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CHECK OUT THE FREE SAMPLE CLASS: https://www.learntruehealth.com/coach

I love IIN; the Institute for Integrative Nutrition is where I took my Health Coach Training and where you can transform your life and become an Integrative Health Coach!

The whole program is online and designed for busy people, so anyone can do it!

Free 7-Day Holistic Doctor Course by Ashley James:

FreeDoctorCourse.com

Join the Learn True Health FB group:

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Ozone Machine:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/ozone

Listen to episode 484 for more info on why and how to use ozonated water made in your home for energy and mitochondrial function:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/at-home-ozone-therapy-for-immune-mitochondrial-health-eileen-durfee

High-Quality NAD Brain Supplement:

Use coupon code LTH at

https://www.learntruehealth.com/nad

Listen to episode 460 about the benefits of high-quality NAD on cellular function, energy production, and mitochondrial health:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/nicotinamide-adenine-dinucliotide-supplement-nadovim-nad-the-missing-link-to-energy-brain-function-and-longevity

Sunlighten Sauna - the sauna Ashley uses, loves, and recommends:

Be sure to ask for the listener special!

https://www.learntruehealth.com/sunlightensauna

Listen to episode 245 to learn from the founder of Sunlighten Sauna as to why this sauna is the best tool for your health journey:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/sunlighten-saunas

The world's most effective Magnesium Soak:

Use coupon code LTH at livingthegoodlifenaturally.com

Listen to episode 294 to hear Kristen Bowen share her story of recovery and discovering the world's most absorbable form of magnesium:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/magnesium-foot-soak

Ashley's Favorite Spirulina and Chlorella:

Use coupon code LTH at EnergyBits.com

Listen to episode 487 and hear the latest science behind healing algie

https://www.learntruehealth.com/mitochondrial-self-healing-superfoods-high-potency-chlorella-spirulina

Dr. Biamonte's website: www.health-truth.com 

Join the Learn True Health Facebook group: learntruehealth.com/group

494: Why Rx Drugs Are Destroying Emotional and Mental Health

We've been conditioned to believe that emotional and mental issues are the result of chemical imbalances, but that's a myth. An overwhelming number of people are taking prescription medications for emotional health problems, and the numbers are growing at an alarming rate. That's because, in many cases, pharmaceutical drugs fail to address the root cause of emotional issues. The drugs we take to treat the symptoms of a condition could be causing more problems than they are treating. Join Dr. Michael Biamonte and Ashley James as they dig into why this is the case and how you can cure your emotional and mental health problems today!

Ashley James And Dr. Michael Biamonte

Highlights:

• The relationship between gut health and emotional and mental health
• The chemical imbalance myth
• Neurotransmitter testing
• Hormonal imbalance
• Heavy metal toxicity
• The madness of marketing
• Panic attacks and anxiety

Intro:

Hello, true health seekers, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. Today, we have back on the show Dr. Michael Biamonte. He was in episode 486 and 488 where he taught us all about candida and how you can get candida back into balance. A lot of people say get rid of candida, kill candida, but what we learned from Dr. Michael Biamonte is many people have candida overgrowth and we need candida but we probably need 90 percent less candida than what we have and when it runs rampant in the body, it affects our brain, it affects every organ, it affects every system. It just kind of takes over and everything dominoes in the body. So, you could have bad sleep, you could have cravings, you could have weight gain, you could have hormone dysregulation. You could have brain fog. The list goes on and on and on. Of course, there’s digestive issue that happen like diarrhea and bloating and in some cases, constipation, and we see it affecting our ability to focus. So, those who have ADHD symptoms. Right? Our ability to learn, our ability to concentrate. Motivation, our motivation in life. Our feeling of drive, our feeling of sense of purpose, sense of fulfillment from life. This can get actually very existential. When we see the body as a whole, this is a holistic podcast – welcome, if you're new to Learn True Health podcast – this conversation is that the body is not broken into parts. Modern medicine, when you go to a regular doctor at any given clinic, a medical doctor, their education has trained them to see the body broken into parts. So, you go to the liver specialist over here, the heart specialist over here, the endocrinologist over here, the brain doctor over there, and it’s great that we have specialties. You know, if you have a broken arm or need to be put back together after an accident, God forbid, I’m so thankful that we have this type of medicine. However, what we do see, if you get a 30,000-foot view, is that modern pharmaceutical-based medicine is horrible, has an absolutely horrible track record for helping us to heal from chronic illness, for helping us to get the body back into optimal health.

How often do you see people actually get off of drugs, get off of pharmaceuticals and get so healthy they don’t need them and get even healthier before they went to the doctor? In most cases, they get put on more and more and more medications the older they get. Not less and less. This is the unfortunate truth, is that it is a for-profit industry and it’s a big juggernaut. But when you come to holistic medicine, you come to the side of holistic medicine, now of course there are good and bad… I don’t want to say bad doctors. There are far more competent doctors and far less competent doctors just like there are more competent mechanics. We are fallible, we are humans. Right? Don’t put anyone on a pedestal ever. We have to understand in holistic medicine, let’s assume we are seeing and referred to very competent and experienced holistic doctors, what we’re seeing is, the philosophy that guides them is completely different from Hollywood portrays as medicine. They look at you as a whole. So, when we talk about mental and emotional health, we have to also see that physical health plays a role in that. Because something like candida in those past episodes, 486 and 488, with Dr. Michael Biamonte, we talk about how candida overgrowth and in other episodes where we’ve had experts on small intestinal bacterial overgrowth and fungal overgrowth, parasites, all kinds of stuff that affects the gut, we’ve had many. I have at least 20 episodes that you can go back to and check out when you go to Learntruehealth.com, scroll down from the homepage and you’ll see Choose Your Own Adventure and you can find the digestive stuff and parasites, and all wonderful fun things to dive into. That all these very physical, tangible things, have an effect on the intangible like our emotional being and our mental health, our sense of who we are and how we are right now in the moment can actually be affected by what’s going on in our gut. 

So, we look at the body as a whole and we look at your whole life as a whole. We look at everything impacting you. I think it’s so gratifying to have a practitioner look at you and wanting to see all of you and saying “hey, I know you’ve expressed to me that you’re feeling a lot of stress, you’re feeling a lot of sorrow, or you’re feeling grief, or you feel anxiety,” and not discrediting those emotions and also not discrediting that there’s other aspects of your life like the role you play, the roles you play in your life and everything in your environment, and all of that, looking at your life as a whole and including your physical health. Let’s get some lab work done but let’s also talk about your spiritual health, your spiritual life, your mental and emotional health. Let’s talk about your environment, let’s talk about your relationships. So, looking at everything as a whole. 

That’s what Dr. Biamonte is here to discuss today, this wonderful viewpoint—looking at mental and emotional health from the holistic standpoint. Some of what he has to share today is going to rock your world, it was absolutely fascinating. I think I said the word “fascinating” 20 times in the interview because of how fascinating it was. I feel like I’m Spock, “That’s fascinating.” He shares some crazy statistics. I want you to really let them sink in. He kind of pulls us out of the matrix today in this interview. He shares with us stuff that we just let slide like the effects that certain drugs have on the human psyche and have on suicide rates, and yet, we just let these pharmaceutical companies slide, we just let it all side like the status quo is fine, everything is fine; meanwhile, everything is burning down. And I so hope that what he shares with you today helps you, gives you another piece of that puzzle that helps to direct your life so that you can learn true health, create true health in your life.

My husband has actually started working with Dr. Biamonte on a personal level doing the candida protocol. We’ve done some labs with him. First of all, let me tell you. I am as impressed with him in my interviews as I am working with him as a doctor, because my husband lets me in on their telemedicine calls. He’s a very caring, fantastic doctor, right to the point. Functional medicine, I should say. He really does deal with functional medicine. I’ve enjoyed the labs he’s had my husband do and the analysis of those labs, really interesting. And now, my husband is starting the diet and the supplement protocol, so I’ll keep you guys posted on how that goes, but so far, working with him has really been great. Definitely give him a call if you’re called to, if you find he’s interesting because so far, I’m really impressed and, well, the proof is in the pudding so we’ll see how my husband does after a few months on the protocol. I’ll let you guys know.

There’s a few resources I want to make sure that you are aware of. Especially if you're new to the podcast or newer to the podcast, I haven’t mentioned it in a while, but I have this great resource I built out with some of my favorite holistic naturopathic doctors. You can go to Freedoctorcourse.com. That's Freedoctorcourse.com and I filmed a 7-day beautiful free course, less than 10 minutes a day kind of thing but it gets right to the point, the foundations of health. These are fantastic naturopaths and they have some great advice. This is actual steps that everyone will benefit from no matter what health issues you have – mental, emotional, physical, spiritual. It deals with the foundation of things that we should absolutely be doing to build our health no matter what. So, definitely check that out. Freedoctorcourse.com. Every day I email you one of the videos we made along with some great homework and tools for you. These are things that I often remind myself, “Oh yeah, I need to go back and do these things.” These are the basics but if you're missing one, it’s like missing a tire on your car. Your car’s not going to go anywhere. So, you have to have these foundations to have fantastic health.

The next thing I really want to make sure you know about. Because so many of my listeners end up becoming holistic health coaches, either for their own personal growth and their own health goals, or they’re just drawn to it and they want either add this to their career, have it as a hobby side career, or they want to completely transition into doing full-time holistic health coaching. Check out Learntruehealth.com/coach. That's Learntruehealth.com/coach. You get a sample class from Institute for Integrative Nutrition. That's where I went. It’s an online program designed for very busy people. So, if you're like, for example, full-time job and a mom or a dad and you’ve just got a lot on your plate, you can still graduate from the program. It takes a year. You do about 20 minutes a day. Sometimes if I was really busy, I would just accumulate all of my lessons for that week and do them all on a Sunday. Oftentimes I’d listen to them where I was cooking, doing laundry, driving. So, if you listen to a podcast, you could absolutely a year from now, be a holistic health coach. If you want to become more of a full-time student, it’s about 40 minutes to an hour a day. They have a six-month accelerated program. So you could check either one of those out, but I love that they designed it knowing that usually, it’s not someone’s career, you jump out of high school and go, “I’m going to be a health coach,” boom. You know, 17, 18, 19 years old taking the course when you have all the time in the world. Usually, it’s not your first career and it’s something that you already have an existing career, you're super busy and you have to somehow fit it into your life. What I love about the IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition’s health coach training program, is your life gets transformed while you're doing it. You learn from amazing… it’s like if you love my podcast, it’s like my podcast TED Talks, like each week is digesting 3 or 4 amazing TED Talks on health and then they give you homework that you get to apply to your own life. So, each week you're adding almost like the foundations of health but you're adding more and more to your life.

Holistic health coaching is looking at your life holistically. It’s not just dietary theory. Yes, you do learn a hundred dietary theories in that course but that’s not even important. As a health coach, you're really helping people to get to their health goals by listening to them and drawing out of them the answers that they’re most of the time already in them. Then you help them crowd out their plate when it comes to eating, helping them bring joy into their life in every area of their life, so helping to identify what areas are missing joy. If you in your life are missing joy in certain areas of your life, you should definitely check out the sample class and consider “could I bring joy to every area of my life through this program?” Because that’s what I loved about the program, is it really helped to unfold and bring forth joy in each area of your life. It has you look at under a lens in a different way each area of your life. So you end up at the end of the program feeling much more fulfilled, satisfied, and joyous in your life as a whole in your body, but also in your world, in your relationships.

They say almost half, I think it’s like 47 percent of people that do the program just do it for their own personal growth, so I thought that was really cool. Right now, IIN’s having an amazing sale. I don’t know when it’s going to end, it’s going to end soon so you should go to Learntruehealth.com/coach and just check it out and see. Right now, they're offering a big discount and they are offering to sign up for I think it was $49 or something just to get started just as the down payment. Sometimes, a few times a year, they do these sales so it’s great to check out. But if you're checking this out and that sale is over, what I want you to know is that when I took the program, I asked them if they would give a discount to all my listeners because I talk about it so much and I’ve actually interviewed many of their teachers. So, they do give a great discount. Make sure you mention the Learn True Health podcast with Ashley James and say, “Hey, Ashley James said I’d get a discount. Make sure you give it to me.” So, yeah, check that out. Let me know if you have any questions. You can always ask me questions in the Facebook group, in the Learn True Health Facebook group. I’d love to see you there and answer questions. Every day I’m in that group answering questions. Not just me but there's other holistic health professionals in the group.

Every day when someone asks a question, there's a bunch I was jumping in to help and give our feedback. Feel free to join the Learn True Health Facebook group. You can go to Learntruehealth.com/group to join the Facebook group. Make sure you check out the free sample class from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition for their health coaching program. You go to Learntruehealth.com/coach. If you want the free class that created with some of my favorite naturopaths, you can go to Freedoctorcourse.com and you’ll be given the 7-day class. It’s absolutely free. Something that I created out of love for you guys because it’s so needed. This is the foundations of health. Everyone listening should do those things that you learn in the 7-day course and everyone sees a benefit from doing it. So, I want all of you guys to have that benefit. I love you. I know you and I personally don’t know each other or maybe we do because I’ve actually met several of my listeners. But if you are struggling and you need help, please join the Facebook group because I don’t want to struggle.

What I want you to know, especially if you're a new listener you might not know this, I suffered for many years. I cried myself to sleep. I’d burst into tears often at how much I suffered. I had major chronic illnesses throughout my 20’s and it was very difficult. I know what that feels like. I don’t want you to suffer. If you're suffering, I don’t want you to suffer anymore. I have seen people recover from so many conditions they were told where “unrecoverable.” I believe in your body’s ability to heal itself. I believe that you can improve your situation no matter what. It has to start with you believing and so I want to let you know I believe in you and I believe in your body’s ability to heal and take these resources, take the free sample class from IIN and see if you get something out of it. Definitely take my free course and come join the Facebook group, ask for help. Pore through the answers. You can use the search function in the group. You can also use the search function on my website Learntruehealth.com to find many resources. There are so many resources out there in the holistic world. You have to dig for them. But we’re here to help. The Learn True Health Facebook group is here to help you because we’re a whole community. We’re actually a community of over 5000 listeners and we’re here to help each other. 

So, suffering is needless and suffering is optional. This is what actually a few of my guests have come on the show and said. Suffering is optional, let’s make it optional. Let’s make it optional by discovering the tools, sharing the tools. As I constantly am uncovering these amazing holistic tools, I bring them to you because I know that they're going to help.

Now, what I’m planning for episode 500, and it’s been on my heart for a while now, is I’d like to do a testimonial episode. I received so many testimonials of people who have shared that through this podcast learning from the guests and from me. Their lives have been transformed, their health has been changed. In some cases, they actually saved a relative’s life, which is huge. There's one woman who saved her mom’s life. Her mom would not have lived if it wasn’t for this podcast. How big is that? So, if you have a testimonial listening to this podcast, please send it to me. You can send it to me. Support@learntruehealth.com. Come into the Facebook group and share it. I’d love to see it there, and other listeners would love to see it there too. You can message it to me on Facebook. I’d also love to include it. I don’t have to include your name if you're uncomfortable with that. I’ve been collecting testimonials so I can create that episode.

I think it’s so important. I know when I was suffering, hearing testimonials really helped. When I lost my daughter last year, I think the biggest thing that helped besides my connection with God was hearing testimonials of women who had lost their children and they're living, they're living their life, they’re happy, they were able to heal from it because at the time, I couldn’t see a way out. I couldn’t see that I could heal from it. So testimonials have, even though you might discredit your testimonial like “oh, who am I, my story is not so big,” but if you were suffering and now you're no longer suffering, sometimes that right there, that little story you have, is actually huge to someone else. It’s lifechanging to someone else. So, when I heard, my midwife was sharing with me some other women that she had worked with who like “oh yeah, this mom’s third child diet and now she has three more and she’s so happy.” Just those kind of stories, those type of testimonials might not seem like a lot but for those who need to hear them, it really helps. So please, if you have any kind of transformation, any kind of story of healing, please reach out to me because your story, even though you might not think it’s important, it could be lifechanging for someone else. And that's what I’m about. That’s what this podcast is about – it’s about helping as many people as possible to learn true health.

So, thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about and thank you so much for sharing your testimonials with me so I can create that episode, episode 500. Whatever holidays you celebrate this month, you know, can be stressful a lot for many people. I recognize that you might not be listening to this episode in December although I’m releasing it in December. I want to wish you peaceful, gentle healing and loving holidays. Since I do celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas for those who celebrate Christmas and for those who celebrate anything else. I wish everyone to have gentle, peaceful, loving season to let the stress go and replace it with love and peace in your heart and in your life and in your environment around you. Because we don’t need stress. That is not healthy for any of us. So, I love you all and enjoy today’s episode. 

[00:19:23] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 494.

I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show Dr. Michael Biamonte. What I love about today’s interview is we’re going to do some major myth busting. This is like pull you out of the matrix. We’re going to take you out and show you that you’ve been raised in a system that teaches you that you need drugs to suppress, to change, to manage your brain chemistry, your biochemistry. And when it comes to mental health and emotional health, the word “health”, they shouldn’t even be allowed to use the word “health” because it is so far from health. When it comes to emotional and mental health and prescription drugs, and I’m so excited to have you on the show to talk about this topic today. Dr. Biamonte was in episode 486 and 488. In those two episodes, we really did a deep dive into candida and gut health. Now there's a large correlation between gut health and brain health, and I definitely want to touch on that since that is one of your expertise. But you did mention in episode 488 that one of your favorite things to do is to take your patients or your clients and to help them get so healthy that they're off all their meds especially when it comes to mental and emotional medications. So, looking forward to doing a deep dive there. Welcome back on the show.

[00:21:03] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Thank you very much. I’m happy to be here.

[00:21:05] Ashley James: Excellent. Now, listeners can go to your website which is health-truth.com and of course, the links everything that Dr. Michael Biamonte does is going be in the show notes of today’s podcast at Learntruehealth.com. I’d love to know because your expertise has largely been around gut health or getting candida back in balance in the body instead of having an overgrowth of it for so many years. At what point while you were practicing and working with people and helping them, at what point did you go “Wait a second. I can help people get emotionally and mentally healthy” to the point where they're no longer on all these meds?

