teach you what to do. They never ask you how your poop is unless they want to give you a drug. Meanwhile, this is the beginning of health. The beginning, the root cause, the beginning of health is in the gut. So I love that you’re painting this picture that it all starts here, but it also all dominoes here.
So we have to look at all of those factors. If you have had a lifetime of this, then changing everything but not doing colon hydrotherapy is really you’re missing a big key. You’re missing a big component of healing if you still have a toxic colon. So that’s why I think this so important because for some people, it is the last missing key that puts everything back in place.
[0:54:16] David DeHaas: Yeah. The picture I always paint is imagine if you left food in your refrigerator that got moldy and rotted for maybe two or three months or two or three years or how about twenty years or thirty years, right? You can’t just throw a probiotic in there or fresh food and expect it to change. I mean, “I’m taking probiotics.” That’s great, but the problem is, I mean, it’s not going to help much because you’re so toxic. Well, we got to clean out the refrigerator. You mentioned some good points. Most people are dehydrated. I was one of those. Makes a huge difference. Give you another great example of a story. A lady came to see us 84 years of age. Her poop problem started when she was in her 20s. In between children, she had her gallbladder out. Next child she had her appendix out. They did a hernia. So hernias, appendix, tonsils the trifecta there says to me you are constipated and of course she was. I remember after her second colonic she called me and she says, “Oh my gosh.” So she just got done cleansing, right? But she went home and she had to poop. She says, “David, that’s shocking.” Because she goes once every four or five days. All she could do all day long is just sit in a chair. She said, “I can get up make breakfast, the rest of the day I’m just sitting there.” When she was done she goes, “You know what, I’m 84, I’m going to go back taking up painting. I’m going to start doing some fun stuff.”
It’s funny too, I get people come in and they go and they’re kind of hunched over and they’re shuffling and their joints hurt and they’ll tell me, “Well, I really don’t have anything wrong.” They got arthritis, they got brain fog. I look at them I go like, “Oh man, you’re only living part of your life.” I mean they say, “I’m normal.” What’s normal? Jack LaLanne, in my opinion, that’s the normal I want to be, right? I want to be able to pull a rowboat across the San Francisco Bay with my teeth at 72. I want to be still strutting around and working my buns off at 90 something years of age. I mean, that should be the normal. Dr. Jensen, he had people hired all around the world and interview and really research who’s living long and why are they living long. Of course he did truly determine, it was all because of nutrition value they were getting. Their teeth weren’t falling out because they were getting proper nutrition. We don’t get proper nutrition. We’re buying stuff in boxes and our stores are a 100,000 square feet when we basically need about 3,000 square feet for produce and a few meats. We’re eating out of the wrong kind of cookware. We’re eating out of the wrong type of containers. You should be drinking out of glass. You shouldn’t be drinking out of plastic. You need to throw away your Teflon pans, those non-stick pans are one of most toxic killers. I mean that stuff is just – when I got cleansed, when I got my body cleaned out, what’s really amazing, now here’s a guy I mean as a kid I raised hogs. I loved pork, I love bacon. Everyone loves bacon, right? So, what I noticed after getting clean is if I eat a food that’s bad for me, if I eat pork, I begin to sweat. If I eat out of a pan, if the food’s been cooked in Teflon, I break out in a sweat. I literally get a, I guess you might say a fever. My body or my teeth will hurt. My body will tell me, “Bingo. Dude, you just put something that they shouldn’t put in.”
When your teeth are well, they’re secreting a fluid. When they’re not well they’re taking it in. That’s why we get cavities. So, if your body is really at homeostasis it’s going to give you a sign. So, I don’t even go close to touching any of those foods anymore like I used to.
[0:58:24] Ashley James: I love that you brought up plastics. Don’t eat out of plastics or drink out of plastics. I interviewed a Naturopath that was, oh shoot. What’s one of the Beatles that’s still alive? Not Ringo, the other one. Paul McCartney.
[0:58:40] David DeHaas: Yeah, Paul McCartney.
[0:58:41] Ashley James: Paul McCartney’s wife and Paul McCartney were big vegan activists. She would travel with them and she would bring all of her own food with her. She ate a whole plant-based diet. So when she got breast cancer it was really curious. She was eating so healthy, why’d she got breast cancer? Well, unfortunately she came to this Naturopath and I interviewed him. It was really fascinating because he does a lot of work with cancer. I think he’s in Arizona. He’s a really old school. He’s been, I think, practicing for 40 years. He said, “Let’s test.” He figured it out. He actually figured it out. He goes, “Tell me about your routine for the last 50 years. Tell me about your routine. Paint the picture.” He figured out that she was bringing all of her own food. She’d cooked beautiful, beautiful vegan food and put it in Tupperware containers and bring it on tour and heat it all up in the microwave. Then eat her food heated up in plastic. Well, they tested her tumor. They found the exact, he said, “Bring me your Tupperware.” They tested the Tupperware and they tested her tumor. The plastic in her Tupperware was in her tumor. Unfortunately, she came to him too late to save her life, but they got to the root of it. Because there’s so much now we know, so much more now than back then that plastics are endocrine disrupters. The body does not know how to handle them. So, if the colon is backed up and the liver is backed up, the body really doesn’t know how to handle it and also can’t eliminate it. It gets built up and built up.
So, what happens is the body then puts it in our fat cells and stores it there and it disrupts our endocrine system. So it’s just so bad. We have to definitely be cautious. I keep saying this in the podcast. If you want to be a statistic, if you want to – one in three people will have a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. That’s the truth in the United States and in all the industrialized countries, it’s very similar statistic. One in three people are diabetic or pre-diabetic, one in three people have obesity. The number one cause of death is heart disease. So, here we have these statistics. If you want to be a statistic, keep doing what everyone else is doing. Keep doing what the masses are doing. But if you want to beat the odds and not be a statistic, you have to be a salmon and swim upstream and be the oddball weirdo that doesn’t drink out of plastic, that doesn’t have Teflon that doesn’t do what everyone else is doing. I have right here beside me, you could hear this, this my mason jar. I drink my water out of a mason jar. I like drinking a lot of water.
[1:01:42] David DeHaas: Awesome.
[1:01:43] Ashley James: So, I got my mason jar here. We travel with all of our food in the glass version of Tupperware basically. My husband bought me as a gift because I told him I wanted it. So, a big purse that’s actually a thermos. You could get them at Bed Bath & Beyond. I cook all my food at home. We pack it up in these glass containers and bring our own. We don’t you do one-use plastics so we bring our own utensils. When we go out for the day, we bring snacks and bring healthy food with us. We just went to the zoo with our son the other day. We sat by the zebras and I had brown rice, steamed green beans, instant pot sweet potatoes. We just sat there and ate that. I think we had some fruit also. But you have to be kind of oddball. You have to be the black sheep. Yeah. Some people are going to think you’re weird or criticize you. You might lose some friends but those people weren’t going to support you in your health goals. You’ll find new friends and find a new community that are totally into wanting to be healthy.
I just got to this point where it’s like I rose above it. I’m like, “Yeah, this who I am. I’m that oddball health nut that won’t eat something that isn’t organic. You know what? Because my body notices the difference.” Because when I ate the standard American crap diet, I was so sick. I was in my 20s. I lost my 20s. I did not get to enjoy my 20s. I was so sick. I was a prisoner trapped in my body and I was incredibly ill. I’m in so much pain emotionally and physically from being sick. I had to really make some big changes. I’m still making changes. I’m still adjusting. I’m still growing. I’m still gaining health.
You’re never done with this. You’re never done learning to be healthy, but it does start with this mindset. I think that when you shift to this mindset of I’m going to do the opposite of what the masses is doing and look towards natural medicine, then going and sticking a tiny tube up your butt and washing your colon with water really isn’t that far-fetched.
[1:04:05] David DeHaas: Well, exactly. I was like everyone else. I was the addicted two Reese’s peanut butter cups, two Snickers bars, 5-6 Coca Cola’s a day, hardly drank water.
[1:04:21] Ashley James: Well, you only ate two Reese’s? Isn’t there three Reese’s in a package?
[1:04:24] David DeHaas: Well, back in the day it was two.
[1:04:26] Ashley James: Oh, okay. I was going to say what happened to the third one man? It’s three Reese’s for me.
[1:04:29] David DeHaas: I got gypped. Anyway, of course there’s Big Macs, fries, Burger King, Wendy’s. Yup, that’s all the fast-food. That was the life that I knew. I remember people telling me, “You need to drink more water.” Why do I need to drink more water, I’m drinking Coke, right? So, when things get bad enough you got to start making some changes. I always convey to people, look at it, whether you’re a meth addict, a heroin addict we’ve had smoking people coming here that’s been smoking for 40 years can’t quit. It’s all the chemicals. What happens now is your autonomic nervous system it goes like, “Yeah, we want those chemicals, David. You know what, we’re going to turn things on to make you go get those chemicals. We want that Snickers. We want that Reese’s. We want that dose of heroin. We want that cigarette.” It’s all the same. The addiction’s an addiction. It’s just that your body’s been conditioned to fire and wire based upon what the chemicals you’ve given it.
So, when we start detoxifying the body, I’ve had people smoked for 40 years and in three or four days they’re like, “You know I had no craving this morning to smoke, David,” or “My sugar, I tried to eat sugar and they didn’t taste so good,” after the fourth or fifth, sixth day when they’re in here. Sometimes the first day we were getting them organic soups and juices. In the first day, “Oh, I didn’t like that so much.” But day three or four they’re like, “Oh, that was really good. What was it?” I go, “Same food we had the first day.”
So, your autonomic nervous system, look at it, it’s telling you, “Dude, give me a cigarette.” You’re going like, “Well, I don’t want to.” Of course there’s people that will, “Just do mantras and look in the mirror and say I am smoker-free and I am going to run and blah blah.” Anyway, you can say that all you want to your brain. Your autonomic nervous saying, “Dude, it ain’t going to happen dude. We got you wired. We got you where we want you. Give us some sugar. Give us some smokers. Give us give us whatever.” So, the transformation, you know it’s a couple steps forward. Maybe it’s half a step back and you keep going forward, you keep doing more cleansing and the toxins start pouring out. Those skin issues you had, the can’t sleep at night, you got the frequent urination going on, you’re walking like an old man. All these things can be healed and changed but we’ve got to begin within. Chasing it with chemicals is not going to chase it long-term. So we’ve got to get this cleaned out well. When you do that, when you get the parasites out, you get the heavy metals start to flowing out. Now your hormones start humming a little better. You start getting, “Oh, I’m making some progress.”
So then, things begin to change. But yes, it’s a process. You got to begin someplace and begin doing it and just don’t stop, keep going.
[1:07:19] Ashley James: I have a fun, fun story. My experience with colon hydrotherapy, when I was a kid I was totally grossed out by it. My mom brought me to Dr. D’Adamo, the man who wrote the book Eat Right for Your Blood Type. He was our Naturopath when I was six, not his son. He’s passed away because he lived a ripe old age. His son now has continued on the legacy. So there’s Peter D’Adamo and James D’Adamo. So the father, the original D’Adamo, he was my Naturopath growing up. I went from being very sick to being incredibly healthy overnight. It was amazing. He looked at my eyes and my ears and took my blood. He said to me, “You are allergic to milk, yeast, wheat and sugar. Stay away from them.” I looked at him and I knew those were the ingredients of chocolate bars because my favorite chocolate bar was a Coffee Crisp, which isn’t sold here, it’s a Canadian chocolate bar, at age six. I said, “Well, when can I have a chocolate bar?” He said, “Once every blue moon.” I thought that meant once a month so I was pretty happy about that. Little did I know my life was totally going to change. We came home and she threw out everything in the pantry. We basically ate a more whole foods diet, switched to soy milk, really gross thick soy milk because there wasn’t really cool options like there are now. We went wheat-free. So, we didn’t eat much gluten because we were wheat-free. They didn’t know what gluten, gluten wasn’t a thing back in the 80s.
So we just ate a lot of real food: brown rice, legumes. We did have meat because he said O blood type should eat it and lots of vegetables and I took his supplements. Overnight I went from being sick all the time to not being sick once. If I caught a flu, it lasted 12 hours. If I’d get a fever, I go to sleep, I’d wake up I’d be fine. I even had German measles and it was kind of like a three-day cold. It wasn’t that big of a deal. I just sat around and watched some movies and then it was over. It was pretty interesting that my body was buzzing with health. Then I hit 13 and I rebelled. I stopped the supplements and I started eating all the cafeteria food at school. I totally rebelled against my mom and all her hippy woodoo, voodoo health stuff because she was totally into it. I spent my teenage years totally rebelling. I paid for it in my 20s and then I had to spend all my 30s up until now reclaiming my health. So, I’ve had the experience, it’s sort of like rags to riches to rags to riches again.
In that, in my childhood, my mom would go for colonics. She’d come home and tell me how amazing it was. I think she was a wackjob, crazy and thought that was the grossest thing in the world. Of course a 7-year-old or a 9-year-old or a 12-year old doesn’t want to hear that a doctor is putting a tube up their butt and water and all that stuff, but my mom would say, “You can see your poop and you can see what’s coming out of you. It’s so cool. There’s this little viewing tube and you could see stuff.” My mom totally thought it was the coolest thing. Her girl friend who’s Japanese saw a giant tapeworm because the water comes out slowly and there was this viewing tube. She saw a giant tapeworm as long as her intestines and she stopped eating sushi that day. I was just like, “Are you kidding me?”
Interesting that Dr. D’Adamo’s clinic when it was in Toronto, they would use an enzyme in the water from a cactus. Have you ever heard of this? It wasn’t just pure water, it was water plus an enzyme that they said would also help to break down the stuff that was kind of caked on. Have you heard of that?
[1:11:07] David DeHaas: No, I haven’t.
[1:11:08] Ashley James: Yeah. I’ve talked to a lot of other colon hydrotherapist and no one’s ever heard about it. So, I was just really curious that they would do that in the water along with everything. So, my first experience was my mom basically telling me it’s cool. Of course I’m a kid so I think everything my mom tells me is not cool. That I had to come back around and realize how cool it actually was. I wish my mom was alive today and I could go back and tell her, “Oh my gosh, everything you said it was right.” It’s so funny. We come around. We come full circle and we realize our parents were right.
When I was really, really sick in my 20s I had some sessions of colon hydrotherapy. It felt as though I got some relief from it, but I hadn’t changed my diet, I hadn’t changed anything else so it wasn’t a permanent lasting change. I think I did about 10 sessions in my 20s. I got bought like a punch card with this woman, like a whole package and kept coming back every few weeks. Like I said, I didn’t change anything else. So, you can’t just do it and keep eating crap food and keep smoking and keep drinking alcohol and still think that it’s going to save your life. It’s really helpful but you have to also make the changes throughout your whole life.
Then back in 2011, I was probably at the peak of my, well almost at the peak of my sickness. I had gone organic. We had figured out to eat organic food, which stopped my constant chronic infections. I thought that was really neat that just by switching to organic, my body responded really quickly to that. I still had polycystic ovarian syndrome. I was still type 2 diabetic. I still had chronic, chronic adrenal fatigue. I was exhausted all the time. I couldn’t lose weight. No matter what I did I was constantly dieting and constantly felt like I was a failure because I would fail every diet. What happened was I get really sick every time I lost weight. Well, I didn’t realize until years later my liver was so backed up that every time I lost weight my liver couldn’t process all the toxins being released from the fat. Then I would get very sick and I’d have an over toxic reaction.
Well, in 2011 I met a Naturopath who got me on supplements and told me to go gluten-free. He told me to eat more whole foods. Within days of doing that I started to drop pounds of water like just pounds of water came off of me from cutting out some bad foods. What’s really interesting is that I noticed that my body put off an odor and my stool put off an odor, a heavy, heavy burning rubber. Like if you ever smelled tires, like car tires that were burning. It was a stench so putrid and it was coming off of my breath, off of my body odor, but mostly out of my bowels. I was feeling really off. So I called this Naturopath and I told him what was going on and he said, “You need a colon hydrotherapy session now.” So I called up the one in Seattle. It’s called Tummy Temple. I called them up and I was their last appointment of the day and I went in and it was like amazing. It was amazing. So I had already, I changed my diet. I was on supplements. I was moving in a healthy direction but then adding the colon hydrotherapy was exactly what I needed. The funny thing is, you know it’s serendipity. The colon hydrotherapist, it turned out she used to be the neighbor of my Naturopath. They actually knew each other on Vashon Island. So, it was just really neat how it all came. It all kind of was confirmation. She’s like, “Yeah, who sent you?” Then I told her and then she goes, “Oh my gosh, we used to be neighbors. I’m friends with his wife”
So, I just thought that was interesting because he was in a different state so I didn’t think like, “Why would they know each other?” But that was confirmation. So I did about 10 sessions. In addition to the eating healthier way, in addition to supplements, in addition to everything I was doing, it was the final sort of key. I dropped 25 pounds in that month, between the water weight that I lost. My ring size went down one-and-a-half ring sizes so I know I lost water weight. My rings went flying off my hands. Six months later they were still flying off my hands so we got them resized and that was nine years ago and my rings still fit fine. So I really lost a ton of water weight kind of edema and inflammation. I know I also lost whatever was caked on in there in my gut.
My husband, his bowel movements for his whole life were between one poop every week sometimes two poops a week. I didn’t know that about him until we started working with Naturopaths because they asked. That’s something I didn’t know about him. Because it’s not like you follow your husband around and want to know like what he’s doing in the bathroom. I thought that was really crazy because for me at least I went every day. I knew I did but he was going like once a week. So he had some colon hydrotherapy sessions, which were great. What really helped him though was eating a gut-healing soup and I have the recipe on my website. It’s just a soup that is just filled with cabbage and beets and other gut-healing vegetables and we made into a puree. He drank it every day for one meal a day. So he still ate all the other food he ate but he just added it. So for one meal a day he had the soup. After seven days, and that was coming up on six years ago, he now goes three times a day.
[1:17:14] David DeHaas: Woohoo.
[1:17:15] Ashley James: I know. So, food can also heal the gut. The food could harm the gut and food can heal the gut. But colon hydrotherapy was we both used it at this moment in our life when we made the shift. We shifted our diet to eat heating healthy food. We shifted supplement. We shifted our lifestyle. We started drinking water instead of crap. Shifting everything and then adding colon hydrotherapy was like I don’t think we would have gotten the same results if we hadn’t added it, if that hadn’t been part of shift.
[1:17:49] David DeHaas: Speeds up everything, yeah. I’ve got a couple of chemo doctors who are patients that went through chemo and they’re sending people here to now detox and clean out the body afterward. So some people are going to choose that. Yeah. So, let’s get those chemicals out of the blood and out of the liver. That’s awesome though. I mean, what a big win. Actually, the dairy industry they’ve got a slogan, “Three a day, your yogurt your cheese and your milk. You got to have three a day,” which of course going to make you have asthma and plug up things. I’m thinking, “No, no.” We even have a shirt that says, “Three poops a day.” “Poop like a boss.”
[1:18:28] Ashley James: If a food has to market to you, don’t eat it. When they have to promote something to force you, there’s no commercials for broccoli or kale. The really good healthy foods, the advertising dollars come from an industry that wants to make sure you eat it. So, just don’t take your nutrient nutritional advice from marketing. You know what I mean? That’s just…
[1:18:59] David DeHaas: Exactly. Well, right now I mean, so people are on a celery stick right now, which is celery’s great but it’s got to be organic. If you eat non-organic celery you are just speeding up the amount of pesticides and chemicals in your body. You’re just getting a straighter shot of pesticides, really. So, yeah it’s going to make things, “Well, but I can’t afford it, David.” I say, “Well, you’re going to be spending some money here in the future.” “Oh, but I have insurance that covers it.” “Yeah, but you’re going to be sick and you’re going to die earlier.” So, choose how you pay, choose when you’re going to pay, but an investment now in good food and it’s not that much more. It’s really not that much more. I mean, I tell people. They’ll employ people I said, “Look.” I had a gal come in if I have to call her employer to tell him what she would be doing. She already missed two months of work. She had to cover one eye to be able to see the screen. She couldn’t squeeze her hand to hold the remote. I’m thinking, okay, he’s paying her $10 an hour. I go, “No, you’re not. You’re paying her about $60 an hour because she’s only working, you’re not getting a full day out of her. So I mean about 30% of your employees I mean they’re brain fog. The lack of critical thinking, the no energy to get things done. Everything that slows down and it’s costing the employers in this country. Billions of dollars just in lost time and wages because people are, “I got to get coffee and a doughnut so I can stay awake,” or “Oh, I’m sorry I missed that order. I couldn’t finish that sale because I wasn’t thinking clearly enough. Oh, I forgot to dot the Is there on that contract. Whoops.”
So, this goes deep. I mean, not being able to function and be cognitive is affecting a whole host of industry and businesses.
[1:20:52] Ashley James: But it’s profiting. It’s profiting some businesses and industries.
[1:20:55] David DeHaas: Well, the chemical industries love it, but if you’re an employer and you got people working for you, spend the money. Don’t spend it on insurance. Spend it on getting your body detoxed and cleansed and some nutrition in people. Rip out those Coca-Cola and Pepsi machines. Rip out the microwave, throw that away and let’s get whole food in the gut. Let’s get the gut well.
[1:21:20] Ashley James: Yeah. I had the CEO of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition on my show recently.
[1:21:24] David DeHaas: Yeah, I listened to that.
[1:21:25] Ashley James: You did? Yeah. They have free avocados.
[1:21:27] David DeHaas: I got bowls of avocados. Yeah. Avocados. I was going like, “Awesome.”
[1:21:32] Ashley James: Right, because if someone owns a business and they have employees, “They’re thinking, man free avocados. That’s going to add up. But if you have your employee eating healthy fats, healthy whole foods, that’s a healthy snack instead of some kind of packaged food with MSG that’s going to jack up their brain. The quality of their work is going to be better if they’re eating healthy. That just makes sense. I mean, to paint the picture of the contrast between my life now, the quality of my life now and the quality of my life five years ago, I was on a health kick five years ago. I’ve been on a health kick since 2008. I’ve been desperately seeking health actively, daily every minute of my life and every moment of my life since 2008. The contrast, even five years ago to now, I wake up and my brain is on. I am jumping out of bed. I am effortlessly going to the gym. I was just thinking that this morning in the gym when I was doing cardio, I’m like, “This is effortless. I could not do this five years ago. The feeling of ease in my body and my brain and my brain’s ability to be here with me. Even at night, it’ll be 7:00 at night now. I won’t want to wind down, although I know it’s healthy, I know I should be winding down. I still have my full cognitive ability to be here and to keep going if I needed it.
I thought that was really cool because five years ago, I even then felt really strained in the morning. Brain fog would happen. I’d have to really push myself to motivate myself or I’d need a substance like some kind of beverage to get me going. I don’t have that anymore. That makes a huge difference in the quality of a worker, right? In both respects, I was still on my health path. I was still doing healthy things, but the changes I’ve made in the last few years have made it so that I am like always on. So I’m just thinking, imagine if all of the employees out there were at their 100% capacity? How much more profitable would an employer be? So it really is in the best interest of an employer to invest in the health and the environment, the health of the environment and the health of the individual employee. That makes total sense. What would you say? You think employers should pay for their employees to come do your 10-day detox?
[1:24:15] David DeHaas: Yeah, definitely. If you think about, every business has got their ROI, the return on investment, right?” If you’re missing out on sales. You’re missing on getting things done properly in your business that money is leaking. It’s seeping out of your business. I see it all the time. I’ll give you a great couple of other stories. This gal was about 21 years of age. College wasn’t great for her. She had a hard time with college. So, she was working here part-time and working someplace else. She’d come in here. She’s always smiling happy. Her church sent her on a mission. I’m thinking, “Oh, man. She’s going to go to Boston Massachusetts.” Yeah, go away from home. There’s going to be stress. She’s kind of in that sick not sick state. I told her, “So McKenzie, we’re going to give you a 10-day cleanse.” She was so excited.
So, before they go on this mission I guess they have a talk at the church. She was like, “Oh my gosh. I never talk. I escape talking. I don’t want to be in front of the public.” Now she’s got to go on a mission she’s going to be talking to a lot of people. So, she does her cleanse and during this cleanse, she had to give her talk. On day eight, she’d just done her liver cleanse. She comes in, of course her skin’s looking brilliant. She comes in the door and she’s smiling. I go, “McKenzie, how’d it go?” She goes, “Oh my gosh, it was amazing.” I said, “Well, tell me about it.” She says, “People come up to me after. I talked.” Then they say, “Oh my gosh. McKenzie, where have you been? That was an amazing speech. That was incredible. We’ve never heard you speak like that ever.” She goes, “You know what, David?” I go, “What?” She goes, “I can’t think.” I went a couple of weeks later and she had to speak again. I listened to this and she like knocked it out of the park. The missionaries that have been away for a year or two years, some of them came back. They’ve been out two years. They came back, they talked. She nailed it. I mean, here’s a gal who struggled with school.
So, if you got kids out there struggling with school, you might want to give him some colonics, you might want to start thinking about, “I need to detox and cleanse to get those neurons.” Because brain, let’s talk about brain. Where does the brain connect? Transverse colon. If you got headaches, migraines, brain fog, bipolar all the transverse colon. Our colon hydrotherapist Chandra, she came to us in 2013 and she had been having migraines once a month for 12 years since 9/11/2001, interestingly enough. This put her out for about a week. For a week. 144, and my wife looks at her and says, “Oh yeah, you got parasites.” My wife’s amazingly intuitive. She goes, “I do?” She says, “Yep.” So she does the 10-day process. Guess what, it’s been six years, no migraines.
[1:27:10] Ashley James: Love it.
[1:27:11] David DeHaas: I know. I mean, it’s just firing and wiring neurons to nerves. Let’s detoxify the body. If you’re not pooping like we’ve talked about, three times a day. If you eat and you don’t poop, you’ve got a problem. So, let’s poop. Poop well.
[1:27:28] Ashley James: Okay. Well, this idea of parasites being in the biofilm of the gut. The biofilm is like this film that coats the gut. When we have a colon hydrotherapy session we’re washing the colon. Do we lose good bacteria? Does it wipe out the microbiome that’s housing the good bacteria? How does it get rid of the bad stuff but not get rid of the good stuff?
[1:28:01] David DeHaas: Great question. Okay. I’m getting back to my refrigerator analogy. If you’ve got old rotting gunky stuff in your trunk, in your colon guess what, your microbiome is already destroyed. If you’ve had antibiotics, your microbiome has been destroyed. We’ve got to clean it out and re-establish. So, you’re not going to get out all the bacteria. I mean, this colon hydrotherapy session is going to go into your colon. It will not going to go into your small intestine, but once we get the colon working right, guess what’s pulling it’s creating peristalsis and then stuffs coming out of your small intestine. We’re doing some other things up top to push things through. Once you start cleaning that out and getting that well and you give it a way to move, then you can put again like putting fresh fruit in the refrigerator that’s been cleaned, there’s no molding anymore. Then that microbiome is going to be reestablished. Look at it, my feet were totally black. I had fungus, severe Candida `yeast and I was able to use cleansing to reestablishment. I had psoriasis. My arms, it blew up. Oh my gosh, it was so horrible.
Let’s think about what happened to old David? Well, when I was young kid my mother says, “Oh, I think I should have the kids. I think I should take them to the dentist. I think I’ll go take him to Dr. so-and-so, okay.” So, of course he was one of those that was the drill fill-in bill and next thing you know I’ve got a cavity. Every time I went to him I had a new cavity. I got what in my mouth? I got mercury? Then later, “Let’s put a gold filling in there, David, that’ll be better.” No. So mercury, and I met Dr. Hal Huggins in 2004, I had 13 amalgam fillings and a root canal. I got them all removed at once. Had to go out of the country to do it up to Toronto. He supervised it. But what was amazing is that when you have mercury leaking yeast Candida is there to protect your body from mercury from converting to methyl mercury, which is far worse. So, of course I had yeast Candida, which means I’m craving carbohydrates. So if you’re craving carbohydrates and you’ve had mercury in your body and by the way, there’s so many sources of mercury. If you’ve had them out and you didn’t have them out properly and even if you did, there’s still mercury in your tissues of your body.
So it’s a process of continuing to cleanse out the body and using chelators and herbs and things to help pull those out the whole time. But again, if the pathway is blocked things aren’t sailing out like they should be. But I got those mercury fillings out and I went to Huggins the next day and I say, “Oh my god. Doc, I dreamt last night. I saw movies in full cinematic color. It was like freaking awesome.” I used to have frequent urination at night. I’d go to the bathroom seven-eight times a night, which means I wasn’t really sleeping. That went away. That went away.
[1:31:04] Ashley James: Interesting.
[1:31:05] David DeHaas: I know. Of course, most people had antibiotics. What do antibiotics do? They destroy everything. So you’ve had your antibiotics, I just had a customer here to cleanse, he had tons of antibiotics every day for a long time. It’s amazing. So, antibiotics are destroying your microbiome. So most people have probably already destroyed it, but we got to clean everything out and let’s reestablish it. You can do that pretty quickly through nutrition supplements and through foods and so forth, but until you get the old gunk out and get that those heavy metals out, it’s a tough go.
[1:31:43] Ashley James: So you, for example, have been doing cleansing for a long time so you don’t have this rotting gunk for 20 years in you. So when you get a colon hydrotherapy session, does that wipe out your good bacteria? How does that work? How do you maintain a really healthy bacterial colony, a diverse bacterial colony in your gut and use colon hydrotherapy on a regular basis?
[1:32:08] David DeHaas: Yeah, good question. So there’s a couple of ways we do that. So we do that with what we call reforestation with proper nutrition. We can do it also with foods, but again, if you’ve got old stuff sitting in there and every once in a while, David will go off and maybe eat some things he probably shouldn’t be, maybe travel, a little stress. So, I come do a colonic and oh my gosh, it feels so much better. So yes, through prebiotics, probiotics, foods, sauerkraut, kimchi. All those things going to help reestablish. You got to work here with your Naturopath or your chiropractor who’s versed in this and your colon hydrotherapist of course.
So, on our 10-day protocol when we people come here and spend 10 days with us, they’ve got about 50 hours of being in our office because we’re doing a lot of education. We’re giving you lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of education. In fact, one gal speaks to me. “Oh my god.” She goes, I would have gone to how many umpteen seminars to even get close to all and spend how much money but I’ve gotten these last 10 days.” So we were to give you a lot of education so you really understand what’s going on so when you leave you really understand how your body works, why you want to be eating those foods. Again, you get rid of the chemicals, now you’re not craving the things you used to crave. We teach you how to muscle test so when you go to the store, hey, people call me “Well, David, should I take this?” I go, “You know what, what’s your body say?” Your body knows. So we teach them how to muscle test so they can go to the store. People always laugh. I always see people looking at me when I’m muscle testing for something. But they do it. They’ll pick up an apple or an orange or they’ll pick up some food in a box and it goes, my body want this, is this safe for my body? They go, “Oops, no. Well, maybe not have that.”
[1:33:55] Ashley James: I love it. It’s so funny. Yeah, kinesiology is really interesting. There’s this gluten-free market. I don’t go there often but once I a while my son wants something processed that’s gluten-free. So we go there for some certain, there’s this vegan bread that’s gluten-free or whatever. So once in a while a treat for him. I was in there looking at some new stuff they had. This woman was poring over these different brands of bread. She’s like, “I don’t know.” She goes, “I normally don’t eat bread. I just really want to try one. I don’t know which one’s going to help me or which one’s going to harm me.” I said, “Have you muscle tested? The guy who works there looked at me like I had two heads. He was horrified. He was just silently horrified I could tell. Somewhere along my life I gave up that embarrassment should bother me. I’m going to be myself no matter what. I can’t control other people or what they think of me. So, I I’m just okay with that. I’m not going to let embarrassment stop me from helping someone.
So she put her stuff down and I showed her. I said, “Have you ever muscle tested?” She didn’t, had never heard of it before. I said, “Put your arm out.” I did the experiment. It’s like think about something you really, really don’t like and just hold your arm, try to keep her arm up. I just push on her arm like with four ounces of pressure. She can’t even keep her arm up. She was like, “What.” I said “I just take two fingers and just push on her arm.” I said, “Okay, now think about someone you love, think about love.” I pushed down on her arm as hard as I could and it wouldn’t budge, I couldn’t move it. I said, “Okay. So now, close your eyes so you don’t know which package I’m giving you. So like your conscious mind can in your fear and just hold it into your energy field and then hold your arm up.” So just with two fingers I’m just gently pushing on her arm. We tested all three and there was clearly one was a very strong. She could keep her arm up. I said, “Okay. This is the one.” She felt it. She could feel. When she really got quiet and felt her energy and felt her body and felt the tension or the relaxation in her body when she held that item, she could feel that there was strength or that there was a weakness that would overtake her depending on which package she was holding. So she thanked me and got that package.
I thought that was really neat that we can use this when we kind of come to a crossroads. Obviously we should use our cognition, read the label. That’s my first step is use my conscious recognition of ingredients. If I don’t recognize, if an ingredient looks suspicious, I don’t need to eat that. If I read it and there’s tons of ingredients in it that aren’t really meant for human consumption, I don’t need that. If it comes to whether I should have an apple or banana, not a banana because I’m allergic to bananas, but whatever an apple or an orange then yeah it can be fun to do muscle testing to choose as one of the tools in our tool belt. I think the most important thing is that we start listening to our own intuition and use muscle testing as sort of like after we’ve checked in with our intuition, after we’ve checked with our conscious mind let’s just check with our neurology and see what our neurology is saying about this item as a third check. So I think that’s really cool that you teach that.
Can you walk us through and pretend like we are coming to your clinic for a 10-day detox and wellness retreat in Boise, Idaho. Beautiful Boise, right? Tell us what it looks like. So do we stay at a hotel? What do we eat? Just tell us the whole thing like we’re preparing to come to your clinic.
[1:37:51] David DeHaas: Sure. So prior to arriving, you’re going to get a book and some videos you’re going to watch. You’re going to get about three and a half hours of just understanding some basic things that you need to be aware of before you come in. The power of the mind, what you eat the supplements you’re going to take and so forth. We give you all the supplements that you need for this cleanse. So everything is inclusive. Then when you come in, so the first morning you come in you probably go back and grab a juice, organic juice. If you’re coming in midday you might decide to have some organic soup. Then you’ll go off and you’ll meet with my lovely wife Wendy, who is an amazing intuitive healer. We have a pulse frequency machine that is called the on-demand. I don’t know if you’re aware of it but we use it and we start muscle testing right away. We want to get the body back to balance. So it’s using pulsed frequency to help, as I say, clear the blockages so that the energy grid in your body is now unblocked so that the power lines are running true.
[1:38:51] Ashley James: Is this machine, you put it on the wrists and on the head?
[1:38:57] David DeHaas: No. Well, there’s a couple of devices. You can put it a couple different ways, but basically there’s one that goes around your neck, there’s one you can hold and there’s one that goes around your belly or your knee or wherever you’re working on. So, you’ve taken your supplements that that morning, there’s going to help there. Then they’re there to move stuff through. Then you’re going to go and you may watch an educational video. For example we are going to teach you a bunch of emotional tools. So we all got our emotional stuff and at the end of the day what create all this disease is your emotional stuff. I mean we pick up stuff from when we were little kids and most of us have got cell memory that we locked on to that bad event that happened maybe it’s someone at recess that said, “Hey, you’re stupid,” or “I think you’re ugly,” or the teacher says, “You’re not going to be very good,” or whatever it was. Maybe you saw a horrific accident or something. So we have cell memory and these patterns keep rolling and we keep creating. So we’re going to teach you a bunch of tools to help break that pattern.
Then you’re going to maybe get on our whole body vibration machine, which is going to help move lymphatic fluid and while you’re on it you’re going to watch another video, another educational piece. Then you may go away on our infrared biomat for a half hour. On some days we may be doing some energy work on you or you may just be in there in a meditative state. You may then go back to my wife for some more instruction. There’s some reading material every day. We give you a lot of emotional tools, we give you a lot of stuff to look at. Some things may resonate with you really, really well and other things not so much. It’s all good because it’s your cleanse and every cleanse we tailor to that person. So, occasionally I get someone says, “Well, what are you going to put my mind? Are you going to like woo?” or people, you better be careful if you go there maybe they might have some religious thing that they do.
No. So, this is your cleanse. When you come here it’s all about you. I don’t care what your religion is or what your beliefs are. It doesn’t matter to us. This journey is for you and you’re going to go through it. We don’t get caught up in religions and all that stuff.
[1:41:03] Ashley James: You yourself are Christian. I saw a cross behind you. So, I know I have a lot of Christian listeners. So you’re a Christian though and if someone came in there Christian you honor their religion. If someone came and they’re of a different religion you honor them like Christ would. You respect people for who they are and where they are. You’re just there to help them heal and love on them.
[1:41:28] David DeHaas: Exactly. It’s all about self-love. We teach you how to self-love yourself. Most people would begin there. We give you the exercise. Let’s say mirror work every day. I love myself. I love myself love. A lot of people, that’s really hard to begin with. I’ve had every religion, non-religion, atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims, cults. I mean, I’ve had everyone come here. When they come to get done they go, “Oh my gosh.” I’ve had one gal and she’s been everywhere with cleanses and in yoga retreats and all this stuff. She found us somehow and she came here from, she passed like 100 colon hydrotherapist to get to us including her own in California. She comes to us, she said, “I just went. My dad died. I wanted to get away. I want to get rebooted.” She says, “I had no clue all this stuff you did.” I said, “Well, what do you get out of it? She goes, “Oh David.” I go, “What?” She goes, “I’m now, at 66 years of age, I get it.” I say, “What do you get?” She says, “I get the connection between me and God.” I go, “Really?” Now, we don’t necessarily teach that but just because of all the cleansing, getting rid of parasites, getting that toxic load out of the body. We serve up all this information, right? I’m going to tell people, “You’re going to gravitate to whatever you need to gravitate to and you’re going to pull from that and you’re going to get what you need to get. I’m not going to get in the way of that. You are going to pick that out.” I always tell people, “When you come here, don’t get overwhelmed because we give you a lot of stuff but be like Nemo.” Remember the movie Nemo? He had to get to Australia to find his dad, right? He’s out there, he’s swimming so hard. He go, “Hey Nemo, get in the flow.” He goes, “Flow, yeah. Get in this current and it’s going to be easy.” So Nemo jumps in the current. Poof, easy path to Australia.
So, that’s the way it is in our journey is that at the time when we’re ready, the information you need and like I say, we serve up a big buffet of information and tools. I’ve had people sometimes like, “No. I don’t want to do that.” I’m like, “Okay, don’t do that.” They’ll be like, “Wow, this is awesome. I’m going to do this, this, this and this.” So, it’s a buffet table of those tools, emotional tools. It’s interesting, at the end of the day as we start, like this gal just said to me, “David, I came here purely for a physical cleanse.” I go, “Yeah, what did you get?” She goes, “I’ve been doing emotional work for years and years.” I go, “Yeah?” She goes, “I just did so much in 10 days. It’s amazing. She couldn’t even put it in words,” So, I hear that all the time. Again, it’s not something we dish up and say, “Hey, you’re going to come here and cleanse emotionally.” Because some people kind of freak out and get worried about that. But the reality is is that if you’re open to it you and you’re willing, it may happen.
It’s been pretty cool watching the happenings. The reason why I’m so excited about this is I get to watch these miracles happen. Not only physically. We have people fill out an exit form where they’ll go put a Google review. It’s really interesting to me how many people say, “Not only did I heal, my eyesight’s better,” or “my Lyme disease is not like it was, it’s gone” or “my joints feel better, I’m walking,” whatever that is, they’ll say, “Not only do I feel physically better but emotionally, mentally and spiritually.”
So, anyway. So you’ll do that. You’ll do [unintelligible], you’ll get in the colonic bed. Usually people say, “That colonic, I really love being on the colonic bed.” So, even if they come in nervous and kind of scared about it they get done and they go, “Yeah, that’s awesome. Give me some more of that.”
[1:44:58] Ashley James: How many colonics do they do in the 10-day cleanse?
[1:45:01] David DeHaas: 10 days.
[1:45:01] Ashley James: Oh. So they get a colonic every day.
[1:45:04] David DeHaas: Every single day. All these tools I mentioned to you, they do every single day. That’s why they’re here five hours. Then they’ll go to their hotel. In the middle of that session they may go get some more organic soup and juice and so forth and hang out. People tell us that they can feel the love. I think we got a really good environment. They feel safe and they’re really able to let go. At the end of the day it’s about letting go, letting God and just boom, letting it happen.
[1:45:34] Ashley James: Yeah. Do they only eat when at your clinic because they’re on a cleanse or do they also eat out at restaurants? What does that look like?
[1:45:43] David DeHaas: Most people do not eat at restaurants. I’ve had a few that that feast for days. They were like, wanted to go have something. But no, they will at the Candlewood Suites is where we recommend most people stay. They’ve got a little place you can cook stuff or they’ll take the soup home from us. So they may have a little something, something, maybe an organic hard-boiled egg or they’ll have some soup. It’s a soft food diet so you’re not fasting. So soft food means what? It means, hey, if you have a yam don’t eat the peeling, don’t have an apple and eat the peeling. Don’t have nuts or seeds, don’t have a salad. We want you to be very soft food diet. We want to give the digestive system a break because you’re pushing things through and moving things through and we want that carpet to re-heal and rebuild and regenerate and it will do it very, very fast. It’s amazing how fast that.
So if you got nuts and seeds you don’t want to put a carpet down over nuts and seeds. You want to make sure that pathway’s clear and open. So, you don’t starve, the food’s good and if you want to eat something else when you leave here, we coach you up on what to eat. So just basically the soft food diet. So that could be some scrambled eggs. That could be anything soft food. But again, we teach people first of all, anything you put in your mouth, you got to masticate. Chew it until it’s juice.
[1:47:00] Ashley James: Chew everything. Everyone all the time should chew their food more. That’s a really great advice because it stimulates the liver and the pancreas to immediately create digestive enzymes and tells the stomach to get digestive enzymes going. We do not chew our food enough. There was a listener, we have a great Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook group. We had a listener once say or once type into the Facebook group something along the lines of, “Do I have digestive problems? I can see the food I ate like maybe it was olives or corn or something but in the toilet basically.” It was funny how many people wrote back like, “You’re not chewing enough. You need to chew your food.”
[1:47:45] David DeHaas: Here’s the song you need in your brain, chew, chew, chew, because it’s the right thing to do. Chew, chew, chew, because it’s the right thing to do. Yeah.
[1:47:54] Ashley James: And you just keep going.
[1:47:55] David DeHaas: Keep chewing. I had a gal. Oh my gosh. She told me she had last eaten popcorn eight years ago and what came out during the cleanse? Popcorn seeds.
[1:48:06] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.
[1:48:08] David DeHaas: My mom had eaten cilantro, I remember this, it came out. There’s a parasite that came out and it had cilantro. I go, “Did you eat cilantro last night?” She goes, “The last time I had cilantro was like three months ago,” but yet this parasite had had it.
[1:48:21] Ashley James: Had what? The parasite was like attached to some cilantro?