[00:21:47] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Probably in the late ‘80s when I started to see a correlation between several things. First was constipation. I had so many patients tell me “Gee. Since my constipation is handled and I’m no longer constipated, I feel so much happier. My mood is better. I feel lighter as a person. Not physically. They were speaking about more of their own being. They just felt lighter and happier.” So I started researching this and it also was part of my research into candida. I found the correlation between neurotransmitters and the digestive tract. I didn’t know that the body shuttled neurotransmitters and hormones in and out of the bloodstream to the digestive system and back and forth. Sort of like the body will the digestive tract as a holding tank for neurotransmitters and hormones and then pull them back into the bloodstream when needed.

When I understood the mechanism, it made sense as to why these people were now telling me that since they're not constipated, they feel so much happier and quite a few of them went off their antidepressants as a result of that. Some of my colleagues said “Well, that’s probably because their thyroid function improved.” But I actually did find the reference. Unfortunately, I forgot which book it was, but I think it might have been a book by Dr. Whitaker where he went over the fact that the body does pull these neurotransmitters and hormones back and forth in the digestive tract and out of the digestive tract, and you can’t do that if you have dysbiosis. So, you have to have a normal functioning digestive system in order to be able to do that. The other correlation I started to see was in people who had very high copper levels, and that goes back to Dr. Pfeiffer’s work at the Brain Biocenter in Princeton, NJ where he had cited that schizophrenics were very high in copper. He basically laid out that if he detoxed a schizophrenic from copper, his schizophrenia would go away and a lot of his mental health issues would go away that a lot of this was copper toxicity. 

I started hearing more and more from these people who were copper toxic about their mood swings, about how they try to sleep at night and they had racing thoughts and they just couldn’t shut it off and couldn’t go to sleep. It matched a lot of the, well, not a lot but some of the data that I was seeing in psychiatric books, of course they had no idea it was being caused by copper toxicity. But sure enough, when these people were detoxed from the copper, these symptoms would go away. 

So, I guess that was probably the initial thing that set me off on this. But once I armed with that knowledge, I knew there was a lot more. I knew I was just basically scratching the surface. I knew there was a lot more and that’s what led me to dive into it much deeper. I read a book in 2015 which really helped put this together for me. It’s called Deadly Psychiatry and Organized Denial by Dr. Peter Getzsche. He presented data suggesting that psychiatric drugs kill about half a million Americans and Europeans over the age of 65 per year. He also pointed out that in terms of long-term outcomes, people in less developed countries have far fewer problems with mental health and problems with drugs. Obviously, the answer is because they don’t have the availability. As you and I were saying once, on one of the podcasts, people nowadays, their availability to just go to a psychiatrist or even their medical doctor and say “I’m depressed, give me a pill,” they can do this very easily.

We were discussing also that our grandparents growing up had tough times. You’d come to this country and back in those days, times were tough. They had to struggle and bring themselves up by their bootstraps. They couldn’t just go to a doctor and say “I’m new to this country, I’m having trouble getting a job. Give me a pill.” 

[00:26:07] Ashley James: I have family members, I have friends who they're struggling and their doctor very quickly got them on multiple meds, depression, anxiety, and sleep meds and just thinking back to my grandmother who had to bury several of her siblings while escaping the war in a train with no heating, Just like the horror stories, right? And she was never on any psychiatric meds. She lived a full long life, a beautiful life. Kids, grandkids. Our grandparents and great grandparents had, in some cases, much harder times than we’re going through, not to belittle the struggles that we go through. But they didn’t have access to these drugs and these drugs, in many cases, are band-aids. I’d rather have someone, if a drug could stop someone from committing suicide, I’d rather have them be on that drug. But what we’re seeing is actually the opposite. We’re seeing that in a lot of cases, going to the drug ends up being that band-aid that then doesn’t let them go through and do the emotional and mental healing.

[00:27:14] Dr. Michael Biamonte: And the growth. Their own personal growth at the same time. 

[00:27:20] Ashley James: Right. And then, we’re still seeing the suicide rates go up and in our youth right now, I believe suicide is the first or second. Either the first or the second leading cause of death in ages I think it was like 12 to 25. It’s very scary and sad how rampant this problem is becoming. I can’t help but think that, obviously, there's gut issues. We have an over toxic world. There's 80,000 new man-made chemicals in the last 40 years. The environment, the milieu, the day-to-day existence is toxic compared to what it was one generation, two generations ago. 

So, we are facing a different world. Our biology is facing a different world than our grandparents. But at the same time, we have to look back and go, how is it that for many generations, we could live through the tough times and grow and learn and support each other and create an ecosystem of support and growth? Then now, we are more isolated than ever. We are more depressed than ever. We have incredibly high suicide rates. The first thing we’re given when we go to a doctor is a drug that has a bunch of side effects.

[00:28:38] Dr. Michael Biamonte: That's the swing that we’ve had in the last 50 years where instead of self-reliance, we have entitlement—and entitlement also offers people these drugs, unfortunately.

[00:28:50] Ashley James: So, the purpose of having you on today isn’t to make people who are on these drugs feel guilty. That's the exact opposite.

[00:28:55] Dr. Michael Biamonte: No of course.

[00:28:57] Ashley James: You help patients all the time to get so healthy that they’re no longer on these medications and that they also feel freedom and they feel amazing again emotionally and mentally. I want to clarify something you talked about before we move on to how you go about doing this. When you said around the world 65 and older, I think you said, what was it, like 2 million people die of psychiatric drugs.

[00:29:23] Dr. Michael Biamonte: What I was referring is that in the developed world, and the developed part of the world as opposed to the underdeveloped, you have so many more people dying from psychiatric drugs than you do in the underdeveloped parts in the world. It’s primarily because the drugs are unavailable in underdeveloped parts of the world. The book I was talking about before was Deadly Psychiatry and Organized Denial by Peter Gøtzsche. He talks about psychiatric drugs kill approximately half a million Americans over the age of 65 every year. That's horrifying!

[00:29:55] Ashley James: Wow. What is killing them exactly? 

[00:30:01] Dr. Michael Biamonte: What’s killing them is a combination of things. But it’s in part the side effects of the drugs. The drugs cause various side effects in the cardiovascular system and completely damage the gut health. So, then you have whatever problems you then want to postulate from gut health coming from that. You also have mass suicides that have occurred in these people. The FDA trials for Prozac, they covered up. And I know they covered it up because I have the actual reports from Eli Lilly. They covered up so many suicides that occurred in people on the Prozac trials. Why that occurs, you still hear it nowadays on TV. You turn on the TV and the big joke is the pharmaceutical commercial goes on and it lists a hundred million side effects that you could have. They have children playing in the park on the background, you know.

But it’s understanding how the drugs works, gives you a better understanding of why people die from them and why there are suicides. The typical antidepressant, your SSRI, which is an uptake inhibitor of serotonin, it doesn’t work by boosting your serotonin. It boosts by restricting it. Prozac actually stops your brain’s reabsorption of serotonin in order to make the serotonin receptor sites in your brain more acute and more excitable. So, it’s creating a deficiency to try to make something create like a sparring effect. The idea behind the drugs is that if you block the brain’s ability to reabsorb serotonin, then the brain has to do a much better job with the amount of serotonin it has. That works in some people. But in other people, it doesn’t work. It causes a crashing serotonin deficiency which is why of the side effects you’ll hear them talk about when they discuss Prozac or SSRI side effects is suicide or extreme massive depression.

[00:32:08] Ashley James: If you're stopping, blocking the cells from uptaking the… I mean, could see maybe if they did that temporarily like give you Prozac for a week and then take you off of it to try to resensitize the cells, but to keep you on it, how would keeping you always on it resensitize the cells to uptaking serotonin?

[00:32:29] Dr. Michael Biamonte: It doesn’t. Which is why these drugs ultimately are a failure. It’s in part a lot of politicians and bureaucrats that work in the industry have allowed this go on. There's the chemical imbalance myth. I call it a myth. But you hear these for years. You’ve been hearing the doctors quote that this chemical imbalance exists. Well, I can tell you about the chemical imbalance from the viewpoint of really scientific viewpoint of someone who tests. But in big pharma and psychiatrists, they for decades have claimed that the mentally ill have this chemical imbalance but yet, there has never been one single test or one single study that’s ever confirmed anything that they’ve said. In the British Psychology Society, there's a report in there, very interesting. It goes on to say that the chemical imbalance of neurotransmitters such as serotonin has remained unproven.

Now, I can tell you, however, from the viewpoint of someone who actually tests people that when I test people who come to me who are on these drugs or who have these issues, we will occasionally find a person who does have the serotonin deficiency. So, I can say, I am at liberty and I can say with authority that I can find a chemical imbalance in some of these people. But I’m testing them and the difference between myself and other practitioners, particularly psychiatrists, is they never test anyone. They don’t even know that these tests exist. But I can occasionally test someone and find their serotonin is low or their cortisol is too high or I can find some type of neurotransmitter imbalance and thank God for the work of the late Dr. Gottfried Kellermann from Neuroscience Labs who formulated an entire line of nutritional supplements that are all based on some of the patterns that you find in these neurotransmitter urine tests that are available by Functional Labs. His nutritional formulas are aimed at normalizing these imbalances. If your dopamine is too high, your dopamine is too low or whatever, your serotonin, he developed formulas which you can use on people that actually would balance it. He’s not doing something that’s hokey pokey where he has supplements and they’re starving the brain of these nutrients. He’s actually giving the person the precursors of these nutrients. He discovered that there are many herbs that work to excite those neurotransmitter receptor sites. So, he can accomplish with his formulas a natural way of going about what these drugs are doing in a destructive way.

[00:35:28] Ashley James: Fascinating, what you just said. You said psychiatrists don’t test.

[00:35:33] Dr. Michael Biamonte: No. I dare anyone to email or call in on this show who’s had a psychiatrist, not a functional medical doctor. I have never heard of, and if you go through all the psychiatrist data, if you go through the DSM-V, you look at all these books, you're not going to find any mention of any testing that's recommending or any protocol for testing. It doesn’t exist. They don’t do it.

[00:36:01] Ashley James: So they go based on your symptoms like “oh yeah, I can clearly see this person’s depressed,” or, “I’m diagnosing this person with bipolar based on what they’re sharing with me and their behavior,” and then they just put them on drugs and they don’t test them to see could there be a different imbalance.

There's one of my naturopathic mentors often find some people who are misdiagnosed with bipolar who have out-of-control blood sugar swings.

[00:36:26] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Or hormonal imbalances. That's another huge one in women. In women, PMS. They're constantly putting women on all these psychiatric drugs for PMS. Where the woman would be better off taking zinc and vitamin B6. She would get more relief from her PMS doing that than taking these drugs. 

[00:36:45] Ashley James: Fascinating. Yeah, since the last two years, I upped my zinc and I have noticed that I don’t have any symptoms. I always get surprised when my period comes because I have zero symptoms.

[00:36:59] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Well, zinc and B6 are cofactors to progesterone. They help mobilize progesterone. Normally, when you think of PMS, you think of high estrogen to progesterone ratio or estrogen dominance. And B6 and zinc help smooth that out. They help bolster progesterone.

[00:37:16] Ashley James: Wow. That's just fascinating. So, when comes to you and they have depression, what’s your first few questions for them?

[00:37:30] Dr. Michael Biamonte: My first few questions is why. Why do you have depression? What’s the situation? Who’s involved in this situation? A lot of times, they’ll rattle off names immediately. “Well, I’m depressed because my business partner is doing this.” “I’m depressed because my spouse is doing this or my child does this or my neighbor does this…” A lot of times they’ll just ring it right off. In that situation, I encourage them to handle the real-life situation they have and not take a pill and go hide in the closet.

When a person can’t come up with what it is, then we will do different testing if that's their main problem. A lot of times you get patients with candida come in and they talk about depression very often. So, if that’s the case, we’re going to treat the candida and see if the depression goes away in that line. But let’s say the person just comes in, he’s depressed, he doesn’t know why, he doesn’t really have any other outstanding physiological symptoms. Well, sure, then we’ll go ahead and we’ll do a neurotransmitter test. We’ll check out his blood sugar, check out his hormones, and 9 out of 10 times we’re going to find there’s a physiological reason which flies in the face of the gene finding theory that for years, psychiatrists have been saying that genetic factors have a substantial role in mental illness and even says in the DSM-V but yet, in actuality, there's no evidence that this is true. As a matter of fact, what was his name, David Kupfer several decades ago said we’re still waiting to discover biological and genetic markers for mental illness. They still haven’t found this. That was in a taskforce that I think he was the chair of.

So, they throw these things out, these things become catchphrases. Chemical imbalance. Genetic defects that lead to mental… they throw these things that they become catchwords but when you actually pull the string and look into them, there is no evidence behind them that they exist. 

[00:39:42] Ashley James: Tell us a bit more about the neurotransmitter testing that you do when someone has depression and you're suspecting that there might be an imbalance.

[00:39:53] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Well, we do a urine test that they're available through several labs. I believe Great Plains, Doctor’s Data, and Genova Labs easily offer them. Those are the bigger labs. They offer, it’s a urine collection. The urine collection goes to the lab, the lab looks for the neurotransmitters. There’s a certain amount of interpretation skill needed because sometimes, high levels of neurotransmitters in urine can indicate a loss of the neurotransmitter. So, let’s say you find a high amount of serotonin. The high amount of serotonin may not mean they have a lot. It might mean they’re losing it. But there's usually a pattern involved in that. Like very often, you’ll see the person has high cortisol which blocks serotonin, so you can see they have high cortisol and then high serotonin. Well, in that case, you know that the high cortisol is blocking the serotonin and causing a loss of it. So, that's what I mean by there's a certain amount of interpretation skill. But for the most part, when you do that test, it lays out all the neurotransmitters and show you the ratios between the ones that are very important that work together. It lets you see what’s high and what’s low. So, then you have an idea if there’s any actual evidence and reality that the person has an imbalance with the neurotransmitters. More often than not, when we find these imbalances and we put them on the right nutritional support, they feel better. 

[00:41:17] Ashley James: Interesting that high cortisol blocks serotonin. I’m just trying to think of why that would be because your body needs to be in fight or flight mode and not in like super happy mode.

[00:41:27] Dr. Michael Biamonte: No, it’s a matter of the receptor sites. Cortisol jams up the serotonin receptor sites. 

[00:41:33] Ashley James: They fight for the receptor sites.

[00:41:35] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yeah, cortisol blocks the receptor sites so the serotonin then can’t go and attach itself to the receptor site that easily. So, it’s not being utilized so it then builds up and then it’s excreted in your urine. 

[00:41:48] Ashley James: So, someone who let’s say have high cortisol because they’ve been chronically stressed out and it doesn’t have to be emotional or mental stress, it can also be physical stress like the body’s fighting let’s say a chronic candida infection. Their body is in a state of stress, they have higher than normal cortisol levels. Maybe they're also not sleeping well at night, maybe they're using alcohol to manage their “stress”, so they're doing things that increase cortisol and then they go to a doctor and they say “I’m really depressed and I have sleep problems” and the doctor puts them on an SSRI. Their body is making enough serotonin but maybe even trying to make more serotonin, but the cortisol is blocking it and then they take a drug because the doctor did no testing at all to figure out the root cause. Then they're taking an SSRI that’s then blocking the serotonin further, pushing them further into being out of balance. 

[00:42:46] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes, this is true. I’d give you one from the backdoor. There was a patient I had for years. She finally moved away, she moved to California but for years, I was treating this woman. Every September, her hormone tests would start to go out of balance. I asked her millions of questions as to what’s going on and she never came up with the answer until finally, I asked her, well, what’s different about this time of year than any other time of year. Then she suddenly blurted out the L’eggs Mini Marathon. So I said, “alright, tell me more.” She says, “Well, every year I run the L’eggs Mini Marathon in New York City, so I start training for it in August and the race is in October.” That was exactly coincidental with when her cortisol and other hormones started to go out of balance. So, from the training she was doing, the running she was doing, which you could say an excess of what the average person would do, that was raising her cortisol. So you see, it could be something that innocent. 

[00:44:01] Ashley James: You need to do the deep dive. This is why it’s so dangerous at times to go to a traditional medical doctor or go to a head doctor and say, “I got depression” without doing the deep dive. These band-aids are causing more damage than good.

[00:44:23] Dr. Michael Biamonte: A colleague of mine wrote an article called Why Your Insurance is Making You Sick. Backtracking on the whole thing, he was pointing out that people will go to their doctors their insurance will cover. A lot of these doctors don’t know what they’re doing, so by engaging in the doctor that's going to be covered by their insurance, they're actually getting sicker because they're not going to the doctor who would find out what was really going on. 

[00:44:48] Ashley James: Ha! That is so sad. So, we talked a bit about depression. What other mental health situations have you been able to help resolve to the point where they’ve been able to get off all their meds?

[00:45:02] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Well, we can go down the list of the names—bipolar, schizophrenia. They're all basically, as someone like you who’s read the DSM, basically these are all made-up situations for the purpose of being able to find a drug to sell. If someone really wants to get into this, there's a video you can watch called Marketing Madness. If you go to the website CCHR.org, you’ll find this video. It’s maybe 3 or 4 hours long and it rips apart the entire scam of psychiatric medications and the whole scam of psychiatry, it breaks it all down to the point where you appreciate the title, it’s Marketing Madness. They’re marketing insanity and the solution they have for you are these drugs. As the old saying goes, the two worst things you can ever do is number one, kill the patient, and number two, cure them. Because if you cure them, then he’s off your list to sell the drugs to. 

But to answer your question, you know, I don’t like to get into the terminology. The terminology is only good for recognition. Everyone can agree upon a recognition of a set of symptoms perhaps. But one of the major things that I’ve practiced as a clinical ecologist, because I consider a lot of what to do to be clinical ecology, we work with a lot of children with autism. There is a definite set pattern in what happens with autism. It’s very simple. In fact, it’s too simple. It’s so simple that people can’t believe it. But the components of autism start out with a child who’s born, who’s genetically compromised as far as his ability to detoxify. Then you put that child in an environment that’s toxic or you give him silver amalgam fillings in his mouth. Or you vaccinate him with thimerosal. So, you then make this child whose detoxification is compromised toxic. He can’t detoxify. It affects him neurologically.