[1:48:25] David DeHaas: Yeah. We had, speaking of parasites, oh my gosh. We had a gal that spent about $72,000 over the period of four years taking nutrition and supplements to help get rid of her parasites. She said to me, “David,” and she appear like sick or unhealthy but she says, “God, if I could cut this down,” I said, “Well, let’s just jump on the cleanse.” So she did. She spent fifteen days with us. She had amazing buckets of rope worms. It’s on our Youtube channel. That’s probably the most viewed video.
[1:48:55] Ashley James: I watched some of the videos on your YouTube channel of the parasites coming out of people. It’s pretty awesome.
[1:49:01] David DeHaas: Yeah. Anyway, she took it back to her Naturopath and the Naturopath goes, “What are you guys doing? What’s happening here?” So, yeah. She got out a bunch of them. What’s amazing to me is it’s not the big guys. I get these 4’9”, 117-pound women in here and they’ve got tapeworm 6’, 10’, 12’, 20’ long. It’s like, what? Or nests. I mean nests like softball-sized nests that look like spaghetti coming out. It’s amazing. They’ve been in there for a long time. Don’t think that you have to go to a foreign country to get your parasites guys. They’re around us.
[1:49:39] Ashley James: They certainly are. We started this conversation talking about Ann Louise Gittleman. That was my experience when I was around 10. Our family got parasites and we read her book, Guess What Came to Dinner. It was just amazing to me that people assume that because we’re in a first world country, we have really clean water and we have shoes on our feet that we don’t have any that we’re like, we live in a sterile environment. That we’re sterile. It’s just not the case. Life is dirty and we are animals. We have to get that we’re equal to, we’re on the same level as cows and monkeys that we are animals. We’re animals and so of course we’re going to get parasites because all animals get it because that’s just how it works. It’s our job to deworm ourselves. That’s something that we knew as humans to do and animals naturally do it. In the wild they’ll eat certain foods to help deworm themselves. They just know what to do, but we don’t because we’ve given up our power to the medical establishment. We’ve handed over all of our thinking over to this idea that we go to a doctor and the doctor just takes care of our body like a car mechanic.
I remember something was wrong with our car and my husband just handed it over the car mechanic. Then afterward, my husband was kicking himself going, because he went to school for mechanics way back in the day and he goes, “Well, why did I do that? I know exactly how to fix that. Why did I totally just give over my power and just assume that a mechanic would know, that I don’t know anything and a mechanic knows everything. I know this stuff. I could have done something about it.” That’s the mindset. We get into this mindset that MDs are all-knowing and that we know nothing and that they’ll know everything to fix us, but they’re not taught everything. So giving over our bodies and waiting to get sick and then going to the doctor and not taking any action, not advocating for ourselves that’s the perfect storm to become a statistic.
So, listening to the podcast like this and learning and then implementing everything you learn, that’s how we’re going to get as healthy as possible because we have to be our own mechanic, right? We have to listen to our body and go, what’s going on? Like you said, people say, “I’m healthy. I don’t have anything wrong with me. I’m healthy, but I have headaches and stiff joints and I’m tired all the time and I need coffee to get started in the day and I go only poop once a week.” Well, that’s not healthy. Any symptom means you’re not healthy and 70% of that of the adults in the United States are on at least one prescription medication, meaning at least 70%, at least 70% of the adult population in the United States is sick. Because they’re so unhealthy they need a medication. They’ve gotten to the point where their body is breaking down and is toxic. A medication is fantastic and life-saving when we need it. Unfortunately though, most people wait to get sick and not take the actions needed. So I love, all the listeners here are turning their life around and learning from people like you so they can be the salmon and go swim upstream, go against the grain and turn their life around and be an example of optimal health. Let’s live like Jack LaLanne and we could all live well into our 90s being physically fit. I love that idea. You mentioned liver cleanse in your 10-day detox. What does a liver cleanse look like?
[1:53:36] David DeHaas: Well, the way we do it, we start teaching to you about day four. It’s about a three-day process that we had to go. So you’re going to be taking some things, some supplements and some herbs and so forth. Then you’re going to have a night where you go through a process where you’re going to help clear out the liver. You may see a bunch of bile stones come out, usually most people do. What’s also interesting about that is that usually after liver cleanse day, Ashley, parasites are starting to really jump out. I think a couple of things really happen during that process is that people finally get to day seven or eight and they realize that, “Oh my gosh, I can let go. It’s safe to let go.” So when now the liver is saying, “Oh, wow. We’re cleansing out.” The colon is saying, “Yeah, baby. Let’s go.” Really, that’s the next three or four days they’re on the cleanse it’s more than the previous seven days. It’s amazing.
So, we’ve really got to that point even though we may say, “Yeah. Well, why would I block letting go?” Well, emotionally, remember your autonomic nervous system, the guy that’s out there jacking you up because they’re still wanting those chemicals to be coming, right? So that’s gradually changing. As you’re mentally, emotionally and spiritually letting go, then more things let go. One of the other things we really are cognitive is about teaching how powerful we are and how we can use our own energy to heal. I mean, what do I want people leave here? I want them to be able to go back and understand that they can use their energy to help other people heal as well. I mean, we’re all-powerful beings. It’s just not someone that’s got the special gift. People tell me, “My hands are really hot,” which they are. I can feel energy and I can help boost energy in people. But it’s the person themselves that are doing it.
So, we’re teaching heart coherence, we’re teaching the mind-stuff, we’re giving them as experts what Bruce Lipton has taught us and Gregg Braden and all these. So we’re giving all this these, like I say, buffet table of stuff so that people can really start putting the whole. When I spent 20 years fumbling around, reading all these books and going here and there, we’re giving it to you, serving it up all at once so that you can understand that, “Oh my gosh. You mean, I can go home and lay my hands on my son?” For example, I had a gal that came in. This the wart story I call this.
So, she says, “David, my son’s got warts.” I go, “Oh. Kids are so easy. Get this. This is what’s going to work.” So go home and have your son do these affirmations at night before you go to bed. Just tell him, “I love myself. I love myself. I love myself. I love myself.” Let’s see what happens in a few days. I tried this with my son. My son had got warts and he had warts for like a couple years. We tried all the stuff, natural stuff, unnatural. We tried everything. Finally one day we got the book from Louise Hay and we pulled up what the cause was and she started saying that information and three days later he had warts and he had one on his foot. He’s a very active boy and of course now it hurts to walk. Guess what, the warts were gone in a few days. This gal’s son, same thing. Warts were gone in five days. Kids are so easy. Kids just boom, pick it up because they haven’t been so programmed like us adults, but yeah that’s cool.
[1:56:55] Ashley James: Is it because it turns off the sympathetic nervous response to say the affirmations?
[1:57:03] David DeHaas: Well, okay. I don’t know exactly technically what is happening there. I just do know that when we are putting our energy, our feeling – so Gregg Braden in his book he has the Isaiah Effect. Here’s the story, so Gregg was up in these monasteries in Tibet and he’s asking the abbots, “How do you pray?” The abbot looked at him with a twinkle in his eye, oh my god. Here’s the best question ever, right” Because most people ask the question like, “What do you eat? What do you do? How long you pray?” No, he says, “How do you pray?” Here’s where we all screw up, right” We go to church and let’s pray for Billy Joe. Her husband’s got cancer and she’s not feeling well and we’re saying, “Oh, yeah. Too bad.” We’re sitting there and we’re praying with, “Oh my gosh, so sad.” The abbot looked at Greg and he says, “With feelings.” So if you’ve got the feeling in your body, you change your cells. When you’re happy and joyous and have gratitude and gratefulness and happiness, those feelings change chemistry. So, when you’re saying I love myself, you cannot test negatively when you say I love myself.
When you do a muscle test and say, “I’m going to try to do something.” What’s something you love to do, Ashley? What’s just something you love to do?
[1:58:25] Ashley James: Interviews, podcasts interviews.
[1:58:28] David DeHaas: Okay. So, when you say, “I love doing interviews,” you’re going to test positive for this. When you say, “I try to do an interview. I hope to do an interview. I want to do an interview. Someday I’m going to.” You test negatively. So, boom. All that energy through your cells changes. So when we’re praying or we have a setting an intention and it’s an intention with sorrowness, unhappiness, wishfulness. Look at it, things aren’t going to change. I’ve got a group, this is just something I do on the side, is I’ve read Lynne McTaggart’s book and I’ve taken her courses and we do an intention. We’ve got people on the phone.
[1:59:08] Ashley James: Is that the Power of Eight?
[1:59:10] David DeHaas: Yeah. Power of Eight.
[1:59:11] Ashley James: I’m going to interview her.
[1:59:12] David DeHaas: Oh, awesome.
[1:59:13] Ashley James: Yeah, I’m really excited.
[1:59:14] David DeHaas: Yeah. I’ve been doing it since last summer. We just set an intention. We put the person in the circle and we’re just sending positive energy. Some people feel it and all of a sudden, “Oh my gosh, that pain is gone,” or “This has helped.” So we get into a state of coherence where we’re happy. The reality is, when we get sick, we’re not happy. We don’t have joy. But what if we set the intention like, “I’m healed. I feel great.” You put that joy in your heart, put that happiness, that gratefulness, that relief. Put that through your heart center and express that into happiness. You’re going to change. You’re changing chemically. Now, you may not be healed right then, but over time that you’re changing energy throughout your whole body and things began to change. I’ve had people walk come in here bankrupt or have emotionally bad relationships or pissed at somebody.
I had one gal, she was so mad at men. She’d had a bad divorce. She had men stalking her. She was attracting the negative energy. She comes to the cleanse and she gets done. The job that she was trying to get all of a sudden, boom, they’re calling her. They say, “Hey, we want to interview tomorrow.” Then I go, “You tell me that they haven’t returned a call for six months and now they want to interview you tomorrow?” That happened. She walks out of here and six months later stalking went away, six months later she found the love of her life, got married, had another child.
I had another guy he was cirrhosis of the liver. Get this amazing story, oh my gosh. His face was purple. My son called him Santa Claus. He’d played a little bit too much in his earlier life. I needed some plumbing done. I say, “Dennis, you’re a dead man walking. I need some plumbing, you need some plumbing too.” I said, “Let’s trade.” So he comes over and we put him on the cleanse. I said, “Just be aware,” because the color in his face changed. The purple redness, you see people with a lot of redness around their skin, that’s all liver. That’s usually a lot of heavy metals and stuff. So that all went down and started decreasing. He walks out of here in 10 days later and he calls me says, “David,” I say, “I don’t know what’s happened,” he says, “but my phone wasn’t ringing before that cleanse and now it’s ringing every day. Not only that, I could spend maybe five hours working or some days not working at all. Now I just did 10 hours under a house all day I got energy.” How cool is that?
Recently, get this. Recently Ashley, he says, “David,” speaking of liver cleanses, I remember when he says, “I need to keep doing these and I haven’t. I went in to get some life insurance and they say, “Oh, so yeah. Your cirrhosis,” do they say in remission? I don’t know if that’s the right words or not but he goes, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold it. Hold it. What did you just say?” They go, “Yeah, yeah. It’s paused, it’s in remission. It’s not getting worse.” He goes, “You guys told me that would never change. You told me always it would be getting worse, worse, worse.” They just looked at him. They don’t say a word. Dennis comes in and he says, “I got to do another liver cleanse. I need this colonics. I need to keep doing this.” I mean, that was a pretty cool story.
[2:02:34] Ashley James: What’s he look like now?
[2:02:35] David DeHaas: Oh it looks great. Pink face, he’s not a Santa Claus anymore. He’s had some cancers and he’s treated that alternative as well on his own. So he came in here he got empowered. He got the belief that he could heal himself. You give people some belief, you give them the ability to understand that they’re the powerful beings. At the end of the day, David DeHaas can’t change you. You got to change you. I can give you some suggestions. I always think of myself as a cheerleader. I’m going to help coach you through this. I’m going to cheer you up to get through this. Because you go through this and sometimes people have a healing crisis where they, you get a little worse before they get better. That’s the time where I got to get on the pom-poms and say, “Let’s go. Let’s keep doing this.” Your body’s going to detox and you may get a little worse. Every once in a while I have someone who starts, they throw up. They go, “Oh my gosh, that’s not good.” Then I go, “No, it’s great. Your body is saying, hey, let’s get the stuff out. It’s going to do whatever it can to move it out and it just happen to be you not only pooping it out but you’re also vomiting it out. This is going to go away in a bit. It’s going to be okay. You don’t want to suppress it.” The problem is that too many times we suppress it like Nicole.
Nicole was 22, worked for me part-time. I gave her a three-day cloning cleanse after she worked with me that summer. I didn’t know this at the time but she went home and she threw up, I mean a lot. She says, “I’m not going back. I’m doing that. I’m not doing that anymore. I wasn’t aware of this. Well, three days later she’s one semester away from graduating and all of a sudden she’s got severe migraines. In fact, they were constant, 24-hour a day, no medications would cut the pain. When she sat up, she would blackout for five minutes. The doctors did a spinal tap then they say, “Okay, we need to put a shunt in your brain.” That’s when I heard about it. I go, “What? What do you mean? No, no, no. Why isn’t she in here?” Her mom says, “Well, the last time she was here she threw up.” I said, “Well, there was your sign. That’s a severely toxic body at age 21. To do a colonic and then throw up, there’s your sign.” So I called her up. She came in, she spent 18 days. Now, the doctors had told her that, “Look at it, you’re going to be on medication. You’re not going to be able to eat Boise, Idaho.” She couldn’t look at a computer screen. If she did that would cause problems. She couldn’t look at a TV or anything. They say, “Basically, you’re going to be on medication for the rest of your life. We’ll put a shunt in your brain. We’ll help you manage this but you’d have to stay here little girl. This is your life.” I said, “Come on.”
So, she came in. I filmed her just about every day. Eighteen days later she was back at school and she graduated, went out to get her master’s and she now works in College of Idaho and is doing great. Pretty cool story.
[2:05:29] Ashley James: She’s off all those meds and she doesn’t have any migraines?
[2:05:32] David DeHaas: No meds, no migraines. Travels the world, does what she wants to do. Yeah.
[2:05:38] Ashley James: So sometimes you got to push through. It’s like maybe the first colonic stirred some stuff up but that means you got to keep going.
[2:05:45] David DeHaas: Yeah. You don’t go into your refrigerator and you go, “That stinks all that rotting food.” You don’t stop, right? You clean all of it out. We’ll dirty it first, right?
[2:05:54] Ashley James: Are there any contraindications? When should someone not have a colonic?
[2:06:01] David DeHaas: Yeah, there are. There’s two types of colon hydrotherapy bed systems, there’s open and closed. We use the open gravity-fed very gentle small tube. The closed system is a tube about five inches in diameter. They’re pressurizing the system. A lot more contraindications for them. The association puts out contraindications and they got a list. But what I have found to be true over the years is that, I can’t remember all of them right now off the top my head, but yeah. There are a few. They’re on our intake form. But anyway, I’m drawing a blank right now. There’s a list of them. But what I found to be true over the years is that, well hemorrhoids, for example, are one of them. I’ve had people tell me, “I don’t care. I’m plugged up. I need a colonic.” I mean, I’ve had pretty severe, but you get a hemorrhoid. What’s a hemorrhoid or a cyst or a tumor? It’s just a place for your body put toxins. I remember those people that shows on their own volition to ignore those contraindications and that the hemorrhoids went down and actually pretty quickly, pretty surprising.
[2:07:10] Ashley James: Interesting.
[2:07:12] David DeHaas: Yeah. You can only do that with the open system. You couldn’t do it on a closed. The tube’s too big.
[2:07:17] Ashley James: That was my next question. What is the difference between an open and closed? Because I’ve done both. I enjoyed both for different reasons.
[2:07:24] David DeHaas: Yeah. The closed system is, again therapist is in the room, again for some people that’s a little uncomfortable having someone there watching you poop. They’re going to fill you very slowly, gently. Then now the process are there, they can swish your belly around. That’s all great. Then when the poop goes out, you got a 5/8 inch tube. If the poop’s bigger than that, they have to either squeeze that tube and help squeeze that water and hopefully break up that hard. If you got poop as big as your fist, which many people who are constipated do, you may end up getting off that table because they’re not on a table that you can just poop on it’s a massage table. You go to a toilet and release. Now on the beds that we used, it’s a toilet if you will. It’s not a toilet, but it’s a bed where you just poop.
[2:08:09] Ashley James: It’s like a lie-down toilet.
[2:08:10] David DeHaas: Yes and you just let her go. Tubes very tiny, like you say, it’s tiny the size of a pencil. The poop just goes around that rectal tube. I mean, I’ve had people fill our three-inch tube like rock-solid poop as big as that three-inch diameter tube all the way full where I’ve had to, especially people with opioid, induced constipation, where they filled it, plugged it up. We have a flusher jet. There was one time, the gal, my gosh. We ran that jet the whole time but she was just solid. Now, on a closed system, usually the closest to people –
[2:08:46] Ashley James: You can’t do that.
[2:08:48] David DeHaas: Yeah, they’ll send them to me. Then you’re going to have constant release. So the beauty of that is it’s again, what we want to do when we get peristalsis happening. So think of peristalsis as a squeezing of the colon. That’s what helps move the poop. When the small intestine dumps into the large intestine on the right site or just above your hip, that’s liquid and then it’s going to go up move up. So what moves that up as peristalsis, the squeezing action of the colon. It goes up, moves across your transverse colon and drops down and begins to dry out. So, now the problem is is that stuff can get stuck down there and it could get very constipated. It gets as big as 16 inches. That’s stuff’s traveling through pretty slow. So, when we’re when you’re hydrating with colon hydrotherapy, that’s going to help begin to dissolve that. The cool thing about an open system is that, if you just relax and let the water do its work that colons going to start taking directions. It will go, “Oh, I’m going to push now. I got enough water, I’m going to push automatically on your own.” Whereas the closed, you can’t push back. You got to let the person turn it off, release it. You might have three releases, wherein an open system it’s just constant in-and-out. You’re releasing all the time. You might have 30, 40, 50 releases.
[2:10:00] Ashley James: Very cool.
[2:10:03] David DeHaas: Yeah. So, it’s fun. It’s fun, it’s relaxing. Most people, they get done, they come in of course they’re nervous, everyone is. I was too. I get done and I say, “Well, how’d it go?” They go, “Oh, you know what? I feel lighter and refreshed.” Yeah. That’s most. Now, every once in a while you get someone that goes, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got nausea.” I go, “Yup.” I tell people, “Look at it, if the next day you’re feeling nausea and you feel like you don’t want to come in, you want to come back in because your body is saying let’s go and there’s just a lot of maybe heavy metals or whatever toxins that are moving past. Your body’s picking that that’s why you don’t feel good. Don’t wait. Let’s get back on the bed. Let’s keep cleaning it out. That will pass faster than then if you keep it in.”
[2:10:49] Ashley James: Yeah. There’s one of the videos on your YouTube channel where a guy had kept coming in. He wasn’t feeling good at the beginning then he kept coming in. He passed the microbiome. The entire microfilm, I should say, the biofilm. Biofilm was this like leathery thick mucus that was coating his colon. It released and it came out. Then he felt so much better. I’ve heard that from many people who either do water-only fasting or juice fasts or like a series of colon hydrotherapy sessions. When they pass, the body finally lets go and releases the biofilm. They were feeling really sick before and then they pass it and they feel amazing afterward. I’ve also heard that from people who are on, like Dr. Jay Davidson who I’ve had on the show, his parasite cleanse. So it’s like when you release it though, when it leaves your body, because it’s just so diseased and it’s housing the parasites that are giving off all these toxins on their own. So, when you release it you feel so much better. Can you tell us a bit about this, the biofilm and releasing it using colon hydrotherapy?
[2:12:09] David DeHaas: Yeah. So, colon hydrotherapy is hydrating. What we like to also have you be using is some bentonite and slim at the same time to help kind of stimulate that action to get things moving through. But think about this, again, I always like going back to the refrigerator analogy. You’ve got this stuff that’s been trapped in there and things are passing very slowly through your system. Like you say, you’ve got parasites in there you may have heavy metals you have all this gunk. So that’s going to come off and you’re going to re-establish, as I call it, the new carpet. Now you’re going to be able to absorb the micronutrients into your bloodstream, because remember the end of the day, we got to get stuff into the blood to get to the cells. You have 50 trillion cells. So we got to get that nutrition there. So, again, you got to let that old stuff go. It builds up over time. I haven’t got a good analogy right now to use. The other thing that people need to understand, here’s what people get kind of weirded out too, diarrhea. People are having constant diarrhea or they’ll have a lot of diarrhea or they go from diarrhea to rabbit pellets. What’s diarrhea? Diarrhea is a body’s amazing, it’s the fire hose of the body. You recycle two and a half gallons of water per day in your colon.
Well, when you get a bug in there the body says, “Whoa, dude. We don’t want this bug in here. Let’s get it out.” Well, how are we getting it out? Let’s turn on the jets. Let’s just give him some diarrhea. Let’s blow this out of here. Okay. Let’s go. Now you’re sitting on the toilet, you go, “Oh my God, this just feels horrible.” You think, what can I take to stop diarrhea? No. You should probably come in and do a colonic. Hence, that action, clear out that bug, whatever is in there and change it. So, that’s usually a severe microbiome dysfunction. You’ve probably got a lot of yeast Candida with it. Everything is out of balance. Look at it, we got to clean it up, reestablish. The sooner you get all that toxicity out of there the faster that will heal and repair. Then again back to your micronutrients, back to the foods you’re eating and getting that restored. The body’s amazing. I looked back at Dr. Jensen and the work that he did. I’ve met some of his sons and daughters of the parents that he helped heal. We’ve seen them here at Living Waters as well.
I mean, I had a guy come in, just to give an example, severely constipated, in and out of the hospital, on meds of course for six months. When you’re on meds, okay again, the brain connections transverse colon. How do we cut pain? Okay, we got to cut those signals. So, now your colons not working when you’re on these pain meds. So, we get constipated. I experienced that with my wife. My wife had fell and broke a bunch of bones. She was in the hospital 24 days. We’re like, “Sheesh, I wish we had a colon hydrotherapy bed down here.” But he comes in and he had severe fatty liver. He had had a shunt putting in his bile duct, but he’s plugged up. He couldn’t walk and he wasn’t very cognitive either. We had to lift him to put him on the colonic bed. We did that. We did three colonics, he says, “I’m going to do your 10-day thing.” I said, “Okay.” His wish was to get home for Christmas, which is five hours north of us. He couldn’t. No way he’d be in a car at that time for five hours.
Anyway, so he kept and in five days he was actually walking with a walker. Next thing you know he’s able to get up on his own, we don’t have to lift him. His skin color changed from gray to pink. On the last day I filmed him. On the last day he gets up and sits down, gets up and sits down on his own unaided. Of all the people I’ve seen, he had two feet in the grave. I looked at him and I say, “Well, as I see it, you’re either going to live or you’re going to die. You’re definitely closer to dying right now. It’s your choice, what do you want to do here?” Of course he’s severely backed up and he said, “I can’t poop. Yeah, let’s go.” So, they jumped on the cleanse and went forward. It’s pretty cool.
[2:16:28] Ashley James: So, how is he doing now?
[2:16:30] David DeHaas: He lived another year. He actually got so he could walk unaided. I don’t think he would have made Christmas that year but he got another year of life. He had some other heart issues going on. I sent him home with instructions and so forth. They’re pretty happy with what happened, but again probably a little too late coming to us. But hey, he got another year.
[2:16:58] Ashley James: Man, he got to go home for Christmas which was his wish.
[2:17:00] David DeHaas: He got to go home for Christmas. He got to see his kids. He got to resolve some things that emotionally he needed to resolve, which was pretty doggone cool. There were some things that he was hanging on to take care of and he met us. He bought that time basically. I’ve had Parkinson’s people come in and dragging on their feet. Then we’re learning more now. I mean, we’ve learned so much about the microbiome in the gut in the last 10 years. There are now tons of evidence about how Parkinson’s is definitely a gut issue. I remember, oh my gosh, this one guy comes in first day and again, what caused it? “Well, David, back in the 50s I was putting my arms up in DDT up to my elbows. I was growing these root crops.” So he had a lot of chemical toxicity, DDT. To get up out of a chair someone had to pull him up. He’d shuffle. First, he stayed with his daughter here in Boise. He says, “David, the first night it took me a half-hour to get those stairs, thirteen steps.” He says in three or four days I think it was he says, “I went up and down like I should normal person. On the fifth day here, again, I always had to lift him up off the clinic bed, pull him up off the massage table. Fifth day, he sits up on his own, flips his round and stands up and he go, “Dang.”
This is so interesting, human behavior is so funny. Great guy, awesome guy. I mean, very wealthy. Hands-on lots of businesses, in his late 70s. He had this big real estate project going on. He says, “David, I got to break away from here for a few days. I just got to go do this. I got to take care of transaction. It’s a $4 million transaction.” I say, “Well, I think it’ll wait a few more days,” but he got, “I’m feeling really good though.” So he got driven here by someone else. Shuffles in. He goes out there hops in his truck he says, “I’ll be back, I promise. I’ll be back.” Hops in his truck, takes off like and I look at him and go, “Amazing.” So anyway, you can’t get everyone. I mean you can only coach people so far but he was like, “Hey, this has been awesome dude. This has been really great. I really appreciate everything. I have to take care of this.” I mean, he’s in late 70s. The guy’s probably worth millions.
[2:19:30] Ashley James: Did he come back?
[2:19:31] David DeHaas: He did not come back.
[2:19:33] Ashley James: That’s so funny. So, he was just hobbling. He was hobbling in and then you just got him to the point where he was healthy enough so he could go out and work again. Then he’s like, “Okay, I’m good.”
[2:19:45] David DeHaas: Right. Of course, what happens to us human beings we’ve all did this, I did this, right? Oh well, I’ll do it tomorrow. I’m not that bad. I mean, okay. I’m tired, I’m fatigued, I can just kind of push through this. Yeah, it hurts the morning when I wake up, but maybe tomorrow, right? We all, us human beings we’re so, we’re crazy most of the time. We think, “Oh well, we should take care of this first.” We don’t really look in the mirror and say, look at it, “I need to be selfish and take care of me first.” Especially moms. Moms will take care of everybody first even when they’re sick and they can barely move. That’s just human nature. But my goal as a cheerleader is to get people to take, hey, self-love. Be selfish. It’s okay. Take care of you first especially you moms. Look at it, if you’re not well, no one else is going to be happy. Take care of you. On the airplane they say, look at it, “Parents, put your oxygen mask on first before you put it to on your children, okay.” Take care of yourself first. You’re going to have a happier household. When mamas are well and dads are well, you know what, everything else is going to be a lot happier. It’s just human nature. I see it all the time. You know what, I do the best to – again, from where he was, he was 1,000% better. So, I can’t blame him. I mean, he was like, “This is great. I don’t need to be any better,” is what he’s thinking, right, and I’ll get back to it. Of course, you got for him, he had like several businesses and so he’s taking care of this and this and this and yeah.
[2:21:29] Ashley James: Not taking care of himself. That’s a really good lesson because we get to this point, even with injuries or with getting over a cold, like you just, the second you feel better, you overexert yourself and then you feel worse again. I’ve had so many times where people come to me, I get them on a really healing protocol, supplements. Get them on a really great protocol and they’re doing amazing. The first week they feel like a million bucks. Then they come to me sometime the second week and they’re like, “Oh, I’m in so much pain.” This happened so many times, I know exactly why. I say, “Well, tell me what you did this week. What activities did you do?” “Well, I ran through the yard playing with my grandchildren. I went for a walk with the ladies. I gardened” and they started listing off all these things. I’m like, “Before you started working with me, what was your activity level like?” “Well, I sat all day and I watch TV.”
It’s like the second people feel good they just, when the pain is gone, we totally overexert ourselves. Then of course you are aches and pains, you just did more activity in the last week than you have done in the last five years. Of course you have. That’s just normal, but you’ll still have a long road of wonderful healing and building a foundation of health. This is what I do, is if I have the cold, a head cold or whatever, then the next day I’m feeling good then I’m like, “Okay. Great. I’m done. It’s over. Let’s go,” and I go 100% again that my body’s like, “Nope. You have to rest still. After you’re recovered from a cold or flu, you should really take two weeks to slow, like really go to bed early. Even earlier than you should and drink lots of healing soups. Even if you’re not feeling sick anymore, your body has to recover from that and you need to do extra self-care.
So, it’s interesting that people get to this point where the second they feel a little better, they’re just like, “Oh, I don’t have to do any work anymore. I’m good.” That’s when they should double down because its money in the bank. Every activity that is building a foundation of health is money in the bank. Every glass of water you drink, every colon hydrotherapy session you get, every vitamin or eating an apple or a whole food, going to bed early is your depositing money in your health bank. The best time to do it is when you don’t feel like you need it. The same goes money for actual money in a bank. When you need money and you haven’t been depositing any into your bank account, that’s when you need it the most, but when you should have been doing it the most was when you didn’t need that money and you just put it away, tuck it away in the bank account.
So, when we don’t have ill health is when we should be building our health to prevent it, to prevent illness. We can really clearly see that when we spend time every day doing emotional self-care, mental self-care, spiritual self-care, physical self-care, energetic self-care; when we spend the time, carve out time for ourselves that we will see for years to come the positive ramifications of that. You can see people in your life who neglected themselves and they are now experiencing the result of that. I keep coming back to that the body is like a garden. You tend to the garden all year long and you fertilize and you mineralize those soil. There’s a microbiome in the soil. There’s so many things we can do to constantly create a healthy garden. Our body and our gut is really, there’s a lot of similarities between a healthy garden and a healthy gut. It does take constantly helping it and avoiding things that harm it. I love that this another tool, colon hydrotherapy is another tool we can add to our tool belt.
Robyn Openshaw was a guest I’ve had on the show before. She’s green smoothie girl. She is vegan. She does promote a whole food plant-based lifestyle. Although, I think she does things once in a while like bone broth. She’s not against it but she does eat whole foods and lots and lots and lots of plants. Just recently her boyfriend did her cleanse, which is a whole food plant-based eating basically where you’re not eating processed food you’re just eating lots of plants, a variety of plants. I think he’s about two weeks into it. She just posted this on Facebook. She posted it publicly so people can see it, but she said, “My boyfriend just, he never believed me when I said that your poop shouldn’t smell. That if your poop smells, that you’re actually toxic and your diet is wrong. Because when you’re really healthy and you’re eating a really healthy diet your poop shouldn’t smell. He didn’t believe me. Two weeks into this whole food plant-based eating, his poop doesn’t smell and he couldn’t believe it.” I made a comment in that thread about, yeah. It’s interesting that people eat dead decaying flesh and dairy products, which contain infected pus. This is proven. It’s not conspiracy. The USDA, they allow a certain amount of particles of blood and pus from infected cows in dairy. I know that sounds really gross, but if someone is consuming dairy, they have to understand that it’s not clean at all. Also, us humans are not meant to consume the milk of any animal at all. We’re not meant to consume milk after we’re an infant let alone the milk of another animal. Although we have adapted to in times of survival, humans have used dairy because they had to. I’d rather have someone trick dairy than die of starvation. So in those terms we did, but we don’t need to anymore. It’s not healthy.
So, there’s a lot of evidence that dairy is really unhealthy for us, but the marketing in the food industry would tell you otherwise. That eating rotting decaying flesh of animals is very toxic for the colon. Now, you’ve mentioned eggs a few times. So you are not promoting a whole food plant-based or a vegan diet. You have a lot of experience around colon health. What kind of a diet do you see is the most healing and healthy for the gut?
[2:28:40] David DeHaas: Yeah. You said you interviewed Peter, Eat Right for Your Blood Type. Peter D’Adamo.
[2:28:47] Ashley James: I haven’t interviewed him. He was my Naturopath growing up. Yeah.
[2:28:53] David DeHaas: He wrote the book Eat Right for your Blood Type. So, we have found that, we typically ask people what the blood type is. We have found that to be pretty much true. Every once in a while I get an A, if you’re type A that usually means you should be plant-based. Dr. Huggins was pretty big. He was a guy that did a lot of studying. He inherited all of Dr. Weston Price’s research and did a lot of studies on his own. He was pretty big on eating what’s right for your blood type. He says if you’re Type O, you need a lot of protein he says, “You need to get it from a hoof.” So, we have found, I’m a B+, my wife is O. She takes some supplements, some extra protein, amino-based supplements as well, which really helped her. So we found that to be pretty accurate over the years. Again, I tell people look at it, muscle test. What’s your body telling you?
So, yeah. I do. I’ve always been an egg guy. I love eggs. I do. I don’t eat near as much steak as I used to. Lamb, for B guys, that’s B+ people, because we’re so positive. Lamb’s good for us. I noticed that to be true for me. So, I always say to people, “Again, at the end of the day, let’s clear out your body. Let’s see what you’re testing for and go with that and understand. Your body knows. Once you understand how to do this, you can choose. That will serve you. If someone’s saying, “Hey, you know what, everyone has to be a vegan. Everyone has to be a vegetarian,” whatever. No. I don’t get on that bandwagon. I have found some people that go on that sometimes they’re having some issues later on, but again, you know what, you know you. You do you. Muscle test. Understand what you need and I think you’ll be okay.
[2:30:55] Ashley James: Yeah. I always thought, because I was O blood type and I was raised to just almost only eat meat and vegetables are a garnish, when I did so much to correct my health, like I just couldn’t get over the hump and then I interviewed so many people that said the most healing, cleansing thing for the body is whole food plant-based no processed foods. So I tried it, and I thought, now I was of the mindset that I had to have meat at every meal. So even the thought of having a one meatless meal was just absurd, like my brain couldn’t wrap my, didn’t make sense. But I tried. I did a 21-day challenge, 21-day cleanse where I ate lots of salad, steamed vegetables, two pounds of steamed vegetables a day, lots of starchy vegetables and also non-starchy vegetables, brown rice, tons of legumes, nuts and seeds. Basically lentils, beans, peas. So all plant-based protein. I was getting around 50 to 70 grams of protein, but it was from plants. I was getting 50 to actually between 50 and 70 grams of fiber a day, which was amazing. So good and I couldn’t believe it. Because before that I struggled to get even 15 grams of fiber. I felt full and I could not believe, within days I had more energy, more mental clarity than I ever had. I had already been on eating organic, eating whole foods. I had done paleo and keto. I’ve tried everything, but this, this for me has been revolutionary. I don’t have cravings anymore. I don’t have the feeling of being weak. I used to feel weak if I didn’t eat meat. I don’t get that. I just thought that was really neat that I feel very strong in my core.
So, even if someone were to just eat more vegetables or just get a variety of legumes and nuts and seeds and just eat more plants and learn how to cook. That’s why I started this membership called Learn True Health Home Kitchen. It was to teach people how to eat more plants. Some people don’t want to cut out meat, but eating more plants is healthier and is healing. Would you find that you help people to eat more plants because people just are not eating enough fiber? What kind of diet changes that you help people that you see helps a 100% the population?
[2:33:37] David DeHaas: Yeah. So again, I go back to when of course when they’re here we’re teaching lots and lots of things. Like for example you mentioned eating lots of beans, my wife, beans she can’t touch beans at all. So, she stays away from those. So again, I talk to people about, “Okay. Let’s definitely fruits, vegetables.” I’ve got people here in Boise that advocate for being a fruitarian. That doesn’t resonate for a lot of clients especially if you’ve got heavy metals and you got yeast candida and you’re doing a lot of fruits. Some people go, “Oh fruits, yeah.” So you’re going to have more sugars and that’s probably not going to serve you well. So, there’s a balance and I think that people need to, that’s why I always have them start out with, “If you want, here’s some education. Eat right for your type, look at that, see what resonates. Let’s start muscle testing yourself. See what you are resonating with.” Then I think that is something people need to become empowered and begin to figure out what is best for them. But again, I always start first of all, organic only. You got to have organic. You can’t eat the non-food. Well, you can but you’re going to be sick. Usually people get on that as you probably experienced as well, after a while, guess what, your body you eat something that you used to think you liked and you eat it now, you got a reaction. You’re not going to feel as well. So, yeah. God gave us fruits and vegetables. I think it’s why I like Thai food so much. I like a little spiciness to it.
[2:35:21] Ashley James: Yum.
[2:35:22] David DeHaas: Yeah. Turmeric and cayenne. Cayenne is a wonderful ingredient. Cayenne is so amazing. Amazing thing. I’ll tell you my first experience with cayenne, because I had a lot of allergies. I had severe allergies. One of the things that my in-law says, “Well, you know, cayenne is great for allergies.” So I started taking a little bit and they told me a story. I didn’t really believe them because he told me the story of my father-in-law was out logging one part in his life. His chainsaw bucked and hit him in the cheek. He’s three hours from a hospital. So he had a whole bag of cayenne because his mother drank cayenne pepper every morning. Every single morning she’d have some cayenne in water and she lived all-natural until 105.
[2:36:09] Ashley James: Nice.
[2:36:10] David DeHaas: So, he takes the cayenne, puts it in that wound and butterfly bandages it and goes back to work and no scar. My brother-in-law says, “Yeah, David.” He says, “It was bad.” He was telling me chainsaw bucks and hits you in the face, it’s not going to be pretty. No scar. I go, “Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.” He says, “Yeah. I got in this car accident and I cut my hand here and I put cayenne in it, butterfly bandaged it and I didn’t have stitches.” “Yeah. Yeah. Sure.” So one day I’m out, this back in the 80s and I had the old mobile phones where it had the big box in the trunk and a phone handle upfront. I’m taking it out and I raised up and I hit my head on the edge of the car lid. I got blood spurting everywhere. My in-laws were there so I say, I walked in and of course blood’s everywhere, “Should we go to the hospital?” He says, “Well, hold it. What the hell. Let’s try to this cayenne thing. Let’s just cut this back and throw some cayenne in there.” It was bleeding pretty good. So, we did it, we put cayenne in it, cut my hair back and put a butterfly bandage over it. I don’t know, for some reason about a week later I was at a doctor’s office. He goes, “What did you do to your head? So, I cracked it open. He goes, “Wow.” I go, “Yeah.” I said, “How’s it look?” He goes, “Looks really good.” I say, “Yeah, all I did is I put cayenne pepper in it and put a butterfly bandage in. He goes, “Well, that didn’t anything.” I say, “Well, you’re looking at it and you tell me it looks great.” I said, “Dude, I had blood everywhere.”
[2:37:42] Ashley James: That’s so funny.
[2:37:43] David DeHaas: So, anyway, that was just part of the learning experience that I had. Anyway, I don’t know how we got off on cayenne pepper but great thing to be –
[2:37:53] Ashley James: To add to your food?
[2:37:55] David DeHaas: I just had another great guy in here who’s very well known for, speaking of soils. He runs some garden centers here in the area. He was telling me some of his cayenne stories. Pretty interesting stories, but yeah, cayenne’s awesome. Everyone have that little cayenne. If I went back on the day when I used to get sick, I don’t get sick anymore but I get really sick. If I ever got a sore throat I would take some cayenne, put it in some water juice and I would juggle it down. Of course you’re going to feel the heat against your throat, but I did it every two hours with vitamin C in between and another product called Immune Formula which has Echinacea and goldenseal and some other products in it. I can alternate every two hours. Cayenne just cut that pain in the throat. I’d heal that day.
[2:38:34] Ashley James: Yeah. My mom taught me fresh lemon juice, hot water, cayenne and some maple syrup or honey. We would drink that all day long if we had a sore throat or if we were coming down with a cold and then it would just blow itself right out.
[2:38:50] David DeHaas: She was too kind to you giving you the honey, I just take her straight.
[2:38:53] Ashley James: Well, I was a kid. She had to figure out how to get it in me. Yeah, the cayenne and between the cayenne, I think we also put ginger in it. Yeah, that’s right. We put ginger in it and the lemon juice for the vitamin C and the ginger for the tummy and then the cayenne for the throat and then the honey because I’m a kid. Yeah. That was the home remedy. Absolutely.
[2:39:16] David DeHaas: That’s going to help move out that mucus too. So if you’ve got some mucus, that will help it. The other thing too, I’ve had a guy come in with pneumonia. In fact, his daughter was on the 10-day cleanse and she was having this amazing changes. She says, “Yeah, my dad was at the hospital last night.” I go, “What for?” She says, “Well, he’s got pneumonia.” I say, “Well, why is he in here?” He had never done colonics yet, right? So he sends his daughter but he hasn’t come in. I go, “Tell him get down here.” So he comes down and he comes in. After the first colonic he said to me, “David, I have not slept through the night in years. I slept like a baby. I can’t believe how much better I feel.” I say, “You’ve only done one day.” He goes, “I know. What’s going to happen today?” I say, “Oh, it’s going to get better.” So yeah, he did I think three or four colonics in a row. His eyes got clear and all that. Yeah, getting that mucus out, getting that gunk out of the trunk. Again, what you’re doing with cayenne and the lemon juice another great thing to help move that out. We also use ginger here and lemon on the cleanse as well. Good stuff.
[2:40:16] Ashley James: Fun. Awesome. Do you add anything to the water when they’re doing colonics like at the end? I’ve been to places where the last sort of water flow into the colon contains probiotics. Do you do anything like that where you add stuff to the water?
[2:40:34] David DeHaas: Yeah. So we don’t generally add some stuff to the water but we do add some stuff that you can and you muscle test to see what exactly you need. So, again giving your body the ability to drink that from the hinder parts is a cool thing.
[2:40:51] Ashley James: Awesome, Is there anything that we didn’t cover today that you just really want to make sure that we cover?
[2:40:57] David DeHaas: If people really want to do a deep dive, I did a webinar that goes into a deep dive on how the colon works. I even bring on Dr. Charina Holmes and she talks about what’s going on in the gut. That’s at healingtheincurables.com, healingtheincurables.com. So, people could go watch that and really get an education on colon hydrotherapy and how the gut works and how all those nerves, I have pictures on there of how the nerves connect to the gut. I go into a whole and its very layman’s terms so people can understand. I think everyone from first grade up should probably watch that webinar just to understand.
[2:41:35] Ashley James: Oh, cool. We homeschool our four-year-old so he’s about to be five. He’s already doing first-grade level stuff. So we’ll watch it together because he’s really interested in anatomy. He likes to draw and color the body, like the anatomy of the body.
[2:41:51] David DeHaas: Awesome.
[2:41:52] Ashley James: So, yeah. Neat. I know we have a lot of parents that listen to the podcast with their children, actually. That’s why we keep it a clean show with no swearing, friendly for the whole family. Some topics though, when it comes to like some kind of health things maybe should be PG-13, but other than that, it’s a safe podcast to listen to for the whole family. So your webinar healingtheincurables.com. Is it incurable?
[2:42:22] David DeHaas: Incurables.
[2:42:23] Ashley James: Incurables, with an S.
[2:42:24] David DeHaas: Healingtheincurables.com. I teach a thing called the four natural laws of healing. Thank you V.E. Irons for that and Dr. Bernhard Jensen. So, yeah. There’s a lot of good stuff in that. Of course we got stuff on our website as well at livingwaterscleanse.com so a lot of good, in fact we have a video on there on how a colonic is done. So if you go to livingwaterscleanse.com, you’ll actually see my wife show you how a colonic is done.
[2:42:55] Ashley James: Yeah. I’ve watched that video.
[2:42:57] David DeHaas: Ten minutes long.
[2:42:58] Ashley James: Yeah. A lot of your videos. They’re fun. Just go watch the videos and see the testimonials and see the stuff that comes out of people because that’s like crazy. That’s so crazy. Then you really want that stuff to come out of you too. I know my listeners are really into parasite cleanses or at least I am, and then the ones that are interested, they talk in the Facebook group about it. So yeah, if you think you’ve got parasites, if you’ve never done a parasite cleanse and you’re an adult, you have parasites. That’s basically what it is.
[2:43:30] David DeHaas: Parasites don’t like the warm water. They don’t like that. They hate it. I mean, that’s what really helps all the herbs and all that stuff and using zappers and pulse frequency. All that’s great. People come in and have done all that over the years they come here and they add the water by doing the colonics. Those guys can only hang on so long.
[2:43:52] Ashley James: It’s like a tidal wave. It just pulls them out.
[2:43:54] David DeHaas: Whoosh.
[2:43:55] Ashley James: Yes. Nice. Awesome. David, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing all this great information. It’s been wonderful. Livingwaterscleanse.com is your website. Of course, the links to everything that David does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Is there a final message that you’d like to leave listeners with to wrap up today’s interview?
[2:44:21] David DeHaas: Oh, final message. Well, I think the important thing is you need to poop like a boss. If you’re sick, get a colonic, come on. Guys, it’s really simple, really easy. It’s going to cut your sick-care costs and it’s going to improve your well-being. Find a colon hydrotherapist. I mean, we’d love to have you come to Boise, Idaho and join us. But look at it, there’s great colon hydrotherapists throughout the country. My mission is to make colon hydrotherapy as popular as those little stand-up pharmacies on the corner.
[2:44:54] Ashley James: Very good, very nice.
[2:44:56] David DeHaas: Bring your friend. I always tell couples, there was a couple that came in yesterday and I say, “Are you guys boyfriend and girlfriend?” They say, “Yeah.” She had done colonics and he hadn’t. I say, “You can’t date him until he’s cleaned up. We can’t date the unclean.” He looked at her and like, “Oh, I guess I got to get some colonics.” I say, “Yeah, because what he has, you’re going to have.” So, yeah.
[2:45:18] Ashley James: Very interesting. Bring a friend. All right. Thank you so much, David. This has been a pleasure to have you today.
[2:45:26] David DeHaas: All right. I appreciate it. I appreciate what you’ve been doing. I’ve listened to quite a few your podcasts. They’re awesome.
[2:45:32] Ashley James: Oh, thanks.
[2:45:34] Outro: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview, I know I did. It’s such a wonderful journey to be on this health journey with you, learning alongside you. I’ve been so into health for so many years building my health back. To be able to share it with you is a real blessing. Come join the Facebook group the Learn True Health Facebook Group if you haven’t already because it’s such a wonderful community to be part of a supportive community of people like you who are looking to build their health and gain their health back and be as healthy as possible. Sometimes we feel like black sheep but our own family or in our own social circles, but when you come join the Learn True Health Facebook group you feel supported and you feel like you’re not alone.
Another place you’ll feel supported is my new membership, the Learn True Health Home Kitchen. Whether you don’t know how to cook at all or you cook all the time, you are going to get so much out of our membership. I paired with a really good friend of mine, Naomi, who’s an amazing cook and is a total health advocate. She figures out how to cook in a way that makes children happy, that makes the whole family happy and that’s healing using healing ingredients, healing foods that can be adapted for all different kinds of diets and lifestyles.
So come join the Learn True Health Home Kitchen. Go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. That’s learntruehealth.com/homekitchen and use the coupon code LTH. I made it affordable for everyone because I want you to join me. You can support the Learn True Health Facebook group, support me in continuing to do these interviews by joining the membership. Also support you to gain more recipes and more ideas more lifestyle tips and tricks. I put a ton of work and a ton of effort into the Learn True Health Home Kitchen to teach so that I can empower you to get your health to the next level and to always be cultivating true health.
Every week I add new lessons so you’ll continue to gain more and more and more. There’s well over seven hours of content that you can pour through right now and I add new lessons every single week. So please, come join the Learn True Health Home Kitchen, support the Learn True Health podcast, support me and what I’m doing. My mission to continue to bring you these interviews and support you and your family in optimal health. Go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen and use the coupon code LTH. Thank you so much for being a listener and thank you so much for supporting the Learn True Health podcast. Have yourself an excellent rest of your day.
Guess What Came To Dinner: Parasites and Your Health – Ann Louise Gittleman
Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management – Dr. Bernard Jensen
Dr. Jensen’s Guide To Better Bowel Care – Dr. Bernard Jensen
Use coupon code LTH for $15 off or use this link which automatically adds the discount code to your MamaSezz cart: https://www.mamasezz.com/discount/lth
Highlights:
In this episode, Meg Donahue shares with us how she started MamaSezz, a whole food plant-based meal delivery company. We learn the different struggles that they faced and how it became an opportunity for them to create healthy foods delivered for people with different lifestyles. We also learn how their company values people from their customers to their staff and even our environment.
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 episode. I feel like everyone should listen to at least the first 20 minutes. Oh my gosh, Meg’s story is amazing and so inspirational. If you’re struggling with health problems, if you have a family member that’s struggling with health problems get them to listen to this. I’m really, really excited to impart this information because we have to get this out there. People need to know that there’s a way for the
m to heal their body using food that almost looks miraculous. The results are almost, it’s almost a miracle. The science is there and it’s been proven. So really, enjoy today’s episode. Please share it with those you love. Now, Meg is giving us, is gifting one of the listeners $169 package. So you can go to the Learn True Health Facebook Group for the next week or so. We’re going to have a post after I publish this. We’ll have a post on the Learn True Health Facebook Group. You can comment and you can get a chance to win $169 package of whole food plant-based delicious food that’ll be shipped to you for free. So, one of our listeners is going to win that.
Now Meg is giving all of the listeners $15 off. So, you can use coupon code LTH on her website, mamasezz.com. That’s MAMASEZZ.com. You can also look in the show notes of today’s podcast as all the links to what Meg does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. So get the $15 off coupon using the coupon code LTH. Excellent. Be sure to go to the Facebook group for your chance to win this beautiful package that Meg is gifting us. Thank you so much for being a listener. I’m so excited to get this information out there. I can’t wait to hear what you guys think of this episode after you listen to it. Then come into the Facebook group and let us know what you think. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day.
[0:02:19] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 411. I am so excited for today’s show. We have on with us, Meg Donahue. She’s the co-founder of mamasezz.com, a national plant-based meal delivery and lifestyle company. MamaSezz is MAMASEZZ.com. I love your website actually. It’s really cute and all the food looks so delicious. So, I’m really excited to talk to you today about starting a company focusing on helping people who are super busy to also eat in a healthy way. I think that’s a really unique niche to get into.
[0:03:12] Meg Donahue: Thank you. I’m delighted to be here, Ashley. I love the work that you do.
[0:03:15] Ashley James: Awesome. So, I’d love to just dive right into your story. You are an entrepreneur, you’re a speaker, you’re a writer. What happened in your life to make you want to start a plant-based meal delivery service?
[0:03:31] Meg Donahue: It’s a really good question. It was not at all on my radar, I’ll say that. I was a pretty healthy junk food, meat-eating, dairy eating, grew up in farm country person. At 50 I had had my first child and she was a preemie. During that time, my mother who was 80 also got sick. I’m just giving the back story so you can kind of have a setting for it.
[0:04:03] Ashley James: I want the back story.
[0:04:04] Meg Donahue: Are you sure?
[0:04:07] Ashley James: I’m in awe of you right now. You got pregnant at 49?
[0:04:11] Meg Donahue: I did. It was awesome but at 26 weeks, I woke up in the middle of the night and my legs were just double their size. They had just felt like somebody had taken a hose and just was pouring water into my body. I called my doctor and minutes later I’m at the hospital. I had acute preeclampsia, which is high blood pressure and edema, this massive swelling. So, I was 25 weeks at the time so it’s a very delicate time for babies where their lungs and their eyes haven’t quite developed and there’s brain development. So, they said, “We’re just going to ship you to the local the regional big hospital, Dartmouth-Hitchcock here in New England and just kind of put you in a room to be quiet and dark until and right up as out as long as we can and try and get another week and a half.”
[0:05:12] Ashley James: Is there a reason why the room had to be dark?
[0:05:14] Meg Donahue: Yeah. Because it’s really interesting. It’s when sound and light can raise your blood pressure. So, you’re just trying to be very calm. So, during this time my family of course wanted to visit, my partner was with me, but there are no outside visitors. So, actually my mom was also very sick. She got congestive heart failure. She was 80 and had been kind of in and out of the hospital at that point herself. She said to my sister, she lived two states away, “Hey. I’m going to drive to go see Meg or you’re going to take me or I’m going to walk.” So, my sister said, “I will take you.” So, she showed up and by this time I had gained, in that week, 65 pounds of water weight. My head was swollen up like Dick Butkus. I don’t know if you know him, but he was a football player from the 60s. I had slits for eyes. It was a very intense time.
So, my mom was in a wheelchair and my sister brought her to the door. I’ll never forget. I looked over and she got up out of the wheelchair. My mom, her whole life up until she got sick, had been what we would consider a really healthy profile person. She played tennis, she golfed, she was active, she read, she had a lot of friends, good family life. So she had all of those elements that we – she wasn’t overweight, she was fit-looking. So, prior to her getting sick and being pretty much unable to walk more than 10 feet, she was that person.
So, she showed up at my hospital room door. I looked over and she got out of the wheelchair and it was like she was when she was 40 again and that kind of vibrant energy. She came over to me. My head was really like a basketball. My back was so swollen. It was just a nightmare. She grabbed my hand and she leaned in and she said, “You’re a fighter. You’re going to be okay and your baby’s going to be okay.” Yeah. I didn’t have any reason to believe her at all because at that point everyone was preparing for the worst things that can happen. There are a lot of them, but I did.
Sometimes you just believe your mom. At that moment I did. She went back and kind of collapsed into the wheelchair. My sister took her out of the room and they were going to go get a cup of tea to get her and then get her back to Maine. Moments later, my blood pressure spiked so high they said, “No. You have to have the baby now.” So, they wheeled me in and I gave birth by cesarean to a little over a pound preemie. Yeah. Very tiny. I said, “She’s perfect just very small.” So, I had this baby and then I still kept getting sick. Normally, preeclampsia, once you have the baby that cures it. Then you’re on the mend, but I had more complications. On top of that my mom collapsed because all of it was just too much. So, she was in the ICU. So, we’re on three different floors in the hospital.
[0:08:49] Ashley James: Oh no.
[0:08:51] Meg Donahue: I know. It was nuts. We were there for three months. My daughter was in the NICU for three months. For her, she ended up doing phenomenally well. She has no residual impact of the big scary things from being a preemie. She’s tall and she’s eight now. But we were all in different like NICU, ICU, cardiac ICU for my mom. I was in the high-risk ward for after pregnancies for a while, but we were there for three months. So, during that time, I rented a hotel suite because it was far away from my house and would stay there. My mom would come in and out of the hospital and stay with me. I realized there’s no way she’s going home. She can’t navigate her day. She can’t shop, she can’t feed herself, she can’t do these things. She was just kind of rapidly going down.
So, while I was up there, we renovated a little garage apartment in my house. I said, “Mom, why don’t you just come home with me for a while. Really what I knew and from what doctors had said, there’s nothing more we can do. She has less than 10% heart function, kidneys are failing. What happens is your lungs, because your heart can’t pump fluids and your lungs fill up and then you have to go in and your lungs. So it’s just like this ecosystem that isn’t able to, it collapses. That was her body. So, I think she was just too weak to say no. Because it was like a separate garage apartment, it’s like 500 feet from my house because she’s very proud and private, she said okay. We just brought her home and the same day that I brought my little daughter Annie home three months later.
So, I had this little preemie who was in quarantine for two years because her lungs were very fragile, which meant you know nobody came over unless they had every shot in the world and Purelled themselves. Then I had my mom. My mom was not getting, there were a lot of trips to the emergency room. I’d call my brothers and sisters. I’d be like, “This is it.” They’d all come in and she’d kind of just limp along. So one night up, feeding Annie and I couldn’t reconcile how can this incredibly healthy person, now at 80, all of a sudden everything goes. It just doesn’t make sense and who’s survived it. So, I just researched that who survived this level of, just googled it. That was congestive heart failure. I came across Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn who wrote the book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease.
[0:11:48] Ashley James: I love him. I had him on the show. I just love him.
[0:11:51] Meg Donahue: Beautiful. Yeah. He’s wonderful. T. Colin Campbell as well and the work there and a lot of other people, but Dr. Esselstyn’s book I just bought it and said the next day, “Okay, we’re doing this.” So, I started cooking her these meals, these very tiny, I mean they’re like bird-sized meals, whole food plant-based. So, soups and smoothies. So, over the course of like four or five months she started to get better and that she wasn’t getting worse. She could walk, then started to walk around her apartment. When I say apartment it’s maybe 15 by 22. It’s not a big place. Then she started to walk outside and could walk up and down our driveway. We’re saying, “Something’s going on here.” The color came back to her face. If she went back to Maine it was going to be hospice care. That was that, but she had come to Vermont. So, she was that level of sick. Then all of a sudden she’s starting to get healthier. Then within a year, she’s 80. So, then by the time she’s 81 she’s starting to drive again. She joined the senior center because we’re in a new state. Then she joined the pool because she likes to swim so she started swimming three and four times a week. Over the course of three to four years, her heart function went from less than 10% and dropping to the low end of normal. She’s doing great. She’s going to be 90 this year.
[0:13:40] Ashley James: Oh my gosh, I’m crying. I’m so happy. Oh my gosh. She’s still here.
[0:13:45] Meg Donahue: She’s here. She learned to play the uke. Her big first goal once we realized you’re kind of out of the immediate woods here, it doesn’t look like you’re going to die next week, she said, “I just want to be able to see Annie walk.” Now, Annie is over at gram’s house, her little apartment because she still lives with me, every day. She sees her grandchildren every day. I see her every day. We have fun. She shops. She’s really active. So, that whole experience really woke me up because I also started eating this way because I was cooking for everyone. So, everyone in my family me, my partner started eating this way. I had arthritis. I was a lifelong athlete and I had arthritis in my hips, which is kind of like older athletes feel just like oh yeah something’s going to give. The knee, the hip. So, I just had accepted it, but then I woke up one morning and I woke up because I was not in pain. I thought, “Oh my goodness. Could this be the food too?” Sure enough, inflammation is what causes it.
So, these things just totally captivated me. So, I went to Cornell and I did their course work on it. I called all the doctors. We had previously a background in natural and organic food. My partner had a very large organic bread company in Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s and Bic. So, we had sold that. So we thought we were out of the food business but realized, wow this food is miraculous in that when you go from foods that are hurting you to foods that heal. That’s all you need to do. You don’t need to exercise a ton. All these other things you don’t have to do right at the beginning to give yourself a baseline of health. All of these illnesses that we are oddly thinking that it’s normal like type 2 diabetes, obesity especially obesity in children, hypertension, other forms of heart disease. A lot of cancers are preventable or at least mitigated by just shifting your diet. I thought, “How do we not know this?
So the deeper I went in and I wasn’t too naive to the side of food that is food marketing that creates a very palatable taste profile, which is high fat, high sugar, high oil in a lot of foods. That our food had moved from real food, which has some salt and sodium in it, some sweet to it to really hyper super-sized palate and that people were hooked on it. We had actually even moved away from food. It’s like the whole derivative market. Remember when the market crashed it was all about derivatives because it was a derivative of a derivative. That’s really what our food has become. I just got on fire that this is such a simple solution. Everybody, everybody benefits. The planet benefits, people benefit, our economy benefits because we’re not crushing the health care system, relationships benefit. So, we started making these. We said, “Let’s do it. Let’s start making these meals.” Did a lot of research for about a year to how do you get a taste profile with whole food plant-based meals.
So, there’s no additives, there’s no preservatives in our food, which is really common in vegan foods. A lot of vegan junk food. Preservatives and chemicals to give it either a taste or to keep it on your shelf longer. We said, “We need to get away from that if people are really going to have our food and have the experience where their body gets to just be flooded with nutrients and thrive.” So, we spent a lot of time with food scientists and chefs and we came up with, I think, some products that they’re familiar. I said, “If my football-playing brothers like this, then it passes.” I needed them to not going to like, “Oh, it’s a salad.” We wanted to be very open because I came to this, I was clueless. It’s shameful how clueless I was, but I was. I wasn’t a bad person, I just didn’t know. So, shaming didn’t help me because we had those friends who are like, “Oh, you’re going to eat that tuna?” Then wreck the whole dinner. I said, “I don’t want to be that person because I know people come to something when they’re laughing and happy and they feel good. So, let’s create that type of company where if you’re not wholly plant-based that’s fine, just have some of this and integrate it in your life.” Then for people who are sick, if you have a heart disease I say don’t mess around, why would you? Just go all in, see what happens.
So, we really created foods that fit anybody. Wherever you’re entering into a plant-based or if you’ve been eating vegan and plant-based your whole life or if you’re just starting or if you have a specific illness, we try to create a product and we curate them into bundles that will suit you. I think it’s worked out pretty well. We partnered with the American Institute for Cancer Research for people who are going through chemotherapy and treatment because we know that having good food handy and ready-made because our food is already made, you just have to heat and eat it, is a huge benefit when you already feel sick. We have a heart-healthy bundle. We work with Dr. Esselstyn to create that. We worked with TrueNorth. So, we picked some really key people and then develop some bundles specifically for that.
We work with, I don’t know if you know Dr. Jamie Dulaney, she’s just a rock star. She’s a cardiologist. She said she traded in her scalpel for her spatula. She has a lifestyle and wellness practice. She’s also an Ironman athlete. She said, “There are some specific things that we need as athletes when you’re plant-based that you can’t always get.” So, we created some custom products. We have this beet product, which I have to send you because it’s like rocket fuel. You put it in your smoothie with a little juice and a banana and increases stamina. Any research on beets will tell you this, but decreases inflammation, increases stamina, increases endurance. A lot of high-level athletes love it. So, that was her secret weapon. She started pounding our beet. We made it with her and then we made a performance bundle for athletes that need a little extra. Different nutrients, different vitamins and a little more for more calories. So, that type of thing. That’s our story. That’s how we got here and how MamaSezz came about.
[0:21:02] Ashley James: I love it. I was crying the entire time about your mom. I was just like, “Oh my gosh, she’s still here and she was at 10% a heart and her kidneys were failing.” Sounds like she had COPD.
[0:21:18] Meg Donahue: Oh yeah.
[0:21:20] Ashley James: That was her at 80 and all the MDs gave up on her. They all said go home to die, go home to hospice. We really have to wrap our brains around this. We have given over our power and our medical authority. We’ve given over our decision-making to these MDs that we put on a pedestal.
They are really well-intended people. They are highly educated. They really do want to help, but it’s like asking a plumber and check my car engine. They’re not trained in how to heal the body. They’re training how to manage drugs and manage symptoms and sort of just keep us alive with allopathic medicine, but they’re not trained in school about nutrition and healing the body. It blows my mind.
So, all the doctors and all the times she went to the ER and all the time she was in the hospital, MD allopathic drug-based medicine was not going to get her healthy. It was just going to maintain and sort of just keep her from dying. Then she comes home and eats your whole food plant-based no salt, sugar oil, cooking and it’s delicious and she was eating food that was dense in nutrition and optimally designed to heal the heart. She’s here years and years and years later and she’s driving and she’s active and she’s having the quality of life that some 70-year-olds don’t have. Just blows my mind.
[0:23:00] Meg Donahue: It’s really true. I remember one time when I was in, at this time I didn’t really know, but I remember thinking, “Wait a minute, she’s a heart patient. Why are they giving her tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches? That just seems wrong.” I didn’t even know all that I know now. This was before we had the company. It was crazy. What I think happens, she has a story of her doctor. Because earlier, before all this, she had had a pacemaker. He said to her, “You’re never going to feel as good as you did before in your life.” It stuck with her. She’s had a lot of doctors but that particular one just stuck. She goes, “What a horrible thing to say to somebody.” It turned out to be so dramatically wrong. But I think that if a lot of people, a lot of doctors and I think it’s changing a lot but I think that they have the tools that they have to work with.
Nutrition is a very difficult thing to control. You can control a pill but you can’t control what somebody eats. People aren’t great at self-reporting. So, I think that they are trying to hedge their bets and rightfully so because they have an oath to do their best. If what they’re seeing is somebody who may or may not follow through and then they die of a heart attack or I can give them a stent and then they can hopefully change their diet. That’s what I see a lot. I’ve run into some flat-out resistance to it, but a lot of it is that an abundance of caution and an understanding that most people aren’t able to comply. That was one of the reasons that we said let’s make it so flat out easy to do this that people can get over that initial hump that first month. That first two months. Because our products are not like a meal kit or anything. They’re more like what you would stock your fridge with. So, you get your almond milk, you get whatever other things and you get your MamaSezz products. You can eat them just as they are or you can mix and match them with other things and make other meals. That’s what we wanted. To make it so easy for people that the multi-ingredient things are already made for you.
We do veggie burgers you can put whatever you want on a veggie burger. We do the chili, we’ll do the lasagna and we have a great new breakfast bundle coming out with frittatas and flatbread. It’s all gluten-free. There’s no flour. It’s amazing, but to make it super easy for people because that’s what we saw in a medical profession that doctors were really wary of. It was accurate because it is hard to comply especially when you’re not well and you have habits and probably addictions to different sugars and flours and foods and things to comply. So they hedge their bets and we try and help on the other end. Okay, go ahead. Keep taking medication, but do this as well and have your doctor monitor your medication so you can wean off the things. That was really what happened with mom because we didn’t know what the heck we were doing but all of a sudden her blood pressure dropped like a stone. I’m like oh my god. What we realized is because she was getting better, her blood pressure, she had high head high blood pressure, dropped but she was on blood pressure medication. So it dropped too much. We have to like scrape her off the floor and then got her blood pressure medication adjusted as she got stronger and stronger. It went down and down. It was a weaning process.
[0:26:58] Ashley James: Wonderful. So, she’s off of medication now?
[0:27:01] Meg Donahue: Yeah. She had had like a genetically high cholesterol. Some people just produce more cholesterol. So, she’s on something for cholesterol. She had had a thyroid issue. So she still has a small amount of that. So it’s like everything is on a– initially, I have master’s degrees and I had to have a spreadsheet just keep track of her medication. When she first came it was just insane. She’s on B12 now. She does D, some vitamins and things like that. Then she has a few of the other ones, one for the thyroid and then a cholesterol.
[0:27:42] Ashley James: So, she’s on two prescription medications instead of an entire spreadsheet of prescription medications?
[0:27:48] Meg Donahue: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[0:27:51] Ashley James: I love it. We had a similar testimonial from, in the Learn True Health Facebook group we get testimonials all the time from listeners by listening to the show and following the advice of people like Dr. Esselstyn who’s been on the show. My listeners then report back. We had one woman who took pictures of her old medication and her new medication. She went from something like nine or ten bottles down to two bottles. She changed three things in her life, things that she learned from the show. She changed three things. Most of those meds were pain meds. She says, “I am now out of pain.” She’s out of pain. She’s goes, “I’m going to start exercising now because I’m out of pain.” This is the quality of life that people can have by shifting their diet.
[0:28:47] Meg Donahue: And you. You’re bringing that message to them. I mean, that’s what we need. Somebody who can bring quality content to people that’s research-based. We knew we wanted to be grounded in research and that’s what you are where you’re bringing people. This is real. It actually works. You can always test, know if a diet works not by whether you lose weight or not or if you have more energy, but if you get your actual physical numbers done. So, that’s we tell people is like, “You might want to do keto but what I would do is get all of my numbers done first and then six months later get them done again or a year later and follow it.”
[0:29:26] Ashley James: I like that. I like that you brought that up, that testing. That’s exactly what happened to me. Through the last 15 years or so, I have reversed type 2 diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, chronic infections for which I was on monthly antibiotics for, polycystic ovarian syndrome and infertility. I had five basically diseases and I reversed it with food and supplements and lifestyle changes. That’s why I started the show because I learned so much from Naturopathic doctors and from these holistic doctors. I thought this is crazy. The world needs to know this. The world needs to know that just switching to organic made my chronic monthly infections go away. One change, just one. I didn’t even give up sugar. I didn’t give up dairy. I didn’t give up meat. My first change back in 2008, 2009 it’s like right around 2008. It was right when Netflix started streaming the first health documentary. The first health documentary said shop the perimeter and buy organic. We were still eating the standard American diet. I did more shopping the perimeter and I chose organic and within that month my chronic infections went away. I just turned to my husband I’m like, “If I can change one thing, something so big by changing one aspect of my food.” Yeah.
That began my journey into just diving in because I’d been going every month to the MD and they just kept giving me drug after drug after drug. How many years could I have lived on countless antibiotics? I would have had to be on antibiotics for the rest of my life just constantly. Would I still be here? I mean, I might have died from cancer or something because my immune system was clearly not working.
[0:31:21] Meg Donahue: Yeah. It sounds like it had just, probably which is a healthy response to a lot of toxins. Your body’s like forget it, we can’t do this, alert, alert. Luckily, I don’t know how you had the wherewithal to find it, but luckily you did. That’s amazing.
[0:31:41] Ashley James: Divine intervention. It was. It was definitely.
[0:31:43] Meg Donahue: Yeah. I hear you.
[0:31:45] Ashley James: There’s a lot of that.
[0:31:47] Meg Donahue: We’re angel driven, you know. We say that. I think it was right around that year when we were doing this. We had done this. I did a public art show and it was called watching angels because our town had been hit by floods. It fires. We’re a small town in the hills of Vermont. You wouldn’t think there’d be floods but there was this massive flood that went right through the town. So, I did this art show called watching angels where I got artists from all over the world to send in angels. It was outside. We would put them in weird little places or curious places with a message, an uplifting message. Then we had these two big 24-foot gratitude boards in town where people could go write what are you grateful for. It was amazing, Ashley. It was like this vortex. We kept it going for 30 days and we documented it. What we had said was that was kind of like it just dropped into my mind. I was drawing one night and this whole idea just came into my head. I was like, “I’m not really a public artist but okay, I guess I’ll do that.”
So, I just kind of found my way through and it turned out to be this really remarkable thing for the town, which was cool and I was glad to be a part of. The same feeling happened when MamaSezz really coalesced into an idea that we’re going to do this. I was sitting. I got up early. I was sitting at my breakfast table. It was like this idea just came down and the whole thing. I said, “Okay.” That’s what we’re going to do. Here we are two years later.
[0:33:35] Ashley James: Wow. I know that feeling of –
[0:33:38] Meg Donahue: I had a feeling that it would resonate with you like, “I’m going to what?”
[0:33:42] Ashley James: Yeah, because there’s no safety net. There’s no one there to catch you. There’s no paycheck. You might put your whole life savings into it. I mean, when you’re starting a business, it might be years before you get paid. So, it’s like there is no safety net. You could be, and you are so bold, you’re launching- I mean this country wants McDonald’s. What are you thinking? People want to eat fast food. What are you thinking? So, you’re going against the norm. You’re really going up against the norm and you’re saying, “I bet that there’s there are enough customers out there that desperately want a pre-made meal service that is going to help them heal their body.” That is so bold because most people, not the listeners obviously, but the majority the people want–they don’t even think about health. It’s not even in their consciousness to think about it. So you really we’re taking a huge risk to create a plant-based meal service that is designed for athletes, designed for heart patients, designed for weight loss, designed for the different kind of niches, but that it’s super healthy clean food. When the majority people out there just want to go through a drive-thru.
So, that was bold of you in that moment to say, “I’m going to launch this,” because you could have failed but you didn’t and I love it.
[0:35:22] Meg Donahue: Well, thanks. I think too you might be giving me too much credit. I don’t know if I thought about it. I think you might probably measured it as clearly as you might have. I would have gone like, wait a minute. I think it’s the same thing that galvanized you is when you’ve had your life just really transformed and you can see how amazing it is. Then I just felt like giving it away. It just felt like I have a golden ticket. Anybody who had like type 2 diabetes. I don’t want to be the person who’s like talking to their ear off about plant-based food. I said, “Well, maybe I’ll just create a company and then we can get,” and this is the lifestyle part is it was really important that we have solid information for people because there was so much woo-woo kind of not accurate science. Maybe an accurate message but backed up by kind of not strong arguments or science. So, we decided early on that we’re going to invest a lot of our time and efforts also into creating solid information for people because I wanted it. I ended up really just having, it’s a life or death situation for me. So, I was highly motivated but not everyone hopefully has to come to it being that motivated. They can just come to our site and go, “What is nutritional yeast? What do you do with it? How much B12 do I need?” Get those initial answers done and really find well-documented, well-researched information.
So, that’s the other part of what we do because it’s not all about food. Food just kind of gives you the platform to then go lead the rest of your life. There’s a lot of other things that can go into that.
[0:37:19] Ashley James: Food gave your mom ten years plus, right? Of quality living. She went back to swimming. She went back to driving.
[0:37:34] Meg Donahue: She travels.
[0:37:36] Ashley James: She travels. She’s super healthy. It gave her her life back. Food can give us our life back. I want us to stop thinking about, “Well, but what about my bacon? What about my meat? But I love cheese.” Just stop thinking about that. Let’s say if we add up all the hours of the day that we spend eating, okay it’s an hour a day. You’re suffering for 23 hours a day from whatever illness and you’re worried about the one hour a day that you enjoy your cheese? I mean, this is what I struggled with. It took me a while to kind of come around because I had to wrap my brain around. I realized, I came to the realization that dairy was hurting my health. I had to do a break from dairy and see if cutting out dairy would help. The hardest thing to let go was cheese because my husband and I would eat a brick of Tillamook Cheese every weekend. It was the big kind from Costco. Seriously, it’s the size of a foot. We would sit there and we would like, that was our you know. It took us a weekend and we’d eat it. I mean, we would kind of look at each other like, “Where’s the cheese?” “We already ate it.” It was a huge break. It’s like the size of my head.
Cream in the coffee. I had to kind of have a come-to-Jesus talk with myself and go, “Okay. So what? So what I don’t enjoy my coffee like I enjoy my coffee-less? So what? So I find something else to snack on instead of cheese. I am suffering right now and I don’t need to.” So, I had to buck up and try a different way of eating. Then all of a sudden I had these huge results. I’m like, “Okay. It’s worth.” But I went through a struggle. It took me a while to transition. I slowly transitioned. I slowly ate less and less meat and more and more plants. My husband however, he went vegan overnight. He just woke up and just said like everything in his being said, “I never want to eat meat again.” Since I’m the cook in the house so I have to cook now I have to figure out how to cook plant-based, okay. So, that helped my progression into the plant-based world.
What I found is that I had more energy in one week of eating more plants than I had eating all the meat in the world. We were raised to believe that meat gives us energy. We’re raised to believe that meat makes us feel good. So, I was surprised because I thought for sure I’d feel shaky and weak because again, I lived as a diabetic for many years. I was afraid of carbohydrates. I was afraid that eating yams or potatoes or grains, whole grains or even vegetables. I was afraid of vegetables for many years because I was afraid of carbohydrates. Really, I had to face all these fears and all these beliefs about food. I had to examine them and go, “Is this science-based? Is this based in reality or can I reorganize my thinking about food because I’d never tried eating just whole foods?” Okay. Stir-fry with no oil and there’s easy way to do it. Sauté a bunch of vegetables. Really delicious. You use the spices I love. Put it over some brown rice. All organic of course. Make my own tahini sauce or something. Make my own lemon garlic sauce or whatever I want. So delicious. I thought for sure I’ll be hungry in an hour, I’ll be shaky, I’ll be weak and it was the opposite. My energy lasted longer. I just began to feel better and better.
I told you this before we hit record, but yesterday I had for breakfast, actually it was really an early start because I woke up just after 4:00. So, sometime in between 4:00 and 5:00 I made a big bowl of homemade sprouts and a big bowl of sprouts with avocado and homemade sesame sauce like a tahini sauce. I had that for breakfast and then I didn’t eat again for about 8 to 10 hours. I can’t remember exactly when I had breakfast because I know I woke up at 4:00 but I basically didn’t eat again until 2:00 PM. I kind of looked around going, “Oh, wow. I’m just starting to get hungry now.” That wasn’t me in the past when I was a meat-eater. I had to eat like every three to four hours or else I’d be ravenous. So, I always thought I had to have meat to feel satiated. So, this is just a big, big shift to go, “Wait, I just ate plants and I am more satiated and eating me actually caused me to be hungry more often.” So, I had to constantly face my belief system about food and go, “Okay, I’m looking at foods to heal my body.” Is my belief system and also my desire for oh is it going to taste good because I just talked to a client yesterday and I was talking about broccoli as an example. I said 100 calories of broccoli is like two and a half cups broccoli. So, just to give a comparison, it’s very filling and nutrient-dense, but it’s volumetric. It’s low-calorie but big volume so you can eat a lot of a non-starchy vegetable, feel very good, you’re getting all these nutrients. She goes, “Yeah, but that’d be boring.” I was like, “Yes, exactly.” People are worried about eating healthy because it’s boring, but it doesn’t have to be.
[0:43:14] Meg Donahue: Yeah. I think that you’ve touched on so many important points that we’ve seen with people transitioning to eat this way. One of the ones that you said is you had to kind of come-to-Jesus moment. If you have a health issue, then that’s usually where the rubber meets the road. I say to people, “You’re going to need to make a decision about what you want to do here and accept that there will be some things that are different than what they what used to be. Just do it for today. Then when tomorrow comes do it for tomorrow. Add more things, more good stuff to your plate and have the meats or the dairies be smaller. Then add more of this amazing buffet of possibility over here that are plant-based, it’s colorful, rich amazing foods. Eat those first and then eat the other.” When you can flip it that way and just kind of wean the others away, you allow your buds, which takes some time to change because we’ve really been just kind of saturated with the idea that you have to have massive amounts of salt, sugar, and fat for something to taste good. A potato chip is a good example of that. That the reason they taste so good is because those elements are so so high and it’s addictive. That’s why you can eat just one. It’s not because that particular taste is so unique and amazing. It’s that combination of those elements are so amazing.
So, it takes a while for your taste buds to readjust, but like you said, when you begin to have the benefits and can allow yourself that, it so outweighs the other. I totally get that for people who grew up eating a certain way, changing can be difficult. There is a point where you make a decision, well, what do I want to do? If you can know that on the other side of it is not like food that’s just going to be blah the rest of your life because I think that’s the fear or I’m never going to have enough protein, but to do what you did which was to really allow yourself the experience of it and then to be reflective enough to say, Well, was that true? Did I really have an energy drop? No, I didn’t. Am I really starving? No, I’m not. Did that taste bad? No, it tasted good.” To let yourself do that enough so that your body is like, “This is what I crave, I don’t crave the other anymore.” That happens. That happens to everybody. It takes about, they say, 66 days to really ingrain a habit if you do it consistently. Everyone would like it to be three days but it’s really, that’s just our physiology and our psychology. It just takes some time and to give yourself that time. The gift of health we call it because you know the benefits are just so profound even if you don’t have an illness, especially if you don’t have an illness. Just to be able to live your life with that level of sustained clear energy with a focus is really just amazing. That’s how we’re meant to live. When you can read all the ingredients and you could grow them in a garden of our food, but for a lot of foods that we see, there’s just absolutely no place that they are found in nature. They’re found in a lab. It’s not surprising that our bodies don’t process them or recognize them that well.
[0:46:55] Ashley James: How long have you been offering MamaSezz? How long have you been shipping meals?
[0:47:04] Meg Donahue: We launched in February of 2017. Pretty quickly, made the decision to ship nationwide. So, we ship fresh. It comes in a cooler. This is another thing that bothered me when we first started. I wanted to see what other company was doing, how they did it, what worked and what we could glean from it. What I ended up with it was a garage full of just boxes and ice packs and liners. I thought, “This is crazy. So much of this is just going to land up in a landfill.” Talk about being the ugly American. I’m going to get these ten meals and I’m dumping all this in a landfill. We need to crack that nut.
So, we decided right off the bat that this is something that we have to create a model that handles that. So, what we do with a two-tiered approach. The first thing that we do is we give you a shipping label and we take everything back. So, you get your box and all of your stuff and then you just put your ice packs back in, unless you want them, and the liners and you just ship it back to us. We recycle and reuse all of it. The other thing that we’re doing is, I grew up in part on the ocean in Maine and realized that our oceans are really getting hammered. What can we do to help raise awareness about that and also monetize potentially taking the plastic out of the ocean? So, we said, “Well, we could probably make boxes, shipping boxes out of ocean plastic.”
[0:48:45] Ashley James: Oh, cool.
[0:48:46] Meg Donahue: Yeah. So, that’s our under the wire project that we’re working on now is to pull the plastic from the ocean, pelletize it, make boxes out of it. Because that you can reuse and reuse. You can do 50-60 trips with that. Then when the box is no longer usable, you can repelletize it and make a park bench out of it. So, that’s our idea, our second idea. Our first is of course we take everything back because this is it. We get one planet, one life. Maybe it was after the 50-mark in my life and then seeing how fragile it was for my daughter and then at my mom at her stage in her life is that it is so rapid and so fast. What am I going to leave for my children? What kind of world am I going to leave? What kind of environment am I going to leave? Are they going to be struggling with things that I never even could imagine? How do we set a tone in a company that can leave it better than when we got here or at least stop the burn? So, that is a big part of who we are and why we do what we do.
[0:50:04] Ashley James: Brilliant. So, you have been shipping out since 2017. In the last few years, you must have testimonials. Can you share some that are in the forefront of your mind?
[0:50:20] Meg Donahue: Yeah. We have so many customers. This is because startups are tough, at least food businesses, it’s a difficult business. There are a lot of moving parts when you make your own food. We don’t outsource our food to others, to a co-packer, which a lot of companies do. We do it all ourselves. We have a brilliant plant, brilliant shipping facilities, but there are a lot of moving parts. So, what keeps you going is knowing that what you’re doing matters. That it’s impact is somebody’s life in a really positive and in many life-changing way. So, we hear from our customers every day. We came out with a weight-loss bundle and I had resisted it for a long time because I didn’t want people to just focus on their weight and not on their health. But what I realized is that weight is sometimes what gets your attention. If this is the way we can get people’s attention and then they end up having this health and the weight drops off because it always does when you’re plant-based. So, we developed a weight-loss program. The most moving pieces are people who have had life-long 10, 20, 30, 40 pounds that they have lost and gained back and lost and gained back and been caught in this struggle, which is an excruciating struggle because every day, for every meal you’re measuring it against, am I my gaining weight or am I losing weight? Am I gaining weight, am I losing weight? Do these pants fit, don’t they fit? When you get up in the morning, am I bloated, not bloated?
So, this whole massive amount of energy that is sucked up by how much do I weigh? What they, a lot of people have believed is it’s their psychology is somehow off.
[0:52:12] Ashley James: Or they blame themselves. They blame themselves. I was too weak. I couldn’t do it.
[0:52:17] Meg Donahue: I had a crummy childhood. I had something. All of this stuff, maybe those pieces are true, but what we know is that there’s flat-out science that says if you put too much sugar, fat, salt and other chemicals in your body it’ll alter your body chemistry and so that you begin to set up a craving in there that is just like any other addiction and you are powerless to it. So, what you need to do is to get that out of your system and let your body heal. When you do that you will lose weight naturally because you will no longer be in conflict with food. So, we’ll get messages from people and they’re ecstatic about the 10 or the 15, 20, 30. We’ve had people lose 65 pounds on a program. That is wonderful because to be released that. But the number one thing that is so moving is that they tell us, to a person, I have unhooked from food obsession, which means that the weight issue is you’re done. You paid that electric bill. You don’t have to go back to it. You’re not going to be next month. If you keep eating a plant-based diet, you’re not going to be in conflict with food. You’re not going to have to get up and think, “Should I eat this or shouldn’t I?” All of that energy and it’s not just women. So many men have it. They suffer differently than women, but it’s still a struggle. They might go to the gym more or women too, an obsession with working out, which has to do. I used to do in college, it helped get through college. I worked in gyms. I remember, it was during the early 80s. When they first started putting calorie counters on treadmills. The population of our gym changed from men to women.
Women would come in and it was not to get fit but all of a sudden the marketing had shifted. So, where if you could workout you could burn off last night’s whatever. That’s what happened, is working out became a way to get rid of calories as opposed to a way to get healthier. If working out did not burn calories, people would not do it for the health reasons. They just wouldn’t. That is what happened. That’s what happened and marketers got it. Now you’ll see everything has a calorie counter on it. Everything tracks, “Oh my goodness. Are you burning calories?” I can say I am never ever. I don’t count a calorie. I don’t think about calories. This is somebody who when I was in my 20s had a pretty significant eating disorder. So I was all that. I was as hooked into food as you could get. It’s gone. Just gone. That is the piece that is the most moving.
We’ve had a woman in her 50s, she lost 65 pounds. Then the transformation of her life because her orientation was no longer about food and my own weight and my inability to lose weight. Those are really gratifying.
[0:55:30] Ashley James: Being at peace with food for those who have suffered emotional eating, overeating, binge eating or food addiction. It’s over 10% of the population has this. It occupies every minute of the day for them. I know because that was me. You’re right, whole food plant-based diet has given me peace in my body. I interviewed Dr. Ellen Goldhamer, the founder or co-founder of the TrueNorth Medical Center.
[0:56:01] Meg Donahue: Yeah. We work with him.
[0:56:02] Ashley James: Right. Yeah. You mentioned him or you mentioned the TrueNorth Medical Center. He co-authored the book The Pleasure Trap. I really recommend reading it or listen to it because Chef AJ narrated it. I love her. I’ve had her on the show twice. He talks about the pleasure trap. He talks about the hyper-palatable foods in our society that really have hijacked our brain and hijacked our ancient survival mechanism. Because 1,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago or 10,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago however long it was that we were evolving and growing and being here on this planet. Whatever your belief system, everyone believes we’ve been here at least 5,000 years depending on what religion you’re a part of, but we’ve been here long enough. That back when there weren’t restaurants. Maybe we had to hunt or forage or gather whatever. That the body, we would go through times of famine.
In order to survive the famine, our ancestors had to gorge on high fructose fruit when it was in season. That’s why fructose is the only carbohydrate that doesn’t, actually the only macronutrient that doesn’t trigger the satiety mechanism in the brain. So, what that means is you could not imagine drinking a liter or two liters of coconut cream or whole dairy. Whatever it’s called, whole milk. If I were to hand you two liters of, I don’t know what the conversion is in American, gallon? Whatever what the unit.
[0:57:51] Meg Donahue: Like two gallons.
[0:57:52] Ashley James: Two gallons. Okay. If I’m going to hand you two gallons of high-fat milk and tell you to chug it you would be like, “Are you going to pay me a million dollars?” Maybe, but that doesn’t sound appealing. You drink a glass of high-fat coconut milk and even a glass would be too much. It’s just too much. But if I were to give someone two liters of a soda-pop like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, a teenager would down that in a day and have no problem. They would definitely have problems like sugar high, but the fact is that something with fructose doesn’t trigger the satiety mechanism. So, they use fructose in foods to make us consume more of it. Because we were meant to gorge heavily on fruit and never fully feel full so that we could gain weight so we could survive the famine. So, that was healthy back when it was in a whole food form. Then they took fructose and they isolated it and highly concentrated it and they put it in all packaged food. In some way or another, most potato chips have some form of sugar in them along with the other things that trick the brain to make us want to have more and more and more of it.