A lot of these things like thimerosal and the vaccinations, and then if the child is repeatedly put on antibiotics, he develops candida. Now, from candida he develops leaky gut. So, now he’s autoimmune, he’s got candida. Now, the parents are wondering, “Gee, he reacts strange to foods, this child. He’s got this autism, he has this neurological… but he reacts crazy to different foods.” And it’s not all the time. So, now you mix candida in there, which candida is the big wild card, you never know what’s going to happen next. And it’s that the formula for it is that simple. The child develops candida, develops leaky gut, he becomes chemically sensitive. He becomes allergic. And here you have your standard profile of the autistic child. And it can be reversed, and it has been reversed.

I worked for many years with Jenny McCarthy. Jenny McCarthy was a patient of mine for years. As a matter of fact, Jenny McCarthy wrote the liner chronicles on my book The Candida Chronicles. She wrote the back page. We find as we found with many children, you find that they’re either mercury toxic or copper toxic. Because thimerosal, it’s an alloy, it’s a combination of copper, mercury, and zinc. Now, zine is more of a nutritional element, so the body has a better chance of using up the zinc that might be in the metal. But it’s not true of mercury. Mercury has really no biological functions at all. It’s strictly a toxin. Copper can have biological functions. It’s an essential element. But when it rises to high, it becomes just as toxic as any other heavy metal. 

You start with that. It’s right there. You have loads of trouble. But that explains why. See, years ago, this is the thing that only thinking people can arrive at if they sat down and mudded over this a bit. A hundred years ago, the environment, as you were stating earlier in the show, was much cleaner. You didn’t have the environmental challenges that we have nowadays. So, maybe 150 years ago, something like that, children who were born with these problems detoxifying weren’t challenged by their environment. They weren’t vaccinated. They didn’t have amalgam fillings in their mouth. So, their poor detoxification abilities were not being challenged. That's why these new diseases developed. That's a little microcosm of why it happens. That's why we have illnesses now we didn’t have 100 years ago. The environment is more toxic. And instead of coming up with new drugs to cover up the symptoms of these things, what the people should be doing is they should be taking companies like Monsanto to test for developing all these harmful chemicals that really haven’t been tested and their safety has never really been assured or guaranteed, and they throw them on the market and they're all over the place. Anyone who’s done any weed killing with Monsanto products is going to know that by now.

Soldiers, people coming back from Vietnam, I can’t tell you how many vets I’ve had who were exposed to Monsanto’s Agent Orange, who came back with all types of problems with their lungs and their heart. We had to develop an Agent Orange detoxification program for these people so we could detox them from this chemical. When they start to detox from it, it’s amazing the changes they go through. It’s really amazing.

But eventually, they start to feel better and their chemistry is improved. That's the thing. Anybody can feel better. You can shoot up heroin and feel better. The real bottom line is, do you get healthier? Is there scientific evidence in your bloodwork that your chemistries are improving? That's what we look for. That's what should be done. What I’m talking about should be the industry standard. And it’s not.

[00:51:21] Ashley James: There's another thing that Monsanto did, and my friend is involved in a lawsuit. It has completely destroyed her life. It’s left her in a wheelchair and left her daughter incredibly sick as well. This is just a small town outside of Seattle. There was an alternative school called Sky Valley, and there was an old building maybe built in the ‘60s or ’50s or ‘40s, something like that. But it was an older building. Children were dropping dead, children were getting cancer, teachers were getting cancer. One of the teachers entire jawbone just died suddenly. Crazy horrific things happening. In this town 40 minutes away from Seattle, what they come to find is that Monsanto made these chemicals, construction chemicals for the ballast, for the cocking, it’s through the entire building and it’s very hard to clean up. They said that they cleaned it up but the school board did a coverup. Then, they said, “Okay, it’s safe to come back into that school.” It wasn’t safe. Now, there's a huge lawsuit going on, massive lawsuit, and I think the teachers, they have several different lawsuits. The teachers have one lawsuit, the parents have another. And the teachers won. But they settled that at court or something.

Anyways, it’s all messy. It’s been going on for years. But what I discovered, and I’ll find the article and link it in the show notes. The Associated Press did an amazing… it takes like an hour to read this article. It’s so well-researched. They did this amazing expose where they traveled around the United States and discovered that these dangerous older school buildings, very dangerous for the health of the children because it is killing the children, mostly still exists in impoverished areas now. Monroe isn’t impoverished, it just is an outlier, but most of these buildings that are full of these toxic chemicals that are causing horrific neurological damaging cancer to these children, but the children were susceptible because they're smaller I guess, but also the teachers, most of it is in impoverished areas, most of it is areas where there’s larger groups of people of color, and they know that the buildings are toxic but they don’t have the budget to do anything about it. Because they all feel very powerless in this situation, no one is stepping up to fight back. 

So hopefully, with these lawsuits, it’ll be enough to sort of get everything rolling. But here’s the thing. We walk around trusting the building we’re walking into is safe because we live in the United States or we live in Canada or we live in England. You live in a country where you expect that the building you work in, the house you live in, the car you drive, the food you eat, the air you breathe, the water you drink, we expect blindly trusting that this would be safe for us just like the medications we take. We have so much trust. Sometimes I guess we’re very naïve in that. Without living in constant fear because that wouldn’t be healthy either, we need to do our own due diligence. I have a whole episode on toxic construction materials and how to have a nontoxic building versus toxic buildings. It’s all very fascinating. Same with food and how to have healthier food, how to have healthy water. 

But when it comes to when you already have the toxicity in your body and you have these symptoms, you don’t even know. You don’t know that you have high copper. And that could be why you're feeling depressed or feeling off or feeling lethargic or having the brain fog. Then we go to the wrong doctor. They don’t do the test, they just rattle off some symptoms, they put us on whatever drug the drug rep told them is good for those symptoms. And we still have the toxicity. We still have the underlying problem. We get worse and worse and we end up feeling guilty and shame that we’re broken, and a lot of times, not all the time but many times these people feel like they're a burden on their friends and family and the world would be better off without them.

[00:55:54] Dr. Michael Biamonte: And unfortunately, I can never leave a conversation on this subject without mentioning this because it’s something that really, I took very seriously. When President Obama was running for office, his New York campaign summit was right next door to me. We helped them out in the beginning, we offered them, you know, they needed a table, they needed a chair, they needed this and that, we very easily gave it to them. The people there asked me about what we did. I asked them, what is the senator’s viewpoint about Monsanto and about GMO foods. I was told quite overtly that he was intending on outlawing GMO foods and getting rid of Monsanto and blah, blah, blah. This was great. Then several years later, while he was president, he signed the Monsanto Protection Act. The Monsanto Protection Act, if you look it up, limits the liability that Monsanto has. So, when you're talking about these people suing Monsanto, there's only a limited amount that they could get because this act kicks in and it reduces the liability Monsanto has. Monsanto has no liability at all. You can’t sue them and say that any of the GMO foods that they make made you sick. You can’t do that. In terms of all these chemicals, there's limited liability. 

So, when we start looking at who we’re going to vote in office, we also have to really take a look at this. Who’s going to protect people like Monsanto? Who’s going to protect the person on the street that you're talking about? 

[00:57:37] Ashley James: My church has become very politically active, which is unlike a church, right? Lately, churches have been silent. Something my church has brought up is, you know, the churches that were silent in Germany, the Nazis actually went after the churches first. Not everyone knows the history of this. How is it that such a horrific thing could overtake a country? They went after the churches first. They threatened them and kept them silent. You keep your worship inside the church, you don’t do anything outside the church. You don’t do anything active. You just do your little thing inside the church and stay silent. So many churches have stayed silent.

[00:58:20] Dr. Michael Biamonte: There's a formula, do you know that? You can find this. The Nazis, they actually had a formula of what you did to take over a country or to demean the people. That is one of the first things you do, is you go after religion, you silence the churches. The next thing is you take their guns away from them. Then you make them toxic. That was quite common from when the Nazis attacked the country. Prior to their attack, they would dump fluoride in their drinking water. 

[00:58:50] Ashley James: Wow. Which is a neurotoxin, right, in high doses. And it causes people to be docile. I don’t know all the symptoms but I also know that it disrupts thyroid function.

[00:59:05] Dr. Michael Biamonte: You then start starving them of protein because starving them from protein makes them less aggressive. You take protein away from people, they lose muscle tone, their testosterone drops, they become less aggressive, less motivated. So, they had it all down, the Nazis. They had their whole formulation down. And unfortunately, you're seeing a lot of that getting repeated nowadays in trying to control people.

[00:59:32] Ashley James: With our church, our pastor said, “I don’t care what side. Republican or Democrat, I don’t care. I’m voting for the individual person that I believe is going to do the most good that’s going to help the most people, that's going to, for example, outlaw GMOs or not help these big organizations like Monsanto.” Unfortunately, we have to go based on trust because like you said, you were told one thing and then he did another. And protecting these major organizations that are causing and have a history of causing a huge amount of toxic damage to the world, it’s sick and wrong and very sad and I’m not for either side. I’m pragmatic. I want to see a better world.

[01:00:25] Dr. Michael Biamonte: I agree. I’m a libertarian. I’m registered as a libertarian. 

[01:00:31] Ashley James: The idea that what we deserve is we deserve health. It’s a right. I want that for everyone. I want a cleaner, healthier, safer world for everyone. I know you talked about not wanting to necessarily go based on labels because that is the box they like to put people in just to give them drugs. But when it comes to suicidal thoughts and ideation and wanting to help someone to avoid suicide, have you ever had clients who you felt might be suicidal and are there any common things that are associated with that or imbalance is associated with that that you can help them with? 

[01:01:14] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yeah. One of the first things you’ll find is that they're on an SSRI. So getting them off the SSRI and getting them on 5HTP or any of the precursors to serotonin is very important because you want to make sure they're not suicidal due to extreme dips in their serotonin. Usually, you want to get them out of their environment because unfortunately, people with these conditions are prey for other people around them to crap on essentially. So, getting them out of their environment is just as valid a therapy as anything else. So you get them good nutritional support, you get them out of their environment, get them into some other area where they're dealing with people who are not constantly invalidating them or causing them trouble, you’ll see a tremendous improvement in them and it’ll be safe.

[01:02:07] Ashley James: Dr. Hammer, he did Meta-Medicine. Dr. Hammer saw the centrifugal rings on the brain scans when not using the contrast dye and determine that the edema on the brain was specific areas were associated with specific… he did over 30,000 cases, were always related to specific parts of body. So, breast cancer, that sort of thing. He determined that a trauma would have had to happened in the last four years that would have triggered it. His biggest intervention was to take them out of their environment. So many times he’d see, if he took someone and moved them to a different country, just take them away from the friends or the family or the job or whatever it was that was stressing them out or triggered them that they were able to heal much quicker and in some cases, go into full remission. It’s so interesting.

[01:02:58] Dr. Michael Biamonte: The present time and environment of the patient acts as a constant restimulation to their illness from the time the illness was probably conceived going forward. So, it’s a valid form of therapy to change their environment but to hopefully to a better one. You wouldn’t want to take sick person and put them on the titanic. That wouldn’t be the right idea to change the environment. But that’s the concept. You get them away from the re-stimulators that are occurring in their environment. You get their nutrition improved to the point where they’re at least not going to be eating toxic food or not going to be in a toxic environment and then if lucky enough, if there's a practitioner like myself there, you can test the person and find out that if there are any extreme toxicities, there are tests that are offered by Great Plains Labs. Great Plains Labs offers a test which will check you for mold toxins, will check you for environmental toxins, will check how well you can detoxify. You can also look at neurotransmitter panels and do all these things and you can get a lab done for a person. The person would be in remarkably better shape in just a few months.

[01:04:13] Ashley James: I feel like we have to touch on this subject although it is such a sensitive one. A friend of mine lost her child who was a teenager to suicide less than two years ago. This child who was born a female decided they were not a female and did a transition to appearing as and functioning as a male. We see that the suicide rates for those who feel that they weren’t born the right gender, again, I want to be very sort of sensitive to this subject because the suicide rates are incredibly high and the statistics are that even those who transition, even those who get operations, the suicide rates remain high. Have you had any experience working with those and is there anything that we can do to help them?

[01:05:14] Dr. Michael Biamonte: I have actually more experience than you would think. It’s remarkable that in some of these people that make the transition, some of them are totally fine for their entire lives, they have no problems. Others do have these issues and you would have to then say, well, then obviously this is not the answer. If this was the answer, they wouldn’t still have these compulsions to harm themselves. 

But then on the other hand, I’ve seen that there are some people physically who don’t handle the transition well physically from a biological standpoint and metabolic standpoint. Their bodies just don’t do well at all. They will reject the hormones that they're taking. They can seem to never can find the right balance or dosage of any of the medications. But yet, there are others I’ve seen that did fantastic. So, I think we’re down to this is what the psychiatrists don’t want to hear. But what you're down to is rolling up your sleeves, sitting down with the person and digging in and finding out what’s really going on as opposed to having them come in your office for 10 minutes, hearing their problems and giving them, as you said before, the pill that the drug sells and says it’s the right one for them.

[01:06:32] Ashley James: It takes doing the deep dive because we’re complex. We’re complex. I heard once that the functions with inside a single cell are more complex than the city of Manhattan. So, if you think about if you’ve ever been to New York City and you see just the honking and the noise and the deliveries and the taxis and just everything going on, that is a simpler system than a single cell. We have 37.2 trillion cells in our body, we’re an incredibly complex ecosystem that is affected by energy. The energy of objects nearby, we’re affected by water, we’re affected by the air we breathe. It’s so sensitive. You climb up to Mt. Everest, your muscles will begin to seize, right? We need a perfect homeostasis. When something throws us off, it’s enough to throw everything off-kilter and yet, we think that we can go into an office, spend 10 minutes with someone, take a drug and it’s going to just solve the problem. This is the marketing we’ve been told. It’s ridiculous. We should be and practitioners should be willing to do that deep dive with someone and not be afraid to do the deep dive with them. 

[01:07:46] Dr. Michael Biamonte: To really appreciate what you're saying, I again would have to mention to the listeners to go on the internet and go to CCHR.org and look up I think it’s a 3 or 4-hour video called Marketing Madness. Once you start watching this, you cannot stop. The data they give you is absolutely mind-boggling and they uncover and reveal the entire scam which is the whole psychiatric profession and the psycho pharmaceutical industry. It’s just incredible.

I guess it’s no coincidence the LA Times back in the ‘80s published one of these inserts that you could pull out. It was all about psychiatry. The interesting thing I learned from there just off the bat that I found very curious is that as a whole and a group, psychiatrists have the lowest SAT scores. Psychiatrists have the highest rate of suicides out of any profession. Psychiatrists also have the highest rate of being convicted for felonies out of any profession. 

[01:08:58] Ashley James: Wow.

[01:08:59] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Interesting. 

[01:09:04] Ashley James: And we bring our lives to these people. I don’t think that their entire profession is evil. But we just have to remember that they’re fallible, that we shouldn’t put them on a pedestal like we’ve been taught to do, like the marketing has taught us to worship these drugs and worship these people. Now again, if there's a drug that would stop someone from being suicidal, I’d want them on it, right?

[01:09:34] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes, until you figure out as you said earlier.

[01:09:36] Ashley James: Right. If someone has to check them, and I’ve had friends who went, they have five kids, they are like, “I am going to kill myself today and I don’t want to do that,” and they’ve checked themselves into the hospital, they spent two weeks in the hospital, be put on some lithium or something, put on some kind of medication, and then they're like, “Now, I got to get my life in order.” A few of my friends have done it but one friend in particular ended up finding, she found a few support groups, she changed her entire lifestyle, she had to change her diet, she had to do a deep dive into her life. She still has five kids and she has a sixth one on the way and she moved across the country. She’s done a ton of changes. But she changed her diet, she’s seeing a therapist. She’s going to two different support groups. She’s removed a lot of addictive behaviors out of her life. She had to do the work. But sometimes it starts with going “I’m about to break and I really don’t want to leave my children, but it’s like I don’t see an end to this and I’m going to check myself in.” Then you have to do the deep work beyond that. Sometimes it does take that immediate intervention. 

Unfortunately, some people wait till it gets that bad. But hopefully, listening to you, we’re not going to wait to get that bad that we can make diet and lifestyle changes and even contact you. So you work with clients around the world, you do telemedicine. Health-truth.com.

[01:11:08] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Let me add this. Don’t be complacent about your environment. I’ve had quite a few patients over the years who under my treatment were improving but they then moved. They told me that moving made a bigger difference in their health than actually what I was doing with them. When it was examined, when I looked at that, it’s interesting but there are certain things you’ll find. If someone lives in New Mexico in Nevada, that area, where nuclear testing takes place, traditionally, when we do tissue mineral analysis on people, and the test comes back showing high levels of uranium. Now this is not that they're radioactive, this is inert uranium. The first thing I ask is well, do they live in New Mexico, Nevada, that whole area? Ninety percent of the time, they do. There's a high amount of uranium that's inert, it’s not radioactive, but there's a higher amount of uranium in those areas that people will absorb. Uranium, even though it’s inert and not radioactive still has physiological effects. It affects adversely your digestive system, it affects you neurologically. There's a whole list of uranium toxicity symptoms. 

Also, another patient I’ve had for quite a long time, she had some strange elements showing and had beryllium, which is something you don’t see that often. She had high levels of beryllium and chromium and different elements showing. We never could figure out what it was and one day, she happened to realize that about every six months she would notice that the cars in her neighborhood and the windows of houses in the neighborhood had this white film on them. So, she collected the film and she had it analyzed and she found that this film was high in beryllium and chromium and all these elements that we find in her. So, she then started to investigate and she was very active in her community, she was active politically and the school board and everything. She researched where this was coming and sure enough, there was some industrial complex about six miles from where she lived that was dumping this stuff in the air.