So, our brains from a very young age, have been hijacked by these Frankenfoods. As well as the marketing. I’ve discussed this on the show before. It hit me, when I was a child and I’d watch Sesame Street or whatever. Whatever that had commercials because I don’t know if PBS has commercials but whatever kids show I’d watch. The commercial would come on, it would be a Kellogg’s commercial or there’d be Cheerios or there’d be Lucky Charms or whatever with all these fun, childlike characters. You’d get a prize or there’d be cartoons on it. So, it would be this very friendly, calming thing for a child. It wasn’t threatening. It was something that looked delicious. It was something that was comforting.
So, you grow up going down the aisles seeing your familiar friends on these boxes and seeing all the familiar logos on all these highly-processed foods. It isn’t threatening to your neurology because you grew up with these brands. Our neurology is threatened by something new in an unconscious level. Especially for food and especially for children, they don’t like new things. But we grow up as adults and now we’re buying the same brands that we have been essentially brainwashed to trust because we grew up and they were part of our childhood. So, we just kind of blindly trust so much of the food that’s on the shelves and on our plates and in the drive-thru because they were able to market to us our entire lives. It’s like 1984. They’re able to just George Orwell our brain and hijack us.
So, we have to kind of pull ourselves out and go examine our belief system around food. I had to ask myself, “Why do I want to eat this? Really. What is motivating me? Why do I want to build my cells? I have 37.2 trillion cells. Do I want it? The next bite I’m putting into my mouth, do I want my body to be made out of this food?” Like some kind of potato chips right, as the example we come to. “Do I want to take oil, highly-processed oil, GMO, with pesticides and some fried potato chip with heterocyclic amines,” which is carcinogenic. It’s a massive carcinogenic compound that happens when you take certain foods and process them in high heat and then highly concentrated salt and sugar and MSG and other chemicals. “Okay, do I want to build my cells that are going to support me in health? Do I want to build my brain with this food, build my immune system with this food?” If we looked at every single bite we put into our body and we ask ourselves, “Do I want my eyesight, my eyes, the next cells to make my eyeballs, do I want them to be made out of this food? Do I want better eyesight or worse eyesight?
[1:02:17] Meg Donahue: You’re nailing it. It is not logical. I think that’s one of the things that’s really baffled me in my own life is that I’ve make a lot of decisions that they aren’t logical. I know that the times that I make those decisions are usually something’s going. I’m hungry so we tell people, we call it HALT: hungry, angry, lonely, tired. That address those things. First is hunger because it’s very hard to make a good food decision when you’re hungry and there is something that is going to taste good and give you the boost that you want. You might even intuitively know it like it’s a cookie or those types of really sweet type things or chips that are fast and they give you a jolt. So, if you can avoid being hungry in the first place with whole food plant-based foods, it’s much easier to not want things that are bad for you we found. Because you’re right, it makes no sense, even when you’re informed, that people still make bad decisions.
So, well knowing that we say, “Well, give yourself a little bit of a break.” Don’t make yourself be hungry just like you wouldn’t make your baby be hungry. They’d give them really good food. If your baby was angry you’d kind of pick them up and go, “Hey. It’s all going to be okay.” You can do the same with yourself. Lonely, of course with young children. You wouldn’t just stick them in a room alone. You nurture that need as well. Tired, of course, I think most people are working more than they have at this time in our lives. Just phenomenal stress financially, physically in our world that we’re so interconnected. I don’t think we can [Unintelligible] of being in a very connected and wired world for amazing as it is. How much of our energy and mental focus it gets kind of distracted and chewed up by that, which then leads to a kind of like trying to catch up when you get out of it.
So, those are the parts of the lifestyle that we try and address that putting good food in your body is the number one thing. It’s a whole lot easier to make decisions when you have that in your body, but to understand that there’s all these other pulls that you’re just going to do stuff. If you know any, you probably know a lot about recovery from alcohol and other addictions that it makes no sense that somebody would lose their license, lose their children, lose their job and then still go do something that was so damaging to themselves. We know that that is because there’s an active addiction going on. Once you can get that out and then give people the tools to deal with that time of recovery of when you’re no longer, when you’re learning how do I live differently and how do I make different decisions. So, that’s a part of what we really focus on as well are to give people the other tools to go from consistently making bad decisions to making fewer bad decisions around food, to making good decisions and have some compassion for themselves.
[1:05:46] Ashley James: One thing I would add to your HALT, I love it, is hydrate. So maybe hungry and hydrate.
[1:05:53] Meg Donahue: That’s cool. Yeah. That’s perfect because hydrate would be one, number one and then a hunger. Because a lot of times I think I’m hungry and I’m just thirsty. I don’t even know the difference.
[1:06:07] Ashley James: I’ve done a lot of work with the thirst mechanism. It’s strange, a lot of people think they’re, “Oh, well I’m not thirsty so I’m not dehydrated.” It’s far from the truth. In fact, thirst is sort of like, you know when your car says, “Okay, I’m about to be out of gas,” but you actually still have like 50 miles? My car does that.
[1:06:31] Meg Donahue: Right. Right.
[1:06:31] Ashley James: Okay. Thirst happens when the tank runs out and the car all of a sudden just stops. We’re like, “Oh, we need more gas.” That’s when thirst actually kicks in. When we are below empty and we actually needed to have sort of drinking water 50 miles ago.
[1:06:51] Meg Donahue: That’s a really good analogy.
[1:06:52] Ashley James: Yeah. I just came up with that.
[1:06:53] Meg Donahue: That is so good. That is really good.
[1:06:56] Ashley James: Whereas hunger comes when our tank is like 60% still full. Our body’s like, “Okay. I just made some room in the stomach. You can eat now.” We eat more calories than we need because our brain, for all the years that we lived without restaurants and without grocery stores, we didn’t have access to regular meals. So, our brain was desperately seeking calorie-dense foods in order to not die. So, now that we have access to constant supply of food, our brain goes, “Fantastic. We can be 400 pounds and we will never die of starvation.” That’s your brain’s job is to try to get all of us to be 400 pounds because we have a constant access to fuel. Our brain loves gaining weight because it wants us to survive the famine. We don’t need to eat three or six meals a day. We’re being told now that we should eat, “Eat six meals a day.” We don’t have to, but we definitely want to get nutrients in us.
There’s 90 essential nutrients the body needs. The body needs omega fatty acids, which we can get from plants. The body needs protein or in the form of main amino acids, which we can get from plants, an abundance of it and all the amino acids. That’s my pet peeve is when people say, “Oh, but you have to eat meat because there’s certain amino acids you just don’t get unless you eat meat.” Oh man. That was my first myth. I totally believed that. That was the first myth I busted for myself doing the research. We need 60 minerals, which we can get from, it’s a little bit harder to get all our minerals because of the farming practices. But if we eat organic, and sometimes we can supplement with a trace mineral if we are deficient. Eating plants is going to ensure that we’re getting more minerals than eating animals because animals don’t make minerals. Cows don’t make minerals. Cows don’t make calcium. Cows get their calcium from their feed. Then you could take supplements so we can just skip the middleman and take our own supplement or eat lots of greens.
So, we need 60 minerals. We need two essential fatty acids. We need 16 vitamins. We could definitely get all the vitamins from plants. I went through and looked at all the nutrition. I was like, “We got to get this dense amount of nutrition in us, but we don’t need to eat 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 calories a day and a lot of people are.” I know that I was constantly hungry. I had to work on that. What’s going on? My hunger mechanism was just constantly out of control. Whereas I never felt thirst until I was incredibly dehydrated. So, the hunger mechanism can kick in when we’re still 60% full. We have to sort of check-in with ourselves saying, I love your thing, check-in, is this really hunger or am I angry, lonely, tired?
I have a sign on my fridge that I made that says, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how hungry are you?” Because I check-in with myself and I go, “You know what, it’s a three. I probably need a glass of water.” So, checking in and having that self-awareness has really helped me because I would have totally got in and had a snack because you know what, it’s fun to eat. There’s a word, and I don’t remember the word in Japanese but I love this word. There’s a word in Japanese that means I eat not because I’m hungry but because my mouth is lonely.
[1:10:32] Meg Donahue: It’s true and eating is fun. We have a thing where we say, “If you think you’re hungry have an apple and if you don’t want eat an apple you’re not really hungry, you might want something else.” But I’m a believer in being prepared especially when you’re starting to shift things because our mind is really tricky. It’s just going convince me of something that I’m going to regret later. So, we try and prepare ourselves. I tell people, and we do this in the weight loss and in other things, one, we have drink water before every meal. It’s shown, if you’re trying to lose weight if you can drink 16 ounces of water before each meal and a green salad, you’re going to lose up to 22% more than you would otherwise. So, that’s an incentive, but you also are getting those things. You were hydrating.
Then to plan. You don’t have to be maniacal, but when you’re doing something new, it’s a lot on your brain to make a decision every single time you have to eat or might be hungry. So, go ahead and give yourself a break and plan out your meal. So, we help people do that. We specifically plan snacks, because what happens is exactly what you said, “Yeah, I’m hungry. I think I’ll get something.” Then the know chips are there or whatever. You stop for gas because food is everywhere. It wasn’t when I was growing up. You got gas at a gas station. You didn’t get dinner, which is what you do now. So, food is everywhere.
There’s so many times you have to decide, will I eat that or won’t I because it’s everywhere. So, we pre-make those decisions. Plan your snacks. Plan your snacks. So, make sure. Just like I do my kids when I pack their lunch. I know they’re going to get hungry so I give them a great snack. They look forward to it. Then they’re not hungry and they come home and my kids are super healthy. So, I do it for myself. Plan your snacks. Like, “Oh, cool,” because food is also very sensual. It’s so fun and it’s such a big part of our lives. So many wonderful things happen around a table and around cooking and around eating that you don’t want to take that away to make sure that you’re actually really are enjoying it. It isn’t like taking you over.
So, that’s why we plan snacks so that you get that. Great, this is a treat, cool. Food is a treat, but make sure it’s a real treat not something that you’re going to like, “Oh, why did I eat that?” It’s so over that. It feels like so 90s or 2010. I don’t know but that whole, “Oh, I shouldn’t have eaten that.” Well, I did. That can take so much energy. So, just plan for and give yourself. Then when you get in the habit of it, it just makes sense. We plan for so many other things in our life that really don’t impact us in the same sort of way. So, if you just plan, “Hey, this what I’m going to eat this week.” Don’t feel bad if you don’t do that, but just know that it’s there like you’d put gas in your car because I have a long drive. So, I think I’ll put gas in my car. I’ll plan to do that. it’s just that kind of reorientating our thinking so that you’re super taking care of yourself in a way that you would for somebody that you just love beyond measure and let them to never feel thirsty or hungry or tired or any of those things. To care for ourselves with that same affection.
[1:14:13] Ashley James: On the weeks that I have planned out the meals, I have such low stress that it made me realize how, so I’m the cook in the house. We have a four-year-old, who’s almost five, and I have a husband. So, I’m responsible for, and we also have a cat, but I pre-order. We actually get the cat food shipped to us so he’s taken care of. So I have three people I have to feed every day, me, my husband and our son. The three of us. Being responsible for my food is stressful enough because I have such, for many many years have focused so intensely on healing my body and getting to a weight and healing my liver and all the complications that have come up. I’ve had so many results and I’m still working on my health. There’s no tip of the Mount Everest of health. We’re all still getting somewhere. We’re all still improving our health.
So, my consciousness is around how I can in a way that brings me the most health and then I have to feed a four-year-old and then I have to feed a husband. Everyone has different palates. Everyone wants to eat at different times. Everyone wants different portions and wants different ingredients. We also have food allergies in the house. If I’m working, then my husband’s with our son. My husband, he tries his best but I feel like I’m more responsible for creating healthy meals than anyone else in the family so I take it upon myself.
On the weeks that I’ve planned ahead and I have pre-made food like on a Sunday. I’ll take half a Sunday and just make a ton of food and have it all packaged up and have it in the fridge. The rest of the week, there’s a level of peace in me. It was like I just came out of yoga class but all week long. I just can’t believe how much peace I have in my body because there’s something in the back of my brain like a constant worry about, “Okay, what am I feeding my son? What am I feeding my husband? What am I going to eat next? What am I cooking? What am I cooking? What am I cooking? Oh, I got to go to the grocery store. Oh, we just ran out of this. Okay. My son’s hungry. Okay, I got a feed of a snack.” It’s just this constantly worrying in the back of my mind that just takes up a ton of energy. I don’t even notice I did it until I did an entire week of meal prep. That voice didn’t even need to be there. I couldn’t believe how much energy it took. I just wonder for the listeners. Because even if it was just for me, like if I didn’t have to worry about other people, I still would be thinking those thoughts like, “I got to go to the grocery store. I have to make sure I cook this. I got to make that salad. I have to steam my two pounds of vegetables. I got to pre-soak my beans.” I hate it when I go to cook beans and I haven’t pre-soaked them.
[1:17:10] Meg Donahue: Exactly. That’s why we started the company. Because with that level of stress and if you’re trying to eat healthy and you’re eating plant-based, it’s a lot. We’re busy and we have other things. It’s not like you’re just home and all you have to do is plan meals. But it’s still a lot.
[1:17:30] Ashley James: No, we’re busy.
[1:17:32] Meg Donahue: Yeah, we’re busy. So, that’s what we said. It’s a lot easier. We said, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a personal chef without the awkward small talk?” The food arrives. It’s there in the fridge. I know what I’m going to have for breakfast. I know what I’m going to have for lunch. I get a meal plan that tells me suggestions. If you have a family, we have a family bundle and with a very hearty kind of familiar taste profile. So, it’s not like these are crazy weird things. But at any time, I could go in the fridge and I know I could get a MamaSezz chili, I could get a MamaSezz Moroccan stew, or a MamaSezz veggie burgers. All of our soup freezes well too, but it’s all there. You always know you have it. Because it’s that level of stress, that’s when hungry, angry, lonely, tired that’s when things tip. We make decisions out of expediency. It’s totally understandable because we’re getting crushed by the amount of stressors that we have. It’s real. It’s not like a made-up and we just got to suck it up and get better at it. It’s real. There’s so much going on with families and work schedules and just timing of things. It’s just like, “Oh, I forgot this. I got to go to the store.” That sets everything back a half hour and that means the evenings, so you know.
That’s what we try and alleviate is that juggernaut of stress so that you can just go about living your life and enjoying really good food and it’s there for you. If you want to make something else of course you can, but you have the basics there at any time.
[1:19:17] Ashley James: I love it. Back around 2013, I was doing a job that took up so much of my time. It was like 12 hours a day. There was no me time at all. It was just a project. It was going to be a few months. I basically just had to pour all my waking hours. I’d wake up and immediately start working. I had to pour all my waking hours into it and I was very passionate about it, but it was something that I couldn’t even afford to cook or to even go out to eat or anything. I had to put all my time into it. So, I started googling a meal delivery service or whatever. Uber Eats wasn’t around at the time, luckily. I ended up finding some kind of delivery service, sort of like yours, but not. It wasn’t plant-based. I wasn’t plant-based at the time but I was eating paleo. This company did paleo meals. Because we were gluten-free at the time. We were trying to eat whole foods as much as possible. So, we did it for about three months. I mean, obviously not your delicious food, but just the ease of having meals delivered that were already made that I could just heat up either on the stove or in the oven. I don’t do microwave. I know some people can or choose to. I don’t choose to. That was it. I didn’t have to think about it. I really enjoyed it. I found less expensive than if I had gone out to restaurants. More expensive obviously than if I cooked it for myself, obviously. I felt as though it was a good investment. It helped me get that project done, which was helpful for us, obviously. So, I thought, “Wow, this is really cool.” I considered continuing to do it. But then I had the time, plenty of time after that to be able to cook and our diets changed. I always thought that was really interesting.
So, we did it for three months and it really helped us get over the hump. I thought that that was a great resource. They were just sort of coming out these meal kits or whatever. This was totally pre-made food. They give you a little card that says, “Here’s your breakfast. Here’s your lunch. Here’s your dinner.” Then there are other companies. I’ve tried one since, that have prepackaged ingredients and you kind of have to mix them together to make your meal. I tried a vegan one. It was the most complicated thing ever. I got, oh my gosh. The things taste good, but I had the hardest time. It was a big box and it came with 40 different packages. It wasn’t organized. Then they give you this recipe list and you have to find each package. There’s not like find the blue package or find the red package. All the packages are black and white and you have to read every single freaking all 40 of them to find the tamari or whatever. Then you have to read them all again to find the jackfruit. Oh my gosh. I got kind of pissed off. I ended up just mixing and matching the ingredients and just cooking them. Just cooking them on stove whatever it was because I couldn’t. I felt like I was given a Lego set with the wrong Legos. There’s no way that there’s a jackfruit. Oh man. They gave me too many jackfruits or they didn’t give me enough tamari or whatever.
I just felt that that was a real bummer because it actually came recommended by a Naturopathic friend of mine. She was like, “Oh, this is the best of the world.” I think she just loves it because they have some kind of brownies or something. I’m not into desserts as much as I used to be. So, I was like, “Well, I’m interested in the health food.” So, that was really annoying. Then I have friends who get the meal delivery service where they send one box a week. They give you all the ingredients. They give you a recipe and you have to cook it yourself. So, it really doesn’t save you any time.
[1:23:43] Meg Donahue: It stresses me out.
[1:23:50] Ashley James: Yeah, right. It doesn’t save you any time, but it does kind of I guess save you a trip to the grocery store. That’s nice. They give you a recipe, but you still have to cook it all yourself and it doesn’t really help you for all the other meals. It’s just more of if you have time and you sort of want a hobby like I would like a cooking hobby, but I’d like someone to do all the shopping for me. I want to be given the recipe kind of like a surprise, you’re making this recipe this week. That’s kind of fun if you want a hobby and you have a lot of time. So, there’s different companies out there that will ship you food depending on how much time you have. The people who have the most amount of time I guess is the meal delivery service where it’s just a box of raw vegetables from a farm. I’ve done that before because it’s cool to buy directly from a farm. You’re supporting local agriculture. You’re getting from a local organic farm. That’s really sustainable and beautiful. Or you have to go to the farm itself and pick up your box. That’s also cool. That’s different because you still have to do all the thinking and cooking yourself.
Your way of doing it, you have really clean ingredients. You’re working with doctors that regularly heal heart disease and other major diseases like diabetes and also help people with addiction and weight loss and those things and athletes. So, you’re working with doctors to design, making sure that the nutrient profiles are optimal for health. Your focus is on health. That your food is delicious. Also your food isn’t weird like some weird vegan thing because I’m totally into the weird vegan thing. I’ve just embraced it all, but I can see my tempeh would be a bit threatening. My sprouts and my sauerkraut might be a little weird for people. But you’re like chili and everyone gets happy about it. So, your foods’ delicious and it’s familiar. There’s zero stress because it just gets shipped to you.
I’d like to talk a bit about sort of logistics. Is it in plastic? Is the plastic BPA-free? How do you prevent leaching from plastic into food? Have you looked into that? I’d like to know that because that was a big concern for me when I was buying it. Is it organic? Is it non-GMO? When you cook, do you cook with cookware that doesn’t have nonstick like Teflon? How strict are you guys when it comes to the being non-toxic?
[1:26:17] Meg Donahue: Nitty gritty?
[1:26:19] Ashley James: Yeah.
[1:26:20] Meg Donahue: We’re pretty fanatical, I think.
[1:26:22] Ashley James: Nice. So am I.
[1:26:23] Meg Donahue: Yeah. The big issue is plastic. The number one rule when you’re making food for people is you don’t want to harm people. You don’t want it to be dangerous. So, you don’t want any microbes that could harm people getting into the food. Plastic, unfortunately is the most effective way to do that. Glass can work but glass is also very dangerous in a production facility because if you drop a piece of glass, shards can go anywhere. So, we have zero glass in our production facility. Most high-level production facilities don’t. We use recyclables. We also take everything back. So, if there’s anything that somebody doesn’t feel like they want to, even though all of our ice packs are recyclable, some people just don’t want to do it. We take it back and we recycle everything appropriately.
Our facility is really, it’s probably like a surgical suite to some people. We are fanatics. It’s a cleanroom. You can’t get into our plant unless you go through a cleanroom. You are scrubbed down. You’re definitely in surgical scrubs, all of the production. We worked with labs to say, how do we make this food so that it is not- what we’re trying to do is to inspire health. Every point, what can we do to do that? So, I think on those I think we’re doing a good job. There’s always places where you can do more. So we do as they come up, we try and address them. I think for organic, we were one of the first organic breads in the country. Vermont Bread Company back in the 80s when people were saying you can’t have organic bread because you need to put chemicals in. A bread will rot on the shelf. So, we figured out a way to do that. So, organic is hugely important to us. We really respect the certification. What we know in our sourcing is we are 99% organic. There’s one or two items that occasionally you can’t get 100% organic. Local farmers, they might be a farmer in transition. Which is a real issue, farms that were not organic who are transitioning to. There’s a three-year period where they’re really doing amazing things and it’s costing them a lot of money. So those are the farmers that we end up buying for those products that at that moment we can’t source.
[1:29:11] Ashley James: I love that. I love that you’re supporting farmers that are transitioning. I wish there was a certification that we could put on our food that’s like, “Pesticide-free. Farmer transitioning to organic or something.” I don’t know. Some acronym.
[1:29:25] Meg Donahue: Because they’re just amazing those people. They’re really putting a profit, an easy profit on hold and hoping that they can make it through this period and then regain it or at least break-even. It’s really noble work. So, we try and support there where we can. We’re keen into regenerative agriculture. We work with Dr. Ron Weiss down in New Jersey who has this amazing, I don’t if you’ve ever talked with him but I would definitely. I’ll give you his information. He’s brilliant. He’s an incredibly compassionate man. He bought this huge farm in New Jersey. He’s doing a lot of this work of turning from non-organic to organic. Is very keen on regenerative AG because like you referenced earlier that the nutrients in our food, even organic food today compared to organic food 50 years ago does not have the same amount of nutrients. So, we’re kind of destroying our topsoil. So, how do we address that? He’s doing some beautiful work with that. He’s just he’s a wonderful, wonderful, brilliant guy.
[1:30:41] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. I love it. Just the fact that mamasezz.com is organic or like you said 99% organic, that in of itself is worth getting your pre-made food delivery service just to ease the people’s minds. Okay, I know I’m not eating pesticides. I know I’m eating really clean food. On top of that, you’re eating really healthy food that’s also delicious. Five years ago even when I wasn’t plant-based, I would have prescribed to your food delivery service because my focus since 2008 has been eating organic because it made such a big difference in my immune system. I’m sort of an organic snob when I go grocery shopping. My little son when he was two would be like, because kids are parrots, he would say, “Is it organic? Is that organic?” It’s so cute. I’m like, “Yes, sweetie. You can have this apple. It’s organic. There’s so many times when he’ll be like, “Oh, I want grapes. Momma, I want grapes.” I’m like, “Oh, they’re not organic.” Then he just stops. He’s like, “Okay.”
[1:31:50] Meg Donahue: He gets it. He gets it.
[1:31:52] Ashley James: You definitely don’t want to eat grapes when they’re not organic. Yeah, he gets it. It’s like, “Okay, we’re eating organic.” Then we’ll go, “Okay, let’s go find you something to eat. Let’s go find you an organic banana or something else. Let’s go find you something else.” Then he goes, “Okay.” So, it’s not about you can’t have food. It’s about let’s make healthy food choices. He doesn’t want the chemicals in him, because we talked about it at a kid level.
[1:32:17] Meg Donahue: It’s true. Kids intuitively get it. They really get it and they’re very honest about it. They’re very, “Yeah, but I like this. It tastes good.” We talked a lot in schools and things like that and our own kids, but they get it. We, not we’re organic and so just because if you’re organic your non-GMO. We also, I think something that people underestimate is the impact of preservatives. Even citric acid, we don’t use citric acid. We use our own system to package the food so that it has a long shelf life without preservatives or any chemicals. You nailed it. Why would you put chemicals in your body?
So, one of the things when I talk about being a lifestyle company is we realized, wow, so we’re not eating any chemicals but look at these creams that everyone’s using. Almost every cream you have, even if it looks organic, has some sort of chemical where actually if you put it in a beaker, you would never pour it on your skin. You would just like forget it.
[1:33:25] Ashley James: Cosmetics, right. I interviewed a woman who makes cosmetics at home. She sells them on Etsy. She healed herself from alopecia. Actually, when you buy cream from her you have to keep it in the fridge because it’s made from scratch. Yes. It’s so divine her cream. You would pay $200 a jar for this cream in a spa. This cream is so luscious. It’s so affordable. Her name is Emily. It’s Remedies by Emily. That’s it. Etsy store, Remedies by Emily. I’ve had her on the show twice.
[1:34:04] Meg Donahue: That’s so cool. I would love to talk to her.
[1:34:06] Ashley James: I can hook you up.
[1:34:07] Meg Donahue: Yeah. We’re coming out with a cream line. What we say is, the more of us doing this good work, because there’s so much bad stuff out there, the better. So I never feel like anybody in this space is a real competitor because there’s just so much opportunity. So we like to support anybody. But we felt so strongly about it. We said, “Let’s develop a cream line that is as clean and amazing as our food line.” Because people are what they put in their body and on their body. So, that’s coming out. I was just thinking that might be something good, a fun sample to give all of your listeners. I know we talked about some other things, but that might be something that we could do because we’re launching that soon. You just feel better. When you see my mom’s skin, I’ll send you a picture of her at 90, it will blow you away. It’s amazing. She uses it every day. She’s a skincare snob. She is just is, but she looks amazing. So much of it you’ve nailed it is why would you put something on your body that one wouldn’t eat or you wouldn’t want in your body because your skin’s your largest organ. It absorbs everything. It has to go through your liver. So, it was a natural progression for us to do the skin cream as well.
[1:35:33] Ashley James: It’s true. We often think that the skin is this impenetrable barrier. I’ve interviewed her several times. I want to hook you up with Kristen Bowen as well. Kristen Bowen was 97 pounds having 30 seizures a day in a wheelchair. I’m going to send you that episode. It’s my first episode with Kristen. Now she’s totally healthy. She has a concentrated magnesium soak from the Zechstein Sea. You go get your blood tested for your magnesium levels and then you do a challenge. You get one jug of her undiluted concentrated magnesium soak. You soak your feet in it, just two ounces of her concentrate in some water. You soak your feet for an hour a day and then you go back and get your blood tested. 76% of people are fully self-saturated that they completely have beaten the deficiency. Then the other people need to do it for like another two to three months. Then there’s a small percentage people that are still or magnesium deficient and that then actually it sheds a light on a underlying health issue that’s burning through their magnesium. So, it actually helps them to discover, like go deeper with their Naturopathic doctor and discover what’s going on. But they could have gone the rest of their life and possibly breaking down because there was an underlying health issue burning through the magnesium.
[1:36:59] Meg Donahue: That’s brilliant.
[1:37:00] Ashley James: So, yeah. So, 76% of people get the full cell saturation in one month. That’s totally transdermal. It’s through their skin. Now I was taking a magnesium. I was taking 600 milligrams of a liquid magnesium supplement, which I felt good every time I took it so I knew I was absorbing it. I could feel it. I took it for 10 years and I still was magnesium deficient. I did her magnesium soak and it was so life-changing for me. So, I was like how is it that I’ve been taking an oral supplement and eating tons of vegetables and I’m still magnesium deficient? So, I absorbed all my magnesium from her soak. So, our skin absolutely can absorb things depending on the size of the molecule. Even shampoo. You can put chemical shampoo on your scalp. Even though it’s only there for like a minute or two, they can find it in your bloodstream and it’s harmful for the body and the liver. So, yeah. So cosmetics of all kind deodorants and everything we put on our skin, plays a role in harming us or could actually help us and heal us.
[1:38:05] Meg Donahue: Help us and heal us. Exactly. That’s beautiful.
[1:38:09] Ashley James: I love it. The most important thing is food because we build our cells from food and hydrate. Then the second most important thing is reducing the amount of chemical exposure we have. So, I love that your food is organic. I love it’s non-GMO by default because it’s organic. When you cook the food are you making sure that this facility is they’re not using Teflon, they’re not using things that off-gas or add any chemicals to the food?
[1:38:37] Meg Donahue: Yeah. In a production facility, the cookware is a little bit different. So, it’s pretty high-tech some of the things that we do, which are cool. We worked early on with a lab. The lab scared me to death going through and what could possibly happen. There were a few long days where we’re like, “Well, how the heck are we going to do this then?” Some of it requires just a bigger investment.
[1:39:14] Ashley James: Can you give me an example of what you had to invest in? Because you could have cut corners. I’m really getting a feeling that your ethics and your love for people, your love for your customers. That you’re willing to go the extra mile, work with a lab, spend extra money that you didn’t necessarily have to. Because we have been duped by all the food companies out there. They cut corner. Every restaurant we go to chooses the least cost full way to prepare the food. Restaurants aren’t going to make a profit if they’re choosing the most expensive, most high-quality ingredients unless they’re charging an arm and a leg. So you always have to balance profit and what’s going to cost you. But the fact that you took a year to really make sure that the food was safe and clean and non-toxic and filled with nutrition and the right nutrition. Can you give me some examples of the hurdles that you could have cut corners on but you chose not to because you honor us as your customers?
[1:40:14] Meg Donahue: Sure. I think one of the very basic is the level of cleanliness and that seems like that should be a no-brainer. If anybody’s ever worked in a kitchen for a restaurant and then you clean up at night and you put stuff in the fridge. So if you take that and raise it to the level of you are going into a surgical unit with somebody who is having open-heart surgery. How meticulous are you going to be about making sure that there are no germs and that there’s no way that that person is going to be harmed? That’s how our kitchen is run. We have whole days that we clean before, we clean after. It’s very time consuming and probably more expensive than most that at the baseline you need to do.
Then how we package things. Some of it is proprietary so I don’t talk too much about it. I’m happy to talk off the air, but we went through a lot to make sure that our food is safe and that we have a good shelf for it. We test our food. That’s the other thing. There are so many good companies out there that do this as well. I do think that most entrepreneurs, they get up in the morning and they don’t think, “How can I rip people off?? I think they’re thinking, “How can I pay my payroll?” So there are some very tough decisions that somehow people make. You can’t always nail it and keep the doors open. I think more times than not, that’s what happens for people. There’s a scope creep with those where they kind of snowball.
So, we had a little bit of a luxury of having had a business and then having a little bit of time where we could begin to make some decisions. I think that there are so many people doing great work too, but we knew. Our co-founder and my partner, Lisa Lorimer, had such a strong background. There is not a more ethical business person that I know of. Anybody who has worked with her over a 30-year career will tell you that. That is just who she is. That’s how the whole organic bread, it was squishy white bread when she started her bread company here in a goat shed essentially in Vermont. Then it became this national business. It’s built on that kind of, if you do the right thing, I mean she wrote a book about it. Dealing with the tough stuff. How do you deal with these difficult decisions that entrepreneurs face and to do it as ethically as you can. To deal with the times sometimes and how do you deal when there’s conflict and you can’t always do everything that you’d want to do 100% just because we’re all human.
For safety to deliver for people, what we said we’re going to deliver, that’s our bottom line. There’s no sense being in business if we’re not going to do that. We’re in our 50s. This was something that we could have had a much easier road going forward. It matters to us. So, if we’re going to do this for real, we really want to have an impact. There’s no point at all in cutting a corner because we gain nothing. Then we have a business that means nothing to us and it’s not helping people. That’s really where we come from. I think we do a good work. Our employees love us because we treat them well. We pay livable wages. We give people benefits. We did that. Another decision we made early on that it’s a tough decision because that’s cut straight into your profit, but we said you want to be able to have a vacation, buy a home and not stress if you’re in an entry-level job. So, we try and pay a livable wage. We do pay a livable wage and we give full benefits to people. Those are the other parts of a company that matter to us because they’re people and it’s relationships. That’s why we do it at all.
[1:44:54] Ashley James: I love to vote with my fork. It makes a really big difference.
[1:44:59] Meg Donahue: That’s so cool. That’s a great way. That’s a great way of saying it.
[1:45:02] Ashley James: One of the first documentaries that helped me on this journey had a speech by the original founder of Whole Foods. He said, “Vote with your fork.” They outlined this change in the dairy industry that years ago there was this weird hormone given to animals that then we would consume. It wasn’t good for us. It wasn’t good for them. Was it like the HRR whatever? I can’t remember the name of the hormone, but basically, if you look at your milk now, if you look at all your dairy products now, there’s this thing that says No and there’s like HRR something something. No added hormones. Why is it? Why is it that that hormone was taken out of the dairy industry?
The consumer, and this was over ten years ago. The consumer began to become educated and voted with their fork. One of the largest buyers of dairy is Walmart. I didn’t know that, but you know Walmart’s huge because they have grocery stores. Walmart, because they saw their customers didn’t want to buy the dairy with that, they were like turning their noses up at it, that Walmart was one of the companies that helped to get this hormone taken out of the dairy so their customers would keep buying their dairy. That kind of shocked me because you’d think it would have been like Whole Foods or someone that actually cares about the environment or something like that or cares about health.
Basically it was about the profits. Like, hey, customers are not voting with their fork. That’s why I say vote with your fork. I vote with my fork. I’d rather pay 50 cents more for something non-GMO or organic or whatever. It’s not a big deal. It’s not going to break the bank, but you know what I am, or local. Let’s say pay 50 cents more for that bell pepper because the farmer two miles away grew it rather than shipping it in from Chile or whatever. That money, in the grand scheme of things, is not going to hurt that you paid a little bit more, but you just supported and you just voted, you just said, “Yes, farmer. I want you to succeed. I want you to keep thriving as an organic local business,” for example. So, if you can afford it, as a consumer if you can afford it, vote with your fork. Don’t buy products that the companies you don’t believe in, the companies that are harming us. Buy products from the companies that are helping us.
I love shopping at Costco. I feel like there’s this little halo above my head when I go there because Costco takes care of their employees. You talk to the employees their badges say like, “I’ve been here since 1999.” You talk to those employees who’ve been there a long time and ask them like, “How does Costco treat you?” versus Walmart versus working at other companies. You’ll be really surprised. They are very happy. They have good retention. Yeah, it’s hard to work there. It’s a warehouse. It’s hard work, but the company pays better and values the employees. I believe that every human on this planet deserves to be happy and like you said, they deserve a living wage. So, if someone can afford it they should buy from MamaSezz because you’re supporting a company that supports your health and support its employees. It’s just like this win-win situation. There’s no conflict of interest. It’s all about like, “We want to help you because you want to help us and you want to help others.” I’m just very congruent here in your level of ethics is wonderful. I love it.
Walk us through what it looks like to be a customer. So we go to the website. Now, you’ve given us $15 off, that’s really cool, with the coupon code LTH. Listeners can go to learntruehealth.com/mamasezz. Use coupon code LTH, get $15 off. They can check it out. They can try it for themselves. Walk us through. So someone goes to the website for the first time. What happens? What should they do?
[1:49:27] Meg Donahue: Sure. So, when you get to our home page you’ll see that we have some featured bundles, which are probably our most popular meal bundle packages. They’re based on what most of the people are buying. So if it’s a weight-loss bundle or a peak performance or a chef’s choice, which is where we put together a variety of meals and that you can have that on a subscription every week, every other week, every month or just pause it and have it once. So, you’ll see that our initial products are there or you can buy things ala carte or look at all of our specialty bundles. So, primarily once you get to our collections pages you’ll see that we try and curate the food in ways that will serve you. So, if you have a family, we have a family bundle and a meal plan so it makes it super easy. You can just go to whatever one suits your need. So, if you’re alone and you just want meals just for me that’s great. If you want just breakfast, we have a breakfast bundle. If you want to just put together your own bundle you can do that from all of our ala carte products.
The easiest way is probably buying a curated bundle. Then you just click, “Yes, I want this.” What you’ll get is, you go through checkout, but when the food arrives, it’ll arrive if you order by 8 PM on a Sunday, it arrives the next Thursday or Friday. It arrives fresh because we make it all fresh. So, this isn’t like sitting in a warehouse and then we pluck out when somebody bought. You order it and then we’re going to make it fresh that week for you and send it to you. So, it’ll get to your house on a Thursday or Friday, It’ll come in a box that is like a cooler box with ice so you don’t have to be home. FedEx will deliver it. All of the meals are packaged. They’re center of your plate food. So, some companies they’ll give you like a TV tray, like TV dinners that had a meat and then a salad and then a dessert and it’s all on one plate. So, that’s not our model. We’re much more encouraged kind of a more engaging with your food. So, we will give you a bag. We have some things in stack bags.
So a stack bag of lazy lasagna that’s two servings. You take out your servings and you heat it up on the stove or microwave if you like to do that. Then you’ll have your lazy lasagna. We’ll give you also suggestions of other ways things you might want to add to it. So we’ll do that with every single product, but when you get them they can go right from the box into your fridge. They’re ready to eat or you can freeze them. You can follow our suggested meal plan or mix and match it however you want. You have meals that are based on what you need. So, if you have a heart condition, we have a heart-healthy bundle. If you’re a performance athlete or a weekend warrior and you want to not feel the aches and pains of inflammation on a Monday, then you eat our bundle. You’ll bring down that inflammation, which is great and it increases performance. We work with a lot of, lot of athletes who really do well with what we have.
Some of our most popular ones are the get me started, keep it going bundles, which are just kind of regular meals that are the staples of what you’d have in kitchen when you eat plant-based. That are time-consuming and kind of distracting to make. So, we really thought about what are the things that you would replace the pizza and mac and cheese of when you’re not plant-based. That kind of easy food that is really super fulfilling. Everyone’s going to go, “Yeah. I want that.” So, those are what we want. We want to stock your kitchen with MamaSezz foods so that you’ll always have those meals there just like you always have almond milk or whatever your other staples are. You always have your MamaSezz veggie burgers. You always have your MamaSezz ricotta bake. You always have your MamaSezz marinara because we make an amazing marinara tested by Italians. That’s what we do. We go with the people who really know it and say, “Does ours measure up?” If they’re like, “This is so lame.” We go back to the drawing board and we’ve had a few of those. We’ve had a lot of failures. Oh my God.
[1:54:04] Ashley James: Well, that’s when you know you’re succeeding because you have to experiment in the kitchen to be able to adjust it. Now, marinara is typically vegan or plant-based anyway but what you’re saying is it’s oil-free and it doesn’t have sugar in it. It doesn’t have processed food in it.
[1:54:22] Meg Donahue: Exactly. No preservatives.
[1:54:24] Ashley James: No preservatives. Yeah. So you’re really making like an authentic, real one.
[1:54:29] Meg Donahue: It is like you just got it out of like somebody grabbed their stuff from their garden. You know that difference. Then they put this thing together and you’re sitting outside and you’re eating and it’s so fresh. The taste just pops differently in your mouth. Your body knows. It just responds to it differently. Anybody who’s had fresh food has had that experience where there’s just devoid of any of the other additives, preservatives, little chemicals, citric acids, little like, oh but it’s organic citric acid, whatever that goes into food. When it doesn’t have that, it tastes amazing and your body responds differently. That’s the bar for our food is that we just want it to have that fresh taste that you can open it up and you eat it and you feel great and it’s easy. It’s super easy. It had to be easy. We had to solve that problem.
[1:55:27] Ashley James: Love it. What about people with allergies? You obviously are dairy-free and egg-free and gluten-free. Those are like some really, really common food allergies, but what if someone’s allergic to corn or they’re autoimmune so they’re avoiding nightshades. Can they look at the ingredients or do you have a hypoallergenic package?
[1:55:46] Meg Donahue: Yeah, you can look on the ingredients. All of our products have an ingredient panel so that you can pull up and see. We are, like you said, gluten-free. We’re not nut-free so we tell people. If they say, “Hey, I have a nut allergy.” We just say, “It would not be safe.” Even if you’re having products that don’t have nuts in them. We use cashews. We don’t have peanuts and things like that. We use cashews. You still can be some cross-contamination in a facility. So you just don’t want to risk it. We would much rather people not buy our food, not have to worry and not have a reaction that nobody could foresee. So, we just tell people no with the nut allergy. It’s so serious nut allergy because those are a big deal.
Nightshades, we do have some people who are really kind of growing and an understanding of how that can be a sensitivity. We haven’t parsed it out. That might be a good idea for us to do. You can definitely look through and see which ones fit your profile. All the nutritionals are right there.
[1:56:55] Ashley James: Yeah. Maybe come up with an autoimmune package that’s focused with a lot of anti-inflammatory foods and spices and then no nightshades or like no or low grains. That’s temporary. We can heal autoimmune disease. If you go to an MD, most of them will say, “You have it for the rest of your life. You have to be on XYZ medication for the rest of your life.” It’s not true. I’ve interviewed dozens, dozens of people who’ve reversed and no longer have autoimmune disease. You can reverse it. It does take being very diligent with your diet. There is a diet, it’s almost like a cleanse, it’s like a detox, that you go through where you really focus on not eating any foods that trigger your immune system but also healing the gut. So, for some people temporarily, they need to eat like an autoimmune, grain-free, nightshade-free, high antioxidant diet for about a year. Then also eating fermented foods to help heal the gut. They just go through this transition. I’ve met so many people that after eating that way, they’re able to slowly add back foods. They’ve already healed their gut. Now their body doesn’t react to grains anymore. Their body doesn’t react to nightshade anymore.
There’s a mountain of evidence suggesting that we can use food as a major component to healing autoimmune condition. So I love that that you’re so focused on creating different packages specifically for people that are looking to heal something. So people with allergies could easily go through and see the ingredients. You have different packages for weight loss, for heart health. For athletes and you also have family packages. What about kids? So, if I were to buy, how would I or how would one of the listeners with kids who wants to take some of the stuff that you’re sending and put it in their lunches because it’s just going to save them? Because the amount of stress I have when I have to pack lunches in the morning. So, do you have packages for helping families to pack lunches for their kids?
[1:59:02] Meg Donahue: Yeah. What do you pack for lunch? Sure. So, I have two kids. I pack their lunch every day. It is, again, a little bit of a planning. The foods, what we say is, kids might not like all plant-based foods because they can be sometimes picky. They usually like one, two, three, four. So, we’ll identify those. In the family bundle, we’ve got some really kid-friendly items that the kids love the lasagna. We have a little veggie loaf that the kids love. It’s like little burgers. You can make burgers out of it or meatballs if you want to. The kids even like our chili because it’s not hugely spicy. Frittata, our frittata kids like. Everyone loves this particular product. It’s a high-protein breakfast bar. It’s like a blondie brownie but it’s no processed sugar. It’s made of beans and chickpeas. It is like the go-to. My kids love it because it gives them that steady burn. There’s enough sweet so they’re like, “Yum,” and it’s a treat. It’s not a bar filled with junk. It tastes like this really yummy brownie, not as sweet. You get the nice steady burn. They absolutely love that. That’s a great thing to pack because you know your kids are getting protein. They’re getting all these nutrients. They’re getting that feeling like they got a really cool treat and they did. So, that’s one that we pack for kids too.
[2:00:47] Ashley James: I love it. Is it sweetened with dates or fruit or how does that work?
[2:00:50] Meg Donahue: Yeah. This one is dates. So dates. We make our own date syrup. So, you get the extra nutrients because they’re not skinned.
[2:01:01] Ashley James: I love dates.
[2:01:05] Meg Donahue: I know. They’re delicious.
[2:01:07] Ashley James: They’re so great to cook with. I visited a date farm once in California, just a few hours outside of Las Vegas. It’s fascinating. They’re a beautiful fruit that grow in the desert. They’re beautiful. They grow in a place where no other life seems to exist. Then these trees pop out of nowhere in an oasis and they’re able to just make the most beautiful sweet fruit. They’re so nutritious. They’re so great for energy and for baking and for replacing sugar. So I love that. That’s really cool that you guys make your own dates syrup.
It’s very exciting because so many listeners just don’t have time. They don’t have time. They want to eat healthy. It’s also so overwhelming especially if someone’s facing a health issue or they worried about they’re having to cook for many different people. I mean, there’s just so many concerns and you really take care of them. Like you said, by Sunday night they just click, okay I want this and then it arrives on Thursday. It takes care of the majority of their food for a week. Can they become subscribers that it just automatically arrives? How does that work?
[2:02:24] Meg Donahue: Yeah. We really resisted subscriptions for a while, but we just found that our customers kept asking for it. So we said okay. We make it super easy to subscribe for whatever cadence works for you. So if it’s weekly or bi-weekly or monthly or once a week and then you don’t want to order for another two months. You have really a lot of control over how it comes. But to be able to reorder the things that you liked easily and just have that kind of, okay on Fridays my meals for the week show up. I know what I’m going to be eating. I have this great meal plan. So, that part of my life I don’t have to think about. I can focus on all the other cool things that I like to do or have to do in some cases. So, that is how it works. Our ala carte can also be on subscription. If you have some ala carte items you want on subscription you can do that as well.
[2:03:18] Ashley James: Very cool. Is there anything I haven’t asked that you want to you answer?
[2:03:24] Meg Donahue: You’ve been amazing. I was just thinking people are so lucky to have, because I know, entrepreneurs know that there’s a lot of heartache, there’s a lot of passion and awesome things about doing things on your own. There’s also, as you referenced earlier, there’s a fair amount of stress and can be hard. To do the work that you’re doing and bringing really high-quality messages to people. You vet people. You do the work and you spend the time. It’s really a wonderful service that you’re offering to people. I’m sure you have thousands and thousands of fans who know that as well. I just want to thank you for that because it does matter. You have a great sense of humor and to be able to bring this message to people in a way that is fun and enjoyable and it’s not so hard. That’s kind of like where, “Eat your fruits and veggies. Go outside and play and your life will be better.” That’s our motto. This is mama’s kitchen. We’re just going to take care of you. We’re going to give you what you need. Don’t worry about it. As long as you tell us what you need, we’ll give you exactly what you need. We have that affection. You have that same sense. You’re doing work that is it’s noble work. So, I really appreciate it.
[2:04:49] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you so much, Meg. The feeling is mutual. I’m definitely passionate about spreading this information because you don’t even know how good it feels until you do it. I was just constantly shocked while I was making the transition to eating more and more plants. I did it over a period of time whereas my husband just did it overnight. He said to me about three to five days into being vegan, and again he came from a carnivore diet. His entire life was mostly meat, very few plants. Most meals were only meat. That was my husband. Then he just woke up and said, “I am never eating meat again.” That came out of nowhere because he had a joke. He would say, “I eat vegans daily,” was his jokes because cows are vegan. He actually only pretty much only ate beef. It was just beef breakfast, lunch and dinner and coffee. That was his diet his entire life and energy drinks and ice cream. That was his diet when I met him. He came up, it was his decision. About three to five days into it, somewhere in the first week, he turned to me while he was eating. He said to me, in all dead serious he said, “If you had told me that this food,” plant-based food, “would taste this good I would have done this years ago.” He’s constantly in awe. No oil, no salt, no sugar. I’ll use Bragg’s Liquid Aminos or something. We use seasoning. It doesn’t taste like tasteless. There’s salt. Naturally occurring salt in the food, but it’s not like adding tons of the table salt. It’s no oil, no processed food, no sugar, tons of plants on his plate. It tastes amazing. It tastes really good. He’s always in awe of how good it tastes. He always like jabs me a bit because once in a whiles we’ll go to restaurant, of course vegan. He goes, “Why do we go? We just paid $50. Why do we go out?” The next day we’re going to be eating like lunch or dinner and he goes, “This tastes so much better than that. Why did we even go out?”
[2:07:11] Meg Donahue: It’s true.
[2:07:12] Ashley James: That food was covered in oil and covered in a bunch of other stuff. It’s nice to go out to dinner, but it’s never as good as real like whole food plant-based no processed food. So we did. We neuro-adapted. It does take a little bit of time to neuro-adapt to it when you’re used to potato chips or whatever. I can’t believe how good I feel and I want the world to know. Also, I tried being vegetarian before and I felt horrible. What was I eating? I was eating vegetarian subs, vegetarian pizza. I was eating just processed food. So a lot of people I think have maybe had an experience with not eating meat or eating some form of vegetarianism and it really failed for them. Then they say, “Oh, well vegetarian’s not healthy. I didn’t feel good. Meat makes me feel better.” So, don’t even associate whole food plant-based with vegan or vegetarian. It’s totally different. It’s cutting out processed food. Even if you are still eating some meat and you’re just adding more and more plants because that’s what I did.
[2:08:22] Meg Donahue: That’s great. That’s a really good strategy.
[2:08:24] Ashley James: Thank you. I learned from Dr. Joel Fuhrman. I had him on the show. His thing is the Nutritarian approach. If you’re still going to eat meat, okay. Eat more and more plants, more plants, more plants, more plants. It crowds out. The plate becomes fuller and fuller with nutrient-dense foods that heal your body. Then eventually I would have meatless Mondays. Then I just have one meat meal a day. Then all sudden it became one meat meal a week. Then also of a sudden I just stopped. It just stopped. I turned around and went, “It’s been weeks since I’ve had meat and I actually don’t feel like I need it. I actually feel better without it.” The occasions when I did have meat the next day I felt horrible. So, it’s really just listen to your body, eat more plants, eat less processed food, eat more real food and keep eating more real food, Keep noticing you feel better eating more real food.
I’m not here to tell people that they don’t ever have to eat meat again because I think that’s very threatening to some people. I am saying though, whatever diet you prescribe to, eat more real food, more plants. If you want the extra support, I think that the MamaSezz food delivery service because it is so focused on healthy food in a way that’s going to decrease your stress and give you more time. Oh my gosh, I just think your business is wonderful. I love it. You’re giving our listeners $15 off using coupon code LTH. I think that’s fantastic. Of course, the links to everything that Meg Donahue does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Meg, is there any final advice you’d like to leave with us to wrap up today’s interview?
[2:10:06] Meg Donahue: Maybe an observation is that if you’re on the fence and not sure or you know people in your life is that what I found has worked best is a very compassionate approach to other people and to give them really good food and let them experience it. Like you said, it’s very similar to what Joel Fuhrman said that as you change, the things that are not good for you will naturally go away if you are consciously adding more good things to your plate. That’s really our ethos is eat your fruits and veggies. Go outside and play. Enjoy your life. Life, it’s spectacular. To have the energy like you did when you’re a kid like when you just got up from dinner and then you went outside and you play because you felt so good. You didn’t have to like go lay on the couch like you’d eat an opossum or something and had to digest it. That’s the feeling that we know and that’s, Ashley, that you know and we want people to have. Is that joy of life where food is a part of it and enhances it and gives you energy to really experience life to the fullest.
[2:11:34] Ashley James: Brilliant. I love it. Eat your fruits and veggies. Go outside and play. We’d say that to our kids and then we should start saying it to us, to ourselves. Go have fun. Eat your carrots and go have fun. You’re giving away a package that’s worth $169, I believe, to one lucky listener. I’m going to make sure I add this to the beginning of the show as well and put it in the show notes. So one lucky listener. So I want all the listeners to go to the Learn True Health Facebook group. We’re going to put a post thereafter this episode goes live asking what you loved about today’s episode. What did you learn? What did you love? Why you want to be the winner to try MamaSezz? Yeah. Then we’ll pick a random. I will pick a lucky winner. That would be really awesome. Thank you so much for giving every listener $15 off using the LTH coupon code. I think it’s really cool. Thank you for choosing one lucky winner to receive a package. This has been awesome. It’s wonderful having you on the show. Thank you so much.
[2:12:41] Meg Donahue: Thank you so much. It has been beautiful to be here. I really appreciate it.
[2:12:46] Ashley James: Be sure to go to MamaSezz.com and use the coupon code LTH to get $15 off. Visit the Learn True Health Facebook group so that you could be one of the lucky winners to get the $169 package of delicious organic whole food plant-based food.
Deep Work by Cal Newport
The Free Info and Training from Marcus: trulyheal.com/ashley
https://www.learntruehealth.com/available-natural-treatments-for-cancer-and-other-diseases
Highlights:
In this episode, Marcus Freudenmann shares with us different ways to treat cancer. He explains the importance of wanting to live in treating cancer. He also shares with us that each cancer treatment should be personalized and that generalized treatment doesn’t work for everybody.
[0:00] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 410. I am so excited to have back on the show, Marcus Freudenmann. I love saying your name. Did I get it right?
[0:00:21] Marcus Freudenmann: Yeah. Pretty close. Freudenmann.
[0:00:24] Ashley James: Pretty close. Freudenmann. Marcus, I loved our first interview episode 147. I really feel that everyone in the world should hear the things you shared. It was so eye-opening to have you on the show. So really listeners, go back and listen to episode 147 when you can. Marcus is a wealth of information. He spent pretty much a decade traveling the world and learning and studying from the top holistic doctors and experts who are getting really good results in curing disease especially cancer. Marcus created a documentary about his experiences. He’s been very busy. Since we had you on the show about two years ago you have built up your website trulyheal.com. I know you give us a special link, trulyheal.com/Ashley, that’s a-s-h-l-e-y. So trulyheal.com/Ashley is a special link for the listeners.
I’m really excited to learn from you today because of the last two years of your life you have learned even more and you’re here to share with us today. So, welcome back on the show.
[0:01:45] Marcus Freudenmann: Thanks for having me. I’m very excited to be here.
[0:01:48] Ashley James: Absolutely. So, what has happened in the last two years? Where has your focus been professionally? Because I know you’re passionate about bringing the truth about healing and putting the power back into the individuals lives so that each and every one of us can learn how to be the healthiest versions of ourselves. You’re very passionate about exposing the truth in the latest science, but really getting into it and exposing the truth even though sometimes the truth might get you in trouble. So, we thank you for risking yourself to expose the truth today, Marcus.
[0:02:31] Marcus Freudenmann: Yeah. Well, the concept is always the same. You look for solutions. Especially with cancer with Lyme disease with all of those diseases. There are so many proclamations, so many cures, so many things that people advertise. We’ve been following first based on clients recommendation and then on doctor’s recommendation. Many of those treatments and we follow it through with what they do, how they work, what kind of research. That’s been since many years the focus, but it became more and more obvious that we are not only dealing with the ignorance in the conventional treatments, it’s also in the alternative. There’s so much hype, so much sales pitch in many of the advertisements that it becomes a maze of irritation and confusion and temptation for most patients. That’s been something that becomes more and more obvious.
We’re living in a world where everybody can advertise pretty much everything and can make claims however they like. That’s something that starts to annoy me more and more. I was working with a lot of clients that are broke. They invested money into pretty much everything and nothing worked. It was funny, I had an interview with Dr. Rau in Switzerland when he said, “Marcus, you’re asking all the wrong questions. Why do you keep asking about treatments? Treatments are not relevant. Treatments are not something you should focus about. Just focus on what’s the cause.” Then I said, “Well, but there’s so many.” He said, “Yeah. But that’s what we need to find out. If we look at three patients and all three patients having a disease like let’s say breast cancer.” He pulled out of his drawer and he has all the different diseases categorized to different groups. He pulled out of a drawer three charts and then he showed me and said, “Look. This client here had corporate stress. She’s never satisfied and happy. Non-stop stress, stress, stress. Not good enough.” You can see that it comes from trauma out of the childhood, resentment, serious problems with parents combined with a bad diet and very high inflammation, leaky gut. On top of that even those performance drugs to keep her active, to keep her alive.
That’s one client where you have one treatment protocol, which is very obvious. Then you have another client comes in has breast cancer too but it’s triggered by EBV virus, Epstein-Barr virus, combined with mercury and cadmium. Her test levels were off the chart. It was based, first of all on her amalgam fillings, but the second part was based on her hobby. She was painting. We know that painter’s paint, those artistic paints, are full with cadmium. Then she had two root canal fillings. He said, “Look. That’s number one. Dental treatments. Pulling out the mercury fillings. Detoxing the body, getting rid of heavy metals and then dealing with the EBV virus, which is promoted dramatically through heavy metals.” So, we know that if you have just an infection or just heavy metal, they don’t really cause something like cancer or fibromyalgia or any of that. But if you have both in combination, they become up to 20,000 times more toxic.
Then the third client had deficiencies in vitamin D, selenium, iodine. She was more or less depleted, her whole body, from a very uneducated diet. She was exposed to mold which slows down all detox pathways. As soon as you have a moldy environment and you live in that for a while, all your detox pathways are shut down. Plus she had a CYP1B1, which is a DNA SNP impairment that impaired her detox pathways even more. So, she was building up more and more and more toxins. Based on the deficiencies, it’s usually an indication. The body tried to detoxify, try to detoxify and was flushing out everything and that’s why she had cancer. He said, “That’s an evaluation that we do. So one needs massive support in nutrition and detoxification. The other one needs infectious disease and heavy metal treatment. The other one needs some psychologist to help with the stress and trauma in all her past life so that the self-loathing changes, which then changes dietary intake.”
That’s where I found the whole industry whether that’s most of the cancer clinics, most of the marketing and advertising is lacking. People do not focus on why they have cancer. They focus on what can I do to kill it? I get hundreds of emails every day. I try to answer them every morning. Sometimes I have a bit of a backlog. It’s quite intense. It’s always like, “What kills my cancer? How can I get rid of my cancer? How can I fight?”
We’ve been instilled with an attitude of fighting a disease, which is actually just a warning sign showing us you are moving in the wrong direction. You ignore certain things that would be important. Because it’s so individualized, it’s really difficult to find out for yourself what are the contributing factors. That’s mainly the work we’ve been so passionate about. To develop a program that really covers all aspects of that disease.
[0:08:49] Ashley James: So, the three cases that the doctor pulled out of his drawer, all three were people with cancer?
[0:08:57] Marcus Freudenmann: Breast cancer, yes.
[0:08:58] Ashley James: All people with breast cancer. So, specifically. So, if those three women were to have gone to some hospital in the United States, oncology ward. Pretty much any hospital in the United States, in the oncology ward to an oncologist they would be given almost an identical treatment. Nowadays, the oncologist will do some testing to see if it’s hormone-related and they might suppress the hormones. Their methodology is either you do chemo and then surgery and then radiation or you do surgery and then chemo and then radiation. Then on top of that, you might do some hormone suppression drugs. That’s basically the cookie cutter.
[0:09:57] Marcus Freudenmann: Yeah. Standard protocol.
[0:09:58] Ashley James: Standard protocol. That is hailed to be the most advanced and has a 2% chance of causing leukemia, has a very poor outcome if you want to live longer than five years. There are women who survived breast cancer, absolutely. There are many who don’t. I just lost my best friend, one of my best friends to her battle with cancer in December. She did the natural holistic method for eight months. She ran out of money and then decided to do chemo. They had her on chemo and radiation for two years. The day that she was in the hospital in a coma about to die her oncologist called her husband and said, “When is she coming in for her next chemo session?” He downplayed how bad she was. Her liver had been failing. The oncologist kept pushing them to come in and come in. Even the oncology nurses were saying that the type of chemo they had her on was known for killing patients before the cancer does.
So, I watched her deteriorate very quickly. The question remains in my mind, if she had stuck with just natural methods would she have just lived longer than if she had gone the conventional route? She suffered, the last two years of her life was pure suffering. Whereas, I know women who have gone through chemo and came out the other end and that was ten years ago. They’re totally happy and they’re healthy and they’re fine. The cookie cutter for cancer, the cut, burn and poison, does not take into account what you said. It just focuses on the tip of the iceberg.
The doctor that you mentioned he holds these three files in his hand and paints the picture of the root cause of their cancer coming from three totally different places. If you had taken those three women and put them through cut, burn and poison, the first one still would have had the stress, still would have had the poor diet and the stress incredibly lowers the immune system. She might not have survived. She might have gotten an infection. She might not have even survived the surgery. The second one had Epstein-Barr virus and heavy metals so she was immunocompromised. So, no matter what cut, burn and poison you do she would still have been immunocompromised. The third –
[0:12:37] Marcus Freudenmann: She would have been, she would have probably died on the first round of chemotherapy because if your detox pathways don’t work, then chemotherapy is recycle, recycle, recycle. That’s the people where we see even a small treatment like vaccination would be very impactful. That’s the children that become autistic. People who have their detox pathways impaired and have severe problems in that concern or have been born into an environment where mold was already established in the mother, they have no detox. Then giving a drug, then giving chemo or any kind of harsh chemical substance just recycles, recycles and it distributes more and more into the body and poisons the body.
So, it’s always based on–and sometimes you wonder where you hear things. I was at the seminar and it was a business seminar. The speaker said very clearly, “If you don’t know where you are at you cannot make a plan to health.” I was like, “What does that mean?” He said, “Take the America map and then you don’t know where you are but you know you want to go to Chicago. If you don’t have a location from where to start you could drive into the wrong direction because you need to know first your personal location.” It made kind of sense. I think it’s the same thing with health.
We invest into everything in treatments without investing into the investigation on what causes my problem? What is the main reason? I hear that a hundred times from patients that say, “Marcus, look. That’s $250 for a test. Well, I could buy a treatment or supplements for that.” That’s something that can often then go astray with no effect, no results. You just said it, she was first eight months on alternative treatments. Again, I’ve seen people that were — a friend of mine, personal experience wherein a very very dear friend. First client then friend then very good friend and then you accompany them all the way. He was spending almost 1 million dollars going from clinic to clinic to here to there trying out buying this buying that spending so much money. Towards the end I said, “Wayne, look. Why don’t we just sit down and work out all the causes and really focus on that.” Unfortunately at that stage he was already very weakened. We got through. We did all the tests, which are sometimes quite simple. Gut biome, toxicity test, infectious disease test, deficiency test. Not the standard one that is done in the clinic where you just check in serum, full blood test of all the minerals. We did that and his results were shocking.
He said, “How can doctors tell me for two years that my blood is absolutely perfect, that I’m absolutely fine and then I get the full blood test back and it shows I’m deficient in pretty much everything.” So, there is difference in test. There is difference in evaluations. So, that became actually our main focus in finding the real best tools to determine our location, GPS, knowing exactly where I’m at and what my situation is so that I have a roadmap towards health. That has proven to be extraordinary. So many patients could drop certain treatments. The second one with the amalgam fillings and root canals, this is something everybody talks about. If you have cancer you need to check your teeth and many people start treating the teeth but you check whether you have that output of thimerosal from your teeth. Whether your root canals produce heavy loads of bacteria.
There is so many possibilities to test instead of just pulling our teeth spending $20,000 with a dentist. You could invest the money more wisely if you know that that’s not related to your cancer. So, that’s where I believe my job and my task is. To help people to find what is best suited for them.
[0:17:19] Ashley James: I think it’d be really interesting if you took all of your emails, of course removing personal information like names, but if you took all your emails and all your correspondence with people asking questions and compiled it into a book or some kind of articles and websites. Something that people could search because you’re probably answering the same question over and over in different ways. You’ve probably given so many really interesting and well-thought-out answers that I think it would be worthy of publishing. So, I’m just put I’m just putting it out there.
[0:18:02] Marcus Freudenmann: I thought about the idea and put it on the website. We had for while Q&A questions. I categorized them in different groups. It was before we did the transformation and change to the new website. You know what, it’s very hard to explain but people need that personal contact. If it fits for that person that might be okay, but I’m still special. Yes, we are all special. It’s like finding it for myself. We offer a service on the website which is an evaluation for you. It’s only $250. It goes through 280 questions. It really covers so much ground. It gives you afterward an evaluation on which areas are most important to look at. It creates a timeline. It’s a really powerful program. We had thousands of people go through that. It’s actually one of our biggest turning points because it’s personalized. It’s not what the doctors do. It’s not what alternative doctors do, cookie-cutter. It actually really takes in account your personality, your upbringing, your birth, your parents’ diseases, your inherited diseases, your inherited environment, your inherited habits. It goes through all the body systems. How you digest? How does your poo look like? How your environment at home is? What kind of environment?
We give a lot of tips in that process on how to test for heavy metals, for EMF and all those things and formaldehyde so that it becomes more or less already a full education program parallel to giving you that evaluation in the end. That has been a huge breakthrough.
[0:20:01] Ashley James: Yeah. When did you create that?
[0:20:03] Marcus Freudenmann: Probably in the last two years.
[0:20:07] Ashley James: I mean, that’s after over a decade of interviewing and working closely with all these doctors from around the world. What I like about, you have a talent for seeking out doctors who are getting real results and then figuring out the exact root. Like getting to the root of it and figuring out what the driver is. What doesn’t work all the time but what does work all the time. You just have this way of cutting through so much misinformation and so many half-truths and really getting exactly what the science is saying, clinically what the results are saying works. I like that you always are focusing on the root cause. What is causing? What is the environment of the body that created the disease? How do we support the environment to be an environment to the body that does not create disease?
[0:21:09] Marcus Freudenmann: Yeah. Look, the main problem that we have with cancer is that it’s not just that it’s caused by carcinogens. We know that. We consume hundreds of them every day. So, it’s not just the carcinogen that causes the problem, it’s also what stops my immune system from actually dealing with the disease. Because if you have 50 people and they all have cancer cells in their body, we produce, you and me and everybody, produces every day hundreds and thousands of cancer cells, but our immune system gobbles them up and get eliminates them and stops them from growing. As we get older, our system slows down our immune system doesn’t work anymore, our oxygen levels go down. There’s so many different reasons for cancer then to start growing.
The problem today is that it’s 27-year-old mothers. That’s where my biggest passion comes from. If somebody is 80 and 90 and they develop cancer, well, we all have to die of something so I’m not too worried about that. We had a long life. If somebody comes just having two little babies and then being diagnosed with cancer and trying to survive, it’s a jungle of misinformation. It’s so much marketing and advertising that people get lost in so many different beliefs. “Just drink ASEA water. Do this. Do that. Do this. Do that. Here is another remedy, $250 only.” It’s always told with those miracle stories. “My cousin survived. She just had one cup of that and all her cancers disappeared.”
I follow it through. I was at a workshop invited at one of those cancer conferences as a speaker. There were about 200 cancer patients in the room mixed with professionals. I asked, “Who of you has tried,” and I just went through lateral GcMAF. Many of those treatments that are promoted as a cure and it didn’t work. Almost the whole group went up, all hands went up. Then I asked, “Who has tried and where did it work? Who has seen it witness themselves?” Only the stallholders who put their hands up. It was kind of embarrassing and I pointed that out, which I told you stepping up to the truth and doing things slightly different and exposing the marketing behind was one of my insights that I had. It was so obvious. There was one person who had significant results from one of the treatments. When we follow through, I always taken, if anybody in the audience has such a case where one particular treatment really did a massive transformation changed and it helped them to reverse the cancer, please contact me on the website: trulyheal.com/Ashley. You will find up on top a little contact button. Send it to me and contact me. I’m always searching for those treatments which have significant results where we can prove that it actually had some help.
It was shocking how many people came afterward to me and said, “Marcus, thanks for actually speaking up because there is two problems. One is it’s me. It works for everybody else but it doesn’t work for me. Maybe I’m not worthy of living.” You have no clue how much guilt and shame and whatever is associated with the diagnosis of cancer. It’s such a significant emotional burden already. Then you get told, “It works for everybody else. You must have done a mistake,” or “Only in your case it doesn’t work.” That’s number one problem. So, people feel guilty about having no results.
The second part is, nobody is really brave enough to say, “Look, it didn’t work for me. It didn’t work for my husband. It didn’t work for the other friends. It’s actually a fraud.” Because they always think maybe it’s just for them or their case is different. That’s why I told you that generalized answer is what people don’t need. They really need a personal evaluation, what is important for them. I see that at workshops, I see that in seminars and I see that in my emails. Even if I have answered that question in five videos already, it’s like in my case thank you. It’s true. We’re all special. We’re all individuals. We all have our own needs so that’s why we provide that service.
[0:26:10] Ashley James: You mentioned the guilt and the shame of the cancer treatment not working. You could apply that to either the standard oncology chemo radiation surgery, whatever form of chemo, right? Your cancer didn’t respond to this or whatever. We’re going to have to do another round. We’re going to try this chemo now or we’re going to do another thing of radiation because your cancer is spreading or your cancer is doing this, your cancer is doing that.
[0:26:42] Marcus Freudenmann: Yeah. Just take dietary recommendation. Ketogenic diet cures cancer. Just go on to a ketogenic diet. It works for about 7%. The rest the cancer is so clever, so intelligent, so incredibly adaptive that if you change to a ketogenic diet and you do it well, not just half-hearted a little bit with ketone bodies, you do it properly it still thrives because it can start to convert even fat metabolism into energy. So, I’ve had people that change to a ketogenic diet and the cancer grew faster. So, and the same it’s vegan and then it’s vegetarian and then it’s the Gerson. We all have those beliefs. Most of it is from hearsay not from personal experience. You see all those famous people who go through and they do, Jessica Ainscough for example, she did a fantastic promotion of the Gerson diet and was doing so extremely well. She was prognosed five years and she died after four years. After she passed away, all of her books, all of her website, all of her promotions were taken down and disappeared from the web, from the publisher because they didn’t want to interrupt the process of people believing in Gerson.
So, it’s like we sell hope, we don’t sell results we sell hope. That’s where I believe we’re wrong because there is a diet for everybody but we need to find out which one. If you have kidney problem, you need to know that you have to really be low on proteins even vegetarian proteins because your kidney is the conversion the transformation is difficult. If you have liver problems or gall bladder problems in fat metabolism or your pancreas doesn’t produce enough lipase and you have a too fat diet with the ketogenic diet, this is really adverse and causes massive problems. If you have leaky gut and high inflammation in your gut and you go onto a raw diet, so many things that can just be completely adverse because we follow hearsay mainstream. Follow the followers instead of checking out properly what is important or relevant for you.
[0:29:12] Ashley James: So, the ketogenic diet, 7% of the time is exactly what that person needed and helps to kill the cancer because it starves the cancer, but the rest of the time, the cancer adapts or that it isn’t the kind of cancer that that dies off if you starve it of glucose. I like that you point out that the raw diet, very healthy for some people. Just the most healthiest thing in the world for some people. Other people it could be poison, poison because their gut isn’t capable of handling it. We have to focus on healing the gut, healing the microbiome. Others might eat a high-protein vegetarian diet or Atkins diet and they’re destroying their kidneys or their liver. It all depends on the person’s chemistry. That’s why we can use food as medicine but there’s not one diet for everyone.
[0:30:13] Marcus Freudenmann: Exactly.
[0:30:14] Ashley James: There are studies that show that higher meat consumption has a higher cases of cancer than lower meat consumption. Across the board, they see that in preventing cancer there are ways to eat that can complement the body in not creating cancer. I know your focus has been on helping people cure it. I definitely want you to talk about prevention.
[0:30:42] Marcus Freudenmann: Can I just go into that very short?
[0:30:44] Ashley James: Yes. I do.
[0:30:45] Marcus Freudenmann: When they talk about meat it’s also what kind of meat, where does it come from, has it been grain-fed, is it hormone-laden because it’s just from a normal butcher? There’s no discrimination done. Do I eat just lean meat which has no fat which is not really healthy for the body? There’s pro-inflammatory meats and there is very healthy meats. If you eat liver from an organic butcher. Differentiations. If I go to McDonald’s that’s dog food. Not even worthy of being dog food. That’s the meat they calculate in those studies. So, always cautious. We have to really step back not just superficially but completely and look at what we are looking at. Many of the studies are sponsored. Many of the studies are manipulated. They take into account very very few of the reasons that we actually are interested in. That’s why just saying meat is bad is completely reversing the Mediterranean diet, which is actually really healthy. It includes some fish, it includes some healthy meats but we don’t take the garbage, we eat quality.
So, it’s something that we found very important that we don’t judge too easy and too fast and are too manipulated by what people want us to believe.
[0:32:14] Ashley James: The most important thing is to know where you are, know where you stand. Like you said, you can’t get to Chicago if you don’t know where you are. You can’t get to health if you don’t know what your body actually needs right now. Because if you have heavy metals and mold exposure versus you have nutrient deficiencies and you have a DNA SNP for preventing you from fully detoxifying versus you have a leaky gut or you have an autoimmune and leaky gut and you have food sensitivities. There’s not one diet that’s going to fix everything. We have to shift our mindset around food and really see it as medicine. I could go to a drugstore and there’s some medicine that would help me and there’s some medicine that would hurt me, right? If I injected myself with insulin it would not be healthy for me, but you inject a type 1 diabetic with insulin at the right time and it is a very healthy thing for them. Yet we’re using food just like we’re going to a drug store and just randomly picking a drug and eating it and taking it.
[0:33:31] Marcus Freudenmann: Even worse.
[0:33:31] Ashley James: Right.
[0:33:32] Marcus Freudenmann: We use it as a religion.
[0:33:36] Ashley James: Yeah. You’re threatening some people’s belief systems because there are some people who would really heal their body on a raw vegan diet versus some people would really heal their body on a ketogenic diet versus some people really heal their body on a Mediterranean diet. We have to let go of dogma and look at what does my body need right now? Because my body in five years might need this nutrient but right now my body needs this nutrient and this medicine. So, we have to look at that every meal, three meals a day is actually like three doses of medicine.
Now, you talked about the shame and the guilt that patients feel as their cancer treatments are failing them. Whether it’s the traditional cancer treatment or whether it’s any kind of holistic cancer treatment or cancer diet. Whatever they’re doing. Many people feel shame like their body is failing them and they’re somehow bad and wrong because it’s supposed to work for people. So, it’s supposed to work so if it’s not working for them then they’re the ones left feeling shame and guilt and somehow less than. That’s not the case at all. It’s that these therapies are not a cookie-cutter for everyone. That each individual is really very specific that we have to look at exactly what’s going on with their DNA. with their nutrient deficiencies, with their heavy metal load, with their exposures to certain environmental toxins like mold, with their stress levels, with their emotional health, with their diet overall, with their viral load, which organs are weak, which organs need support and the list goes on and on.
So, you can’t just do a cookie-cutter. You bring up this point of feeling guilt or shame because the body’s failing them. This reminds me of at least two-thirds of the adult population has dieted at some point in their life. Diets have failed them but they don’t blame the diet, they blame themselves. “I did Atkins and I wasn’t strong enough. I couldn’t resist the carbs and now I’m eating carbs again I gained all the weight back and more.” Well, no. It was the diet that failed them because the diet wasn’t healthy for their body and yet they’re taking on guilt and shame. Shame depletes our magnesium stores. Shame causes stress levels and depletes our nutrients. So, shame is an emotion that is moving towards creating an environment in the body that will sustain cancer. We have to look at that our emotions will play a great role in healing us or in creating an environment for disease. I feel that there’s a great amount of shame that we all feel when we go to do something healthy for ourselves and it backfires. We say to ourselves, “Oh, look. That must be my fault because it’s supposed to work all the time.” Because we’ve been marketed to.
So, I like that you’re pointing out that there so there’s so much BS out there and that it’s not your fault.
[0:37:10] Marcus Freudenmann: Let me just point out one of the other points that really significantly made a huge change in our approach. When you go to so many clinics, you will find that many of them have specialties. Many of them have a main focus. It always depends on what the doctor experienced. So, in Germany we found several clinics that focus on the mind. Whether that’s radical forgiveness or the breakthrough experience or whatever they use as a means to help clients. Different types of meditation, breathing techniques, which is by the way something would like to speak about because we always say what makes the biggest impact. It’s definitely oxygenation of the body as one of our hooks that we use.
Let me just continue the train of thought first. Every single clinic has certain specialties. In the beginning I made little mind maps. I call it my flower power map because it had those little colorful flowers and it looked really pretty. Then we added more and more. Every doctor we spoke with and showed the map added their components. It just became a maze of different research and deficiencies and everything and we categorized. What I found is that very few clinics really solve or help the clients solve that mental and emotional problem of guilt, of shame, of feeling worthy, of feeling too self-important or too driven. Many, “I beat this cancer.” It’s like they have to prove something instead of letting go, relaxing and not being the star of the whole thing. It can go in both directions. Not only that you feel intimidated, you can actually feel empowered by it. You have something to talk about. You become self-important.
So many people write books and start blogging and share their experience and put so much pressure on their bodies and mind and stress levels to prove that they can do it. Then being defeated halfway through the program. So, we need to learn what actually the lesson is for everyone. I deal with their mindset and what cancer actually tries to show them. If stress is a big factor of work stress. I had one friend. I tell the story shortly in between. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The doctor said, “You know, we don’t even need to do chemo. It’s about two months, three months maximum that you’ll be here. Just get your affairs in order. Go home.” He had 27 little tumors and two or three big ones in his body spread out. When he first was diagnosed.
He came to me and said, “Marcus, do you see any chance?” I said, “Look, the only chance I see is letting go. Letting go of everything that holds you in a stressful situation. Letting go of your addictions. Letting go of whatever. What is your dream? What do you really would like to do before you pass away? Because we all have to. So just see that you have a chance now to live your dream.” He said, “I would like to go on a walkabout.” I said, “How can that be a dream? Flies in the Australian desert. That’s not something you dream about. He said, “Yeah. I saw a movie so many years ago and it just kept with me. It’s been my dream.” I said, “Yeah. Watch out what you wish for it might come true.” He started his walkabout. He left his penthouse apartment, his Porsche, his mobile phone, cell phones, business, everything. Just put a backpack on and started his walkabout.
I lost track. No contact anymore. He had no mobile phone. Half a year later he reported back, “Marcus, I’m feeling better than ever before. I’m now close to Uluru. I’m having this a camp here. I live with Aborigines. It’s absolutely incredible. One and a half years later I heard next time from him. He was in Perth and he was just cleared, cleared of cancer. No more indication of cancer. His scan came back as neutral. He didn’t eat a healthy diet. He most was fasting. If he ate, those little backcountry stores, they don’t have anything healthy. Canned food, no vegetables, no nothing. You don’t get that in the desert. He was living tribal. He was living off the land but he was exercising, moving, no stress levels, sitting around the campfire at night. He said, “I don’t ever want to go back to my life as it was before.” He is still cancer-free. He is still teaching people how to step out of the box. He is phenomenal. He lives north of Perth and really the most isolated parts of the world in tribal communities. He is doing fantastic.
So, it’s not the diet. It’s not the remedy. It’s not the treatment that can sometimes change. It’s letting go of that which makes us sick. It can be different from everybody to the next. That’s what we try to find out. What are the things? They can be mindsets, they can be resentment to the past and anger issues with the parents. You know how I learned that? I was running a workshop that was called loving cancer. It was like finding the blessings out of everything we see as soon as we get diagnosed. Things that we change. We learn more about our body. We become more body-conscious. We hear symptoms and signs a lot faster. We change our friends and community around us. All those who drain us with energy and really make our life difficult, we learn to isolate. We learn to say no to certain things. We do not comply all the time. A lot of women, housewives that get diagnosed, all of a sudden realized that they have demands and require time as well.
There’s so many things. Because we did it in a group setting with 20 people, you had all of a sudden insights and other people had that illumination, that breakthrough and they felt the blessings. Then the whole room said, “Oh wow. Yeah. That’s definitely true. That changed for me too.” So, it was like a build-up of gratitude that cancer brought into their lives. That was so amazing. One of the biggest factors that we always realized is that as soon as you see your cancer not as a curse, not as something to be killed, not as something to be eradicated by all means, but is something that helps you to come back to who you truly are, to your personality, to your needs, to actually having an ego and saying no or I choose this over this and not just complying because everybody else does. That was one of the biggest healing factors that I witnessed in so many people. As soon as they do, as soon as they listen to those things, they change. That’s why we built that into our program as well. It’s probably, in my opinion, one of the strongest factors in getting well.
[0:44:55] Ashley James: What you teach, we could all use. We don’t have to wait to get cancer. I’m just imagining someone who has type 2 diabetes. You could apply everything you just said. Your disease is not a curse. Shift your mindsets. Instead of a curse, make it be a lesson to teach you how to listen to your body and how to come back to who you truly are. Shifting your lifestyle, your food. Now you’re moving your body in a way that brings you joy. Now you’re decreasing your stress. Even getting enough sleep affects blood sugar. Someone without diabetes doesn’t notice that when they go to bed at 1:00 in the morning versus 9:00 at night. That the next day, even a normal person, their blood sugar is less in balance if they got fewer hours of sleep and they’re more hungry. People who go to bed later are hungrier the next day. Their blood sugar’s out of balance. They’re consuming more calories through the day than those who, like you said, have a bit of that ego to enforce your boundaries, tell your family I’m going to bed at 9:00. “You can have me till 9:00 but after 9:00 is my time. I’m taking care of myself. You need to be quiet, keep the house quiet because I’m going to bed. I’m going to lie in bed and read a book and then I’m going to fall asleep by 10:00.” The next day you wake up naturally when your body wants to wake up instead of to an alarm clock because you’ve had enough sleep. You notice the next day your blood sugar’s more in balance, that you’re less hungry, that maybe you’re able to do a little bit of fasting like intermittent fasting. That you’re going to get up and move your body in a way that brings you joy because you’re listening to your body. Every day you’re creating an environment because you’re using your disease instead of a life sentence. You’re using it as a motivation to help you-
[0:47:03] Marcus Freudenmann: Motivational guide. Exactly.
[0:47:05] Ashley James: Yes. Yeah. I love it.
[0:47:09] Marcus Freudenmann: Yes. I do too. It’s been my saving grace. You have to be rich. You have to have this car. You have to have whatever. When I have that I’ll be happy, which unfortunately never ever happens. But we put ourselves under so much pressure instead of just really enjoying the moment, enjoying what we have right now. So, there’s so many lessons in cancer that is a healing factor. It’s actually healing not only us because let’s face it, if you’re diagnosed the whole family around you or your friends are influenced by it. With using a disease as a motivational guide, it has so many advantages because we can relax into listening. I think that’s one of the things we seldom do, listening to what our body tells us, what our environment tells us and become an observer. Stepping outside of our active phase into our passive phase. Stepping back and looking at everything. That’s been one of the big things that we found.
What I would like to mention very short because a lot of people always say, “Marcus, you just told me that all those treatments don’t work. That the old pathways don’t work. It’s actually quite doomsday philosophy. So, what are the solutions that actually do work?” I really would like to focus on some of those because it’s not the treatment that is relevant, it’s the resolving of the problem. So, if let’s say we look at the four main reasons to have cancer or most degenerative diseases. It’s infections that we need to deal with. There is latent infections. There is infections that we treated with antibiotics but they’ve never been cured out. They’re still there. Antibiotics just strip the membrane of the bacterium and therefore it’s still there. It just doesn’t interact with the world but it’s still, as I say, pees and poos. It eats up resources. So, infections even if they are latent can be very very dangerous. Then viral infections don’t go away from use of antibiotics so we never ever get rid of them if our immune system isn’t on top. So, dealing with infections is really crucial.
Then we need to look at toxicity. Toxicity is rampant today in so many different forms, whether that’s plastic and petrochemical toxicity that stops many of the body functions that we need. It impairs our DNA. We have carcinogens, we have a teratogens, we have mutagens that don’t work on us they work on the next generation. So, all the chemical processes we need to look at. Then we have the toxicity of EMF and stress that many people aren’t aware of. So, looking at all of those factors is, in my opinion, really crucial. Let’s face it, one of the most important rooms that everybody needs to detoxify and clear is their bedroom. It’s almost half of the life that we spend in that bedroom. So, having that contaminant-free, rejuvenating, energizing is really crucial.
Then we look at deficiencies. So, that’s the main three: infections, toxicity and deficiencies. Just those three taken together can make it or break it. Deficiencies, again I said, it’s very important to know how your body works, how your liver detox pathways work, how your digestive system works, how the liver and kidney system works so that we see how our body can deal with our environment. If I have problems with proteins, reducing them. That just influences the diet. That influences what we are supposed to eat. It influences how we break down those nutrients in the gut. Do we have enough HCL? Do we drink too much alkaline water and therefore dilute HCL? There’s so many little factors that we should look at in regards to deficiencies because replenishing with food certainly the best. But then you live in Australia where there is no zinc and selenium in the ground. You can eat as many vegetables as you like, you don’t get any. So, supplementation is crucial. All of those factors, those three physical as I call them. Then we look at stress. Stress again in so many different areas. Do we have relationship stress, financial stress, work stress, physical stress?
There’s people that are lean and slim and obviously seem to eat the right thing and they do tons of exercise. They actually destroy the body with two single-sided or too fanatic sport. We have so many young people today that they lack so much cholesterol. They are so burned out at the age of 20-25 already just to have that ideal body, just to be slim, just to be beautiful. They’re killing their whole future and killing their ability to have children and produce osteoporosis at early stage. So, it’s not just that fat ones that get sick, it’s the thin ones. I have many that because of their fanatic diets and extreme sports cause problems.
So, looking at those factors in regards to stress, in regards to deficiencies, toxicity and infections, that is what we focus on. When your audience is listening to the program trulyheal.com/Ashley, they come to a training program where we cover in six videos all of those factors that are important to look at. I think, of all the videos that I ever did, 590 on YouTube and many more, they are the most helpful. We have hundreds of people giving feedback that they finally understood what to look out for. Then according to that, we can find very specific the treatment. Then the treatment works because I don’t just do something because everybody else does it. I do it because my body really needs it. The testing is sometimes really inexpensive, really simple but it gives you a head start by knowing where you are at navigating towards Chicago let’s stay with our example. Chicago being pure health is not really a good example.
[0:54:17] Ashley James: Deep dish pizza. Chicago pizza. I want to drive to Loma Linda California.
[0:54:27] Marcus Freudenmann: Okay. Let’s take that one as a navigation.
[0:54:29] Ashley James: Right. Right. You bring up infection being one of the pillars that we need to address, 100% of the adult population, in that case then, has sort of latent viruses and bacteria, that you say, has the membrane’s been stripped with the bacteria. The guts of the bacteria are still pooping inside our body. So, there’s viruses, there’s bacteria. We also have yeast, fungus, and amoeba, parasites.
[0:55:05] Marcus Freudenmann: Fungi, mold, yeast, amoeba. Yeah.
[0:55:11] Ashley James: I’m amazed at, I guess, ignorance or hubris of all of us in North America because we assume that we live in such clean houses, we have access to clean water and clean food. That we assume that we don’t have parasites. It is just not in the case. This mentality has made us totally disconnected from the medicine that our ancestors would take on a regular basis. The herbs that they would incorporate on a regular basis to deworm, to kill the amoeba.