[01:13:39] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

[01:13:43] Dr. Michael Biamonte: I have dozens of other similar stories. But the moral of all these stories is don’t become too complacent about where you live if you're ill. Investigate if you're ill. If your area has any history of chronic toxicity, if there's anything in the water, if there's anything that’s in the water, eventually it’s going to make its way to the land. If you're doing gardening or you're doing any kind of work like this where you're getting in the dirt, you're going to start absorbing this stuff. It doesn’t have to be in the air although the air is the easiest carrier. But check out your environment to see what’s going on there. Because your environment might be making you sick and you don’t know what your doctor doesn’t know.

[01:14:28] Ashley James: I’m reminded of this. You might have heard this. Let me know if you have. But there were these guys that went to I believe it was Papua New Guinea and they were doing trading. They gave them a bunch of corn and grains that these people had never eaten before. This population didn’t have a history of mental illness but after they gave them, I mean, besides what you get from being a cannibal for those certain areas, but in terms of like bipolar or schizophrenia, they noticed that they were having mental health issues after being exposed to like rice and corn. Same with Hawaii that the ancient Polynesians who had never had grains, they didn’t eat grains, that wasn’t in their diet, they ate tubers and fish and lots of fruit. They were given grains and mental health which had never been recorded in their history was then found. They took these findings and they did an experiment in England with a psychiatric ward primarily that had schizophrenics, they removed grains from their diet and saw that many of the went into remission and had either less or sometimes no schizophrenic episodes just from removing grains from their diet.

[01:15:53] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes, these are very, well, at least to me, pretty well-known stories. That especially you’ll read in the books of the doctors who are very anti-gluten or anti-grain. It’s very true. Very true. 

[01:16:06] Ashley James: Do you think that their major component is that it’s not feeding the candida that is having an impact on the brain becomes of the connection, the leaky gut, like you had mentioned before that there was these neurotransmitters in the gut, but also, that there’s a nerve that goes straight from the brain into the gut?

[01:16:29] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Well, that would be presuming that these people had candida which we don’t necessarily know that they did. So, we would have to look at really… the most obvious thing is these people right off the bat, when they’re eating grains, they’re probably blood type O’s. So initially, you're introducing a fluid which probably hasn’t been in their genetic line because these foods are not native to those areas. Once you do that, you don’t really know what’s going to happen because it’s like putting someone on another planet. You don’t know how they’re going to react to the food. You don’t know if the food allergy is going to cause like extreme irritation or break down their intestinal lining, which is leaky gut is then going to… leaky gut is known to cause many psychiatric-like symptoms in people. So, we could stop just there. But when you go further and you look at allergies that you can get from grains, they’ve been well known to affect the brain.

Pfeiffer, again going back to Karl Pfeiffer from the Brain Biocenter, he did quite a lot of work on that, quite a few of the people who I would tend to call the earlier pioneers in nutrition, did a lot of work showing that grains would affect people in this manner. So, like I said, you're introducing something to a line genetically which it’s not native to. These people never had it before. You don’t know how they're going to be affected by it. 

[01:18:04] Ashley James: Right. Is there anything you’d like to say to those who have or are struggling right now with emotional issues, maybe they're on medication or they’ve been considering medication, is there anything you’d like to say to them directly?

[01:18:24] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes. As you’ve been hearing through this broadcast, going on these medications is haphazardous and dangerous. That's not your first choice. Regardless of how society looks at these things, how they're accepted, when you really get into the scientific aspect of it, it’s not condoned. You really want to take a look at the things we’ve talked about here today. This is where you want to go first before you start taking medicines which the fact the insurance company pays for them and the fact that they're advertised on TV doesn’t mean they're safe, it doesn’t mean they're good. We can start advertising heroine on TV and have your insurance company pay for it. That doesn’t mean it’s good for you either.

So, I would say to them, please look into the things we talked about today. Make that your priority because a pill doesn’t fix your life. If you have a problem in your life, handle your life, don’t take a pill and go hide in the closet. 

[01:19:32] Ashley James: There's one thing we didn’t touch on and I want to make sure we touch on it, and that's those with panic attacks and anxiety. Oftentimes they feel like they're dying. I’ve worked with several clients who they have to go lie down and their heart is pounding, their palms are sweating, they feel like they're dying and they're terrified that they're dying and so they end up popping a pill. Can you speak to those who have anxiety and are choosing to be on anxiety meds because they feel like otherwise they die?

[01:20:00] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Well, the first thing you always do is go to your doctor and you want to see if there's a tumor, benign or otherwise on your pituitary gland or on your adrenal glands. You want to have your adrenal hormones tested. Not a blood test in the morning where it’s one take. You want to do several blood work over the period of 24 hours or you want to do a 24-hour urine test which is going to measure your adrenal hormones to see if there's any surge in the hormones. You want to look to see how your magnesium levels are. Most importantly, you want to look for toxic metals. Because metals like cadmium, lead, arsenic, nickel, and iron, when any of these are in excess, they stimulate areas of the brain particularly the amygdala of the brain which when you overstimulate that area, you end up having the panic attack-like symptoms. 

You want to look for physical causes. Just simple being medicated is not handling your problem. As you would assume, if there's an underlying problem there and you're not addressing it, well that underlying problem you're not addressing today, in 20 years from now, can multiply exponentially to give you all types of other problems. 

[01:21:18] Ashley James: It’s reassuring to know that there's a path that with working with someone who does functional medicine like yourself, that you work like an engineer and you go through and do a deep dive and help that person become balanced again in their body. Now, they still have to do the work in their life. There's emotional and mental work to do, and you're going to make sure that you help them with the balancing of their body so that they no longer have this. We have to really listen to the symptoms of the body as the language of the body, the body is speaking to us if we have depression. We have problems sleeping, if we have outburst of anger or panic attacks. We need to take these symptoms seriously and go, okay, we’ve got to go through and is there something in my life externally, is there something in my self-talk internally, is there something in my biochemistry that's going on or physiologically what’s going in. We got to do a deep dive. It takes the right practitioner. Like I love saying, you don’t take your car to an electrician. You don’t take your car to a plumber. You want to take your body to the right practitioner for the certain condition.

So, I love medical doctors for emergency medicine. If I have a broken arm or if I have certain types of infections, if I need emergency surgery, that's when I want allopathic medicine. But when I have a chronic situation, I want to go see someone who does a deep dive into functional medicine. That's why I love the work that you do and I think you're an amazing practitioner and I’m so excited that I’ve been able to share you with my listeners because I know you help so many people. So, thank you so much for coming on the show, Dr. Biamonte. Of course, listeners can go to your website, health-truth.com. Is there anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?

[01:23:09] Dr. Michael Biamonte: No, I think that's it. But I do agree with you. If I break my arm, I’m not going to run in the house and start eating yogurt and think something is going to happen miraculously. You want to go to somebody who’s going to be able to address the problem correctly. There's so much on TV, people are so brainwashed by these companies, so, it makes it more difficult. But I completely agree with you. Your summation is people, they have to hold that to their hearts and their minds.

[01:23:40] Ashley James: Absolutely. Well, thank you again for coming on the show and talking about this very much needed conversation. I really appreciate the work you do and please come back anytime to continue to teach us. I love learning from you.

[01:23:56] Dr. Michael Biamonte: You're more than welcome and I certainly intend on doing so.

[01:23:59] Ashley James: Wasn’t that a fantastic interview with Dr. Michael Biamonte? I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and I hope it really helps you to gain clarity and direction on mental and emotional health. There are so many resources out there and I’ve seen so many people heal anxiety, depression, and bringing themselves back into balance. Even bipolar, I’ve seen people to bring back into balance where they feel even-kill again. 

Use the search function on my website. I do have a lot of other episodes about these especially anxiety. Please go to Learntruehealth.com and just use the search function, type in anxiety, see all the episodes that come up. Lot of episodes, lot of great information, lot of great resources and tools. This is just the beginning. It’s just pulling you down the rabbit hole through the matrix, out of the matrix, down the rabbit hole. Then, I want to just arm you with all the resources and all the tools that’ll help. Make sure that you go to freedoctorcourse.com, get my Free Doctor course from holistic doctors who look to give you the foundations of health and then make sure you go to Learntruehealth.com/coach and get the free sample class from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition as well. I’m just showering you with gifts today. Make sure you get those. Of course, join the Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook group because so many resources, so many people are there to support you. It’d be great to have you be part of the community and join us there. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. Have a wonderful rest of your holiday season! I have a few other amazing episodes to post before we get to 500, so you still have some time, but if you have any testimonial to share at all, big or small, please send it to me. You can give me an audio, you can give me a video or you could just type it out. You can send it to support@learntruehealth.com or you can also message me on Facebook or put it in the Facebook group, would love to see you there.

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Book by Dr. Michael Biamonte

The Candida Chronicles

Ozone Machine:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/ozone

Listen to episode 484 for more info on why and how to use ozonated water made in your home for energy and mitochondrial function:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/at-home-ozone-therapy-for-immune-mitochondrial-health-eileen-durfee

High-Quality NAD Brain Supplement:

Use coupon code LTH at

https://www.learntruehealth.com/nad

Listen to episode 460 about the benefits of high-quality NAD on cellular function, energy production, and mitochondrial health:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/nicotinamide-adenine-dinucliotide-supplement-nadovim-nad-the-missing-link-to-energy-brain-function-and-longevity

Sunlighten Sauna - the sauna Ashley uses, loves, and recommends:

Be sure to ask for the listener special!

https://www.learntruehealth.com/sunlightensauna

Listen to episode 245 to learn from the founder of Sunlighten Sauna as to why this sauna is the best tool for your health journey:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/sunlighten-saunas

The world's most effective Magnesium Soak:

Use coupon code LTH at livingthegoodlifenaturally.com

Listen to episode 294 to hear Kristen Bowen share her story of recovery and discovering the world's most absorbable form of magnesium:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/magnesium-foot-soak

Ashley's Favorite Spirulina and Chlorella:

Use coupon code LTH at EnergyBits.com

Listen to episode 487 and hear the latest science behind healing algie

https://www.learntruehealth.com/mitochondrial-self-healing-superfoods-high-potency-chlorella-spirulina

Dr. Oz's book, After Covid: Optimize Your Health in a Changing World

https://amzn.to/3BbfglU

www.ozgarcia.com

"Our clinic is on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We provide detailed lab work, IV therapy, peptide therapy, and nutritional protocols, including supplements."

493: How To Recover From Long Covid, Dr. Oz Garcia

When you experience long-haul COVID, it's important to be proactive in recovery, and it's also helpful to know how to plan for this kind of huge transition. In this episode, Dr. Oz Garcia talks exactly about that, which involves reducing toxins in your life, boosting nutrient density (as well as nutrient diversity), improving sleep quality, enhancing focus and concentration, and getting into the best shape of your life.

Ashley James and Dr. Oz Garcia

Highlights:

• The novelty of the COVID virus
• How Dr. Oz Garcia became his own patient zero
• Supplements Dr. Garcia recommends
• Oura Ring
• Tracking heart rate variability
• How long-haul COVID damages mitochondria and healing from it
• NormaTec compression boots

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. Boy, are you in for such a treat. We have an amazing guest on the show today, Dr. Oz Garcia, who used to be a marathon runner, incredibly healthy his entire life. He’s a holistic doctor, works in New York State, and he has a great clinic. I believe it’s in New York City where he does functional medicine and believes in nutraceuticals and really healthy eating. And he got hit with COVID, he almost died. And he tells a story of recovery of experiencing first-hand the worst of long-haul COVID, the long-haul symptoms that have lasted him months, that left him crawling on the floor only months before he was running marathons. This is something now we’re discovering so many people have to a certain extent. I myself have been healing from long-haul COVID. And we’re seeing it is a different animal, it’s a different creature that we’re facing similar to Epstein-Barr virus or mono. The body has been affected on multiple levels. Some have seen even the brain shrink. There’s been studies showing that the brain shrinkage is almost like brain damage and recovering from that, healing from that. Healing is possible. We need to recognize that the body has an innate God-given ability to heal itself. It’s this amazing, beautiful machine.

We are so intricate that cellular biologists say when they look at the cell, they still don’t fully understand the cell, but when you look at just one cell, now you are comprised of over 37.2 trillion cells in your body and yet, one single cell is more complex than everything going on in New York City. It is so complex. It is so beautiful, the dance that happens in your body. And we can heal ourselves. Now, modern medicine really has us duped. It says we have to wait to get sick, go to the doctor, get put on some drugs to force the body to do something and then there's all these spill-over side effects. And they don’t really focus on healing and completely restoring the body from any kind of chronic illness. That's not their wheelhouse and that's frankly not where their money is made. That's why you are listening to this podcast because we’re holistic, meaning we look to the whole body and the whole life of that person knowing that your mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health all affect each other, knowing that what you ate affects you. Even what you ate yesterday is affecting you now, of course it does. What you eat, how you sleep, even when you eat, how much you eat, whether it was organic or not, all of that plays into the cell’s health, how much joy you experience, how much support, connection and love you have in your life, whether you feel like you have a purpose in your life. All these things matter.

So, wonderful episode today because Dr. Oz Garcia goes into his journey where he was left for the first time in his life needing to rebuild his health. And he’s 70, I think he’s 71 now but, you know, at 70-71, he looks amazing by the way because he’s taken such great care of himself all his life, but here he is rebuilding his life, just learning how to walk again, let alone run a marathon again. So he shares what he did throughout his journey in the last year to recover his health and, of course, then go on to help his patients do the same. He does mention some things that I want to make sure you know about. We talk about ozone. I have a fantastic episode. These are resources for you if you have long-haul, if you're looking to heal, especially mitochondrial issues. We see that a lot of people after COVID experience. It’s almost like their mitochondria has been damaged. And this also can happen when people take antibiotics and take other drugs. Those other drugs that disrupt the mitochondria. Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. It is the part of your body throughout all your body that makes cellular energy ATP. The majority of our mitochondria, although it’s in all our cells is in the nervous system, in the brain. We really need mitochondria to function to have these other cells function. It is what makes the energy for our body. So whatever damages mitochondria damages the body and leaves us exhausted. So, we want to do everything we can to support the body in having healthy mitochondrial function and the entire Krebs cycle, everything that has to do with making energy for the body is really important. We need to get the good stuff in, get the bad stuff out and get out of the way. Let the body do what it needs to do, support the body in doing it, what it needs to do.

So, there's a fantastic ozone machine that you can get at home. Quite affordable. I thought ozone machines were thousands of dollars and they’ve really come down in price and it’s a little machine, smaller than a shoebox and it will make ozonated water and it’s safe to make in the home. Other machines are not safe. You had to leave the room because it’s not safe to inhale ozone. But this one degases it so it only goes into the water. And I have a whole episode on that. It’s episode 484. The links to everything I’m talking about now is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at Learntruehealth.com or in the notes, wherever you're listening from. If you're listening from iTunes or Spotify, you're going to just go into the notes there in this episode and you’ll see it. So, check that one out. Of course, everything that I share, for the most part, I get a coupon code from these people, Learn True Health, the LTH coupon code. So always type in LTH and just see if they give us a discount because for the most part, I do get a discount for you guys. 

So, the ozone machine, you can just go straight if you want to check it out. It’s Learntruehealth.com/ozone. That's Learntruehealth.com/ozone. That's the ozonated water that you can make in your home. You can use it as a very safe disinfectant and you can also drink it and it only disrupts or kills the bad bacteria that is talked about in episode 484, but also, ozone hyperoxygenates the body and the cells in the body and it also has been known to help the mitochondria function better. And I had a personal experience with ozone that rocked my world. It took away the muscle weakness that I was experiencing post COVID and I thought that was really amazing.

The next one is NAD. You can go to Learntruehealth.com/NAD, just the letter N, A and D. Learntruehealth.com/NAD. Listen to episode 460. We talk about NAD and how it helps energy production, cellular function, and especially mitochondrial health. It’s a really interesting interview. Today, that's one of the things that Dr. Oz Garcia talks about, ozone and NAD for his health journey. So go to Learntruehealth.com/NAD and use coupon code LTH as well.

Sunlighten Sauna, we do talk about sauna therapy using heat and light therapy. Amazing. I love Sunglighten Sauna. It is part of my detox routine. It has been part of my detox routine for 4 years now. It has really helped me recover from heavy metal toxicity and also, it’s fantastic for the cardiovascular system, for the immune system. The benefits go on and on. There are so many studies about sauna therapy. What I like about Sunlighten Sauna, it’s actually low heat. You can get started sweating at about 130 degrees, so it’s very easy to breathe in there. You're not really feeling overly hot. It just feels nice and warm like a day at the beach and yet you're doing your best detoxing at that temperature and it also helps with the immune system hugely. We talk a bit about that in this interview that you're about to hear. You can go back and listen to episode 245 to hear the founder of Sunlighten Sauna and some of the benefits as to why Sunlighten is better than the other sauna companies out there because I did do my research when I was choosing my saunsa, and I am so glad that I chose Sunlighten over the other ones because it’s full spectrum, it’s ultra low EMF and nontoxic. 

And of course, if you decide you want to buy a Sunlighten Sauna, you can go to Learntruehealth.com/sunlightensauna and there's a list of the benefits and the machines and all that. But if you end up calling them, make sure you mention that you heard it from my podcast because listeners get a huge discount. This month and the month of December, there’s an even bigger sale going on right now. I believe it’s up to $700 off plus free shipping, and they usually throw in a few other goodies. So, just say that I sent you and that you better get a good deal because I said, you know, and of course, you can always message me and let me know, or come join the Learn True Health Facebook group and let me know because I’ve had nothing but good experiences from them and I personally am friends with one of the managers there, so if you ever need any help with that, you just let me know. I’ll make sure you get the hookup.

Then, of course, my favorite magnesium soak. Go to episode 294 to hear Kristen Bowen’s story where she was having 30 seizures a day, unable to talk in a wheelchair. Her life had totally disintegrated after a surgery where they put some stuff in her that they said she wouldn’t be allergic to, and of course, now we know so much more but it caused her to become so unhealthy, she was on death store, eventually got surgeons to finally agree to take this stuff out of her, but there she was, she was left still very weak, very sick and she stumbled upon this particular type of magnesium from the Zechstein sea that allowed her… it was the biggest tool she used to recover her health and so she dedicated her life to making this I don’t want to say little anymore because her company has grown so much since I started talking about it. But it’s a family-run company and it’s very high quality. She has incredibly high standards like I do when it comes to what you put in your body. So you can go to Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com, use coupon code LTH, get the magnesium soak. And my favorite thing to do is soak my feet in magnesium while in the sauna. Bada bing bada boom, you got 2 for 1. It’s great. We have several more episodes on the magnesium soak. The first one is 294 so you can go back and listen to that one. Make sure you use coupon code LTH anytime that you're at Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com because she does give the listeners a great discount.

Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing these episodes with those you care about. My mission is to help as many people as possible to no longer suffer. The needless suffering needs to stop. Man, I can tell you that long-haul COVID is no joke. It is suffering and it’s psychologically suffering as well because so many doctors, they don’t know what to do. They throw their hands up, they say maybe it’s all in your head. You don’t really feel like you're being taken seriously and a lot of them just don’t have the tools. They don’t have the tools because they don’t have the training and some of them have the hubris because, I don’t know, there's ego or they feel threatened because they don’t know the answer. They end up making us feel like it’s our fault. It’s so frustrating. But really, there's a whole world of holistic medicine and it’s completely separate from the mainstream medical system. And the mainstream medical system doesn’t want to acknowledge that there's all these amazing things that we can be doing outside of drugs and surgery. If you're suffering or you have a friend who’s suffering, please get them to listen to these episodes, tell them that there's hope. Tell them the body can heal itself. The body is amazing at healing itself. I was sick with so many different conditions. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, I no longer have it. And I was told by so many doctors that you can’t get rid of it, you have it for the rest of your life. I had type 2 diabetes. I was told that that’s just it. You just have to be on these drugs for the rest of your life. I said no, I took the natural medicine route, I no longer have type 2 diabetes. That was actually the easiest thing to reverse out of all the issues I ever had. And I had it for years. I had out of control blood sugar for years. I had infertility. I was told I’d never have kids. And we have an amazing son. So, you can’t put these doctors on a pedestal and accept their truth as your truth. You need to fight for what you want in your life and if you want really good health, stop believing the limitations that other people put on you. Their belief system is their own and I believe you have an amazing ability to heal yourself, your body wants to heal itself.

As one of my mentors once told me, your body has this blueprint of perfect health and healing. It’s somewhere deep inside you in the higher self, in your soul. But it is in there. You have inside you this blueprint of perfect health and healing. If you’re spiritual, then God has that instilled in you and your body wants to come back to that. Homeostasis is the body always trying to get back to that perfect point of balance. What throws the body off balance can be stress. It can be emotional, physical, mental stress – physical stress being drugs, alcohol, the over 80,000 manmade chemicals in our air, food, water, soil. Right? There are so many factors now that are putting stressors on the body and so, with one thing at a time, with one episode at a time, with one meal at a time, with one day at a time, you can make these beautiful little changes to supporting your body’s ability to heal itself. That's what I want you to focus on. Don’t focus on what the doctor told you that you're going to be sick the rest of your life. Or you have this because your parents had it or you had this because you're old or you have this because you're a man or a woman, or whatever. Whatever excuse they said. You have this issue because… That’s their belief system. You don’t need to buy into their belief system. If you want perfect health and healing, then that's what we’re going to focus on. Because your body can heal. Just like you got a paper cut, you get a little cut, you don’t even think about it. The body just does the healing for you, right?

Now, if you have a lack of nutrients in your body, it takes longer to do wound healing. I have some clients who got their nutrition totally under control, got rid of all their nutrient deficiencies. Their body was super nutrified and then they went in for some kind of surgery and the doctors couldn’t believe how fast they healed. They were amazed. They had to take stitches out weeks before. I had a friend heal a bone faster than was expected. I’ve had clients that the incisions heal incredibly fast. I even had a friend who’s a fellow coach who was working with a client who had a stage IV bed sore and the doctors were like this person is going to die from this, there’s nothing we can do. The bed sores were all the way from the skin into the bone. We changed his diet. Diet. That’s all we could do because they were in a hospital but we changed his diet. And I said okay, here’s the foods I know that are super healing, here’s the foods that I know are super nutrifying, and here’s a list of the foods that are definitely going to hinder his wound healing. Guess what? He was able to get out of that hospital completely having healed that stage IV bed sore. 

And the doctors, within days of changing his diet, the doctors were like, “Hey, something’s working.” We’re like, yeah, we stopped feeding him the hospital food and started bringing in our own. There are foods that help the body heal. Everything you put into your body matters. Right? And that's why I love the magnesium soak because it absorbs straight into your body, bypasses the digestive system, straight into your lymph system. I love the NAD supplements. I really feel a difference when I take it. Especially the ozone therapy is amazing.

ENERGYbits is one I haven’t mentioned here but you can go to ENERGYbits.com and use coupon code LTH. Like yesterday for breakfast, I just had chlorella and spirulina. ENERGYbits to me tastes delicious. Other companies’ chlorella and spirulina, I don’t like. The ENERGYbits are so clean and so pure. It’s pure amino acids. The body just immediately absorbs the nutrients and the vitamins from the ENERGYbits and I feel so good. All I did was eat 30 of these little pellets of chlorella and 30 little pellets of spirulina. That’s all I had for breakfast yesterday and I was full until about 1 PM. How cool is that? I fully nutrified my body with it. So, it’s a food. It’s little capsules you chew, not capsules, it’s like little pressed tablets that you chew. We call them green crackers in our home because our son loves them. But they're actually not a supplement; they're a crop. They're a crop the sun dehydrated and for ease of use pressed into these little things that you can chew. So, I love the ENERGYbits. Of course, you can go back. You can use the search function on my website Learntruehealth.com, search ENERGYbits and find the interview, several of them with Catherine Arnston where we go through the science and the studies. It’s the most studied food in the world. There's over 100,000 studies between chlorella and spirulina. It’s the safest food in the world to eat. It’s the most studied food in the world. And it’s actually the most nutritious food in the world.

My most recent episode with Catherine Arnston, episode 487, is fantastic to listen to. She goes through, even though like I said I’ve had her on the show several times, that one is fantastic. We go through the latest science of chlorella and spirulina and how it actually acts as an antimicrobial in the body and it helps to establish a better microbiome. It is so cool, the science. If you geek out like me on the science of holistic medicine, you're going to love that episode.

So without further ado, I’ll let you get to this episode with Dr. Garcia. I know you're going to love it. I just really felt like I had to do you a service by making sure that you knew that there's all these resources. When you come to listen to this episode, I want to arm you with all these other things that you can do and now you have a bunch of things to listen to after you listen to this one. I’ve given you a list of other ones to go through. Of course, like I said, it’s in the notes of this episode. So, go through all those episodes when you’ve done this one and know that your body will heal itself. Sometimes it’s as simple as little bit of changes in lifestyle, going to bed at a different time, making sure and walking in sunlight in the morning, especially drinking enough water, drinking lemon water in the morning. These changes seem almost because they're so simple, they seem like “Oh that's too simple. My symptoms are so great. These are such small changes. How can they possibly help?” I think that some people go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Drink lemon water in the morning, whatever. That just doesn’t sound like it could help me.” First of all, huge benefits from hydrating the body, and then the lemon water, once it gets inside your cells, it actually acts as an antioxidant. Even though it’s acidic in your stomach, it’s actually alkaline once it’s absorbed up inside your body. So, yes, simple cheap things that you can do, like drinking a lot of lemon water in the morning, going for walks first thing in the morning, making sure you get to bed at 10:00 PM, that actually makes a huge difference. Making this shift in your diet. I have so many episodes on the wonderful healing benefits of eating organic and removing gluten grains, removing oil from your diet and increasing antioxidants with all kinds of wonderful, colorful vegetables and berries, mushrooms, onions. You can listen to my episode with Dr. Joel Fuhrman, like a nutritarian diet. Doing these changes, within 24 hours, there’s a shift in your body. Even just one meal. Eating a nutritarian meal actually is seen. You can see it in bloodwork. It begins to affect you right away. Don’t discredit diet changes, little tiny changes. Don’t discredit them. They are the key to your better health. I’m so excited for you on this healing journey because no matter where you are, if you're suffering like I did, please know that you don’t have to suffer. It is optional. And we’re going to help you to get to a point where you’re no longer suffering. I believe in your body’s ability to heal itself. 

Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day, and enjoy today’s episode. 

[00:21:06] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 493.

I am so excited for today’s interview. We have an amazing guest, Dr. Oz Garcia, on the show today who specializes in helping people to heal and overcome from long-haul syndrome. We’re seeing the masses having huge issues recovering even months later after having COVID. And you’ve written an amazing book called After COVID. It’s on Amazon. Of course, the links to everything that Dr. Garcia does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at Learntruehealth.com. 

As the pandemic began in 2020, when did you start to see people suffering from long-haul syndrome? Much like mono where even a year later, people are just exhausted, mentally exhausted. They’ve got brain fog; it’s affecting people mentally and emotionally. Some people even have digestive problems months and months later. When did you start to see it as a problem?

[00:22:11] Dr. Oz Garcia: Great question, Ashley. I would say the summer of 2020 already, even though that was the beginning, in many ways of the pandemic, that March is when it really took off. But people were already being deeply affected. They have been exposed to the virus. Months later, I started to read about people that have gotten it right at the beginning and by August-September, I was reading about people that were somewhat incapacitated. In other words, they got sick. They had gone through all that was available to actually get through the illness itself yet there was the post-illness hangover, so to say, and information was already coming out at that point and I thought to myself, this is really peculiar. Kind of like what you said about mono and Epstein-Barr where you took a bad hit but it would debilitate you for indefinite periods of time and for the effects of COVID, nobody knew what this was, why were people still experiencing symptoms three months, four months, six months later. And now we know that people are experiencing it one year, two years, going into three years for some people.

[00:23:42] Ashley James: This is very scary because a lot of doctors are ignoring it. A lot of doctors don’t know what to do. They are sending people, just go to a counselor, maybe this is just a mental or emotional issue. But they don’t have this toolset and the drug companies haven’t developed a drug yet, so they're just like, “Well, just wait and be sick until we figure out a drug we can give you.” 

But really, none of those things are the answer. Is this similar to other viruses that cause a syndrome? Is this similar? Or are you seeing it that it’s even worse? Is it different?

[00:24:19] Dr. Oz Garcia: The nature of this virus is its novelty in terms of what’s happening that is completely radically different than anything that’s come before it. So, when people get exposed to it, they could get a kind of like COVID which is in something that I would say is all that good. We don’t know if you get exposed to COVID one, two, or three times with a new variant that there may not be long-term repercussions even though the hit may be initially somewhat light. Now, we know that because of the novelty of this particular virus, in fact, it mutates—in fact, it mutates so rapidly. The fact that there are many points along the protein spikes on the virus itself that can cause depending on the person, depending on their current state of health, depending on preexisting conditions, genetics, whether you're going to go down or not and whether you're going to go down really bad, and whether you're going to have a good recovery or not, and you're going to find yourself with post COVID or long-haul syndrome.

So, doctors are not all that well-equipped to actually deal with this problem because we’ve never seen it before. So, if you do go to a doctor, they’re going to look at you as they did with me when I was first diagnosed with long-haul as a mystery, what do I do about my lungs that were ravaged by COVID pneumonia. What do I do about these joint aches that were back breaking? What do I do about the severe exhaustion and apathy that had me sleeping up to 18 hours a day? What do I do about my moods? The fact that there was this no sense of happiness whatsoever, just morose, blue, anxious. And then the terrible problems with insomnia.

So, I had the full package. Everything that anybody could have had post COVID, I had. I went from weighing about 140 pounds to about 100, maybe 99, 98 pounds by the time I got home from the hospital. So, I was a walking wreckage. Like that, there are people in the millions that got this virus. It’s kind of like termites in a house. They come in, they do the damage that they do. You get the exterminator, they put the canvas over your house, they come in and they spread the house and fumigate it, kill all the termites, take the tent down, but you wouldn’t dare go into the house afterwards. God only knows what condition the floor is in, the staircase. So, kind of like that. COVID does tremendous biological infrastructural damage for many people. Certainly those that are long-haulers and symptomology that's unexpected.

So, you can’t reduce it to a pill, a solution. There are too many moving parts when you’re talking about long-haul COVID or post-COVID syndrome. Some people can’t recover their smell for a while or their taste for a while or they’ve got chronic headaches. It may be just something like that. It can be just deep disturbances with your sleep. So, you can have mild long-term symptomology which is also nerve-wracking or the full package in the way that I had it where when I was speaking to some doctors that are dear friends of mine, some of the most brilliant cardiologists, pulmonologists and so on that couldn’t come up with any way to explain what was going on and any way to explain what would be the best path out or best paths out. 

So, doctors themselves are baffled. There are doctors themselves that have wound up with long COVID, and they're suffering and they understand that this isn’t a mental problem. That there are severe problems with your body that they can’t put a finger on. There are programs at different institutions at Cornell Weill, at Mount Sinai, programs for long-haulers I think at NYU also. I find that the counsel and advice that’s being given by the faculty of doctors in these different institutions leaves a lot to be desired.

[00:29:01] Ashley James: What did you do? So you were patient zero for yourself. Or patient one. You were like ground zero. You're treating yourself first and having to figure out what is going on. Then also, you were seeing amazing experts and they were all scratching their heads too. So you had to really build your protocol from the ground up.

[00:29:20] Dr. Oz Garcia: Let’s backtrack a little bit. I’ve been in my field for about 40 years. I’ve been a long-distance runner. I’ve been a marathoner. I’ve been an ultramarathoner. And I’ve been accustomed to having great control over my body. Certainly when it came to my breathing capacity, the fact that I could in the weeks before I got COVID get up, do 150 push-ups, work out in the ways that I was accustomed to working out and generally feel really well to getting home several weeks after being hospitalized with COVID where I tried to do one push-up and fell and banged my head and just made things worse. Being accustomed to having been a runner and having full lung capacity to where now I was attached to an oxygen compressor 24 hours a day for about two months, this was mentally debilitating and when I would talk to the doctors that had treated me in the hospital, you could almost feel them shrugging their shoulders over the phone. They didn’t know what to say. Bit by bit, they disconnected from being in communication with me.

So yeah, I had to be my own patient zero, so to say. The fact that I knew so much about caring for my body in terms of nutrition, in terms of mindfulness practices, the supplements that I used, the way that I would work out, the fitness protocols, the use of contrast between extreme heat and extreme cold, whether it was sauna and cold plunges. All of these plus a multitude of other practices, protocols, and products that I never thought about, I had to think about. Now, I knew that if I wanted to get my breathing back into control, that I had to rely on myself. And what was out there that was available to actually rehabilitate lungs that have been ravaged by viral pneumonia, by COVID pneumonia, whereas the doctors couldn’t tell me what to do really. 

I kind of literally, in my bed, laid out a spreadsheet. Okay, so my mood sucked. What do I do about that? My anxiety is through the roof. I don’t have energy. I need to crawl to the bathroom. My breathing is suffering tremendously. My lungs have sustained a certain amount of damage. My appearance, at 98 pounds, I looked like I had survived coming out of Somalia. I could count the bones on my chest. My face is completely sunken in. So, what could I do to rebuild my muscle mass? What could I do to gain my weight back? So, this became an inquiry in terms of all my prior knowledge and could I bring it to bear so that I could save my life.

[00:32:28] Ashley James: How long did it take you before you started to start feeling better again?

[00:32:33] Dr. Oz Garcia: I would say it was a good 8 months. Good 8 months. So, the first several months was falling into routines that I would follow every day religiously and repeat them every single day over and over and over. Then, what I would do is add another routine. It’s kind of like becoming a juggler. You start out by juggling two balls and then at a certain point, you find that you can keep on pulling up in the air and add a third one. Then all of a sudden, I was juggling three balls. Then bit by bit, as I had my confidence increased, I could add a fourth and a fifth and so on.

So, it was a lengthy process and it’s still going on. I’m still rebuilding my body almost few years later. But I’m far and away from where I was when I couldn’t stand up hardly. Like I said, I had to crawl to just about any part of my apartment. My breathing was terribly labored. By following the counsel I’d say of thinkers that were better than I am, certainly in how to do things incrementally like James Clear, and James’ book, Atomic Habits. So by listening to Atomic Habits, again, while I was in the hospital, audiobooks, and then kind of listening to it again when I was home, I knew that I could do a little tiny bit every day. If I could do 0.25% percent better than I did the day before and keep building up so that it was a percentage increase in a week, then 0.50%, then could I do 1% better today than I did yesterday? With my breathing exercises, my ability to do some kind of strengthening exercises, crafting my eating so that it was to make me gain back muscle mass, and then by category, all the different things that I knew I needed to do, within a matter of several months, I was off the breathing device that I had at home. Then beyond that, I saw that my appearance is improving. That encouraged me tremendously.

I lost a lot of my hair as you saw before. I now have a full head of hair. But it was coming out in patches. Same thing. You all of a sudden go from thinking of yourself in a certain way in the world, you take great pride in terms of your upkeep, your appearance, and here I was I looked completely unrecognizable to myself.

There were other problems also that arise in the hospital. I developed clots in my body. Now, this is an effect of the virus itself. So there were medications that I was put on to actually break the clots up. They did save my life. Once I got out of the hospital, I found alternative protocols, alternative treatments to actually break clots up because the medications themselves that I was taking were producing terrible side effects.