If you go to India and look at their medicine, they’re drinking and I was just telling you before we started recording that I love drinking moon tea, which is a concoction of herbs that are gentle, antimicrobial, anti-parasitic herbs. Also wonderful in decreasing inflammation and supporting the nervous system and supporting digestive health. It’s called moon tea.
My friend Naomi and I just actually filmed making this tea and teaching our members. We do a membership where we teach how to cook real food so you’re eating clean food that is delicious and healthy. We just made this concoction. So, I’m kind of addicted to it because I feel so good drinking it. Also remembering that our ancestors used to take herbs all the time in order to clean out the body of these parasites. Most of us are walking around just Petri dishes with a high viral load.
[0:56:58] Marcus Freudenmann: You just think about the sugar that they use, which explodes everything. It explodes the bacterial overgrowth and viral overgrowth. There’s two major. I totally agree with you with all the herbs. It’s a bit of a science to know what works, but there’s also so much information. There is two major treatments that have been known throughout mankind that reduce infectious load dramatically. Both are related to body core temperature, body temperature. One is ice bath. That really extreme cold environment to get your system oxygenated, to get your system alkaline combined with breathing. The other one is hyperthermia which is really fever therapy. Children get an infection. What do they get? They get any kind of flu or virus or bacteria, their body goes into a strong fever response. The fever then flags, first of all until, oh God now conversion again. We need to figure that one out. It’s 39 at 39 temperature Celsius, which is you can do that while I talk. 39 Celsius is how many Fahrenheit? That would be the temperature that flags all of your pathogens: virus, bacteria, fungi, mold with heat shock proteins. I call that their sprout green hair. Green hair would be a visible sign for the immune system. Oh, this is somebody that shouldn’t be in my body.
Then they start attacking those proteins and those pathogens in the body that have green hair. That’s a very very powerful system at the temperature of 39.5, which is just shortly below 40. Many of the cancer cells, many of the pathogens actually die off. Lyme disease dies off, hepatitis C dies off at 39.8. So, if we have a strong fever and we lay in bed sweating and having that strong fever, that’s when our body officially cleanses from all those infections. We sweat and we put it out. Our blood vessels are expanded. We transport millions of white blood cells directly out of the bone marrow into the bloodstream.
So, in Germany when you go to all of the clinics that deal with infectious diseases and Lyme disease, they all do hyperthermia treatment even in addition to all the herbs, in addition to chemicals of antibiotics. They use that to keep the immune system strong, to produce many many more white blood cells and there is plenty of research. That fever therapy often has shown a complete reversal or shrinkage of cancer cells because they break down just in the same way as pathogens do. So, fever therapy is one of the treatments that we really love. I do it once a week. I’m like you addicted to your tea. I’m addicted to hyperthermia. It’s kind of a weird thing because it’s a tough treatment. Once you feel afterward your energy levels, you feel how your mind clears up.
See all of those pathogens produce neurotoxins. They poop and pee as we call. Those neurotoxins, they play out the mind, they make you tired. You create a huge burden on to your liver, on to your detox system. So, it’s like the more I have whether that’s root canal filled bacteria or whether that’s in the jaw from cavitations or they’re that’s in my joints and elbows and knees or it’s in organs. All of those, especially in the gut, all of those bacteria produce neurotoxins. So, if I kill off many of them I go through that stage. That’s why fever tear therapy makes you sleep a lot, makes you tired, makes you really it’s a tough progress but you come out so cleansed and so bell-clear with your mind that it can’t be explained or compared with any other treatment.
So, I really encourage people to look at hyperthermia as a treatment, as a general treatment because it also detoxifies heavy metals, it detoxifies plastic toxicity. It’s an internal and external detoxification through the skin and through the blood. If you do a hyperthermia, 3-4 days afterward your poo smells. It’s not nice but you realize what comes out. It also is anti-parasitic. It’s definitely the most proven and the most effective treatment of all. We have several clinics when I say to them, “Why don’t you do clay bath? Why don’t you do a zeolite? They all go like, “Because we don’t need it. We do once a week hyperthermia and that’s more than sufficient for any problem that we have from toxicity to infections to cancer growth to everything.
[1:02:40] Ashley James: So, you mention that 39.8 Celsius is high enough for Lyme disease. That’s 103.64 Fahrenheit. So, if someone did hyperthermia to 104, which most people listening, about 104 fever it’s not unthinkable. I recently had a guest on the show. She’s a PhD in homeopathy her name’s Cilla Whatcott. She’s been on the show a few times because she specializes in homeoprophylaxis. The last time she came on the show she was sharing about her three-part docuseries. She actually produced three 90-minute documentaries so there are three movies. It was all about the immune system. It was sort of focusing on what you could do instead of vaccines. It was kind of her, “Here’s the immune system. Here’s what it does. Here’s what you can do to support it.” She actually, while she was filming, developed cancer.
So, it took her a completely different turn. So, the third movie, she actually threw out. The third movie was almost done, she threw it out. She started filming again. The third movie is her journey to heal her cancer. Of course she did 100% unconventional treatment meaning she didn’t do the cut, burn. She did end up getting surgery after she did all the natural stuff. She chose to remove her breast, but she did not go for chemo or radiation. Instead, she did many different things but one of them was hyperthermia, which she swore by. That it played a huge role in her healing.
So, that was my first real-time talking to someone who’d ever experienced hyperthermia. I’ve had fever before as a kid, remembering having 104 fever as a kid. I remember waking up the next day totally fine like just boom. My body killed it. So many questions come to mind. Is this safe? Is this a safe therapy for everyone? Are there some people for whom this would be dangerous? You mention DNA SNPs, are there people who hyperthermia would not be a good therapy for because their body wouldn’t be able to handle the toxic load after the die-off, for example.
[1:05:22] Marcus Freudenmann: I would say the only real handicap that we have is breast implants. It’s a contraindication because due to the heat the silicon, it releases so many toxins into the body. So, if they have a client with breast implants in Germany, they put specially created gel poultices over the top to cool the breast so that they are not impacted. You can do that at home with cold towels and everything. It is something that we call a contraindication. The second thing is if somebody has severe heart problems. Let’s say it’s like climbing up a mountain. You get out of breath. It’s intense. Pulse increase so you push so much blood through your system that it is exhausting. That’s why heart problems and breast implants are the only two contraindications that there are.
If people follow the link trulyheal.com/Ashley and you go up, just above the video there is a button that’s called treatments. You just scroll down to hyperthermia. You click that button. First of all, there is a video that explains all of those treatments and why we recommend them and the research. Then if you click on hyperthermia, it takes you to the hyperthermia academy. We have a list to download with all the contraindications and side-effects that can come from the treatment plus a massive checklist. What to do, how to do it safely so that you can go really to prepare it, how to prepare yourself, how to do your breathing, everything. So as you go through the treatment that you don’t miss any of those steps.
It is a medical treatment, which is used and performed in all European, Russian, Romanian, Austria, Switzerland countries as a standard of care.
[1:07:29] Ashley James: Really? Standard of care? Sorry. You’re kind of blowing my mind here. This is just in clinics, totally accepted.
[1:07:40] Marcus Freudenmann: It’s used in university clinics.
[1:07:41] Ashley James: University clinics. Totally accepted.
[1:07:45] Marcus Freudenmann: It’s called the fourth pillar of cancer treatments because in Germany, as soon as cancer patients go down in white blood cell count, chemotherapy kills off every fast dividing cell in the body. Cancer cells are fast-dividing, immune cells are fast dividing. So, your white blood cell count goes down and then they have to stop chemotherapy because your white blood cell count becomes critical. Then you have no more defense, no more repair that’s why they have to stop. Now they go into one single or a series of two hyperthermia treatments during. They can first of all, reduce the load to about 30-40% of the chemo. So, they reduce the amount of chemo being used to have the same effects, plus they produce so many white blood cells during the process of hyperthermia that they can continue with chemo.
See, I’m never saying chemo is bad. I kind of dislike that we make it so black and white. There is a big gray area. I’ve met many people who did the integrated form. They had chemotherapy but they did hyperthermia at the same time. We have many clients that do that at home. They go through hyperthermia to keep their immune system going, to intensify the effects of chemotherapy. For many it’s a dream solution. So, saying it’s all bad or it’s all good on the other side is something that I’ve come to disagree with. We have solutions on both sides. That’s why when we use such an integrative method like they do at the university clinic and we do it wisely, we can have far better results. We have far less side effects. Actually, we can reduce side effects like hair loss and gray skin and all of those things completely. Patients come out of their chemotherapy with much greater success. Again, there is many studies.
So, hyperthermia is a treatment that we fell in love with, but I always say it’s only suitable for those clients who really want to live. If somebody says, “Oh. It’s a tough treatment. Don’t you have something simpler? Can we not do rather rife?” I always say, “Yeah. Just do whatever you like.” You obviously don’t want to live hard enough. It’s not a treatment for half-hearted approach. It’s a tough treatment, but it is one of the most relieving. You will also find that you have emotional relief. Many people start crying or start getting angry and release their emotional blockages during the treatment. So, you always should have a partner there. I have so many videos on that page that explain the process. There is doctors who explain the emotional factors of hyperthermia then the immune factors. So, it’s all on that training page. It’s really really helpful. That’s, in my opinion, one of the key treatments that we all have to do.
The second one is oxygenation. Oxygen oxygen oxygen. Cancer thrives in an anaerobic environment. If we focus on oxygenating our environment, first of all, the cancer doesn’t need to spread because it always looks for other areas to settle in. As soon as there is plenty of oxygen, that won’t happen. So, oxygenation and alkalinity. A lot of people think when we eat greens then we alkaline the body. I’ve seen people that tried that with all means. Didn’t eat anything else and still were highly acidic. The problem is very simple. Every food you eat, doesn’t matter what, needs to be converted into glucose for our cells to produce ATP. So, everything you eat whether it’s low converting or fast converting sugar it becomes sugar in the end. The second component to produce ATP energy for your body for every cell to work is oxygen.
Now, even though you might eat the most alkaline food diet, your pee and saliva strips stay acidic. That is because we breathe wrong. Oxygen intake. You need oxygen to convert glucose with oxygen into ATP. If you don’t have enough cellular oxygen, if your red blood cells don’t carry enough oxygen, if you don’t have that saturation in the organs, if your hemoglobin is not charged properly enough then that process is impaired. That means you have more glucose than oxygen. That means you start to ferment food. It becomes a lactic acid process and an anaerobic conversion. That is what cancer thrives on. So, the more oxygen we can get into the body, whether you use the Wim Hof method in breathing in there, Indian method or breathing exercises or you just go out in nature, exercise or you do own therapy or you do hyperbaric oxygen. It doesn’t really matter. Oxygen. The new method on sitting on a bicycle with the altitude training, which is very rarely a cancer suitable treatment but it is a possibility.
Things increase the chance of survival, the chance of your immune system actually handling the cancer. The immune system dealing with infections so far that it is, in my opinion, the biggest transformation for every cancer patient. We use mostly ozone because it has a whole lot of effects that compensate even for the lack of exercise, the lack of cytokine production communication. It has 50 different health benefits to the body. That’s why, again, it’s used in all European as a standard of care. It’s a totally normal treatment to boost the immune system, reduce infections, charge your hemoglobin with special energy that then can carry more oxygen. It makes your blood vessels dilate better so that you can get into the fine capillaries all the oxygen where it needs to go. A powerful treatment. These two hyperthermia and ozone are our more or less standard of care. Most important treatments and also most researched products that we use in cancer treatments, infectious disease treatments or any other chronic degenerative disease.
[1:14:47] Ashley James: You’re blowing my mind that hyperthermia and ozone are standard in European countries and yet completely not even mentioned by MDs here. Just not even brought up. Why is it that North America is in the dark ages? Why aren’t we on the cutting edge with you in Europe? Why aren’t we doing the same thing? It’s really infuriating when you look at how much money we pay for medical care in the United States. We spend the most amount of money on medical care than any other country. The U.S., we pay the most for our medical care. We are, I believe it’s 30th or 31st, in the world rated out of all the other industrialized nations that we come 30th or 31st. That we’re like close to dead last in terms of infant mortality. When you give birth in a hospital it cost over $5,000. That’s if you have a smooth birth and you don’t have a C-section. It blows my mind that if I were to have, God forbid knock on wood, if I were to have cancer and I lived in Europe, that a traditional oncologist would say, “Okay. We got to do some ozone therapy and some hyperthermia,” as part of my care. That’s not even heard of here.
I heard about ozone. I believe we talked about it in episode 147 when we had you on the show the first time. I first heard about ozone back in 2006 when I was working at a company. I was a sales manager for an international training company that taught people how to become trainers of neurolinguistic programming. My employer and my office manager would go to Tijuana and go to a clinic in Tijuana called the Hitt Center, Dr. Hitt. He was an American that would work in Tijuana. He would take your blood and put ozone in it, which is three oxygen molecules. Put ozone in it and then put the blood back in your body. My office manager had cervical cancer. She kind of went there for a week like she was going on vacation. She had absolutely no fear about the cervical cancer whatsoever. She was acting like it was kind of a cold that she was going to get over. She went there. She had seven days of ozone therapy and walked out without any cervical cancer. Then of course she changed her lifestyle. Ate organic, started to exercise. She then proceeded to live a much cleaner, healthier life and take care of her stress levels.
My employer at the time went there because of his allergies were off the charts. It was almost deadly for him to be in a room with a cat. It almost would send him to the hospital. It was so bad. If he was in a room with a cat he might die. That’s how bad his allergies were. After getting ozone therapy and a few other natural immune therapies, he became so healthy that they adopted two cats. I watched this happen. This was my first exposure to ozone. I’m thinking to myself, “Man, why do we have to go to Tijuana to get a therapy that seems to really really work?” It was explained to me was that ozone therapy is wonderful especially for people with cancer because it explodes all the pathogens in the body. Brings down the viral load and explodes all the passive pathogens. So now your immune system, instead of having to constantly keep up with sort of dormant viruses or keep everything at bay, now your immune system could focus on healing what it really needs to, which just blew my mind.
I believe you shared with us some ways that we could at home use ozone. I’d like to talk about that because there’s some concerns that ozone is a toxic substance. That it shouldn’t be inhaled, it should never touch our body. If you go to buy an ozone machine there’ll be all kinds of warnings about how toxic it is. So, how can we use ozone? Is it really toxic or is it benign? Should we always go to a professional or can we do ozone therapy at home?
[1:19:31] Marcus Freudenmann: Okay. That’s a very very important question. Toxicity of ozone is relevant in regards to breathing it into your lungs because you don’t have antioxidants in your lung and they don’t handle that oxidative stress. That’s why not breathing it in. If you smell it in the room, it’s not dangerous. If you smell a little bit of it, not dangerous. Just in high concentrations and large volume. That’s why they made it something negative. The whole concept and why it’s so harassed by the authorities and by the medical professional, whoever is in charge, is because it is absolutely cheap. You need an oxygen bottle and that oxygen, whether use medical or industrial doesn’t really matter. Cost you something like $60 a refill for a 1,000 treatments and that’s it. The device itself, depending on which device, it’s ranging from $700 to $2,000 dollars, which means every single doctor will have absolutely incredible results. The only income is towards the doctor. No chemicals to be sold. No pharmaceuticals to be sold. That’s why it has been harassed all over the world being prohibited, banned. Doctors lose their license.
In America, there’s more and more doctors using it. There’s more and more doctors opposing those regulations and do it as a private treatment. You have to pay privately for it but they use it because they see the effects. There’s hundreds and thousands of research studies and prove that it works for infections, infectious diseases, for so many things. It’s used to heal leaky gut. They use it in clinics in Europe for children. They use it for toddlers with autism. They use it for children with behavioral problems because of gut issues, gut overgrowth, bacterial overgrowth. It is proven to reverse leaky gut. It’s just an immense treatment. Because it is so effective, it works actually quite fast. It is easy to do. They don’t like that. That’s just simply the reason. I can’t see any other reason because there is hardly any other treatment that has so many documented research studies and studies that it can’t make it into the mainstream. So, it’s just simply too cheap.
[1:22:09] Ashley James: Is it safe to do it at home?
[1:22:11] Marcus Freudenmann: Oh, yes. I do it since ten years. We have those treatments, God, 8,000-9,000 devices I’ve sold to people all around the world. From Iceland to Russia to South Africa to Namibia. I can’t tell you all the countries. In the beginning we made dots on the map how far we could reach the world. Then it just became too overwhelming. Every country around the world we’ve delivered ozone devices to ozone bundles. We have a complete training. Again, trulyheal.com/Ashley and then just scroll up to the top. Go into treatments and you will find the O3 Academy, ozone academy. What it’s used for, different protocols for different diseases, how it’s used, how to set it up at home, how to be safe, contraindications, side effects, everything is there. You can get instantly the download. You can watch all the videos. We’ve put a lot of effort in to make it.
Let me just give you my reasoning. The biggest problem when you are diagnosed with cancer or any other chronic disease is cost. It just ends up to be an incredible expense. The more you try, the more you search around, the more you consult with training and everything the more it goes out-of-bounds. I’ve seen so many people broke or using their whole resources that they have just to stay alive. That’s why when you go to have a treatment, in Mexico I think you pay for one ozone therapy something like $130 dollars, $100. In Germany it’s a bit cheaper because every Naturopath is allowed to do ozone therapy so it’s about $80 converted, $60 some of them. But if you have a 10-pack or 20-pack it still adds up. So, what we found and you need to do at least 20 or 30 treatments to see results. It’s a slow-motion treatment. That’s why when you buy yourself a hyperthermia dome, one hyperthermia treatment in the clinic is around and $1,500-$1,000. Here in Australia they charge now in two clinics $1,200. That’s two treatments you can buy off your own dome and you can do it at home the next 10 years.
So, what we found is that that investment to buy a device, have a proper training with it, know what to do, know to handle it properly and then you can run your home treatment. It’s first of all legal. It’s completely legal to treat yourself like doing a diet or taking drugs or whatever. It’s totally legal. Secondary, it’s safe. That’s why we don’t sell the device before you haven’t gone through the training because we want you to really know the side effects and not going to the hyperthermia dome with big breast implants and then you get sick afterward. So, we showcase those things before. Then once you’ve done the training you can purchase the device and you save yourself thousands of dollars. Because they are the most effective treatments plus we teach you all the cofactors. What you need to look out for, which supplements are important, which nutritional values are important. It’s always a whole package. It’s made around the world. We have thousands of people who use those treatments.
[1:25:58] Ashley James: You say 20 to 30 treatments of the ozone before you see results. This is not IV ozone so you’re bathing in it or you’re I believe you talked about–
[1:26:12] Marcus Freudenmann: Rectally.
[1:26:13] Ashley James: Rectally. That’s right. So, you put a small amount of ozone in your rectum.
[1:26:19] Marcus Freudenmann: Up your butt.
[1:26:20] Ashley James: So that you can absorb it because that’s a highly absorbed area. There’s a vein around the anus-
[1:26:28] Marcus Freudenmann: The portal vein.
[1:26:29] Ashley James: Yeah. Portal vein goes right to the liver. So, it’s delivering the ozone into the liver and then throughout the body. So, 20 or 30 treatments, could someone do that in a month? Could they do a treatment every day for a month?
[1:26:45] Marcus Freudenmann: Yeah. Certainly. That’s what the plan is. If you start out doing it for every day, in the morning. For very impatient patients who sometimes do morning and evening if they are really keen, especially in the first week where you want those effects. Major autohemotherapy, which you described before where blood is taken out and it’s bathed in ozone and then drip back into the body is probably a lot more effective. I would say half or double as effective than rectal, but it requires those really big needles in your arm. Children, elderly often have problems with that. It’s a dreadful thing to see that the doctor getting that needle done. It’s always an hour driving or half an hour driving. It takes a lot of time.
A treatment of rectal ozone insufflation is in the morning you go to the bathroom, you go to the toilet you have your bowel movement and then right afterward you lubricate the catheter with a little bit of ozone oil. You insert that into your rectum. Then you blow 250 milliliters. It’s a small amount of ozone into your colon and try to hold it. It doesn’t need to stay long. It’s like a fart that wants to escape so you try to hold it for something like two minutes. Then all the reaction has passed. If you would hold it longer, the only additional benefit is that the oxygen is absorbed. All your white blood cells that live in that final part of the colon in the membrane, in the mucosa, mucous membrane, they thrive with that input of ozone and oxygen. So, it’s like an incredible boost that you give yourself. So, I try to hold it. I have very strong muscles. I can hold it easily. I don’t even feel it, the 250 milliliters. But if it passes early it doesn’t matter. That’s it. That’s the whole treatment for the day. You do that every morning. It’s a two-minute, three-minute treatment if you include washing the catheter and flashing it out in the sink with a bit of soapy water and that’s it.
The Cuba study showed that five rectal ozone insufflations can be compared in its effect to three major autohemotherapy. That’s normally when you go to a clinic like your friend did in Mexico. They have three major autohemotherapy per week. That is pretty much the same as five rectal ozone insufflations. The effects are multiple. First of all, again, you create like a vaccine. The bacteria that die off become a vaccine. The virus that dies off due to the oxidation becomes a vaccine. Your cytokine production is increased. Your oxygen uptake is increased. You produce in the bone marrow what we call super red blood cells. They have highly charged hemoglobin so they take up more oxygen and release it a lot faster.
Now, they live 126 days, roughly let’s say 130 days. So, when you start doing your ozone treatment, that’s when the first blood cells, red blood cells, are produced which are the strongest. But you have still many that are in your body that are sluggish that don’t hold a lot of energy. So you slowly increase that amount of super red blood cells. Once you really change that environment and you have a lot more oxygen uptake, see, when you breathe and you breathe in fresh air, then the oxygen has to be pulled through two membranes unto the hemoglobin. First, the lung membrane and then the red blood cell membrane. That needs a strong charge to pull that oxygen molecule through and tie it to the hemoglobin. Then the blood travels through the body and it’s released in areas where it’s low oxygen content. It’s like a trigger that releases.
Now, if your red blood cells are starving themselves from oxygen they can hardly survive. They’re clamping up and they’re clotting up then they won’t release the oxygen. They use it for themselves. But if you have those super red blood cells they release it. That’s why it’s used for Neuropathy, diabetic Neuropathy for wound healing, for expedited wound healing. For people who have those dying off black spots on their legs and toes because blood circulation doesn’t get there from diabetes. It’s used for wound healing. It’s used to wash wounds. You can use it for toenail fungus, which your immune system is not capable of dealing there because it’s fine capillaries and your oxygen is used up before it gets to your toes, to your extremities.
So, all of a sudden your whole body gets a complete revamp and reboost. Your eyesight gets better. Your skin gets better. It’s used in Italy in nine clinics where I interview doctors as beauty therapy. They use it instead of Botox to take those wrinkles above the lips away to use it above the eyebrows. It’s phenomenal. They remove scar tissue with it. I’ve never seen the treatment that is used so versatile. They use it with children with autism to heal the gut. There is clinics that flood the whole colon with two liters of ozone and then start to recolonize the colon with probiotics and with good like in Ayurveda they use ghee and good oils and good nutrients combined with minerals to recolonize the colon. It’s phenomenal. I’ve never seen one treatment that is used so versatile in so many areas.
[1:33:08] Ashley James: That’s phenomenal. I mean, that it was used instead of Botox is kind of blowing my mind. Now, biological dentists use ozone instead of the old way that dentists would do it, which is to drill and then fill. Drill and fill a cavity. Biological dentists use ozone to kill the cavity, to kill the infection in the tooth. Then they put like an inert substance over it if they have to. But it is used by biological dentists here in the United States, is it not?
[1:33:43] Marcus Freudenmann: Yeah. Look at the process. They kill off bacteria with ozone and they stimulate the innate immune system in that area. Then usually what they do is they extract the white blood cells from your blood with the centrifugal. Then they inject that plasma, the white blood cells, into the extraction. So, the white blood cells boosted by ozone, boosted by oxygen and then do the healing. It’s a phenomenal concept and it works absolutely astounding. So, I’m really upset that it’s so difficult for people to get it, to find a biological dentist, to find a doctor who does it. There is many many more.
Dr. Shallenberger, who I interviewed and Dr. Robert Rowen in San Francisco or north of San Francisco. Dr. Shallenberger is in Reno. They both hold courses and training programs for doctors and professionals. They usually have about 50 to 100 people in the room, doctors and professionals who learn how to do the treatment. They’ve done those courses since two or three years. So, there’s more and more doctors coming forth who step outside the box and say, “Look, I do what’s good for my patients.”
In America, it’s just not advertised. I can’t go and say, “Hey. I do ozone treatment.” Here in Australia, two doctors coming from Germany and very proud, started an ozone clinic in Melbourne and within two weeks they lost their license and were closed down. So, you just need to stay under the radar. That’s why I always say just call a doctor and say, “Do you do ozone therapy?” If they do then they will let you know but they won’t advertise it in a big way because it’s just not helping their licensee. That’s why do it at home. It’s a fraction of the cost. If you buy a kit it’s $1,400 and it allows you to do ozone treatment for the whole family for two years, it’s ten years. It doesn’t cost anything. It allows you also to save in trip and time and all of those things, which I believe is quite important.
[1:36:05] Ashley James: What about HPV, herpes, yeast or Candida infections? I’m just imagining, could you put ozone in a vagina? Can you use it?
[1:36:19] Marcus Freudenmann: Oh certainly. Vaginal insufflations. You connect the hose directly with your catheter directly to the ozone generator. You turn it on 27 milligrams so a slightly lower concentration that you use for rectal. You insert the catheter into your vagina with a little bit of ozone oil. Then you inflate your whole ovarian fallopian tubes. Everything is ozonated. It’s healthy for healthy cells, they thrive. Your pathogens die off so you can use it for Candida overgrowth, you can use it for EBV, for everything, for sexually transmitted diseases, herpes, genital herpes. We have many young people who do that as a treatment.
You combine it with a healthy diet. You combine it with good supplementation. You also combine it with drinking some ozone water or flashing with ozone water but a phenomenal treatment. We have all those videos on the website. How to do vaginal insufflations, how to do rectal insufflations, how to do ozone bagging for external limps. It’s all learned and taught by doctors that we visited to really cover all aspects. So we don’t do things half-heartedly.
[1:37:45] Ashley James: If you had to choose between ozone and hyperthermia, if someone didn’t have the budget for both and they wanted to heal their body. Let’s say they have a disease a chronic disease and they want to heal their body, which one? If they could just choose one right now, which one do you think is more important?
[1:38:10] Marcus Freudenmann: Again, that’s one of those general questions. What is their situation? I would say it’s not so much about the budget or about one or the other. It’s more what is their personality type? See, we have let’s say total three treatments. PEMFT would be what I call the couch potato treatment.
[1:38:33] Ashley James: What’s PEMFT?
[1:38:34] Marcus Freudenmann: It’s pulsed electromagnetic fields.
[1:38:37] Ashley James: Oh. Yes.
[1:38:37] Marcus Freudenmann: It boosts the immune system. So that would be my couch potato treatment. Lazy people who don’t want to do anything and who are not really willing to touch their butt. Let’s face it, many men when you say do a rectal insulation they look at you as if you ask a miracle from them. The next step would be ozone is what most people comply with. It’s already borderline but they comply with it because they feel and see the results. Hyperthermia would be the toughest treatment and you really need to have a dedication to get well. It’s also in sequence in effectivity. Hyperthermia would be the most effective, most powerful treatment to cover such a wide range of problems that you can do especially with a good breathing technique. When you go into the dome, it can compensate for both of the other treatments. So, that’s number one.
Ozone would be treatment number two because it compensates for exercise, for breathing. It’s very convenient. It’s a short treatment but you need to do it longer to have those results. I just had a young lady. She contacted us with very advanced stage of herpes, genital herpes. She started out with flashing and washing with ozone water. Doing the vaginal insulation and rectal insulation because vagina is local treatment. Rectal is the systemic response of the body creating those red blood cells and creating the cytokines. So you have to do both. She did the whole process for four weeks and everything disappeared. So, dedication in that treatment will bring you massive results.
PEMFT is what I call for those people who have no energy left to do anything. They lack well even in the will to do things. If they start using PEMFT it’s like your toothbrush. When it goes whoop whoop whoop and doesn’t brush anymore properly, you put it in that stand and it recharges the battery. It’s similar to us. Every cell is recharged. All of a sudden we go, “Woo, woo. Let’s do something.” It’s an energizing treatment, which has health benefits as well, but the major effect would be energy and pain.
[1:41:11] Ashley James: So when someone is just so fatigued, they’re just so fatigued they just don’t have the will or the energy to really do anything you say PEMFT, which you could just sit on the couch or lie in a bed, electromagnetic pulse. I did a two-part interview on micro frequency, using specific micro frequencies to stimulate certain parts of the body kind of like rife but very specific. So, you dial in a specific Hertz for exactly what they’re looking to work on. Is what you’re suggesting similar to that? That you dial in a certain frequency? Is it a specific frequency?
[1:42:02] Marcus Freudenmann: No. That’s exactly what we try not to do because that’s when it becomes really technical, very complicated. You need to do a treatment two or three weeks with a certain frequency to see whether it actually as an effect. Plus, like rife treatment, you start the treatment you do it for a while and then your cells adapt. Like, “Oh, that kills me. Let’s switch my frequencies so that I don’t respond.” That’s why when you do rife frequency or any of those frequency treatments, which are designed to kill off certain pathogens, then your body adapts after certain while. Then you need to change the frequency, adapt.
There’s whole forums that try to catch the best frequency for Lyme. They always work for a little while and then you need to search again and do scans. It’s too technical. For most patients, way too overwhelming. It never yields lasting results. Whereas PEMFT is a channel recharge. It’s really just simply recharging your body with energy. We don’t care about frequencies. We just simply fill the body with a magnetic field not with electric current, with a magnetic field. That recharges all cells whether it’s your bone cells, your immune cells, your skin cells everything at once.
I sold, actually, many devices to retirement homes. We had one that started out. It was in America one of those over 50 living or over 55 or whatever you call it. They purchased one of those devices. A few clients just used it and sat down and had that treatment. They started to excel. They started to get more feet. They’re better mobility, had overall more energy, more joy in life, libido came back. It was all of a sudden like a reboot. They told everybody. This one retirement village has I think 80, how do you call it, satellites, different villages. They purchased now five devices for each of those communities. They are thriving.
When you see the effects, I went to people that are sitting in agony, in pain because the cells cramp up. They have pain, they have no more energy. They do the treatment for one or two days and you see them walking straight and they stretch out. The nurse said it’s really sweet. We had it in one community and the nurse said, “Marcus, we never ever get rid of a problem which has changed its form. Before we had pain and complaining clients and grumpy and miserable. Now we have parties in the room at night, escaping patients and libido that goes through the roof that shouldn’t be there anymore.” It was so sweet. Yeah. They actually show mostly the effects.
We have a lot of cancer patients that it’s the most expensive device. I said that compensates for the couch potato effect you know doing little and having therefore high cost. Whereas ozone is very cheap in the middle. Then you have hyperthermia which is a tough treatment but therefore it’s probably the most powerful of all. They cover so much ground. All of them deal with toxins. All of them help with detoxification. All of them kill off pathogens. All of them immobilize your immune system. Bring organs back to working function. They oxygenate the body. It’s a treatment that you can do.
You go to the Gesundheit clinic in Giessen in Germany. That’s where you find all super athletes, Olympic players, world athletes, marathon runners. Before they go overseas, before they have a competition they go to that clinic and what do they have? Ozone, hyperthermia and PEMFT as a boost, which is outside of the doping rules so they can do that and increase their performance 50-fold before they go. Plus they don’t get infections when they travel to third-world countries. So it’s a very very popular and famous clinic that all sports people go. So, it’s not only for sick people.
[1:46:30] Ashley James: Oh. Fantastic. That’s very interesting is PEMFT similar to the bemer mat or is that totally different?
[1:46:40] Marcus Freudenmann: It is in the same family but the bemer mat, again, uses frequencies like the iMIS and all of those. They use a frequency which runs for three minutes and that resonates with your bone cells. Then it switches to three minutes of your cartilage. Then three minutes of your muscle cells. Three minutes of your immune cells, three minutes. So, twenty minutes through, it covers pretty much all. It’s a 30-minute program. It covers pretty much the whole range of frequencies. Whereas PEMFT that we use it’s called a ringer device and that’s in clinics use because you can’t have every patient being treated for pretty much everything just to cover one range. In a five minute treatment with a ringer device, with a pulsing magnetic device which causes those muscle contractions, it does the same thing as 10 times being on an oscillating device. So, it’s a lot faster, a lot more effective. That’s why it’s used in sport, in soccer, in rugby. You will find when you look at those sport fields and they have an injury or they fall, you will find that a lot of those athletes are taken to the side and they immediately get PEMFT treatment because it creates faster healing, it prevents edema, it reduces swelling, it takes out any kind of bruising. It’s a really powerful treatment.
[1:48:16] Ashley James: If only the average person had access to all the things that the elite athletes have access to, all the athletes do, then the average person, what every household would have a PEMFT device, would have a dome for hyperthermia, would have a device for ozone. This would be standard, like you said, it’s standard practice in Europe and in clinics there and elite athletes do it. Why is it not standard practice for the rest of us?
[1:48:47] Marcus Freudenmann: I would say thousands of people do. It’s not that uncommon. When we speak about those treatments, you will find that many people already know, many people have, many people do it. It’s not that rare. Yes, the general public is not educated but let’s face it, it starts with diet, it starts with looking and feeling about your body, what your body is telling you. It should be actually not only available because it is available widely. The main factor that we forgot is to educate our families, our children to be more body-conscious, to feel before the disease happens, to know what’s healthy for us what is not, to listen to what my body tells me.
If I eat the same food and I get everyday diarrhea, who connects that what they eat is related to their diarrhea? Sensitivities that come two days late. It’s not that these treatments are not there. They are there since 40 years. Ozone is well-known since a long time as one of the powerful treatments. I think it’s the lack of education. This is why I’m so passionate about that.
If people know and they feel what they can do and you feel the difference from before and after. If you repair your leaky gut and you take some food sensitivities out, how your mind is all of a sudden sharp like a bell. I think we always need to be driven to that place by adversity. I was having my whole mouth full with amalgam fillings. Then my mum said, “It looks ugly. We need to take those out.” Put that white ceramic in so that it looks nice. The dentist drilled them all out in one day. A week later I couldn’t walk anymore. I couldn’t walk straight. I had such a heavy metal poisoning that I was running into walls. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write. My parents in their panic took me out of school and put me into a private school. Lucky, we had a teacher there who was conscious and he said, “Look, I was reading the grades he was cool and then all of a sudden he dropped. Now, he’s hardly responding. What has happened?”
If he wouldn’t have been there my parents didn’t even connect that the dentist might have something to do with my deterioration because we’re not aware. This is where I believe the biggest problem is. Helping each other to become aware that what we do has an impact on our health.
[1:51:36] Ashley James: To be conscious of what’s in our blind spot. Sometimes it takes going to a health coach or going to someone like you. Going to someone who can help us to look in our blind spots and see the missing pieces. It’s hard to see it in our own life sometimes, but you go to someone who’s trained like a health coach or a Naturopathic physician to talk about your whole health history. There’s a huge difference. You go to a Naturopath, your first session is something like 60 or 90 minutes. You go to an MD, insurance only really covers 15 minutes if you’re lucky. There are really good-hearted MDs out there that want to do good work but they’re not paid to sit down and spend an hour or 90 minutes with you and really talk about your health history and figure out what the root cause is. They’re not trained to look for root cause and to help someone heal. They’re not even paid to.
[1:52:37] Marcus Freudenmann: Times are changing. They are changing dramatically at the moment. I’m really excited about this. We started our coaching program five years ago. Five years ago when we went out and talked about the root cause and what you learn in the program, many people just looked at me like, oh you’re a weirdo. I felt sometimes like out of place, but we stuck to it. We really focused more and more and more onto finding the real problems in our life and how we can resolve them. You see that too.
We had so many clients that went overseas. They have a treatment. They do really well. Their cancers disintegrate. They shrink. They come home into their old environment and all of a sudden cancer come back and grow like crazy. You take them back out of the environment. Well, isn’t it a logical conclusion that we then check the environment and look what’s wrong? Whether it’s their living condition, whether it’s EMF, whether it’s mold, whether it’s the stress level that they go back into, it’s memories that they go back into.
So many things that might trigger the disease. That’s where finding that root problem really became a passion. We have now thousands of coaches and students in the program. I can tell you what, many of them are oncologist, many of them are MDS who heard about the process that we do and that want to give a different service to their clients. With just last month I think we signed up five new MDS and two oncologists into the program. I love that transformation because it just shows that there is a willingness to change and to adapt to a new time. We are living in a new paradigm. With the Internet, everything has changed.
[1:54:30] Ashley James: I love that. Now, if a listener wants to work with a coach who’s been through your training, do you have a list or do you have some way that they can find someone who’s been through your training to work with?
[1:54:48] Marcus Freudenmann: It’s already on the website. We’re just updating it. We have been pretty slack with that because of rebuilding the website. We had to separate the treatment pages from the main page because of legal problems and disclaimers and all of that. It feels like you’re always running a marathon because of legal problems. So, we had to separate that. We had to separate the shop from the whole website. So, it’s been a massive. Right now we’re working to put all the coaches and all the updated coaches and the ones who take on services and filter out those who don’t. We have many that work in a clinic or work in an environment where they can’t advertise themselves. We have a lot of clinics actually hire our coaches as they are finished. So, it’s really fascinating how this thing happens and changes. Yeah. There is a list on the website trulyheal.com/Ashley. Then just go up into treatments, into coaches, into program.
I think it’s also important once you’ve seen the approach that we teach. It’s making so much more sense because I cover all of those subjects in great detail.
[1:56:07] Ashley James: Yes. So, when they go to that link specifically which is for the Learn True Health listeners and for this episode. They’re given access to your free training and the videos that you’re most proud of. Out of almost 600 videos you’ve ever made these are ones that you feel are really effective. So you get access to those, which thank you so much because you love spreading information. Then there are listeners, about 20% of my listeners are holistic health professionals, nurses, Naturopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists, health coaches. So, those who are listening who are in the health field or looking to become to enter the health field, they could take your program, your online program. Could someone who has no background in healthcare do your program or is it only for healthcare providers?
[1:57:00] Marcus Freudenmann: Everybody who is passionate about health. Our best students are often those who have a disease themselves. Many of them are scared. Can I do that? Can I learn? What if I don’t succeed? They go through. We have now nine coaches that started the program with cancer and ended the program without. That already shows because they apply much of what they learn to themselves. So, you need to have at the ability to remember and to learn and dedication to go through. Our program, we call it functional medicine training or functional medicine health coach certification. It’s a very deep program. So, it’s not just a dietary coach or a wellness coach. It’s really deep. We cover all the tests, how to read the test. From DNA SNPs, to liver profiles to whatever.
So, it is not very superficial. It’s actually what I would say what doctors should know. It’s a program that is quite intense, but it is the most rewarding program to know afterward for your family, for your friends. Even if you just use it privately, the insights that you gain are just stunning. Plus we cover mental and emotional problems. We cover lifestyle problems and we cover also spiritual problems. Not spiritual in regards to religion but life purpose, listening to your inner voice, covering many aspects of wanting to live.
See, one of the first things that we always check with patients, do they actually still want to live? The wife drags the husband to the practitioner. You see he is more or less not interested, not focused. If there is no spark, if there is no reason to live, if any of the seven areas, let’s say you have five areas of your life not empowered or not joyful or not successful, then life becomes a drag. It becomes very abusive. It becomes very challenging. So those people don’t want to get well.
So, we first look at how to empower those person in maybe one or two areas so that at least three becomes stable. It is so powerful when you see all of a sudden someone empower themselves and then want to live. Not just being told that they have to do this and this to live longer and they don’t enjoy life. So, there’s so many facets in there that we’ve included from what we’ve learned from other practitioners. I’m not saying we’ve invented any of that. I’m actually just a collector of gems as I always say. I walk along the beach and every gem I find and everything that is shared with me, which is of great importance, we add to the program. So, it covers from the spiritual to the mental to the physical side pretty much everything and lifestyle.
[2:00:15] Ashley James: Brilliant. I know you have worked closely with doctors all around the world that get real results. You’ve collected the information and the techniques that are really really working. I love that your approach is to help someone first identify what created the disease state in their body. Let’s get to the root cause and help us heal at the root level. You’re not ever treating the cancer.
[2:00:47] Marcus Freudenmann: You remember the three ladies?
[2:00:49] Ashley James: Yes. You’re not ever treating the cancer.
[2:00:50] Marcus Freudenmann: You remember the three ladies?
[2:00:51] Ashley James: I do.
[2:00:51] Marcus Freudenmann: The first one wouldn’t need hyperthermia nor ozone. See, this is what I mean that’s why I’m so reluctant to give general advice. Because they might just go because they have cancer. Then say, “Oh. I need ozone.” The first one wouldn’t need either of them because it’s a completely different background of treatment. That’s why that generalization or telling everybody to go to the dentist is not what we should do. $250 dollars is really no money in relation to what you pay the long run to get rid of such a disease. Therefore it’s a real benefit to do that.
[2:01:34] Ashley James: So, do that the quiz on your website, which has them really go through and figure out where the problem is coming from, what to focus on? So, when they go to your website, what is the name of the quiz or how would they find that? It’s trulyheal.com/Ashley. Then where do they go to find that quiz?
[2:01:59] Marcus Freudenmann: It’s not a quiz. I think in the first so second email after you sign up, see you will need to sign up. Sign the disclaimer for the website. As soon as you are in, then the whole website reveals a whole lot more. You can watch the free documentary. You can watch so much more. It’s all opened up but you need to sign in. That’s one of the things we had to do for safety reasons because we’re teaching non-FDA-approved treatments. We teach them to private people. That’s why the whole safety step had to be first, second, third. So, as soon as you sign up you will find that more buttons, more possibilities come out. Then it’s in I think the second email after we talk about the causes, you will get an email where we offer that as a package and why we believe it’s so important. Then it comes with the whole educational program with that. It’s like I told you, we don’t sell before you’re educated or we try not to because we believe it’s important that people make wise and informed decisions.
[2:03:09] Ashley James: Right. Well, you’re saving them time and money and also helping them get the closest to the truth for them as possible. Figuring out what their best path would be because I watched my friend for eight months just throw, it’s like it’s like playing darts blindfolded. “I’m going to try some of this mushroom. I’m going to try some hyperbaric chamber. I’m going to try some vitamin C therapy. I’m going to try some Holly injections. I’m going to try some homeopathy.” I mean, the list went on and on and she spent-
[2:03:42] Marcus Freudenmann: Oh, let’s buy some frankincense.
[2:03:43] Ashley James: Frankincense, right.
[2:03:44] Marcus Freudenmann: It’s $250 and it cures cancer. It never has.
[2:03:48] Ashley James: Yeah. Well, she went to Mexico a few times in the clinic down there. She did so many therapies and spent tens of thousands of dollars. It was great actually. Her cancer stopped growing. It was a fast-growing cancer. All the natural stuff she was doing, it stopped at its tracks and just sat there. It didn’t get any worse, it just sat there.
[2:04:17] Marcus Freudenmann: Wow. See that’s already a huge achievement.
[2:04:19] Ashley James: Yeah. If she had a million dollars in the bank she could have kept just blindly doing all the natural stuff. She was nutrifiying her body, she was eating really healthy, she was working on everything she could all-natural. She could have just kept going if she had a million dollars, but she didn’t figure out how to get to the root of it.