So, bit by bit, I found the appropriate parallel protocol for just about everything that I was suffering from and how could I continue to expand on that. Okay, so if I use certain kinds of nutrients to improve on my sleep, then could I eliminate what they gave me in the hospital? Could I eliminate my insomnia? By category, same thing there, I worked up a complete protocol for supplementation. That is, the vitamins, the minerals, the amino acids, the essential fatty acids, the peptides, the nootropics, the herbal products. All the products that I felt besides the basics, things like vitamin D and probiotics, but much more I would say precise use of certain nutrients that could build my brain back, that could build my energy back, that could put me into very deep sleep for hours at a time, that could help me recover my energy from the damage that was done to my muscles, the mitochondria, the engines within the cells of my body. Bit by bit, I started to feel that I was going to actually get my life back. But it was bit by bit. It was a James Clear inspired process to getting my life back.

[00:37:26] Ashley James: At what point did you start to share this with patients or clients or people you’re working with? At what point did you start to then help others?

[00:37:35] Dr. Oz Garcia: I would say it took me months. Probably I got sick at the end of the January of 2021 and by October-November 2021, I was back to journaling, writing essays, posting on media, and it occurred to me that I wanted to write a book about my experience and put in that book what it was that I did to save my ass, so to say. The book itself winds up being in two parts. It’s a history of the events that many people go through when they wind up with severe COVID, my own personal experience. Then the second part, Ashley, is pretty much a workbook like these are the things that I did for sleep, these are the things that I did to improve my appetite. These are things that I did to get my muscle mass back up. These are things that I did to improve my brain, my memory (short-term and long-term). And these are things and these are the products that I used to improve my focus, my recall. These are the things that I used to get my motivation back on track.

So I had to earn it all back. I’d say a lot of it was the discipline prior to COVID. I had to draw on that and use certain thinkers that, again, I would listen to, to get the inspiration, to motivate myself when there was no motivation at all. There was nothing in my body that I would say felt like you got to get up, you got to do breathing exercises. None of that. I had to literally use my brain power to move me through just about every exercise, every practice, every protocol to get back to where I thought I should be. And that, like I said before, was incremental over a matter of many, many months. But I’d say by October-November, I was healthy enough, fit enough that I could start writing out everything about my misadventure and how to get your life back at least from my perspective from long-haul COVID. 

[00:40:04] Ashley James: I definitely want to get into things that you felt were really impactful. But I’d like to know, have you ever had chronic illness in your past or is this the first time you’ve really suffered?

[00:40:18] Dr. Oz Garcia: I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never ever experienced anything of this magnitude at all. Nothing that I could recall. Nothing that prevented me from being able to get out of my bed. Literally, Ashley, I couldn’t lift my arms at a certain point. The fact that there was no muscle there to lift it, it should tell you something in that regard. So no, I was completely unprepared for this.

[00:40:52] Ashley James: Now you're in your 70’s and we got to see each other, I got to see you on video and you look incredibly handsome and you don’t look anywhere, I mean, if someone said you're in your 50’s, I’d be like, “Okay,” Like you are very handsome. When I say handsome, I mean very healthy. You look very healthy. So, I know that the work that you’ve done, like you said, you’ve built all these habits, all these routines to getting yourself back and you still are getting yourself back. But I just think about the amount of empathy now you have for those who are in chronically ill states and especially those who are also going through long-haul like you have so much empathy now having been incredibly healthy before, having not really ever experienced chronic illness and you were a marathon runner, your peak performance, top health, and then it was all taken away from you, just very quickly taken away from you and now you're building your body back from being emaciated. So your compassion and your drive, even though you didn’t have any because I know when you have long-haul syndrome, you don’t have motivation. There's no motivation. Like you had to really pull up some motivation that wasn’t even there from like you said mental willpower. I like that you turned back to Atomic Habits. What a great audiobook. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to that with my husband. We really got a lot out of it. I couldn’t believe when I saw an Audible that it was a 5-star and it had so many ratings. I’m like, what has 5 stars? And now, that has 5 stars. That's a great one to tell everyone to listen to.

The fact that you suffered so greatly and you have come so far and you can turn around and then help those who are also suffering. That’s why I know that your book is going to be so helpful for so many people, the book After COVID. I’m so happy that you're here today sharing so that we can help those no longer suffer.

[00:43:00] Dr. Oz Garcia: It’s true. Also, being in the hospital, being told that I may never be able to work out again, run again, may as well forget, I was literally told that many of the things that I had in my life, I think I had my iPhone me, I was just constantly doing Google searches on what was known at that time. But I came very close to dying in the hospital. As my weight kept dropping rapidly, as I would go in and out of conscience often during the day, the fact that there was no real understanding about the value of sleep, so you would be woken up several times a night. I know this is well-intended to take your blood pressure, make sure that your oxygen saturation was what it should be, draw your blood, but I went through three weeks where I essentially would sleep totally maybe 2, 3, 4 hours maximum per night. You got to know at that point, Ashley, there were no hospital rooms available. They are all taken. So we were being wielded into a converted storage room. So, no windows, temperature control didn’t exist. The rooms would either get too hot, too cold, extremely humid. And that would add to the terror that you were going through emotionally, right? Again, we’re talking about a pandemic. Nobody was prepared. Nobody understood how bad this was and how bad it was about to get still. And how to make sure that you could be as comfortable as possible. The medical system was horrifically overwhelmed. While I was in there, I would say that there was a revolution within my value system. So, all the things that I thought were meaningful before, bit by bit as I went through my recovery, started to lose meaning. How important was it to accumulate great wealth, how important was it to accumulate notoriety, being well known, how important was it to have substantial material goods, how important was it to fly off to exotic destinations and think that this was what was important in life.

So, that whole system kind of collapsed and it was, I’d say, one of the gifts out of all of this and I got to be careful because I wish I could have come to these points of view, the ones that I hold now, in terms of yes, having greater empathy, greater compassion, intense gratitude, humility, the value systems that when you stack them all together allow you to have a sense of integrity and a sense of self that wasn’t there before. And I thought that it was there before. I thought that was I pursuing authenticity and sincerity, but at the same time, you wind up in a hedonic treadmill where if you live in New York City, or any big city in America, you’re driven to achieve and achieve to the point where your value systems do get bent out of shape and corrupted. And you can’t see it when you're in it. It’s kind of like a fish in the water. You're just operating that way. What’s everybody in New York up to? Looking good, scoring big, making sure that you're recognized for being somewhat special. All the things that you can’t really say in totality add up to being a happy human being. Whatever they add up to, the whole notion of what it means to be happy wasn’t on my mind. It was kind of like okay, this is what you do and this is what your work is producing for you.

I think these days, my concern is certainly for people around me, and the kind of value system that does allow me to be a lot more forgiving for how I was and where things go wrong these days. Just forgiving overall. And we know through neuroscience that to the extent that you practice gratitude, you can get a gratitude journal, you can get a gratitude app. You can get a 5-minute journal app, download it, and do five minutes of gratitude every morning, five minutes of gratitude before you go to bed every night. And we know that after a month to three, it has a profound effect on your thinking. How it is that you view the world, how you view yourself and how you view people around you. So, all of those things took on greater meaning for me and continue to grow, expand, push out as more time has elapsed, Ashley, since I became sick and I started to look at the world this way.

[00:48:40] Ashley James: So, you're sharing with us things that you got out of it. It’s like taking a very horrible and tragic experience and you're starting to find the growth there.

[00:48:52] Dr. Oz Garcia: That's correct. But like I pointed out before, did I have to go that far down to come this far in terms of how I now live my life and the way that we’re shaping our practice, our office, and my interactions with most people. So, maybe in my case that’s what it took and thank God I survived. There were plenty of people that I knew that didn’t survive, that didn’t make it. I shared a room with one gentleman who passed away the second week that I was in the hospital and another room with another gentleman that passed away.

So, I remember, I do recall many people kind of telling me, “Well, what lessons did you learn out of this?” Frankly, I don’t think I learned anything. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. It’s not an experience that people need to go through. Now, I think because of my character, I kind of got enough out of this experience that I knew that since I lived and I made it through, that I didn’t want to embody the values that I had before. They somehow seemed meaningless to me. Like the texture of rice paper, like looking good, does that really matter? Or does like you mentioned before, being empathetic and compassionate, does that matter? And should I put my attention there?

In totality, you find that you're accumulating greater amounts of peace of mind whereas I don’t think I had all that much before. I was just driven.

[00:50:43] Ashley James: Wow, it really did completely reset your whole life and you've built yourself back up and then you turned around and you want to help others. I love the work that you're doing because we can end the suffering of so many. There's people out there who went through what you went through. 

[00:51:05] Dr. Oz Garcia: Very true. Well, to give you a quick example, let’s talk about breathing for a minute. So, with my COVID, I had a severe pneumonia. When I was in the hospital and I was CAT scanned, they told me that I had about half of my lungs filled with, to quote the doctor, millions of micro clots. And I had one substantial clot headed for my heart. So, I couldn’t breathe. They wanted to put me on a mechanical ventilator, I refused. Statistically, many of us already know that if you go on a mechanical ventilator, your chances, at least back then, were 2 out of 10 that you’d come back. The other 8 just wouldn’t survive the experience of a mechanical ventilator. They put this tube down your throat into your lungs, you're sedated, you could be sedated for a day, a week, a month, and the mechanical ventilator breathes for you. Now, I knew based on the stats that I just told you and what I reckon, that this would be highly destructive. I took my chances. So consequentially, I was put on what’s called a high-flow cannula. That's kind of like a little breathing device that's attached to this machine that would push 65 liters of oxygen into my nose per minute at 100% oxygen. I went with that and thank God that I survived to be here and tell you the story.

Now, when I got home, I couldn’t breathe without still using auxiliary oxygen, and bit by bit, I started to investigate different devices to help me breathe better. Now, one of the things that they give you in the hospital, they gave me what’s called a spirometer and it’s kind of like a little plastic device that you blow into and then you suck the air in, you suck and you breathe in and you make a little ball go up. To the extent that you breathe better, you can make the little ball go up further and further. And I thought to myself, is this going to really save my life when I get home. You can get it on Amazon for $8. With the severe pneumonia that I had, how do I get back to breathing the way that it did before?

A dear friend of mine who’s a very well-known athlete turned me onto a particular breathing device that you get with an app and started using it. It was like sitting still in a chair using the breathing device, this actually gave me a workout. I could only start at the beginning by doing 1 minute at the beginner level which would knock me out. I’d have to go lie down in my bed. I could hardly make the needle move on the breathing device. My ability to hold oxygen, breathe out and breathe in, you got a measure of all those three metrics, was horrific. Over months doing it every day, sometimes twice a day and working it was the way that I got to breathe again in the way that I do now so that I can go walk, I can go walk for 2 to 3 hours several times a week and bit by bit will consider if I want to run. There were reasons why I’m not running yet. But I can work out the way that I worked out before and go to the gym, do my upper body workouts. And this is what’s missing in the conversation with many specialists that are trying to teach long haulers how to recover their breathing capacity. If you can’t recover your breathing capacity, fully oxygenate yourself, it’s going to be difficult to actually get many other aspects of your health post COVID working as well as you want to.

I was listening to NPR radio a few days ago. On NPR, they were interviewing a gentleman who’s had long COVID now for almost two years and he was talking about how he uses the spirometer still every day and I thought to myself, “oh my God.” Two years later into his suffering still having great difficulty getting up, can only work a couple of hours per week, and doesn’t know that there may be other ways of strengthening his lung capacity, expanding his lungs, getting more oxygen throughout his body and to his brain. So there isn’t a single morning that I don’t do about 40 minutes worth of breathing exercises. That's part of the morning routine. And I can run up the four flights of stairs in my building. Whereas when I first got home, it could take me about half an hour to get up the first 2 flights. 

[00:56:33] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. Do you not have an elevator?

[00:56:35] Dr. Oz Garcia: Well, I live in a beautiful townhouse. That was very difficult. 

[00:56:40] Ashley James: Got it. So half an hour to crawl up two flights of stairs in your townhome whereas now you can run up and down the stairs. 

[00:56:48] Dr. Oz Garcia: That's correct.

[00:56:49] Ashley James: Nice. 

[00:56:51] Dr. Oz Garcia: Also too, as I rehabilitated my breathing, so did my energy start to come back. Instead of having to be in bed at 3:00, I could enjoy normal life. 6:00, 8:00. I remember the first time that I made it till 9:00 PM and I was in sheer ecstasy. It was like yes, you know, everything that you’ve done, you didn’t need to get in bed and crawl and do a 2 to 3-hour nap. You're getting better.

[00:57:18] Ashley James: I love it. I want those who are suffering to see the light at the end of the tunnel and I think your story is sharing that and showing that there’s definitely light at the end of the tunnel for them.

[00:57:32] Dr. Oz Garcia: That's correct.

[00:57:32] Ashley James: So, breathing exercise is important. Of course, you outlined this in greater detail in your book. Are there supplements or like IV protocols or like ozone IV? What else is there that helped you with your lungs beyond daily breathing exercises?

[00:57:48] Dr. Oz Garcia: We have a clinic and we do have an IV clinic. So, there were two bags of IVs that I would do per week. At the beginning of the week, I would have my clinician come over and I would do a bag with a multitude of minerals, vitamins, antioxidants, amino acids. These would have a tremendous impact on how I felt. The second IV was using a very unique and novel form of vitamin B3 called NAD+. NAD is a nutrient that has a massive impact on life extension. So, it will do a great deal of repair within our own DNA sequences so that you produce less mutations as you get older. Now, NAD, we know gets depleted as a consequence of COVID. Certainly, severe COVID. Those particular IVs with extremely high amounts of vitamin C, glutathione, N-acetylcysteine, acetylcarnitine, licorice, all of these were compounded for me, B complex, minerals, amino acids. That was critical to getting me back to normal. Then the second IV which was the NAD one.

So, those are still very important. I do maybe twice a month now instead of twice a week. They’re not something that most people can find unless they go out and search for a good functional MD so that they have access to the intravenous treatment protocols that I believe had a measurable impact to my recovery. Now, separate from that, there were all the supplements that I would use. There were supplements that helped you sleep better. Gaba, magnesium threonate, L-Serine. There’s a plant called Zembrin which is now part of a product that you can get that actually calms your mind and you sleep better. The different forms of plants that I like, herbal products, holy basil. That has a remarkable effect too. So, I would stack these – Ashwaganda, gaba, vitamin B6, 5HTP. Kind of like a little hand grenade in my hand of all these nutrients that would allow me to go into a really good deep sleep. These are laid out in the workbook part of After COVID. They work very well for me and I continue to use them and I sleep a good 8 to 9 hours most days, I make a point of that.

Sleep winds up being a superpower for recovery. If you're not sleeping well and you're trying to get better, just about everything else is going to kind of break down. Your diet, your exercise, getting out and getting sun every day, trying to meditate. Your anxiety won’t alleviate unless you're getting adequate sleep on a regular basis.

I use a tool called an Oura Ring. Now the Oura Ring just like certain kinds of Fitbits, but I would say with much better accuracy, measures a great deal of your activity during the daytime if you want to, certainly when you go to sleep at night. So, by using the Oura Ring and looking at my app in the morning, I could tell how much sleep I got, my body temperature during the night, how many times I woke up, how long was I in deep sleep which allows your immune system to recover, your brain to detox, how long was in REM sleep (that’s where you're doing a lot of dreaming and a lot of memory consolidation is occurring), how much light sleep. And so, I could see my improvement over many months and now, I get almost a perfect score every night.

There's also a measure called heart rate variability (HRV) which you want to make sure is in the high levels. Your HRV can be measured while you're sleeping. HRV levels tend to drop when you're really ill, when you're stressed out. I would say a good HRV is about 40+. My HRV when I got out of the hospital was about 8, 9, 10. I knew that I was in jeopardy at that time.

[01:02:46] Ashley James: Wow. I love the idea of doing the tracking with, like you said, the Fitbit or Apple Watch or Oura Ring and being able to attract heart rate variability is so key. I’ve actually had a few episodes where clinicians have shared about it. We’ve had naturopaths share about it and nutritionists share about it, that they see it’s how we can measure the body’s base stress levels or like you can measure base metabolic rate. You can measure what your body is doing, just the burning calories, and we can understand the metabolism. But now we can look at it and see like how many RPMs are we revving. Are we like always revving at 1200 RPMs or are we revving at 9000 RPMs, is our body revving at high stress. Because I once had a client, she’d do all of my homework except she wouldn’t do any of the homework I gave her to lower stress or to manage stress. I brought it up after a few weeks of noticing. She’d do everything else. She would eat healthy, she’d track what she ate, but she refused to do any of the things that brought more happiness and less stress into her life.

So I approached it with her and she goes, “Well, I don’t feel stress. I don’t need to do this because I don’t feel stress.” I’m like, “Oh, stress isn’t an emotion.” But especially, coming from the perspective of a woman, I just see a lot of moms do this where they ignore stress levels because it’s not an emotion, so it’s not right in our forefront. But we’ll push ourselves and push ourselves. I even had a nutritionist on the show who she pushed herself to the point where she fainted. Her body was so stressed out physically and emotionally that her body said “I’m done.” The circuit breaker blew and she just fainted. That's when she had to go “Okay,” and doctors were like “Yeah, your blood pressure is through the roof, your heart rate is through the roof like everything is through the roof.” She had to dial it back. She ended up quitting her career and going and starting a whole new career and because she had to, like you did, reevaluate her values and realize that she was digging herself an early grave with her stress. Stress is not an emotion. We cannot feel when we’re not stressed. If you actually feel yourself stressed out, you are revving at the top. You’re at like 12,000 RPMs revving at the top. Maybe your heart is beating out of your chest.

But that’s why it’s sort of like they say blood pressure is the silent killer. Having high blood pressure, you don’t feel it. And if you feel it, you're really in danger. 

[01:05:06] Dr. Oz Garcia: That's correct.

[01:05:07] Ashley James: Heart rate variability allows us to see where is our baseline stress level because if we can lower it, if we can do things like get to bed on time, not eat sugar, and alcohol increases the stress levels in the body, and you can track it. You can track your heart rate variability. 

[01:05:22] Dr. Oz Garcia: Oh yeah, you’ll see on the occasions where I’ve had even a couple of glasses of wine, after having a good run for several weeks with elevated HRV, I can see my HRV plummet just from a few glasses of wine at nighttime and waking up and going, “Damn it.” You kick yourself and you realize that yes, in terms of long-haul COVID, it may not be so smart. But even if you don’t have it, overall, it does seem to affect how long you may live, chips away at your DNA’s desire to stick around longer.