[2:04:42] Marcus Freudenmann: See, this is where we say you invest let’s say $1,400 for ozone, $2,500 or $2,600. I think it’s on special at the moment for hyperthermia. When you have the two treatments that they do in Germany, every day when you go there, you don’t get any. The only treatment that is in Germany at the moment stronger is laser treatment they do additionally, which you can’t do at home and local hyperthermia for local treatment. It’s less tough on the body, but therefore it’s very effective. So, they do those four treatments and that’s what you pay $30,000 for plus some IVs.
So, find yourself and that’s where we go through the program. We teach people what to ask for and what to look for and which test will reveal it. Then what kind of local IVs they can get. There’s so many doctors in America and in every other country that give IV treatments: magnesium, zinc, selenium, Myers cocktail, whatever you want. B vitamins and supplementation. So, that’s where you compensate. Pretty much you recreate your own therapy, but you can do it not only for three weeks and then come back half a year later for another three weeks and again and again until you run out of money. You do it consistently at home. Within a matter of two years most of our clients reverse their cancer.
It’s a slow process. I’m not lying and I’m not saying that you get rid of it in three weeks. You don’t do that in clinics either. It’s a process of transformation. Remember cancer is here to show us and teach us something. So, going away into the inside, listening to our body, becoming conscious which I believe is the main effect that happens. Reconnecting with our loved ones. Stopping the fight and the flights and in our sympathetic nervous system. So many things that are part of the healing process, but as you go through we’ve guided every single step of that process. In the coaching program and as a coach you work with your client that way or you do it yourself and learn it for yourself. It’s a huge transformation. Usually after two years you have either no cancer or you’ve recovered so that it doesn’t keep growing. Let’s face it, if it doesn’t keep growing and you can do that for the next 20 years, hey, that’s a win.
[2:07:21] Ashley James: Right. I know my friend, when she was down in Mexico, met a man at one of the cancer clinics down there who is from the UK. He was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. They gave him like two or three months to live and that was 12 years ago. He’s still alive. He kept going to these kind of cancer clinics, all-natural, getting the IVs and ozone and all these treatments. He has just halted the growth of the tumor. It’s not getting bigger. It’s not getting smaller. It’s just staying the exact same. He has had a wonderful quality of life.
So, he uses his cancer as a barometer, as a measuring tool. So, if his markers start to go up he’s like, “Oh, what have I been doing in my life? Oh. Well, I’ve been getting less sleep. I’ve been a little bit relaxed in my health regimen. Okay, I’m a little more stressed. All right. I need to take better care of myself.” So he comes every six months and gets thermography and gets blood work done in Mexico, because it’s cheaper. It’s not even available these things. Some of these things that he does aren’t available in the UK. But he goes every few months and just tests to make sure that he is on course. Sure enough, he’s lived. He’s totally blown away the oncologists in the UK because he’s proving that you can live a long healthy life with lung cancer. He’s just stopped the growth of it. So, it does take shifting our mindset from the old fear mentality towards a mentality of healing and-
[2:09:03] Marcus Freudenmann: Of attitude.
[2:09:04] Ashley James: Yes. Yeah.
[2:09:05] Marcus Freudenmann: Gratitude for the cancer, what it brings into my life gratitude. For the lessons that it helps me achieve, the motivation it gives me you. How many people try to diet and diet and diet nothing works and then all of a sudden with that motivational push they manage to shift and break free of their old habits. It’s a really beautiful thing.
[2:09:30] Ashley James: So, I’m really interested for the listeners to go to the link you’ve given us. Trulyheal.com/Ashley and sign up and say okay to the disclaimer. So, they all of a sudden then are given access to this private website with all this information because you want to give a lot of training to all of us. You’re not charging for the training. You’re giving us a free training. Then should someone want to buy the $250 quiz or should someone want to buy a machine from you they can. Everyone could benefit from the training.
So, they go to the website. Is it quite clear when they go to that link how to sign up so that they get access to all this, I don’t want to say secret information, but it’s a private website that they get access to.
[2:10:17] Marcus Freudenmann: It’s secret information. No. It’s just protected that we don’t give out before the disclaimer. Yeah, it’s very logical. Any video that you try to click, the sign-up box comes up. You can sign up with your Facebook or Instagram or Google account or whatever. All the new fancy stuff. You can sign up with a username and password. Once you’ve done that you log into the site and it automatically logs you in. Then you have access to everything. The documentary, we’ve got the new one the old one there. We have hundreds of videos explaining different things. From my daughter released yesterday a video about trauma and how to deal and supplement in the best way when you had traumatic events. What it does to the body. So, it’s so much content. I would say 20 years of love in that final website that we have now and we’re really proud.
[2:11:16] Ashley James: I’m so proud of the work that you’re doing, Marcus. Thank you so much for coming back on the show and sharing your wealth of information. Anytime I talk to you I just feel like we’re just scratching the surface. So, I’m really glad that you’re providing your website with hundreds of hours of free training. So listeners, if they’ve loved learning from you today then they can dive into your website and continue learning, trulyheal.com/Ashley. I know I’m definitely going to dive in because there’s some of your content I still haven’t absorbed yet. So, I’m going to dive in myself. I’ve always been interested in ozone ever since I saw my friends, my past employer has such a profound result with it. I keep hearing that it’s so effective. Then of course you sharing how effective it is. I’m really curious to learn more.
I’m really glad that you’re a resource for the listeners to aid them. All this information is another tool in our tool belt. We have to grow our tool belt and we need to advocate for our own health. Doctors don’t make us healthy. They are there to help us and guide us, but we can’t give over our decision-making to a doctor. We can’t just blindly give over our will to a doctor because the doctor does not come home with us. We’re the ones that heal ourselves with our actions every day whether we’re taking our medication, going for a walk, breathing. I know we’re about to wrap it up. I want to talk about breathing a meditation, which is something you wanted to teach. We are the ones who are taking action. We need to remember that the root word for doctors, docere, which means teacher.
A doctor is our teacher. A health coach is our teacher. Holistic practitioners are our teachers. This podcast is our teacher. We’re the ones who get to assimilate the knowledge. Then we have to take action. That means working on the level of emotional health, mental health, spiritual health and working on physical health. Doing daily things every day. The hundred and two hundred decisions that you make every day either adding up health or stripping you of health. Whether you drink a glass of water when you first wake up in the morning or you drink a coffee when you first wake up in the morning. I’m not vilifying coffee. I’m just saying, if you’re dehydrating your body or if you’re hydrating your body will add to your health or slowly take away from your health. These little things add up.
[2:14:03] Marcus Freudenmann: Let’s say it that way. If you drink coffee and you drink it black without sugar, without milk it’s actually a remedy. It helps your liver detoxify. It’s one of the healthiest thing, again, plenty of research. It’s just if you add all the sugar and the milk that’s when it becomes really bad.
[2:14:20] Ashley James: It depends on the quality of the coffee. Where it comes from, whether it’s organic or not organic, how much you drink and how much water you drink also to hydrate the body. If you’re drinking 90 ounces of not organic black coffee a day, it’s probably less healthy than 12 ounces of black coffee or 16 ounces of black organic coffee that’s blonde brew because it’s less roasted. Then you follow it up with a 120 ounces of water throughout the day. There’s so many ways that we can tweak our lifestyle. If you were to go to bed 30 minutes earlier. Just try it. Just try going to bed 30 minutes earlier than you normally do.
There is a study they did with children in the United States. They found that these children had ADD. They found that just 30 minutes of extra sleep, most of the children, it was a large amount of children. I think it was over 60% of the children saw a significant decrease in their ADHD symptoms. So, just little tweaks throughout the day, little shifts in our decisions and in our motivation and in our mindset can add up big time to helping us prevent disease and also helping the body to heal itself. Using resources like Marcus’s can really go a long way to inform us so that we make better choices. Like you said, what if we switched from cow dairy and sugar in our coffee to a black coffee. It takes about three to five days to adjust.
My husband once had me drink black just as an experiment. This is like 10 years ago. I was the kind of person that put so much sugar in a coffee that at the bottom of the coffee there would be syrup, there’d be like half an inch of thick sugary syrup. That was ten years ago. My husband challenged me to go black. Within a week I could drink black coffee. I didn’t have a problem with it. I thought that’s really interesting. I neuro-adapted to the flavor. I didn’t enjoy it for a few days and then I was fine.
So, as an experiment, what if we followed Marcus’s advice. Just do these tiny little changes adding up. It adds up to something big. Now, adding meditation and adding breathing to our life could just be something little, it’s a little change, but what if it had a huge impact?
[2:16:45] Marcus Freudenmann: I can tell you the most important change and I don’t know if you can relate to that. If I go into the fitness studio and I do my own exercise, I usually go out way too early and way too little exercise. If I take a coach and I work with them I’d triple my exercise. I found that this is really one of the things that changes people. First of all, it becomes a lot more affordable. When you have someone that guides you through the process and especially in a disease like cancer, if you don’t need to do all the changes yourself. You have someone that keeps on motivating, that keeps on reminding.
Let’s face it, it’s an overwhelming amount of things that some people have to change. From their environment to their lifestyle to their habits to everything. We know that when you do two or three things at the same time, you already have a tendency to drop out, to not do them. Because it’s so much, many people give up way too early. That’s why working with a coach that helps you to pull you through, that reminds you that not impatiently but genuinely interested in your health and wellness to take you through is a huge advantage. I’ve seen it for myself in many areas, working with a coach I perform 50 times better. I do a lot better. I have much better results. If I do it on my own, I sneak into my old ways and avoid the pain and do all sorts of things to bypass the lesson. That’s probably not just me. I see it with all of our clients.
That’s why that coaching process or evaluation process, which I wanted to clarify too, it’s not a questionnaire that you fill out and then you get a computer result. It’s actually a person. It’s one of our coaches that works through your evaluation manually, reads everything, puts all the pieces of the puzzle together, may ask you a few more questions to really clarify certain points because some people are not self-aware. They don’t know what to answer or how their stool looks. “Oh, I flash that always down. I never look.”
So, these are things that we really focus on. Once that person has worked through your whole chart, has asked you all the questions, then they will come with the consultation which is an hour to really guide you through. Then you can work with that person and follow up. So, it’s actually a completely integrated service.
[2:19:23] Ashley James: I love it. Very cool. I really like your analogy. If you just work out at the gym alone you might avoid pain. It’s funny. My husband and I go to the gym together. I push him more when we’re in the gym, but he pushes me more before. If I’m trying to make an excuse not to go to the gym he’s like, “No. Come on. We’re going to the gym. We’re going to go for a walk. We’re going to go down. We’re going to go this hike. We’re going to go to this hiking trail.” He’s more motivational to get there and then when once we’re there I’m the one that’s pushing him, which is also pushing me. I’m like, “Come on. Let’s do five more minutes. Let’s go. He’s all like, “I want to give up. I want to give up.”
[2:19:59] Marcus Freudenmann: That’s a great combo.
[2:20:01] Ashley James: It’s funny because there’s this one machine at the gym where you’re cycling with your legs and your arms. I’ll catch my inner dialogues. I really like to list. I like to become the observer listening to my inner dialogue instead of letting my inner dialogue run the show. Because if my inner dialogue ran the show I’d eat like a dozen donuts a day and I’d never move. Our inner dialogue likes to critique us but then it likes to do really bad behaviors. It’s kind of like this just wild child that was raised by wolves. So we have to really catch ourselves and go, “Wait a second. I’m not actually going to let this first thought.” The thought that goes, “Oh, let’s go eat McDonald’s. Let’s not go to the gym. Let’s binge Netflix till 2:00 in the morning.” That voice is this wild child that just wants the instant dopamine pleasure, wants to procrastinate. That little voice it does not want us to be healthy.
So, I have to become the observer and go, “Oh, that’s an interesting thought,” and let it pass. That thought doesn’t need to run me. That’s not conducive to my goals. So, I’m like five minutes into my exercise and that little thought’s like, “Oh, this is hard now. I’m tired. Let’s stop.” I’m like, “I just got to the gym. What are you talking about?” I’ll have an argument with myself basically, but if I push through and I put a goal in my mind like I’m going to sprint until the next mile marker on this machine. I’m pushing myself. I’m pushing myself. I have to set these goals. They’re a little higher each time and see if I can push myself.
There’s been times when I’ve hired a personal trainer. Then you’re not even thinking about that because they’re like, “Okay. You’re doing 12 this time. Okay. You’re doing this weight. Okay. Now you’re going to keep going. Okay, it’s burning. Okay. Keep breathing through it.” They don’t let that voice run you, but when you’re doing it on your own that voice is kind of screaming.
[2:22:06] Marcus Freudenmann: Screaming. I had a very nice experience. I was hiking up a trail in Zion Park to the observation point. I think it’s a long long hike. Always up, switchbacks up the mountain. I was going up and I wanted to give up so many times. My head was telling me, “You won’t make it back down. It will be dark. It’s not possible. You’re too exhausted. You will have cramps tomorrow.” All of a sudden a voice behind me. Actually first thought that’s in my head said, “Giving up is not an option.” I was like turning around and there was an elderly gentleman. He was probably 80. He said, “One foot in front of the other and tell that stupid head of yours to shut up. Giving up is not an option.”
I was like, “Thank you. Why did you know?” He said, “Well, I saw you turning around four times and then still keep going but you were fighting.” I said, “Yeah. I was actually just about turning. The view is good enough from here.” He said, “The view is much better up there and you will be exuberant and happy.” Then we walk together you. He was a lot older. He walked slowly so I managed to keep up with him. When I got to the top I had that first time in my life that hormone endorphin release of my body like that happy hormone. I was so excited. I was sick for three days with sore muscles and calves and everything, but it was worth it.
Since then, every single time I get to that point where I want to turn around or want to stop I say, “Giving up is not an option.”
[2:23:53] Ashley James: One foot in front of the other. Keep going. That is beautiful. You mentioned you want to talk about meditation and breathing. I know this has been a lengthy interview so I thank you for staying with us. You mention that it is very important. It’s very important to incorporate breathing, to oxygenate the body and meditation. Are there tools on your website, after people do the disclaimer and get in there, that teach us about oxygenating our body with breathing and meditation so we can incorporate this very important tool?
[2:24:31] Marcus Freudenmann: I have several articles on there. I’m working at the moment myself since six-month on the Wim Hof method. I tell you what, I’ve been blown away by the results. So it’s something that I will include into our training. You manage to alkaline your body within a matter of 15 minutes so much that it’s absolutely a dream for cancer patients because the high acidity, the lactic acid production of the tumor to alkaline the body in a very very massive form.
So, right now we’re working on it. I had to do. I never teach anything we don’t do ourselves. We never teach anything which we haven’t proven with at least five or six people that it’s true and that it’s working or where we have research. So, it works. It works like a dream. Everybody can do it in a matter of minutes they can alkaline their body and oxygenate the body and influence the immune system. So, we are adding that right now. We’re creating the videos. That will be published in two or three weeks. It’s inline with our program. As soon as you’re subscribed you will get all those articles and everything that’s relevant as well.
So, that will be one of the most powerful trainings. We have the normal breathing techniques and the pranayama from the yogic teachings already in the program, but that’s a new one that I became aware of. Because of the extreme effects of alkaline in the body in such a short time, we’ve just added it.
[2:26:14] Ashley James: Very excited. I’m very excited for that, Marcus. Thank you so much for coming today and sharing all your information. I’d love to have you back and just continue diving into these topics. I’d also really like to interview some of your graduates. You mention that eight or nine graduates who started your program with cancer and they healed themselves after learning all the information from you and implementing it to their own life and now that they are cancer-free. I would love to interview them. I think that’s so inspiring to interview people who have healed their own disease and then share the experience with others. It gives people hope and also educates us on the step-by-step. What it takes to get to the body back from that level of disease back to a level of health. That it’s possible and we can do it.
Listeners, please go to trulyheal.com/Ashley and sign up to gain access to all of Marcus’s free information. I’m really excited to hear from the listeners after they dived into your information. Listeners, if you want to share a testimonial or talk about this, continue the discussion you could go to the Learn True Health Facebook group. We have, I believe it’s 3,700 members now in our Facebook group and growing. We love to have discussions about topics like this. Marcus, you’re also welcome to join our Facebook group. Listeners, as you go through Marcus’s information, as you try his therapies or do his extensive tests, please come to the Facebook group and share so all of us in the Facebook group can learn from each other’s experiences. I think that would also be valuable. Marcus, is there anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?
[2:28:07] Marcus Freudenmann: I think we’ve already covered so much ground. We don’t want to overwhelm people. I have a tendency to do that every time.
[2:28:14] Ashley James: Oh, I love it. I’m the kind of person that just firehose me with information. I just love it. Obviously everyone who’s still listening is the same. Thank you. Thank you so much, Marcus. Just come back on the show. Keep sharing.
[2:28:30] Marcus Freudenmann: Oh, I’m happy to do.
[2:28:31] Ashley James: Please, send us people for me to interview. People, especially graduates of your program. I’d love to keep uncovering the truth.
[2:28:40] Marcus Freudenmann: We will do. I’ll put the word out and sent them to you. Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure to be with you. I’m always interested to come back. We can, for example, dive into a particular subject and really make all your listeners understand the basics of each treatment, what it actually does so that they can really make an informed decision. So, yeah. Anytime.
[2:29:07] Ashley James: Oh, I’d love that. Terrific.
The Breakthrough Experience by Dr. John F. Demartini
IT'S HERE! Learntruehealth.com/homekitchen
Use coupon code LTH for the listener discount!
Flicka's website www.flickarahn.com
Websites which display Flicka's products and services:
www.theicaros.com (Chakra Soundscapes CD by Icaros)
www.elevateyourstatenow.com (site for the book, App and CD)
www.innergytuner.com (App which uses meditation music from Flicka's CD and videos webbed into visual enhancement as a direct way to create energetic states of peace)
www.powerofsoundandmusic.com (website for the newly released book, "Transformational Power of Sound and Music."
www.naturalreflexes.com (website for my Sound Therapy practice (found under services) at the Integrative Healing Institute
Youtube live performance of Icaros:
https://youtu.be/DRDpU54kUSc
https://www.learntruehealth.com/the-power-of-sound-and-music
Highlights:
In this episode, discover how the power of music can affect us emotionally and spiritually. Even knowing that music can have the power to heal us by just having the knowledge on how to correctly choose the music or sounds we would listen to. Flicka Rahn shares her expertise on all things music and sound in today’s podcast.
Intro:
Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the learn true health podcast. Today’s episode is uplifting and beautiful and it touches on this blend of energy and spiritual, emotional and physical healing. Bringing it all together something that weaves throughout is music. Music can affect us spiritually. Can affect our energy, our mood our psyche and it can even affect us on a physical level. I know you’re going to really enjoy today’s episode with Flicka Rahn, who is an expert in using music to heal us emotionally, physically and energetically.
I am so excited for the Learn True Health home kitchen. I’ve been working on it. Filming with Naomi since October. We launched just two weeks ago and already all the members who’ve joined are really enjoying it. If you haven’t joined yet, I highly recommend checking it out. Go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. That’s learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. Every week I upload new recipes, new videos, new lessons. There’s over five hours worth of content already in the membership and every week we’re adding more and more. If you want to learn how to use food in a way that heals your body, you’re going to love our membership. It’s affordable. Everyone can afford it and I want you to use the coupon code LTH to get the member discount so it’s affordable and we teach you how to cook delicious food, save you time in the kitchen heal your body with food and food that your family will enjoy. There’s wonderful tips in there for shifting your life and shifting your habits in a way that improve your health. So no matter where you are on the health spectrum and no matter what diet you follow, you will get fantastic tips and fantastic recipes that you can implement to get more healing foods into your life. Please come check it out. I would love for you to see it. We’re having so much fun sharing all these wonderful recipes and videos with you. learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. That’s learntruehealth.com/homekitchen and use the coupon code LTH. Come join us, we’re having a ton of fun. All the members who’ve joined so far are really loving it and I know that you will too. Excellent. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about so we can help as many people as possible to learn true health.
[02:57] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host Ashley James. This is episode 409. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have on the show Flicka Rahn. Who’s a specialist in healing with music. This is a topic that’s really near and dear to my heart. My dad, he loved music. He was so passionate about it. He was in the music industry. In a unique way he designed a type of speaker that these speakers that are in like home entertainment systems. He designed a type of speaker that you only needed two of them but that they you could hear from different directions and this is back in the 80’s and 90’s. So now I know like everyone just has a tiny little Amazon device in their corner that plays music but back then he designed these speakers that he called it spatial sound that you could be anywhere in the room and you could hear a sound from somewhere else in the room because it would throw the sound around. He always played music and he always shared his passion about music with me and growing up I complained that I was only teenager that would yell at her dad to turn down the music. He would wake me up playing Fool in the Rain Led Zepplin on a Saturday morning. So I just smile every time I hear Led Zeppelin because he would, I mean he just loved he loved all music but he would play he would play everything for me and so growing up him and I would share, we would share our CD collections. We’d go to the CD store together and we just we just shared it so much that, so much of music for me it brings back these really positive memories of love and a connection that I had with my dad. For me, I found that music is healing when you can link it to something like love and you can resonate a sense of like love and connection. That helped me to heal after losing him. I’ve always had a deep connection with music and I know that it’s part of us. I think I feel like it’s part of our DNA. When you reached out Flicka, to be on the show to share your expertise around using music as a form of healing, I thought this would be a wonderful experience for all the listeners. Because all the listeners are here to learn how to achieve true health and there’s a little-known thing that is very affordable that we can all do and that’s using music as a therapy. As a way to heal. Welcome to the show.
[05:37] Flicka Rahn: Well, I’m so happy to be here Ashley and thank you for this really wonderful opportunity to share what I know and what I know works. My entire life has been revolved around music and the sharing of music and teaching of music and playing music and composing music. I taught for 25 years at Texas A&M University as a voice teacher. I also had a pretty extensive career as an opera singer. I have music published by for soprano and piano. I really have studied this. I mean it’s a never-ending study of music and the depths of how it can reach deeply into us emotionally, physically and spiritually. Yes, indeed, what you did share with your father through music was a sense of love and there is no greater force for healing than love. That is really what after I retired from the University, I became impassioned with knowing about what has been used by indigenous healers. Throughout history as healing music and specifically sound. I did a great deal of research and study about those different examples. And because I have so much experience singing and in all forms of worship, temples and churches and fellowships, I just found a lot of commonalities. That I then went on to explore at a deeper level and went and experienced even into South America. Into the Amazon to really understand the healing nature of the music that they used. The shamans in South America in the Amazon. All of this has come around to broaden my – I really laugh people say, “You’re not retired.” “No, I’m I really, I’ve just found another job.” That is creating and composing this music that specifically uses the elements of sacred music that I’ve discovered and using those elements to then create my own specific type of sound. Which I think you will be playing for the listeners at some point.
[08:38] Ashley James: Yes, I’ll definitely play your music that you’ve given us at some point in today’s interview. Did something happen in your life where you were sick or didn’t feel well and you used music, the vibration? Maybe you could explain a bit about this also that music is energy and our bodies are energy. Where we’re made up of energy and so using music as a vibration that moves through your whole body can help to correct the energy in our body. I know this is really out there but if you think about it, we’re actually we’re not solid. Nothing is solid. Everything is atoms vibrating and we’re all a vibration and energy and so is music. There’s been people who’ve shared that certain frequencies, certain Hertz have healing properties. Was there ever a point in your life where you fell ill and used music or had an experience of healing through music?
[09:37] Flicka Rahn: Absolutely. But I do want to return to specific frequencies and how some are more powerfully accepted by your body than others. Let’s talk about the time, actually I was in I was in Peru and I used to suffer really pretty profoundly with migraine headaches and because I was about to experience sacred ceremony with the Shipibo Indians, I could not take any medicines for a month. I was just about at my wit’s end because I used it to help with my migraine headaches. Honestly one night, I went down there with my brother and he was in another place in the hotel and I said, “Flicka, you know, you’ve physician heal yourself, okay.” This is I mean this is where the rubber hits the road so I said, “Alright, so what I’m going to do, I will tone every note to correspond with the resonance frequencies of each of the chakras.” I did. I started at the root chakra with the pitch. Which is designated as the note C and for about 10 minutes. Then I moved up to the next chakra and I just really moved all the way up the body to the crown. By the time I had finished toning and it was about an hour that I had vocalized all of those pictures, the headache was totally gone and it never came back. That’s a powerful way because I was self-creating frequency and vibration. We know that quantum physics now teaches us this new view of reality which is which has moved beyond Newtonian physics in that, everything vibrates everything has frequency and yes, there is nothing really solid in that in the quantum world. Where I then begin to work and my knowledge and my studies is, “How do I affect this quantum world that is really at the base of what our bodies are to help people with illnesses that are –“ well, there’s lots of causes for that for the illness to appear into your physical body but they all really start at the etheric body. Which is the energetic body that is right beyond your physical bodies a lot about two inches away from your physical body. That is where I, as a sound therapist work is in the etheric body and trying to bring all of that energy into harmony and in balancing the chakras which respond to sound and vibration and to the healing touch which is really the vibration of love. Reiki has a part in that as well but by balancing and re-aligning and harmonizing the entire body, the electromagnetic field around your body then healing can take place. I have I have witnessed so much of this with my clients. Sometimes after I work with a client it in and really worked very closely with the energetic bodies, it takes a couple of weeks because for the etheric body to then harmonize the physical body. It’s not very often although in my case it was because I think I was highly stressed and stress as we know is not something that can help healing. Does that answer your question, Ashley? I’m sorry, I went on and on.
[14:04] Ashley James: It’s okay. You’ve given me ten more questions. Just that one example where you used the frequency for each chakra and within an hour your headache or migraine was gone. It’s interesting though you were reaching for the Advil or you’re reaching for the ibuprofen, whatever drug you’re reaching for every month when you had these headaches but then when you were up against a challenge, the challenge to go drug-free for a month. Then you were left with needing to like dig into your own tool belt. I think that that’s actually a really great challenge for all of us. All of us, we all have resources and sometimes we forget. Sometimes we’ll reach for the coffee, over-the-counter medication, right? The sugar, the coffee, the stimulants, the uppers and downers. Whatever over-the-counter stuff to get us through the day to mask a symptom. I love that you challenged yourself. You took on the challenge to not medicate for a month because you’re walking into a situation where the healer asked you for one month to be medication free.
That is a great challenge because sometimes we know we have these resources but sometimes we reach for what’s easy just to get us through the day and if we challenged ourselves to not self-medicate, to not go for the alcohol at the end of the day or the sugar when we have the sugar craving or the coffee when we’re tired but instead dig deeper into our own tool belt of resources. Realize that we probably have or the body is talking to us. The body probably is saying, “I’m dehydrated. I need to rest. I need some more joy in my life. I need to eat fruit.” Or whatever the body is saying. The body is – and your case, your body was saying, “I need to be in alignment. My energy needs to be in alignment.” So you dug deep into your into your tool belt and you used the very tools that you have at your disposal and your headache went away. We’ve been trained that it’s really easy to reach for the over-the-counter medication or reach for those things that mask our symptoms but when we mask our symptoms, we’re actually not achieving health. Where we’re stunting our own growth and our own personal growth and development so I love that you use that as an example. When you did that though for that hour, I think you said you were at a hotel, were you singing to yourself for an hour?
[16:41] Flicka Rahn: Absolutely. I was and it doesn’t need it didn’t need to be loud because even subtle, it was toning. It’s what was it was, Ashley. Toning is not really, it’s chanting without the words. It’s just singing a pitcher tone without words. It’s more like singing an alm but I would do it on the resonant pitch of each of the chakras. Starting off with the note C.
[17:14] Ashley James: Can you teach us?
[17:16] Flicka Rahn: Absolutely. I think it’s really – thank you for letting me have the opportunity to do this. It’s important that that your body be, check it for stress so that if you are sitting up and in this case, I was sitting up on the bed because the breath then can be deeper into your belly. Like a soft belly breath. I would breathe easily into my belly and then just, okay, here I go. [Singing Sound] I just did that using all of the resonant pitches of each of the chakras. As I closed, did you hear as I closed into the m to the mmm sound, you can feel the vibrations in your head. It was almost like an internal massage and very calming, very comforting and very ultimately healing. That’s all toning is. It’s no big mystery. When I’m teaching people about toning for in my case, I picked a specific pitch and then I moved up the scale but I teach people that whatever tone your body wants to make is the absolute perfect tone for whatever you need your body knows. It will produce the pitch that best heals it.
I always yield to the body wisdom in that case and it didn’t have to – so when I’m working with people, it doesn’t have to match my pitch. It is because we each choose the pitch that the body wants to hear or to feel. Of course, it’s frequency and frequency carries information and you can feel your heart vibrate through all of these toning exercise. It’s just wonderful. I mean you can even do this in the car when you’re driving and you’re in really bad traffic. Honestly, Ashley, I have to tell you this but when I go to the dentist and that is not my favorite place but I tell the dentist, I said, “I’m going to be toning the minute you start that drill.” and they expect it and it, number one, it blocks out a lot of those higher partials in that drill sound that makes them crazy but it also calms me down and I’m breathing slower because I’m releasing the sound slower than the breath I take in. All your listeners may try this. The next time you go to the dentist. I mean it works like a charm.
[20:23] Ashley James: Can you explain how you do that when your mouth is open, they’re drilling in your mouth or they’re cleaning your teeth, how do you do this?
[20:31] Flicka Rahn: Okay. So here I am in my studio right now and I’m opening my mouth like I have to and at the dentist, so it’s like this. [Singing Sound] so the back of my tongue is up against the back of my throat so as to not be you know, swallowing all that water they put in your mouth when they’re cleaning up but I don’t go into the sound the M sound at the end. I just I just hold one note for a long time and again, it doesn’t have to be a specific pitch. It’s whatever your body wants to sound at the time. You think about it Ashley, I mean for any really emotional response that we have to an event. Be it fear or terror, I mean there’s always an explosion of sound that we make as our species has done that to try to balance the body. Screaming when someone is afraid is very beneficial to help bring the body back into balance. Of course, when we’re really happy and laughing or singing. It’s all sound related as the body continues to try to keep itself in a balanced energetic state. That just occurred to me, sound is very connected. Our own sounds that we make to our emotional state at a time. By staying quiet if there’s something that you need to cry about is, you know, your body will take that energy and and hide it into the etheric body. It’s better to go ahead and cry or scream or sound or something so that you keep the energy moving out. Rather than pulling it in to be hidden and that you have to deal with later at some point because you will.
[22:52] Ashley James: It’s so true crying is so cathartic and letting it out, you know, we were taught in the society to hold it all in and then it explodes like a volcano, right? It causes so much internal stress but let it out. I like that you said that when you when you do this alming, your out-breath is longer than your in-breath. I recently had an interview with Forrest Knudsen who’s a yogi and he teaches how to create the heart rate variability which is now the number one way of measuring stress. It’s the most accurate way of measuring stress. They’re now seeing that it’s the most accurate way of measuring your longevity. That if you have poor hurry variability you are likely to die sooner than those who have very good heart rate variability. He said the key to achieving heart rate variability meaning very good healthy heart variability where the heart and the body is in a low state of stress is to make the out-breath be a little bit longer than the in-breath. So by you doing this, you’re actually practicing not only are you using frequency and energy healing but you are also creating heart rate variability and decreasing stress in the body.
[24:15] Flicka Rahn: Absolutely. I know exactly about what you were speaking. I’ve used the breath work as well but to add a toning sound to that is even better because then you’re giving your body some vibrations and frequencies that really help with the alignment and the heart rate variability. Yes, stress is a killer. Stress is a killer and we have a stress epidemic now. My music really addresses stress in a big way. I think that most healing music from Egypt, from Tibet to India, to all of the indigenous peoples use ways to decrease stress.
[25:17] Ashley James: Now what about those who are – I have some listeners who are Christian and might not feel comfortable saying ohm because they’re associating it with Buddhism or a different religion. Could they say anything? Could they say Amen? Yes, that’s what I was going to say. Could they chant Amen to themselves? I know that in the like Catholic Church and the very ancient you know, Catholicism, chanting was a really big thing. That they would chant over and over again. I was imagining you could just take a nice deep breath and say Amen over and over again. Sing it to yourself and whatever pitch your body wanted.
[25:58] Flicka Rahn: Let’s just try it.
[26:00] Ashley James: Okay. Let’s try it. Listen listener, you try it too. Let’s all do it. Let’s do it together. Okay.
[26:05] Flicka Rahn: Remember it doesn’t matter what note you pick. Take the deep breath in. [Singing Sound] Take another breath. [Singing Sound]
[26:37] Ashley James: That’s really fun. It feels so calming. It really feels like a blanket of comfort came over me.
[26:48] Flicka Rahn: Yes Ashley, Yes. You see even with just two Amens, all that anchors you again into a feeling of full, you know, completeness and peace. I think this is – it’s a it’s a beautiful practice.
[27:08] Ashley James: If one was spiritual could imagine connecting with source, with God, with Jesus. With whomever they want to connect with. Could imagine bathing in the energy of divine love. They could you know take that take this to the next level, right? Because you’re incorporating so many senses, you’re feeling your voice, you’re breathing in and then breathing out. You’re feeling a vibration around your whole body. It’s sound bathing but you’re feeling this vibration inside you. You’re hearing it and then you’re feeling this energy so there’s several things going on at once.
[27:47] Flicka Rahn: Absolutely. Yes. You know, and if you didn’t want to close your eyes, you could look at a picture of whoever you know, a picture of Jesus or a picture of Buddha or a mandala with different colors. I mean there are a lot of ways to stimulate the senses through even sight. As also the kinesthetic and the end the oral with your ears. Yes, they’re very powerful. Very powerful.
[28:19] Ashley James: Now each chakra has a different frequency, so how do you then go up? Like if you said you could start at whatever frequency your body wanted then how do you address each chakra?
[28:31] Flicka Rahn: Okay, so in that case, I would pick the specific pitch. I would start at C and I’m getting a C for you right now. We’re going to start with a C. That’s a C. [Singing Sound] I would do that for as long as I felt like I needed it and then the next pitch is a D. [Singing Sound] E, [Singing Sound]. If you want to go down an octave, I don’t think I have a low E but if that’s not comfortable for you then you can go down an octave. There are lots of tools on apps that you can get as a tuner and they will tell you what note is C and D and E.
[29:37] Ashley James: Okay. Now I know you have a CD that people can download. I think it’s called chakra soundscapes. Is that it?
[29:43] Flicka Rahn: That is exactly it and it actually that is what I used when I was in Peru. I put my earphones on and I toned through each of those tracks. They’re eight minutes a piece so I was toning for a long time. The tracks and the sound would lead you gently into that pitch. People would enjoy that. They certainly could go to iTunes and get chakra soundscapes by Icaros. That is the name of our group and tone along. Just know that I’ve been toning along with you and actually my voice is also on each of the tracks. Yes, that would be an easy way to start to so you don’t have to find an app and know where the note C is. You could just tone along with the CD.
[30:36] Ashley James: Very cool. Tell me about Icaros. That’s your band?
[30:39] Flicka Rahn: Well, it is. It is actually two of us. It is my co-composer and when I did all this research about trying to find the common elements of sacred music throughout the world, throughout history and also through all of the sacred expressions of sound and music. I identified those elements and then I asked Daniel, who is an incredible pianist and to help me create what I knew in my mind I wanted to create. The incredible thing about the CD which if people hear it is all of the music is improvised. Which means we wrote nothing down. We went into the studio and I said, “Alright. We’re going to use C as our resonant pitch and we’re also going to play around with the major triad. For those of your folks who don’t know what that is it’s like, [Singing Sound]. I mean everybody knows that combination of pitches. Then we also used a lot of other intervals that have a very strong effect on our Western ears to help us release energy. Let me come back to that. Daniel and I did this and I use my crystal singing bowls which I have here in the studio and I used a whole set of those and we went through each of the resonant pitches of each of the chakras and his harmonies are absolutely just exquisite. I then improvised around his harmonic progressions. We both know how to improvise so this really came from just this outpouring of love that I was feeling and we both get in kind of the same spiritual space. Then we create from that space. Every time we perform, it is all improvised. We feel the audience and then really it’s a co-creative experience. The audience and us.
[33:18] Ashley James: It’s like spiritual jazz.
[33:22] Flicka Rahn: That’s exactly what it is, Ashley.
[33:24] Ashley James: I want to see you live. oh my gosh. Do you tour?
[33:26] Flicka Rahn: Yes, we do.
[33:28] Ashley James: Okay. Well, tell me when you’re coming up to Seattle.
[33:31] Flicka Rahn: I will. I will. We’re about to go to Palm Spring in about three weeks to perform. It’s not even really performing, it’s to offer the experience is more like it. Because it’s meditation to a sales meeting of Tito’s vodka.
[33:58] Ashley James: So like get hammered and spiritual at the same time. It’d be really cool if they don’t have a hangover the next day because you’re like attuning their bodies.
[34:09] Flicka Rahn: I did talked to them. I said, “You know, we have got to do this in the morning.” So I’ve done that and we’ve also gone to some conventions of doctors and holistic healers. We are going to Mexico in March for a big holistic spiritual festival outside of Mexico City. People are hungry for this now because there is so much stress, Ashley and we’ve lost touch with our hearts honey. It’s we’ve lost touch and what Daniel and I offer is a way to touch back in and make a connection within yourself to your own heart and then it’s so easy to love everybody else. It just naturally flows. That’s what we are finding is during our live performances this happens and everybody just gets up and all they want to do is hug each other. It’s just great.
[35:15] Ashley James: Oh, my gosh. If the whole world if the whole world did that. Can you imagine the amount of change that we could make? I love that that’s your mission. Back when I was 19 I stayed at Kripalu. Which is the I think it’s the largest yoga residential Center in the United States. It can house over 200 people and I stayed there for a whole month. I took their 200-hour bodywork training program. I got to experience several different types of music healing. I had a session with didgeridoos where they would play didgeridoos on my body. We lay down like a daisy, like we’re petals of a daisy and he would stand in the middle and he’d play the didgeridoo straight on top of each chakra. There’s nothing like it. I can still feel it when I think about it. It’s pretty amazing.
[36:13] Flicka Rahn: See the didgeridoo is so rich in overtones and what we call partials. What it does is totally aligned, it’s like a buffet for your body as far as a frequency and sound. I am a big believer in that and Gong’s also offered the same thing. Often times when I’m working with a client, I will put the bowl right on their body just to kind of feed that chakra. That’s what happened to you. I mean, I bet it was an amazing experience.
[36:51] Ashley James: It was very cathartic and then we also experienced on a different day we had the singing Bulls. My favorite however, was that the crystal harmonica and they let me play it. I mean I really want to own a crystal harmonica. Many people don’t know what it is but I believe it was Benjamin Franklin that created it. It was at the time more popular than the piano but it would break often in transportation but it’s a bunch of crystal bowls on a stick on their side and it would rotate slowly and you have to have very clean fingers and you get your fingers wet and you play it as the bowls spin. Oh, my gosh.
[37:30] Flicka Rahn: Oh, ethereal.
[37:31] Ashley James: It’s so ethereal right. Yes. Yes, it does. It just did something for me. I’ve had those experiences and of course, we would ohm. The whole group would ohm like several times and you would be bathing in this vibration of the whole room. I can’t even describe what would happen but I felt so full and so complete. Then often every few days they had drumming circles. Where before and after lunch or before and after dinner, there would be 20 or 30 of us drumming and the rest of us would just be dancing just you know moving our bodies to the sounds of the beat. Everyone wanted to just hug and love on each other and smile. No matter how angry, I mean I was 19. I was going through so many emotions. I could imagine very angsty and no matter how frustrated or angry or you know hormonal or whatever I was going through, I’d walk into that drum circle and I’d walk out just like my authentic self. Like all that other stuff would just peel away. I’ve had these experiences with using music as energy healing and they were profound. I’ve never had a mundane music healing session. Let’s put it that way.
[38:52] Flicka Rahn: Well, it’s like effects like. We are frequency and so when we are into a therapeutic situation where there is vibration and frequency, there’s something in us that knows this is this is who we really are. Although there is some sounds that are not healing. That tend to be very disruptive to the energetic body. I think and people can know what those are but just by your response to them. I’ve had some experience with people who are quite disturbed. Do you want me to go into that?
[39:42] Ashley James: Sure.
[39:44] Flicka Rahn: Okay. I have a degree in counseling as well as I’m a master’s in both music and counseling. I have studied a lot of the psychological challenges that people had. There is one way of releasing a lot of pain and that’s through this action of cutting your own skin and from the person who’s doing the cutting it makes a lot of sense because it’s a focus for the internal pain that they can’t get to so it feels actually good. I’ve also experienced people also listen to extremely loud disruptive hard metal dissonant music as a way of focusing on the inner environment which is you know, really probably frightened and in pain and in trauma. It’s making those tuning, that the cutting and the listening to just really hard metal dissonant really loud angry stuff, it’s a way of putting it outside yourself rather than it being inside. I’ve seen that as somewhat therapeutic but it certainly is not the end goal. To understand why, you know, if it were me, I would want to know, “Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? It feels good but why does it feel good?” Then move on to something that is more healing because if you keep doing that disruptive music it just keeps, the neural pathways keep getting deeper and deeper and it’s very hard to then change. Put in some other to feel the release of dopamine and seratonin through like meditation or meditative music. Did any of that make sense? I’m very empathetic, I guess. To how people try to manage their pain and yes, it can be very scary for them. Yes, so-
[42:05] Ashley James: Someone is cutting or if someone recognizes if they’re at the point where they’re recognizing that they’re using self-harm in an effort to self-soothe. How can they use sound or music to help them to make healthier choices for themselves and help them self-soothe in a way that isn’t harmful?
[42:30] Flicka Rahn: Okay, glad you asked that. I am working with a neurologist now and we are exploring the sound of the crystal singing bowls in working with our veterans that have experienced PTSD and are finding it very difficult to re-enter a society. You know, where there’s not the constant threat of death. We do know that their brains have been changed by the trauma and that there are some pathways in in the brain in which see if they heard a backfire, the brain would interpret that differently then say maybe I that heard the backfire because I don’t have the associative memory. Those neural pathways have not been made in me but it in some of our brave warriors it has been. How can you change the landscape inside your own brain to move away from that reactive, the reaction. We also know that what wires together then then repeats. What you want to do is not try to make that go away but spend time and meditation so that that becomes more normal. The pathways of peace, of love, of calmness and there had been a lot of success by people who have taught meditation and a lot of breath work to veterans even over one week. They’ve seen changes and the brain has changed. There is a fantastic movie on I think it’s Netflix called Free the Brain or Free the Mind. One of the two but free the – and it recounts the study that was done with these brave warriors and also with children with ADHD. Who it seems that you know, the neural pathways in there are different from someone of a of a child who can just sit calmly. Through meditation, through breathing, through learning, those techniques those kids have found some relief. I think that weird now really starting to – we intuitively have known the stuff has worked but now there is the data, the hard scientific data that’s coming forward that’s saying, “Yes, what we thought works is working. We can really see that. We can assign some numbers to that.” I really think that’s the next step and that is where I want to go with my neurologist friend who wants to do some studies with what is happening inside your brain when you hear the sound of the crystal singing bowls? Is there something with just the specific sound with a specific frequency? We don’t have those answers yet but we will. That’s very exciting to me because I want to offer some palliative tool to people who are suffering. You know, we all suffer to some degree. Through anxiety or stress or fear and we all have that. So is there a way that we can anchor to a part of ourselves that is not in the drama and then stay observing? I mean that is a meditative technique. I’ve really tried to pull away from the drama of the ego but I think this helps. It helps connect to that higher expression of yourself through meditation, through listening to meditative music. You want to stay away from music with words because that then engages your left brain and you want to get into the right brain which is more holistic. More just stilt in nature.