[01:06:02] Ashley James: And that's so important. Everything we’re doing now will affect us in our later years. I’ve watched several family members who didn’t take care of themselves really suffer in the last 10 year of their life. I really don’t want to spend the last 10 years of my life suffering and being a burden on my family. It’s just not fun for anyone. We’re dragging everyone down. First of all, a lot of people are ignorant. I should say they're naïve. Where people are naïve, they’re buying into the marketing, the food marketing. They go through the drive-thru’s and they don’t take care of themselves. They don’t take care of themselves emotionally, they don’t take care of themselves physically and they're just going with the flow. And they’ll end up like a statistic. Like the heart disease and cancer, the leading causes of death. It’s so unfortunate that the people die much younger in America than they do in other countries.

If you want to be a statistic, first of all, go Google the statistics, go look at them and then keep doing what everyone else is doing. But my listeners don’t do that. My listeners are here learning from you because they want to be 90 years old, hiking at 90, and they don’t want to be a burden on their loved ones. And they want to enjoy the last few decades of their life want to be filled with joy.

[01:07:14] Dr. Oz Garcia: That's correct.

[01:07:15] Ashley James: The choices we make now, like you said, drinking alcohol, let’s say, and not getting to sleep on time every night, staying up late every night, that eats away at our DNA. The eats away at our body. 

Dr. Alan Christianson was on the show a few months ago and he quoted this massive study where they found the single most important factor in all-cause mortality was stress levels. Smoking was the second. So, it’s like quitting smoking is less important than making sure you go to sleep on time and manage your stress. So, the idea of getting serious and, you know what, I’ll make sure my husband doesn’t hear this because I’ll tell you what I got him. I got him a Fitbit for Christmas. We were looking at the Apple Watch and all that stuff. But there was all these fees attached to it. So, I got him the best Fitbit and I’m so excited for him to start tracking because now, he’s becoming more aware and he wants to take even better care of himself. We talked about how you can track sleep and stuff like that. So, I’m getting him a Fitbit and he notices how great he feels when he starts doing all the things I tell him to do.  

[01:08:26] Dr. Oz Garcia: Wonderful. It turns out to be a game. I mean, you start playing a game with yourself where the feedback itself, the numbers that you get kind of entice you to want to get a better score the next day. Like, how do I get my 90 again? How do I get my HRV over 45? So, it’s almost a game that I play with myself. It’s the first thing that I do in the morning. Open up my Oura app and look at my scores, and it’s like “Yes!” There's the Garmin, there’s Whoop, there’s Fitbit, there's Oura. So anything that turns you on that will allow you to measure what’s going on with your body and most importantly with your sleep, that becomes a critical aspect certainly for most people. Long-haulers I think need that kind of information so that they can autocorrect. But just about anybody that wants to get better control of their bodies, they need to quantify certain kinds of data. I would say central to all the spokes, is your sleep. Many times, when I’ve got clients that come in and they want to know, “Well, how am I going to eat? When are you going to put me on an eating program?” it’s like, well, how’s your sleep? Horrible. Really. Okay, so I’ll start by cleaning up their sleeping practices and then, we’re going to talk about something else. How’s your level of fitness? Do you meditate? Are you a mindful human being? Let’s get all the basics in order then let’s talk about food so that you get maximum value out of what you eat and it’s not such a struggle. It’s just not a struggle.

What you're finding is, it’s all something to contemplate over because you're well-rested, you’re in better moods. You can think about what’s going to empower you and give you energy at the beginning of the day. Should I have a smoothie? What kind of smoothie? Do I put fruits in it or not? Should I throw in some MCT oil, half an avocado? Okay, do I have lunch? Do I skip lunch? Do I have a high-protein lunch? Or is today vegetarian day? Should I skip dinner? Should I do intermittent fasting? What’s the latest that I should eat? 

So, it isn’t about being an overthinker; it’s about being a mindful, thoughtful individual about what you're doing with your body. What you’re putting in it, what you're doing to it, how you're resting it, what information you're exposing it to. It used to be that I would get up and years ago, first thing I’d do, I’d get out of bed and put on Morning Joe in the background. I can’t believe that that would be how I would start my morning. I would be stretching, do an exercise. And the TV would be on in the background listening to politics. I’d prepare my tea and just as unaware of how this was warping my thinking. And now, when I get up, I don’t even have a TV set anymore. I had two TV sets in my old apartment. Since COVID, I just don’t watch TV. If I want to watch a movie, I’ve got my iPad and I’ll go on to that, if I want to watch a documentary. 

So, it’s a very different experience to not have a TV set on. And I’ll put on Alexa and ask it to play some great jazz in the morning. So I’m good to bed and enter my morning with music. Which is one of the more remarkable ways for any of us to enter our mornings. Not blasting a TV set or listening to news first thing out of bed and wondering why the rest of your day, you’re on edge.

[01:12:33] Ashley James: I love that. Setting up an atmosphere. I heard there’s a whole thing around sleep hygiene like creating an environment to go to sleep to but I never thought of creating a hygiene of an environment to wake up to, to set the tone of the day to, to help the body and the stress hormones to ease into the day in a more motivated way than have my feet hit the floor and it’s like go, go, go, race, race, race and all the stimulation. You're rising, you’ve created an environment for healing going to bed at night but also waking up in the morning and considering that your mental and emotional state affect your physical stress levels, it’s important to nurture ourselves mentally and emotionally because that takes care of our body as well. 

[01:13:25] Dr. Oz Garcia: Very much. Morning rituals I think are critical for everyone. For me, to know that I had a routine that I could follow at my worst that I had no idea that anything I was doing was going to work. So whether it was through my breathing, having my weird concoctions in the morning, making sure that I got body work 3-4 times a week, I had no idea of this was going to give me my life back. Because I was reading the news just like everybody else. This is what happens with long-haul COVID. My blood tests indicated that there were blowouts within my immune system that if I was to believe what I read on Google didn’t bode well for me. 

So, I kind of stopped even doing that. I just started to do everything that I believed would get me back and that also started to nurture my mindset. So, it became a very flexible mindset and allowed me to look at things that were way out of what people would consider healing practices or could possibly have an effect on long-haul COVID. Then, reel it all the way back in and go, okay, so these are the protocols that I find make a difference for me. This is what got my fill-in-the-blank back to acceptable levels. And a lot of that occurred within the first 3-4 hours of waking up. So, I get up relatively early and I like to go to bed early, read before I go to bed for a while, maybe watch a little bit of a movie or documentary and then, all lights out by between 9 and 10 PM. 

Then, it’s up early between 5 and 6 AM. I’ve got plenty of time before work to do my morning routines, my morning rituals, and that includes doing meditative practices. I may do 10 minutes of meditation, 20 minutes. And I love to use the Sam Harris app which is called Waking Up. That's a world of information. Different teachers that are presenting multiple portholes into how to meditate, different kinds of meditative practices. There's a lot of theory that you can listen to. Recently, I listened to an interview with Laurie Santos who is a professor at psychology at Yale. Now, her course is called Well-being and Happiness. It’s the number one attended course in Yale. One in 4 studies in Yale attend it. So, I listened to the interview on Sam Harris and I thought this is unlike I’ve ever heard before on the subject matter of happiness. Went on to Coursera, signed up for a course and completed it and have a very different understanding of what it is that produces happiness. Like I thought I knew what it was before. But there are nuances, there are subtleties. That, by the way, I would say, Ashley, added much to my evolving perspective, what I knew wasn’t producing happiness. All right, so what does produce it? And this is like kind of the other side of it. So, these are the things that you should be looking at that will produce happiness. This is what happiness may or may not be. You may have had preconceptions about the subject matter, we’re going to kind of blow them up here. So, I’ve incorporated much of that simply because I’m listening to a meditation app every morning for 10 minutes. 

[01:17:16] Ashley James: And that definitely reflects your value shift. Our values, it’s our unconscious motivators. A lot of people don’t know. Like we know what a value means and we don’t understand how it affects our behavior. So at an unconscious level, it dictates our behavior. If you want to know what you value, so I have a master practitioner and trainer of neurolinguistic programming and there's a very simple thing you can do. Get a pad of paper and a pen and either you can do it yourself or you can ask someone else to do it. Sometimes it’s nicer if someone else is writing down what you say because you can just kind of go unconscious and say whatever. And you pick something. For example, my career. So you write down “my career”, these are the values that you're going to list about your career and you say what’s important to me about. But for this podcast, let’s say health. My body’s health. So what’s important to you about health? And you can even do what’s important to me about my life. Right? Then you just start writing down. So you say, what’s important to me about my health? That I have energy, I feel great in the morning, that I feel strong, that I’m able to run up a flight of stairs. You do sometimes say things in the negative that I’m not tired, that I’m not winded. So whatever you say, write it down. It doesn’t matter whether you say it in the positive or negative, you write it down. Then, you get about between 5 and 8 things out, and your mind goes blank. That’s the unconscious mind bringing it to the conscious, so you wait 15 seconds, 30 seconds, ask yourself again, what’s important to me about my health? Then new stuff will come to mind. You do this, you kind of rinse and repeat 3 or 4 times, you get a list. You can get a list of up to 40 things. It doesn’t have to be that long, you can just do 20 things. Then, you look at the list and then you number them. What is the most important thing about my life or my health? What’s the most important thing? Then you go down the list and you number them, and then you look at, oh very interesting, it will give you insight what is an away from, so what is a negative, like I don’t want to feel fat or I don’t want to look too skinny. When you say “I don’t” and it’s away from and you say a negative, you really want to highlight that or put like a little red line or under it, and then everything that’s stated in the positive, that's good. 

The values that have a negative associated to it have a negative belief system. That actually will drag us down and it will negatively impact our behaviors and our behaviors are what get our results in life, right? If your behavior is sitting on the couch and doing nothing, that’s getting your result. Doing nothing is a behavior also. Choosing not to do anything is a behavior. When people are negatively motivated, they’re the ones who join the gym in January but don’t go by February. Right? They’re the ones who you’ll get short-term gains but then you’ll give up. You want to examine and look at how many negative belief systems you carry that are attached to your negative values. This is a great self-exploration or you can find an NLP practitioner to work with to kind of go through and explore this, but even just like writing down and looking at your values and listing your values and looking at your values and going, this is all the results I get, all my behavior both conscious and unconscious in my life, the things I’m doing right now and the results I’m getting right now, this is what is motivating me to do or not do those things. Then looking at what is actually important. Because if you're not pursuing the things that are important to you, you might have a negative belief system holding you back.

Someone might be listening to you going, “Oh, but I couldn’t afford to do IV. I’m not even going to try. I’m not even going to start. I don’t have money so I can’t do it.” They cut themselves off from any further action because there's a negative belief around money or around time. What you're saying is you don’t need to be a millionaire with free time to get your health back. These are the things you did and even someone who like is on a pension or on disability, there are so many things they can do. There are so many free apps they can do. Maybe they can find a used on eBay, find an old used Oura ring or something. There's ways. But if you believe you can’t, you will stop seeing possibilities. 

[01:21:44] Dr. Oz Garcia: No question about it. 

[01:21:45] Ashley James: I want people who are suffering to see like if they have the brain fog and they're like “I don’t know if I can even do this,” but you could do breathing for one minute, you could start for one minute a day, or you could start to write down one thing you're grateful for and then the next day write two things you're grateful for. Like gratitude journaling, even if it’s just three things a morning, writing three things down, start somewhere because doing something is going in the right direction. As opposed to saying “Well, I can’t because I don’t have the time or I don’t have money.” Then boom, they’ve just cut themselves off from this world of possibilities whereas you built your health up so much so you went from crawling up to two flights of stairs in half an hour to being able to run up and down flights of stairs. And that's what I want for everyone who’s suffering. It does take that mindset.

[01:22:36] Dr. Oz Garcia: It does. 

[01:22:40] Ashley James: So knowing what motivates you and shifting your values but also understanding that you might have a belief system that is preventing you from even taking action and saying you know what, I’m not going to let this old negative belief that I created dictate my life anymore because what I want now is to be like Dr. Oz Garcia. I want to be healthy, I want to be building my body again, I want to overcome. And so it does take that. I too lang had long-haul COVID but my experience was really unique in that April of 2021, I was giving birth and my daughter died right at the end of labor. Her head was halfway out and she passed away and we don’t know why. We have no idea why. Of course, with the grief, my blood pressure was through the roof, paramedics were there for an hour and everything. It was incredibly traumatic losing her and right after that. I think I had a visitor, one of my friends came to visit within a few days and she didn’t know him and his son had COVID. You don’t know. Who knows? I just had that feeling like I couldn’t breathe almost like an asthma attack. Couldn’t breathe. My oxygen was low, I felt like I was passing out. I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t walk. At this time during COVID, I didn’t know how much of this is my tremendous amount of grief that I’m going through, how much of it is recovering from birth because my body is still recovering from birth and then how much of it is grief, how much of it was birth, how much is COVID, and then afterwards, again, I didn’t notice how much of my recovery because at that time also we found that we had to move. So, we’re packing. So now, I’m recovering from pregnancy, like having grief and trauma and now, post COVID, and not really knowing which is which. It’s all just a package of weirdness. And what a stress. What a stress from not knowing where we’re going to live.

One of my really close family members went into hospice care and we’re taking care of them. So it was just one thing after another. But what I realized is my brain was Swiss cheese. Doing interviews was really difficult. I was still very dedicated to the podcast but I went from… at the start of the podcast, I could do three episodes a week, three interviews a week and I could barely do one a month at the time. I just felt like my brain was Swiss cheese. I would be reaching for nouns or reaching for names and I couldn’t access it. I always thought maybe this is the trauma brain but this could be COVID brain. I also had a huge amount of muscle weakness. I could barely walk up the stairs. It wasn’t really winded like my lungs. I just could barely carry anything, could barely lift my arms. My legs were incredibly weak. I had to hold on to railings and go one step at a time, one leg at a time going up each stair. That was in April.

Then in December of last year, I decided to go for IV ozone, doing an ozone 10-pass.

[01:25:55] Dr. Oz Garcia: Remarkable, 10-pass is terrific. I did many of them as part of my recovery. It’s good for you.

[01:26:02] Ashley James: It was like night and day and I sat there with this wonderful naturopath and she did the 10-pass with me. It took about three hours. We talked the whole time, it was great. Then, so I pick up orders from Azure Standard. It’s like buying in bulk and I had these 25-pound bags of lentils and brown rice and whatever that I had bought. Her clinic is also a pick-up location for Azure. My order had arrived and I’m like, okay, just give me a sec. And I ran down, there's this long cement staircase all the way down to my car, and I ran down it and I opened up the trunk of the car and got it ready, and then I ran back up taking like not doing one step at a time, like jumping up each step, grabbed two bags, so carrying 50 pounds now, ran back down the stairs and I had maybe 4 or 5 bags. Normally, my husband would be the one carrying the bags. I was crying by the end of it, like tears of joy. I’m like, my muscle weakness was gone. I was like, this ozone 10-pass is amazing and so I thought, man, I didn’t realize that my muscle weakness was from the damages of mitochondrial damage from long-haul.

[01:27:21] Dr. Oz Garcia: Tremendous. Long-haul does create mitochondrial damage. Mitochondria, for those that don’t know, are the engines within all our cells. Each cell that we have, each neuron that we have has hundreds, if not thousands, of these little engines and their job is primarily to produce energy by burning off sugar, fat, and protein to the extent that that may be a fuel like ketones, for instance. So, when you get COVID and any number of other illnesses for some people, I would say Lyme disease, chronic Lyme’s, I would say long-haul in many ways is very similar to having chronic Lyme. The ability of your mitochondria to perform is corrupted. They don’t burn off fuel like they're supposed to. They're not burning fat like they're supposed to. They're not burning sugar like they're supposed to. Energy is not being produced adequately. So, there is severe fatigue. For some people, it’s similar to having fibromyalgia. Just this exhaustion where you can’t lift your shoulders, your back, your legs hurt. And you were extremely fortunate. I’d say that some people have genetic capacity kind of like what you’re describing to rise above the damage that you sustain, the damage that you're living through and recover. I would say you’re describing the capacity to be antifragile. Which is very different than what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Who knows if that’s true or not? But certainly, as you go through very demanding events and you look back and you reflect on how you made it through, it does point towards your ability to, well, be anti-fragile. You just don’t come apart that easily. And that’s what I’m hearing through everything that you're telling me. 

Certainly, having that you know you’re anti-fragile in retrospect. You did it, you did this that all this went wrong and this particular event and the pregnancy and on top of it, COVID. Who knows what else? And when you look back, yes, there's trauma that builds up and sometimes you can even overcome that. It doesn’t leave you in a chronic state of PTSD where you’re incapacitated. You can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. You’re just like, “life’s too hard.” There are plenty of people with events in the way that they occurred to you that they just kind of toss in the towel. There's no further capacity, there's no resilience left. It’s kind of like, that's it.

[01:30:33] Ashley James: In your discoveries, have you uncovered what helps people who are sort of in that level of despair to be able to rise above and start to feel like there's hope?

[01:30:46] Dr. Oz Garcia: This all goes the way almost to the beginning of our conversation, Ashley. Doing one little thing every day instead of filling up a whole list of to-do’s, this is everything I need to accomplish today, and doing that day in and day out and day in and day out and finding that you hardly make a dent. But if you can pick maybe 1 or 2 things when you’re in the pits of despair and whatever it may be so that you're moving towards pulling yourself out of this tailspin where you're not clear about why did I get hurt in this manner, why am I suffering so much, whatever—whatever you're asking why over, that you can project that and go, “this is what I can do today, I think I can do this.” As time goes by, you can reflect on the totality of many of the things that you live through, accomplish, and just like you, you're well aware that “oh, I can actually get motivated, I can actually get things done.”

[01:32:02] Ashley James: Beyond doing like ozone IV which is amazing, what other things have you found help people to heal their mitochondria from long-haul?