[47:06] Ashley James: I mean music with words is okay, it’s just if you’re looking to heal with music, you want to avoid words is what you’re saying. What about when you’re chanting to yourself? Like chanting the word ohm, you are the instrument. The word is the instrument in a sense, right? The word is the music coming from you which is the instrument.
[47:28] Flicka Rahn: But you’re not having to analyze it.
[47:31] Ashley James: Okay. Yes, got it.
[47:32] Flicka Rahn: It just becomes like the sound you’re making and then at some point because of the repetition, Ashley. The mind says, “Okay, nothing to see here.” and it then can lift to a higher awareness.
[47:51] Ashley James: Okay. Yes, so chanting of a word becomes a meditation in and of itself and allows you to go into that higher state. I like that you mentioned becoming the observer in neuro linguistic programming. That is a technique where you become the fly-on-the-wall. The third person. Seeing your life as the third person allows you to analyze especially difficult situations where you can then kind of start to see the whole scenario instead of be reactive in this situation. What about headphones versus allowing the music to bathe their whole body? Is there a big difference? Can we listen to this music and gain the same benefit from hearing it through headphones or should we have speakers or the sound bathe or whole body and our whole body feels the vibration?
[48:44] Flik Rahn: I think that it addresses two therapeutic scenarios. If you listen to chakra soundscapes for example with headphones, you are harnessing the effects of entrainment. Which the binaural entrainment, which is webbed into my music. Both of the CDs have theta brainwave state and webbed in through binaural sound. Should I explain that?
[42:20] Ashley James: We will definitely get into binaural sounds in a minute because I think that’s an important topic but I definitely want people to understand like when should they listen with headphones and when should they make sure their whole body’s being bathed in sounds.
[49:32] Flicka Rahn: Okay. So when is the whole body’s being bathed in sound, the sound will then interact with the whole etheric body. The physical and the etheric body. That offers other benefits too because within our etheric body, we have places where there’s like stuck energy. If you want to attain a deep meditative state in your brain, it’s headphones. If you want to address the places in your etheric arc body that have stuck places or negative emotions are caught there, then listen with speakers on either side of you and just sit in the middle of it.
[50:17] Ashley James: Yes, all right. I think you already opened us up to the next question which is, tell us what binaural. I keep hearing binaural beats, right and I’ve listened to this on YouTube. What’s binaural beats? What’s binaural music? What does that mean?
[50:30] Flicka Rahn: Okay. So this was discovered I can’t give you the exact date of when it was discovered but it’s not been some very long ago because our technology has not allowed that with our earphones but binaural beat is, let’s say for example, okay so you’re hearing, it goes from 20 Hertz to 2000 Hertz. All the way through there, you’re able to hear like outside bird calls, your dog barking, that falls within that that spectrum but if you go below that 20 Hertz, you can’t hear it. The sound will be there but you can’t hear it. What a binaural beat does is it’s through the sound technology in the studio, they will produce a sound that a say let’s say 15 Hertz in one ear and then in the other ear they will produce 10 Hertz. Those are two different frequencies and pitches. You won’t be able to hear them but your brain does. Your brain can discern the difference between those two fifteen and ten as being five. Five Hertz that is way below hearing but that then measures and falls within the theta brainwave state which is very deep meditation. That’s where we see visions, that’s where we go into these altered states that really deep meditative state. That’s what binaural beats do for you but you have to listen to them through your headphones so that you get – the beat means that what you hear you don’t hear specific pitches but you may hear a beat. That’s why they called it binaural beats.
[52:35] Ashley James: What effect is listening in, so you want to still listen with your headphones because they does something to the left and the right, in the brain, right? Can they measure – you spent many years in academia teaching so I’m sure you like to look at the science of it. Do they have they ever hooked people up to machines or brain waves so they measure? Do they see that it measurably makes a difference to the brain waves by listening to this?
[53:04] Flicka Rahn: Absolutely. Yes, through binaural beats then they can they can put a do some brain mapping and see that the person listening to the binaural beats has slipped into these lower expressions of your brainwave state like theta certainly alpha. That yes, that’s reproducible and provable. That is a very actually, this is the way I meditate. I put my earphones on and I listen to either my music or you know sometimes others that I really like and I will very easily and quickly go into that low meditative state. Where the deep healing takes place. So yes, it’s powerful and it’s easy and it works. I really encourage your listeners to find some music on YouTube that you really like that says it’s binaural, hook your ear, put your phones on and close your eyes and drift away.
[54:09] Ashley James: Now does it make the difference whether we put the right earbud in the right ear and the left earbud in the left ear?
[54:17] Flicka Rahn: No. It doesn’t matter.
[54:18] Ashley James: Okay. So it doesn’t matter which way we have our headphones on as long as we’re wearing headphones.
[54:23] Flicka Rahn: Yes, that’s exactly right. Yes.
[54:25] Ashley James: Interesting. I always come back to this same binaural beats soundtrack when I am trying to concentrate so if I find that I – I like to multitask. I’ve got a million things going at the same time and I’m like, “Okay. I’ve got to get a podcast episode up. I got to finish editing this and I’ve got to schedule this person.” I’ve all this stuff to do and I really want to focus. There’s this one track on YouTube that I listen to. It’s for studying and focusing and it really helps. I just put it on it’s like a two-hour long track and I I just put it on in the background it with my headphones on while I work and it really helps me to stay focused so I’ve noticed that it works for me. Then they have ones out there for like weight loss and for happiness and for sleep. They’ve figured out different binaural beats that put the brain into a certain state.
[55:19] Flicka Rahn: That’s exactly, yes, yes.
[55:20] Ashley James: Can you talk a little bit about that like how did they figure out that this specific binaural beat makes someone relaxed for sleep and this one makes people happy and this one makes people want to lose weight.
[55:31] Flicka Rahn: Well, I don’t know about the lose weight. I can tell you that if you’re calm and peaceful, you may not want to eat as much because you have stress eating syndrome but we do know about the beta state and right now I’m in beta, you’re in beta because we are actively listening to each other and thinking. Beta is not a bad state to be and when you are in high beta. This is those brainwave states are well known that you are stressed. You’re in you’re in a lot of traffic and you know you’re sweating and you’re that kind of high beta. What happens is you’re not really thinking clearly and you’re in high stress. Your body interprets that is we are threatened so it down shifts into the limbic system like, “I’m going to protect myself.” All of this is not conducive to healing. That’s beta. The next one is alpha and that’s the daydreaming place. That’s where you’re taking everything in but you’re not analyzing or paying extreme attention to something. That’s alpha. That’s also very creative place. That is where you probably go into like this lovely alpha place with your music. Now if you were to go into theta you’d be falling asleep. The different brainwave states are fascinating and they each have a signature brainwave weight that people can see on a screen. We know that these two things correspond the binaural beats and also emotional states and these different brainwave states.
[57:40] Ashley James: When you’re creating binaural beats how do you know that what you’re creating is going to put someone in alpha or put someone in theta, put someone in a more relaxed state?
[57:55] Flicka Rahn: I guess I don’t know that it will but that is when we we’re finished with in the studio, we were finished with our tracks and then I gave it to a sound engineer and I said, “I want theta binaural beats webbed into each of these tracks.” and so it was sub-audible. How do I know it will? I don’t. I mean if someone is really convinced that they’re going to stay in beta they can probably override that but if you say, “Okay. I’m in for it. Whatever.” You just give in, you’ll slip into theta or alpha. There is also another phenomena that I know your listeners know about this. The scientific term is called isochronic beats and that is different from binaural beats. Isochronic means the same thing over and over. Isochronic, one thing over and over. This is what happens when drumming. You’re in a drumming circle you’re getting isochronic beats. If the drumming is fast then you will your brainwave state will align with that faster beat. Warriors who want to get ready to go into battle, if you can remember what was it? Braveheart.
They were getting ready to go into battle and the Scottish Warriors were gearing up, they heard this loud drum going over and over and over so everybody was aligning in training to that drum. There is also a part of the brain that that loses touch with reality through that isochronic heavy drumming. This is what puts people into trance state in many indigenous societies. Through heavy drumming. It’s like the brain pane just shuts down and doesn’t think anymore. It’s an interesting phenomenon.
[01:00:09] Ashley James: It reminds me of being in a stadium at a sports stadium where we’re all hitting the floor with our feet and then drumming starts off [Sound], the whole stadium is just banging really fast and you feel like you’re not in your body anymore. You really feel just out there. That you’re not thinking. You feel like you’re totally in the moment. It’s a very intense but very enjoyable experience. You’re right. You’re definitely not just in like regular beta anymore at that point.
[01:00:42] Flicka Rahn: Nope. You’ve lifted out and drumming can be very healing too. The slower drumming, remember that you’re going to entrain to that slower beat and that means your brainwaves are going to entrain to that slower beat and you can easily be put into alpha. If you could just imagine that whole stadium slowing down and everybody slowing everything down all of a sudden things would get really more peaceful if the drumming or the sounding slowed down.
[01:01:17] Ashley James: You’ve made this chakra soundscapes. What other and I know you have other music for meditation –
[01:01:32] Flicka Rahn: The other CD that we just released is called hymns like a hymn to Gaia. G-A-I-A. Hymms to Gaia and the subtitle is Honoring the Elements. We used the same process nothing was written down. We went into the studio and I tried to, didn’t have to but I tried to like match the water element with the sacral chakra. Which is has to do with water in your body and like the fire element was the heart and very often we see that the heart is shown as the fire of love or the fire. Then we mixed in, after we have to recorded everything then we mixed in sounds which would show these different elements like sounds of wind, sounds of water, sounds of fire, like a fireplace in a cozy cabin and then I also added the ethereal element love I saw as an element and the angelic realm. I see them as part of our energetic environment that we live in. That we may not always know or recognize but it’s there all the time. I loved doing this. We had a great time. It’s a beautiful, it’s a different experience but it can be used as for meditation as well. It’s hymms to Gaia: Honoring the elements. That’s also Icaros which is what I call. The name Icaros actually is what the sacred songs that are sung by the shaman in the Amazon. That’s what they call them the their Icaros and during sacred ceremony, I was so profoundly moved by the fact that I could actually see the sound in the air. I could see it. I saw how the beautiful songs that the shaman would sing would heal and help people manage you know to come to a place where they’re freer and more loving, more centered in themselves through this through these sounds. I jumped on board. I said, “That’s for me.”
[01:04:28] Ashley James: I love that you traveled the world to learn from the indigenous people. I studied Hoonah many years ago. I studied Hoonah, ancient Polynesian spiritual practice and learn to do their chants. Here listening to the chants or doing it myself, I definitely went into a different state. Definitely went into a meditative state but I felt my heart would vibrate, my whole chest would feel full of love and full of energy. It was my prayer to for healing. The chanting was sort of this meditation asking for healing and I would just feel that in the moment it was so it was really a connection there was a connection there with universal energy. It was very interesting my experience with sort of indigenous music for healing. Can you take us back to when you were traveling? Share some stories about or revelations you had as you were traveling and learning from these indigenous people and learning about how they’ve always used music for healing?
[01:05:46] Flicka Rahn: I went because I felt myself that I was in need of some emotional spiritual growth and healing and as I told you before the month before, I promised myself that I would do whatever it took, I was willing to go to any anything to get free. There were things that happened in my childhood some pretty traumatic things that I wanted to I wanted to let go of in a way that was loving and that made sense to me and that I could synthesize the wisdom of those experiences without carrying the trauma. This is what drove me is, I knew that I needed to be in this lifetime as free as I could. If I was going to offer what I knew I what came here to do and that is this beautiful music infused with love so I needed to be infused with love. My own love. That is why I went it was like I cannot do this music and carry any trauma or any bitterness or any resentment or any guilt. I needed to free everything so that’s why I went down to be in the jungle with the Shipibo Indians and went through some very powerful experiences, Ashley.
In which I reviewed my whole life from the perspective of love and saw that everything made sense and so part of this process is experiencing those emotions and then moving through them so the motions the crying and the yelling and that was part of the release. I understood the process and I wasn’t afraid of that. What I wanted more than anything, I was not afraid of the crying or anything. I was afraid of carrying resentment and trauma. That was the biggest fear because that would limit me. That was my profound gift to myself is, “We’re going to do this.” and we did. That’s what drove me and then because I knew that the sound having known, that sound has led me into the divine places in my own heart and I’ve known that I was a little girl. That I would experience these moments of clarity where I knew there was something much more than what I was just seeing out of my eyes and I had some in spirit experience of enlightenment. I was familiar somewhat although the traumas in my earlier life, sometimes drew a veil over what I knew to be true. I not only wanted to know what I wanted to feel, I wanted to embody as much love as I could. So that means I’ve got empty out all the other stuff that isn’t loving. To be a true handmaiden of sound and frequency and love. That is what I did.
[01:09:34] Ashley James: You mentioned that you felt enlightened doing this. Can you take us back to that moment and share with us the experience?
[01:09:47] Flicka Rahn: Yes. It happened when I was probably, there are two times that I can recount which was not a part of a sacred ceremony enlightenmen. This just happens spontaneously. One was when I was probably about seven years old or eight years old. I was laying on a sidewalk in front of my house in Texas and it was just of starting to be dusk. I was just looking up at the sky and I could see the clouds but I could also see the stars were coming and starting to come out. I something left my body and I knew that I was a part of that. I knew it that the little Flicka on the sidewalk was just a teeny expression. I certainly have no words for it. I just knew I was part of this greater reality. I was an intregal part. That happened then the next time enlightenment happened and I think enlightenment is not like one event. It is many enlightenment events in which you get to sense the true-self in little bits as you can handle it. I was driving back from a funeral in Philadelphia and this time I lived in Boston. I was on actually the Connecticut Turnpike and I was listening to Pachelbel’s Canon which is a beautiful classical piece and for me it’s just very spiritual. I was listening Pachelbel’s Canon. It’s Orchestra and all of a sudden I felt totally enveloped and enclosed in this tube of light. Light that was so bright that it I had to pull over because I was so infused with this white light but it was not bright it was just brilliant and of course, I was sobbing because it was so beautiful and I don’t know how long I was by the side of the road in this white light but ultimately it left and I started crying now it’s so beautiful. I knew that that is what I was.
In back of everything, apart from everything that’s what I was. I was this light and I’ve been trying to get back there my entire life but it happened on the wings of music so when I sing now or when I perform music or when I do this music with Daniel, it’s like we cross a bridge into a divine playground of beauty and love. It’s exquisite. It’s what it is. My hope my music can impart some of that reality to people because that’s what that is my intention is to be so connected to love. That is what I channel so it becomes audible love. I mean that’s my wish so if people can sense this in themselves then they will know that they are not the anger, they’re not the trauma, they’re not the fear, they’re not the crisis of the moment. That they are something way beyond all of what we hear on this and dualistic planet experience. Then to identify with that and to not be afraid. There’s no reason to be afraid of anything. There’s no reason. It’s all love. That’s all it is.
[01:14:04] Ashley James: I like the saying we’re spiritual beings having a human experience. We’re spirit. We’re energy. We’re in the Christian faith, we’re made in the image of God and in other faiths there’s a belief that were that God chose to become us to experience this world. There’s many different ways of thinking about it but when it comes down to it, there’s so much more than what we can see and touch. That what we can see and touch is the illusion. That energy is the reality. That energy is in this infinite energy, is reality and that the illusion is physical. That the illusion is fear. Yes, the negative emotions are illusions and that what’s true is love. When you said that you realize that you are that light and you’re sobbing on the side of the turnpike. That you that you were enveloped with light but that you remember you remembered that you were light.
In timeline therapy it’s a technique, I’m a master a practitioner of timeline therapy, In timeline therapy, it’s you go into a light state of trance, they’re totally conscious. You travel above your timeline and when I ask people to go beyond this life so go beyond your death people see the same thing. Everyone sees they enter a brilliant light that it envelops them and is them and that you know you could call that heaven. With the afterlife when everyone imagines themselves in in this light state of trance, we all see the same thing and it’s this brilliant energy. I thought that’s just very interesting. That we all perceive when we’re not in our body anymore, the same beyond this energy. I’ve heard so many people who can commune with angels. They all talk about this music that they hear like the angelic realm is vibrating in this music and so between I mean, there’s light. Light energy and music are all just forms of frequency.
[01:16:41] Flicka Rahn: Exactly. That’s exactly right, Yes. Everything vibrates. Through vibration comes sound and yes –
[01:16:50] Ashley James: Now you mentioned that the latest album you created was to help people release energy. Can you tell us what you meant by that?
[01:17:03] Flicka Rahn: Okay. I guess I mentioned that if there is something in your etheric body that really is a block to the free flow of electromagnetic flow. That very often that will show up as discomfort or dis-ease. So you understand what I’m saying about that, is that if you put yourself – for example, you put yourself in that area or of the didgeridoo and you felt it. I mean you felt it in every cell of your being and I’m sure that that was like taking a sound bath that what I do too. I give sound bass once a month at the little clinic where I have see my clients and people come in the bathe and themselves they allow themselves to be bathed in these different frequencies. That breaks up the – is this what you’re referring to? That breaks up the blockages or the places where the energy gets thick. Where it doesn’t flow. So there’s no flow of Chi so to speak. A problem and if there is a free flow then the body is able to bring itself into consonants and heal itself.
[01:18:37] Ashley James: Yes. You talk about maybe the stagnation where people get locked. It’s Interesting. In Hoonah, there’s this visualization of the body as a river. Imagine a beautiful river because in Hawaii they have these gorgeous rivers and so you imagine your body’s this river and the river it represents the flow of Chi. The flow of energy through the body, through the meridian system, through the chakras radiance. Negative emotions and limiting decisions and unhealed unresolved past memories are seen as little black bags where that store that negative experience and are like a big boulder in the river. Distorting the flow of the energy and so their visualization is all these black bags may be stored in your body and you imagine a river with no stones that it flows very nicely. There’s no rapids, there’s no turmoil in the river but you put a bunch of boulders in the river and now there’s waves and it’s disruptive. Their description is you want to really work at resolving the trapped the trap trapped negative emotions and limiting decisions and negative past experiences that are stuck in your physical body.
They’re in your energetic body but there actually can be triggered in your physical body and release them. Gain the positive learnings and heal from them because they cuts off the flow, it creates stagnation. We said release energy. It reminded me of that – I was a massage therapist back many years ago. I had a really interesting experience. I was receiving a massage by my instructor in in college as a demonstration. I was the demo and she was working on my back laterally by my shoulder blade coming up around my arm on the outside of the armpit basically and I began to sob uncontrollably. I couldn’t stop sobbing. The class ended and she held me just put her hands on me on the table and I sobbed for an hour. I couldn’t stop. I had no idea what was going on and I just obviously released but she, I mean, she was a massage therapist for many years so she knew it was going on. 19 years old that was my first experience with this happening and she said that, you know sometimes the body can hold on to the – can in the muscle will hold on to that little button that little trigger and but by getting massage. Massage can be a spiritual and an emotional healing tool as well because it allows you to release these trapped energies.
I imagine combining energy work with like for massage therapists listening, combining energy work with your songs would really help. I’ve had these experiences. My husband had a similar experience. He went for a Reiki class and no, it was before the Reiki class. He had Reiki, his girlfriend, this a long time ago gave him Reiki and he burst into tears, sobbed uncontrollably for an hour and then laughed. He said he never felt love like that before. Just universal love and then he just became a raving fan of Reiki because it was just for him, he just never had anything that allowed him to cry and feel such release. He had no idea where was coming from. We have this trapped in our body as so many of us walk around so stoic because that’s what we were taught but there’s this there’s so much available. So many tools out there available for emotional healing for this release as you say so that we can get back in touch with who we truly are which is connected to spirit, connected to the universal energy. That we are that love and that light actually. I love that you’re creating these tools through your talents to help people achieve that. What about the day to day problems that people have with anxiety, procrastination and motivation? Sometimes people get in this cycle of stress that – we don’t feel stress, right? Stress is kind of like we don’t feel it until we break but we do feel anxiety or procrastination or we do feel sort of get that stuck this or that stagnation in life where we don’t have that motivation and then the anxiety kind of just overwhelms us so we get stuck again. What can we do to break free from that?
[01:23:46] Flicka Rahn: I think all of those reflect kind of this and most of it is subconscious but that there is some fear around that activity. We don’t know. I mean it comes up as anxiety but really if you keep going down deeper and deeper there’s some fear of what’s going to happen or me not being good enough or I’m not going to say the right thing. So what you do is you procrastinate so you don’t have to go into what you fear but you don’t really understand where that is coming from because it’s subconscious. Again, to realign yourself with your Divine self is the way out of that and to become another person and a person that is not caught up in their daily routines of being a certain way or feeling a certain way about a person or going through the same habits. You then try to create this other self that is more whole, more a happier and some of this is through your own observation. “Oh, there I am I’m doing it again. I don’t want to do that because I want my life to be about happiness and love and compassion so I’m going to choose to do this.” Sometimes it’s hard to give up Ashley, because I find that people and I know you probably find this they have an investment in being a victim or they have an investment in being hurt or bitter.
There’s a payoff for them. If they really want to get well then they’re going to have to give up their addiction to those negative reactions and say, “No. I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m going to go towards love and I meditate every day so that I continue to stay connected to this. To the divine expression of who I am.” There are times when I, I’m human you know. I get angry at drivers on the road that are doing stupid stuff so but at least I’m aware, “Oh, there I lost. I lost touch with myself.” Send that person compassion instead of the alternative but it takes awareness and it takes such an investment in wanting to be free or to be whole or to be in love with yourself and in love with the world. If people knew and this is what I am trying to do is to give you a taste of what the peach tastes like. This is the peach. The peach is the best but if somebody says, “I don’t know what a peach is. I don’t even know if I want to come over there and have a peach. I like it over here eating free fries.” That’s what I try to do through this music is to say, “This is the peach. I’m going to give you a little taste of it. Do you like it? If you like it, there’s a lot more.” That’s the deal. When I go over there and I’m eating french fries and I’m thinking, “Oh, my god. I will back off the same, “Look at you Flicka. You’re eating french fries when you could be having a peach.”
[01:27:15] Ashley James: Right. We all indulge in the self-pity and the anger and all that. It’s the human, the ego wants to have a little fun and the ego gets to have it’s fun but then to become the observer and go, “Oh, isn’t that interesting that I did that? Isn’t that interesting? What’s the payoff there? Is this the quality of life I really want? Well, no. Okay. So my ego got to have some fun. Let’s get back to creating a connection with the divine and getting back to remembering that I am loved.” Did you definitely need to become conscious of it. There’s stages of mastery. The first, being unconscious of it. We’re totally unconscious and then there’s that conscious incompetence. Where we have to keep catching our self and building that muscle and going, “Oh, look I did it again.” but now you caught yourself only five minutes into being angry instead of 15 minutes into being angry, right? Then we keep catching ourselves. My husband is a great example. He used to really have a lot of road rage where, I mean he wouldn’t like take it out on people except the people in the car would throw this, he wasn’t happy. I would catch him and be like, “You know you don’t know what that person might be having a really bad day. Maybe they just didn’t see you in their blind spot. You’re always assuming the worst.”
Just reminding him and now bad drivers don’t bother him. Whereas they used to really, he’s a Virgo. No one can – everyone has to be perfect on the road apparently but now he can just he can just let it go. It’s funny because he’ll catch himself and he’ll be like, he’ll say, “Do you see that? Do you see that? Oh, that that person cut me off and I didn’t freak out. Do you see it?” so he got to the point where he’s catching himself going, “Oh, look. I didn’t do that old behavior.” or I’ll catch himself getting angry and then go, “Oh, okay. That’s not who I want to be. That’s not the quality of life I want. I’m not going to choose that.” We have to catch ourselves so in catching ourselves, we create a break state of our neurology and we’re creating a new neural pathway.
[01:29:31] Flicka Rahn: Exactly. Yes. Now I wrote about this very same thing the road rage because it happened – I’m with your husband here. I do it too. Although it’s been so long since I’ve allowed that to you know change mine. The stress hormones which are released when you get angry but I did the same thing. I mentioned this in my book. I want to make sure that we know that all of this information is in my book. That what I’ve learned to do is to say, “I don’t know what’s going on with that person but they may be going to the hospital to see a loved one or they have some emergency.” I reframe the event so that I can stay centered in myself and not get thrown out of who I really am. Because ultimately, I’m the one who pays. The person who you know cut me off they’re on their merry way but I am left with all these horrible stress hormones coursing. The adrenaline coursing through my body. I don’t like the way that feels. Some of it is self-preservation I’m going to stay loving but it’s best for me. Ultimately of course, everybody else. Yes, that is a technique I’m continued, of course we all continue to learn but it has become a lot easier is to look at the event and reframe it so that I don’t spin out of control.
[01:31:07] Ashley James: Do you have stories that you can share from people who have had positive experiences listening to your CDs has anyone shared with you results?
[01:31:19] Flicka Rahn: Yes. A lot of people have said that just listening to my CD it and it’s extremely grounding and comforting and loving. A friend of mine who actually lives in Mexico, I just got back from Mexico. She was going through extremely difficult period and she’s she is a shaman and she said that she saw into that music what it does and I can’t do that but she has that ability. She said it is very – it heals DNA. Now I don’t know that, Ashley. But I’m telling just what she said and she had been through a huge trauma in her life. She listened to it like two hours a day and she said it really helped her come back into herself because trauma tends to separate us from ourselves.
[01:32:22] Ashley James: Right. Well, trauma, they can actually test DNA and see if your ancestor had trauma. They’ve proven this. Because we’re just still we’re learning so much about DNA and epigenetics. Epigenetics means that the certain DNA that can turn on and off. Become like suppressed or can activate. It can turn on and off different enzymatic processes in the body. The best example is and I’ve said this on the podcast before but for new listeners, they did a study where they took white mice. This cute, fluffy, soft white mice and they exposed them to the same amount of bisphenol A. BPA per body weight that we would be exposed to on a daily basis. If we were to touch of receipts every day when we buy things there’s BPA on there. Drinking from plastic bottles and cans that have BPA. You might think, well, I don’t buy those things but if you eat out at any kind of restaurant you have exposure to BPA because restaurants really don’t care. They’re going to buy the cheapest things possible so their canned foods or sauces, whatever. Their condiments are going to have BPA in them. Through the food industry BPA is just leached into our food unless you eat a whole food plant-based diet where you’re buying organic and just cooking everything from scratch which is what I teach. We actually I just launched a membership called learn true health home kitchen. I teach that. How to cook whole foods so that you’re getting the purest nutrition you can to heal the body through food.
So this BPA they exposed these mice to it and the mice quickly turned yellow, their fur went from white to yellow and from a nice softness to a coarse hay straw like feel and then they became obese. They didn’t really change their diet other than giving them the BPA but what it did is epigenetically changed their genes to make them become obese and to make them not be able to make beautiful fur. Then they stopped giving the mice BPA and it took several generations. They followed these mice for several generations before they just fed them water and food instead of the BPA but I think it was over three generations until the mice returned back to being white again and having the soft white fur and not no longer being obese.
Epigenetically their DNA was damaged for several generations. We see this with ancestors of those in the Holocaust during World War II. Those who spent time in Auschwitz or were severely emotionally harmed during World War II. Even their grandchildren they can see when they do DNA test, they can see the epigenetic gene expressions of trauma, of stress. They have higher levels just at resting state of stress hormones. What we do in this lifetime will affect our grandchildren directly through our DNA and though the healing that we do in the detoxifying and the nutrifying that we do, they’re seeing now can actually affect our DNA for generations to come. It’s not only healing yourself that aids your healing for your children and grandchildren. I think that’s it’s really fascinating. The fact that this healer sees that your music has a role to play in healing DNA. I wouldn’t be surprised that everything is energy.
[01:36:01] Flicka Rahn: There is a study that I mentioned in my book and I’m sorry, I don’t have it at my fingertips but I’ll recount what it was. It was a study done by taking some DNA in which they put into a petri dish and they subjected it to heat so the DNA “died” or uncurled. It was essentially destroyed and then they had people hold the dish with the hurt DNA and directed loving thoughts to that, I know this sounds crazy, to the DNA and the DNA recoiled. There is a way through love to heal ourselves and to heal the DNA that has been traumatized through toxic thoughts, experiences, down regulated so to speak. That’s through this the power of love which carries probably I’m thinking a very coherent geometry. That the DNA can then reform around this coherent geometry which that’s also a huge subject that we could talk about. How they’re now understanding that this field that we are in the zero-point field is filled with information and energy but there is a uniform geometry that they’re finding that is common throughout everything that saturates everything. I don’t know if you know the work of a Nassim Haramein. He’s a physicist in Hawaii actually and has been studying the geometric shape of the field.
[01:38:05] Ashley James: Interesting. What you’re saying is reminding me of Masaru Emoto, his work. The book. The hidden messages in water where he would emit love or hate and freeze water and then under a microscope you see that water looks so beautiful in the geometric shapes are just divine when you emit love to it but when you emit hate or anger it looks distorted and polluted.
[01:28:38] Flicka Rahn: Right. Then they give the polluted water to some Japanese monks and have them love that water. They take another sample and the water has reformed into those coherent shapes. It sounds to me like love is the variable that helps things become more ordered. Are you familiar with the work of Hans Jenny and cymatics?
[01:39:04] Ashley James: It sounds really familiar but I don’t know tell us.
[01:39:07] Flicka Rahn: Okay. So cymatics is the study of sound made visible. What he did and this was in like the early 1900’s maybe up through the 50s. He would take like a brass plate and sprinkle particulates on it or sand. Then introduce a specific pitch and then the sound would form into these beautiful like mandalas. Beautiful shapes that correspond and it’s reproducible under the same circumstances that they would always form the same shape. Then there were other researchers who put particulates in water and the same thing would happen once introduced to specific pitches or frequencies. Snowflakes, I think snowflakes just are showing us the geometry of the field. If the field is love then that is like the rosetta stone of all of these expressions. My music is tuned to a 432 and I don’t know if you’re familiar with all of that work. It’s a way of tuning, Ashley. It will sound warmer to you. I’s a little bit not as sharp.
It’s a little bit under pitch because we tuned to at 440 Hertz. Universally, all music is at a 440 Hertz but throughout history certainly in the in the Romantic period it’s a musical period and before instruments were tuned lower than 440 Hertz. Some higher but for the most part it’s 432 Hertz because when you see pitches tuned at 432 Hertz, the geometry is beautiful and it’s coherent. It’s much more balanced. Knowing all of that, all of my music is at 432 Hertz which sounds warmer so your body can accept that geometry because it matches because it’s a whole kind of sacred geometry and the fibonacci spiral and everything. All of those shapes that we see in nature are then reproduced in the sound that if the instruments are tuned down to 432 Hertz. Have you heard an orchestra that the oboe plays one note and then everybody kind of tunes off of that one note that the oboe plays? Have you ever experienced that when you go to a symphony orchestra? Well, they do and then the oboe then is toning an A pitch at 440 Hertz. Then everybody else in the orchestra tunes to that but if the oboist drops it just a little bit, just a little bit to 432 Hertz, then the orchestra would tune down a little bit and the sound is warmer to your ears. Your body can accept that because that is our natural, we are sacred geometry beings. Geometrically, we align with that.
[01:42:56] Ashley James: How does the musician know to go to – I can understand knowing how to play a C note but how do you play hertz? How do you know to go to a certain hertz? You need a device to read the Hertz?
[01:43:15] Flicka Rahn: Yes, and there are lots of tuners out now that you can get that will direct you to that 432 Hertz. Both of my CDs are tuned down to 432 a at 432 Hertz. Certainly, every note is a different hertz because hertz designates the frequency and the pitch. But you have to have a touchstone you say, “Okay. I’m going to use this as my tuning center.” The oboist, they can even use a tuner. They’ll hold up a little tuner. They’ll blow into the tuner and then they’ll go to their oboe and they’ll sure that they match that tuner. You asked me why did things change because it used to be that things were tuned down to a 432. There’s a whole conspiracy theory that goes up around –
[01:44:14] Ashley James: I want to hear it.
[01:44:16] Flicka Rahn: Oh, my god. Okay. We got into it.
[01:44:19] Ashley James: I want to hear it. So because back before TV, music was so – that’s what we did. That was entertainment. Even kings and queens five hundred years ago would pay composers. It was a status symbol to have a composer write you. That’s sort of my dream is I’m going to win the lottery one day and like I’ll pay a composer to make me as a symphony. It’s such a outlandish but beautiful thing to promote the arts obviously but just imagine if you had the ability to have a have a composer write you a song. That was such a big deal and music, we bade themselves in music so often and now, we watch TV and don’t bathe ourselves in music. This was my dad’s, that was his mission was to get people back to listening to music. That’s one of his things why he invented his speakers and promoted that. I lived it. I lived his vision. Well, my dad’s time was before cellphones but his thing was, “Why do families come home and stare at a boob tube together when they could put on music and they could talk and they could connect and they could have this loving family time.” He wanted people to return back to that. Tell me the conspiracy theory around changing the hertz in music. When did that take place?
[01:49:49] Flicka Rahn: Okay. Well, first of all, your dad was so right. There is nothing that forms bonds of loving feelings than doing music together. What would going to church be without everybody getting up and singing a hymn. There’s this energetic flow that happens through making music or listening to music together. Yay, dad. The conspiracy theory and I tend to think it’s not so much conspiracy that it’s really true. During the Second World War, before the Second World War, there were lots of composers. This very famous composer Verdi. I don’t know, it’s Giuseppe Verdi. Wrote many operas and he insisted that his orchestra tune to 432 because he said it is easier on his Sopranos. What he didn’t know is that the geometry of the body matched that specific way of tuning and if you tuned up it goes against the geometry of your body.
He was a big believer in that. At World War II, there was this whole propaganda machine that Hitler got into play as a way of controlling the German population. One way he wanted to control them is to make them a little bit anxious because if you have people who are anxious they’re going to get behind a guy who says, “I got the way out for us. We’re going to go out. We’re going to conquer the world.” but you don’t want them feeling comfortable and loving. No. You want them on edge because you can control them. Goebbels his minister of propaganda decided that all the music that they were going to use is we’re going to be up at four hundred and forty Hertz. Which makes you feel a little bit more on edge and you can go to YouTube right now and look at examples. Look up 432 versus 440 and you can hear the same piece played tuned a 440 and the same piece of music played at 432 and just subjectively experience that. That’s easy to do. That’s fun.
[01:48:18] Ashley James: You know what’ll be fun is get your get your partner, like you get blindfolded and get your partner to randomly choose whether they’re going to play the 440 Hertz which creates anxiety versus the 432 Hertz which is healing. Then you feel your body and you see if you feel on edge or you see if you feel connected and happy and content. That would be a fun home experiment.
[01:48:44] Flicka Rahn: Right. Yes. Well, subjectively, I feel better when I hear music in 400 and here, I wonder if I could do it right now because I have my tuner on my phone. Alright. So here is and I will tune so that your listeners can hear this. Here is a note played in 432. Okay. Now here is the same note played in 440.
[01:49:23] Ashley James: It does sound just like a little bit anxious. I got that, yes.
[01:49:26] Flicka Rahn: So here’s again 432. This is the calm pitch. Okay. Now here is 440.
[01:49:51] Ashley James: Hitler made all the music be played at 440 Hertz to make people anxious and so they’re not happy with their present situation in life.
[01:50:05] Flicka Rahn: Exactly. Yes. That’s the way you control people. Engender fear and anxiety and stress and they’re going to look for a way so that can go away. So he said follow me, I’ll make that go away.
[01:50:18] Ashley James: How did he know to do that?
[01:50:21] Flicka Rahn: That I don’t know, Ashley. That I do not know but interestingly enough after World War II and there is also other conspiracy theories that the Rockefellers who were invested in a lot of, I’m not sure if I’m trailing all of this correctly but I knew they were involved is that then they approached the American Federation of musicians and then the worldwide Federation to make the standard 440. Now you can say maybe they wanted us all on edge so that they could control us and that was a worldwide conspiracy I don’t know. But that is what happened so that if a flute player in the United States can go to an orchestra in Japan and they’ll tune the same way. There had to be a standard but they chose that higher standard so that so that the population would feel ill at ease and not as anchored or centered.
[01:51:31] Ashley James: That’s so interesting because we listen to classical music in the car. Often we’re driving with our son. We often most of the time, I say 90% of time we’re listening to classical music. There are some times when I feel like I should be very comfortable and at ease in this a beautiful song but I’m not. I get agitated. I’m , “What’s going on?” The music is and I have to like change it to a different classical station and I’m just wondering if that was the Hertz. Very interesting that they chose to stick to 440 Hertz around the world. Well, the thing is that if they knew they could prosper from it because when you were feeling uncomfortable in your own skin, you will seek dopamine. You will seek pleasure. You’ll spend money and you won’t spend time doing internal exploration. Becoming a sovereign individual. Becoming a higher thinker. Becoming more spiritually connected.
You’re going to spend more time trying to soothe the anxiety through staying in a low level so it’s easier to control a population that’s uncomfortable or that’s in pain. Than control population of a very comfortable, happy, free thinkers so that really does make sense. We want to make sure we want to be conscious. This is why my husband doesn’t – he prefers that we don’t listen to music with words because he doesn’t want to be enslaved to the mainstream narrative. Let’s just say that. Because when you’re listening to music you’re in a state of trance and if you’re taking in words that are telling you the world is a certain way then you are a slave to that narrative and if you go dive into the history of the music industry, there’s a lot of control there. We have you just did but there’s modern-day music industry. There’s a lot of control there and so I like to listen to independent musicians who aren’t trying to manipulate us but are just trying to spread love like you are. We’re being conscious. I think I like that you really bring up a point to be conscious of the music you play because it can be used as a weapon against you or use as a tool to heal.
[01:53:59] Flicka Rahn: Yes. My business partner her name is Tammy McCreary. She also was a co-author with me. She wrote the last chapter in my book and she is a manager for artists in Los Angeles. She absolutely sees that the music that is being offered now is very detrimental because yes, you’re right. That people do, they are in trance when they listen to music and so that allows the message of the words just to be accepted blindly by a brain that is not really thinking.
[01:54:42] Ashley James: It’s hypnosis.
[01:54:43] Flicka Rahn: Exactly, Ashley. Yes, right. Her goal is to wake up the musicians and say, “You have this incredible power you’ve been given. Be very careful with this because you create the future of our young people.” I get very concerned for them. I really do. I certainly don’t listen to it but your husband is right. Don’t be enslaved by – See now, I didn’t think about that you are in a kind of hypnotic trance.
[01:55:17] Ashley James: I’m a master practitioner and trainer of hypnosis. You’re talking about that music sends you from beta to alpha, what’s hypnosis. Then you’re taking in words that have suggestions that create imagery in your mind. Even in an unconscious level those are, its slipping past the conscious mind and slipping into becoming unconscious suggestions.
[01:55:44] Flicka Rahn: There no evaluation. It just goes straight in.
[01:55:47] Ashley James: Right. You’re not using your critical thinking.
[01:55:51] Flicka Rahn: Yes, yes. Amazing.
[01:55:53] Ashley James: So you listen to something over and over again and you like really – I have a friend who listens to heavy metal and he’s just a very angry person and he reinforces it and you’ve said this earlier but he reinforces it with the music he chooses to listen to. The music we choose to listen to can reinforce our neurology. Can reinforce the way we’re thinking and our thoughts. Create our actions or actions create our behavior and our results in life. If we want to be in a state of loving empathy and be able to connect with others we need to make sure the music we choose matches that. Hopefully at 432 hertz. Now that we know that.
[01:56:43] Flicka Rahn: Yes, right. You know there are stations or YouTube stations that have, this is not ideal but they’ve tuned things down like the orchestral pieces. The famous ones. It’s certainly better if it’s recorded from 430 Hertz rather than to be manipulated by a sound engineer to drop it down. That’s better. So that may be interesting for you to listen to expressions of the same piece to see.
[01:57:17] Ashley James: Oh, so cool. Well, it’s really interesting is after this interview I’m rushing off with my son to take him to the Seattle Children’s Chorus where he is taking classes. He’s four years old. He’s about to be five but he’s taking singing classes. It’s so adorable to see these four-year-olds singing together so that’s what I’m doing later today. I’m about to go bathe myself for an hour in children’s singing which I’m really looking forward to. Flicka Rahn, it has been such a pleasure having you here today. I would love to have you back. This has been so much fun exploring this. Thanks for getting into the really interesting topics and this is the kind of stuff I just love exploring. I really feel like we hit the meat of it by understanding that we want to vibrate with a frequency of 432. That we want to choose music that is meant to heal us and make sure that we avoid music that isn’t going to bring us healing. That isn’t either the lyrics or the sound is not in alignment with our healing goals. We want to be conscious of that because music can be a weapon or can be a tool for healing. I love that you uncovered that for us. Is there anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?
[01:58:35] Flicka Rahn: No. I just want to really encourage people to like if you’re changing a pattern be aware. Just be aware of what you’re hearing. Go into the supermarket and be aware of what you’re hearing or if you’re out in nature the sound of the birds carry such high healing frequencies so you’re being bathed in those beautiful higher frequencies that are natural in the natural world. I think just waking up and just saying, “What am I really hearing here? What am I listening to? Is that helping me or do I feel more loving now or do I feel more anxious now?” Just maybe understand that sound can have a huge impact on you as we know. It’s sound and music. To not forget about the beautiful gift of toning and help how quickly you can move to a place of peace and just calmness by doing that. If you go to your dentist, give it a shot cool. It works. I tell you, it works.
[01:59:56] Ashley James: Awesome. Cool. I’m going to tell my husband. He’s got a dental cleaning coming up next week. I’m going to teach this to him. That’s so cool. Flicka, thank you so much. Of course, the links to everything that Flicka Rahn does, it’s going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. I’ve decided I’m going to edit this episode so listeners who are hearing this have already experienced. I’m going to sprinkle your music throughout the episode. Also, now at the end of the episode. Thank you so much for gifting us some of your music that we could include in this and if listeners would like to buy your music and buy your book, please check out the show notes of today’s podcasts. Where you’ll find the links to Flicka’s book and her CDs. Also, we’d love to see you live so tell me if you’re ever going to be up in Seattle. On your website, do you display where you are when you tour?
[02:22:52] Flicka Rahn: That is forthcoming. Let’s just put that.
[02:00:53] Ashley James: Okay. Looking forward to that. Looking forward to seeing that information on your website actually. Thank you so much Flicka.
[02:01:01] Flicka Rahn: Thank you, Ashley. It’s been delightful really honey and have fun tonight with your son. That’s great.
[02:01:06] Ashley James: I will.
[Flicka Rahn Music]
The Power of Sound And Music Website
Icaros Chakra Soundscapes Website
YouTube Live Performance of Icaros
The Transformational Power of Sound and Music: A Handbook for Healers
The Power of Sound by Joshua Leeds