[01:32:14] Dr. Oz Garcia: I meditate a lot. Not only do I do Sam Harris’ Waking Up but I also use a device called Muse. There’s one called Muse S. It looks like a headband. It’s a neurofeedback device in many ways besides being a meditative device. But it trains you to quiet the voice in your head. It trains it be calmer. I’m on my third Muse device now in I don’t know how many years, and that I like because it helps you work through much of what’s destabilizing you. By doing 10 minutes of that or an hour of that, I don’t know, 3-4 times a week works really well. 

I use a device called Plato and it’s a biohacking/neurohacking device that you place on your device, it has certain electrodes on it. Actually, you can set it on your app to calm you down, help you sleep better, increase focus, prepare for a workout, run better and so on. It does it by, I want to be careful, stimulating parts of your brain but optimizing how certain parts of your brain work in the areas of your concern. So like that, I’ve got, I don’t know, two dozen different devices that I work through during a day or a week or a month, each one designed to actually improve different areas of my health and well-being. 

I’ve got the NormaTec compression boots. Now, for many people that have suffered from severe blood pressure problems, heart problems, POTS as a result of long-hauling, the problems that they suffer with blood pressure shooting up and shooting down, you can stabilize by using the NormaTec compression boots. Not only that, but you can do a 10-minute session with NormaTec, I don’t know, 3-4 days a week. I keep it right next to my chair in my office and I’ll be talking to you and I can have them on. And it improves circulation both in and out of your heart. Tremendous improvement in circulation. 

We now know for instance that even doing hot baths on a regular basis 3-4 times a week improves circulation tremendously to the extent that you can do it 4-5 times a week, it reduces your risk of a heart attack by 28 to 38 percent, if I’m not mistaken. It’s almost a 30 to 40 percent win by just soaking in a hot bath. I add Epsom salts and stand there for 5-10 minutes then get out. Relax, breathe a little bit. And you wake up feeling better the next day but you also did something really good for your body.

So, in totality, there are tools, like I said, practices, the extreme hot bath, saunas which we know for many people, infrared saunas, 15 minutes or regular stone sauna. A cool sauna. You don’t have to go in at 180 to 200 degrees. But you can go in for 150 degrees and go in for 15 minutes and build up your time over the course of many weeks and months. But saunas seem to have a profound effect also on life extension, mood, anxiety, depression, heart health. So, there are what are called heat stress proteins that are activated in your favor whenever you expose yourself to extreme heat. The same thing could be said for extreme cold. When you do an ice bath, when you do a session of cryotherapy, that that stimulates, again, activates cold stress proteins and it stresses your body just enough, what’s called hormesis, the kind of stress that actually repairs your body. If you're dealing with a lot of stress in your life, you want to look at every instrument that I’m talking about in terms of what can you do—what can you do Monday, what can you do Tuesday, what can you do Wednesday, what can you do Thursday. And in totality, when you look back over a month, you realize that you’ve done so many good things for yourself that are contributing to the stability of your body.

You had mentioned earlier living longer and living longer better. What I would say about living longer better is you want to live better with a minimum amount of infirmities. You dodge a heart attack, heart disease, adult-onset diabetes, dementia, hopefully crippling diseases of the joints or arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and so on. And really, because of all the things that we’re talking about, many of the things that I appropriated from life extension I use to actually heal me from long-haul COVID. And like you did when you did the 10-pass, these are things that will reduce your risk of dying young from the wrong things.

So I think infirmity control is critical in terms of all that you and I are talking about. Is what I am eating today going to reduce my risk of infirmities down the road? Is the fact that I only did 10 minutes of exercise today going to reduce my risk of having infirmities down the road? The answer is yes. Yes. And so on and so forth. Is the fact that I’m being very cautious with eating processed foods something that will reduce my risk of gaining too much weight, being obese and building up plaque in my heart? And on and on and on.

Curiosity is a very powerful practice and tool for people that don’t have motivation. If you're not motivated, then can you rely on your curiosity? And if not, you just kind of fade away. You miss out on this gift which is existence. The brief time that we have here, can you make it worth it?

[01:38:47] Ashley James: I love that you pointed that out because if you don’t have motivation because long-haul does suck the motivation out of you, but having innate curiosity and that's I guess probably why I’m good at podcasting. I’m so dang curious, I spent many years suffering. In my 20’s I suffered hugely from chronic illness and I overcame them. Even though MDs told me I never could. I was told by an endocrinologist after a battery of tests I’d never conceive. And we have a beautiful son that's 7 ½ and he’s largely the motivation on those days when I was so sick. Taking care of him, homeschooling him, like I have an amazing husband. If I can’t live for myself, I’m living for my loved ones. I also know because I’ve been through so much, I know that life does get better. I suffered great depression after my mom died when I was 22 years old and I remember the first time I laughed after three months or the first time I smiled after three months. First three months, no smile, no laugh. I remember the first smile. I remember the first laugh. And I remember the first feeling like the doom was fading. So, I know that there is that light at the end of the tunnel and it is so brilliant and amazing and life can be so rewarding. It might take months or years after trauma. It is worth it. Those that love you just cherish you so much and want you to not only not suffer; they want you to thrive and they want you to be around and stick around. 

So, if you don’t have motivation because you’re exhausted, having curiosity and I’m sure those who are listening do because they're listening, to having that curiosity, holding on to it and going let’s go down this rabbit holes and let me just choose 1, 2, 3 things a day that I can do that I could just start to do something towards that goal of just feeling better. Dodging infirmities is a great way to put it. But also, the same activities that dodge infirmities way down the road are things that are going to make you start feeling good today. They’re not separate. It's not like you’ll feel bad today but you’ll be better tomorrow. It’s like going for a walk in the sunlight, that's good for later on. That's good for now too. Same with eating your broccoli, it’s good for now, it’s good for later too. You're treating yourself. You're treating yourself to things that are going to build you up in the short-term but also sustain you in the long-term. So, I love that you pointed that out.

[01:41:18] Dr. Oz Garcia: So long as you're ambulatory, you're six feet above ground and you can just keep moving, you can certainly make things happen. You got to be careful with the way that our thinking is set up. There’s so much work being done now on the conversations what we have with ourselves. The voice in our head and how it all thwarts our ability to carry through and what we know is in our best interest. It’s referred to as the neuro default network. It’s a very lazy kind of mechanism that’s built off different parts of the brain that all together produce the illusion that there's a self inside our heads. The real me is this little me inside my head talking. It just talks innately, incessantly, involuntarily, wakes up and it’s got a million things to say about everything. Most of it is just dead wrong. When you can see that for what it is, that's a long process of mindfulness and meditation so that you can see thoughts kind of just passing your mind like clouds and you act on what you said before, on your list, the list of your goals. “Okay, so I’m going to act on this one thing today” rather than listening to what I had to say to myself because it’s just not all that original. I think that that was critical for me in getting better.

So, as I started to find my strength back, I knew that much of what I was saying to myself in my head, you're never going to get better, this is going to be a struggle, look at how many people have died afterwards or remain cripple. I just kind of disregarded that stream of thought and would go do what I had to do. Don’t get out of bed this morning, stay in bed. Then, get up, go get my breathing device, make my tea, sit there, look at something that I wanted to read and spend an hour or two outside of my bed. Okay, good. Am I going to get a massage today? You don’t want any company, you don’t want people to come over and go. That means that you need to call the person to come over and get body work — going against much of what we often say to ourselves which produces nothing but apathy. 

[01:44:03] Ashley James: Thank you so much for all the amazing things you shared today. I could just talk to you for hours and hours. I love that you’ve brought up the sauna because that's actually another. I have a Sunlighten sauna. I’m actually right beside it. 

[01:44:16] Dr. Oz Garcia: Wonderful!

[01:44:17] Ashley James: I’m knocking on it. it’s in our office. People think they don’t have enough room for a sauna. But it’s the size of a closet but it’s square.

[01:44:28] Dr. Oz Garcia: You can stick it in a closet. 

[01:44:30] Ashley James: Yeah, you could. It’s right beside me. This is our Sunlighten and it’s in our office. We just turned one of the bedrooms into an office. We live in a 1200-square foot townhome and we gave our son the master because that way, he has enough room for his homeschooling stuff and all his play stuff. Then, we took a small bedroom for the office. I converted half the office into a studio with all the sound equipment. I got this sauna here. Oh my gosh, I love the Sunlighten. What I do is I soak in transdermal magnesium using the Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com and they give us a coupon code for listeners, coupon code LTH, and I get a big bowl of water and soak in it in the sauna. I just make sure not to spill it. Oh, I feel so good, I feel so, so good afterwards and it’s not too hot. 

[01:45:26] Dr. Oz Garcia: It’s cool, yeah. It’s a cool sauna. 

[01:45:28] Ashley James: It’s a cool sauna. But I’m sweating and my core temperature is raised so that heat shock proteins work in my favor, I feel so good and my husband does it also and our son, he asks for it. He loves it. He jumps in and of course, we don’t give him a full session, we give him a smaller kid version. But he’ll sit in there and he’ll get a little sweat up. And then, we always run into the shower and got to encourage my family to end with cold, get the blood pumping further. Because that also, it gets the feel-good chemicals going. If you're depressed and you wake up in the morning and you're depressed, after you’ve done gratitude, write down three things you're grateful for. But try getting in a hot shower. Even if you can’t stand, I got a seat to sit in the shower because when I was sick, I want to use hydrotherapy. So you can get a medical seat, you can sit in the shower, sure, if you don’t have a bathtub. But sit in the shower or stand and do nice and hot, and then do 90 seconds to 2 minutes of as cool or as cold as you can stand, have it be on the back of your neck and do some nice deep breathing because your body is going to force yourself to start breathing deep and you try to just get it as cold as possible, but start cool and then turn it down, and that gets some amazing endorphins going. 

[01:46:55] Dr. Oz Garcia: Terrific. It does. 

[01:46:57] Ashley James: Yeah. So you can use hydrotherapy in your home. There are so many things you can do for free. Like you said, sweating in a hot, hot bath and then you could take for hot, hot baths, some people get headaches. But if you take a towel and you get like cold water on it. You can wrap it around your neck and that helps to prevent the headaches, so you can get a really, really hot bath and then can get a cold wet cloth around your neck which all the blood going to your brain is cooler there. 

[01:47:24] Dr. Oz Garcia: Terrific. 

[01:47:26] Ashley James: I love the Sunlighten sauna and they actually give a great discount to my listeners as well because when I interviewed the founder Connie Zack, after trying to find the best sauna that I felt was like the most nontoxic and low EMF and all that. But it’s been monumental for me for recovering from heavy metal issues and detox issues. So, that's been really helpful. But yeah, my recovery has been great using that as well. So, I love that you brough that up. There's all these devices. I love the biohacking you do. How can listeners keep learning from you? What’s the best way? Now, of course, you have a website and that is easy to remember because it’s your name OzGarcia.com and of course, all the links are going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at Learntruehealth.com. Where should people go to learn from you? Is there social media or a YouTube or a podcast? Where should we learn?

[01:48:27] Dr. Oz Garcia: Absolutely. Well, of course, the website and we’re constantly putting up blogs and information. I would say our fan page on Facebook which is Oz Garcia, and we’re constantly posting articles that I think are relevant in just about every area of health that needs to be addressed. If you want to live a long life, if you're into the subject matter that you and I are recovering besides long-hauling, what can you do so that you reduce your risk of infirmities as get older. So, we cover everything from diet to fitness to different ways of eating to the aspects of neuroscience that fascinate me, and the tools that I use.

On Instagram, it’s Oz Wellness. There, I tend to address much more my philosophical bent, my thinking in terms of what makes for a good life. I would suggest for sure getting After COVID which is on Amazon and the full title of course is Optimize Your Health in a Changing World. I put a lot of really good information in there that is a good beginning for supplementation, diet, all the things that we’ve been talking about today. I think beyond that, they're always free to contact me through our website. 

[01:49:49] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you so much. Is there anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview? Anything that maybe I didn’t touch on or didn’t ask that you really wanted to make sure you conveyed today?

[01:50:03] Dr. Oz Garcia: You and I covered a lot of territory. And I want to emphasize something that I had mentioned we talked about albeit briefly which is happiness, that to the extent that you look at happiness also as a study, something that you can unpack and put together, so that your life has meaning, is meaningful, and you find that there's purpose to it, that's the message that I want to leave everybody because that's where I wound up, that's where I am these days. How do I have meaning, purpose, happiness, contentment, peace of mind? Those are very important features of being a human being.

[01:50:46] Ashley James: Just to reiterate. Where did you go to watch that course? Can you just let us know? Because I’m sure there are some listeners who are like “I got to go do that course right now.” 

[01:50:56] Dr. Oz Garcia: You can do the Wellbeing and Happiness course with Laurie Santos on Coursera. If you want accreditation, it’s $49; otherwise, you can do the course for free which is amazing.

[01:51:08] Ashley James: Oh my gosh, that is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. I love that. So here, there’s always some people who are like, “Oh, money is really tight.” And I totally get it. Money is tight for everyone right now. But to give someone the gift of happiness, a course about happiness for free, oh wonderful. I was thinking to myself, as you were talking, I’m just like, I’m giving this course. I don’t care how much it costs. I’m giving this course to my mother-in-law for Christmas. And now that I know it’s free, I’m going to give her that course, she’s going to love it. And that's a free gift, so how good is that?

[01:51:44] Dr. Oz Garcia: There are dozens of courses on Coursera of extreme high quality that are available for no cost at all. And I’m looking at which two or three other courses I’m going to be doing soon. So, can’t recommend it enough.

[01:51:59] Ashley James: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Please come back on the show any time you have more to share. I’d love for you to come back and teach anytime you feel inspired to come back and teach more, we’d love to have you.

[01:52:09] Dr. Oz Garcia: Let’s do it. I’d love it, Ashley.

[01:52:12] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you so much.

[01:52:14] Dr. Oz Garcia: Thank you. This was terrific. And it flew. 

[01:52:18] Ashley James: Wasn’t that an amazing episode with Dr. Oz Garcia? I am blown away. I just love him. He’s fantastic. He’s agreed to come back on the show and he’s going to share the next time he comes back on the show about the science of anti-aging and getting your cellular age to be younger and younger. You know, it seems to be a theme in my life right now because I have two things that we’re going to be talking about very soon, I’m really excited. Just a little sneak peek, no spoilers. But there's two things that have popped into my life and I really believe in divine intervention and divine timing that this podcast has taught me that. I’ve talked about it on the show before where I give this link for guests to put themselves on my calendar and I will go out and I will reach out to all kinds of really cool holistic doctors on different topics. Like I’m not going to one day I don’t just go through and go okay, heart health, people. Like I’d just go, oh, this guy wrote this book, this person, I want to get this person. Oh, I’ve heard about this person. And I’d give them all this link and then they put themselves on my calendar. And almost every time I do that, all the heart health people book themselves back-to-back. All the diabetes people book themselves back-to-back.

It happens so often that I just laugh. I go, of course, of course you guys did. Then, when I publish, I don’t always publish in the same order, sometimes I publish, I go, okay, I really feel like it’s time for this episode to come out, and I just get a feeling in my gut like okay, it’s time for this episode to come out. Then, I’ll get a listener messaging me saying, “how did you know this was the answer to my prayer? Yesterday or today, I’ve been just lost and I’ve been asking for an answer. Then, I look at my phone and I get a notification for this episode and this is the answer to what I’ve been looking for.” That happens so often. I believe in divine intervention. It is so remarkable. What started to pop up in the last month or month and a half in my life are a few things that are blowing my mind, the science behind these things. And these things are unrelated but what they have in common is they all reverse cellular age, and there's this one thing that this company actually sent it to me so I could try it myself. My husband and I are hooked. It is so cool and they did a study and they found that by using it for three months, your cells are 8 years younger after only 3 months. That just blows my mind and it takes only a few minutes a day to use this thing. We’ve been loving it. 

There's this other company who’s been around for almost 20 years. They have so many studies. It’s really, really exciting. They are able to reverse cellular age. They're able to remarkably increase stem cells in your body to the point where you can test in your blood and it’s like you’re a newborn baby. You have so many stem cells. It increases stem cells hugely. It increases peptides in the body that end up doing all these things like for us vain people, fine lines and wrinkles go away but people are noticing more flexibility. They're actually seeing that there's more muscle growth and more fat burning. They're able to bring down the stress hormones and the stress response in the body noticeably. They see it in heart rate, heart rate variability. So, the list goes on and on. It’s something that you can use at home, again, easy to use at home. I think it’s really affordable compared to like these giant machines that these holistic clinics have. So, I’m very excited because what keeps dropping in my lap is all these antiaging and reversing cellular age, decreasing oxidative stress in the body. Oh yeah, and another thing, there's been Parkinson’s patients who are shaking and then they use it and they stop shaking right away. 

So, it has this effect, calming effect on the nervous system and it stimulates the body’s ability to heal itself. How cool is that? So, I’m very excited. We’re going to be talking about that in upcoming episodes, so watch for that. But I have a feeling, I just keep getting this intuition that at least part of 2023, if not all of 2023, my podcast largely are going to be about reversing cellular age, reversing degenerative disease and supporting the body to create new healthy cells in its place. So, very excited about that. I think you should be too because it’s not that I want to live be a thousand old, yes actually I do, I think that’d be really amazing. I want to live the healthiest, youngest life possible until I’m ready to leave this world. Right? If you’ve ever been around someone who didn’t take care of their body and they were on their deathbed, it is anguish for those people. It’s sometimes years of suffering. What I want for you is to live fully, live so healthy, so happy where when you're 70, you're going “I feel better than I did when I was 20. That's what I want for you.” I want you to be outrunning the 20-year-olds when you're 70 and when you're 80 and 90, feeling absolutely on top of your game and amazing. That's what I want for all of us. So, I’m going to find those experts and I already have two lined up like I told you about. I’m going to keep finding them and like Dr. Oz Garcia, he’s going to come back on the show and share his tips and tricks because he is gorgeous. This man is so handsome, he does not look like he’s in his 70’s. He looks like he’s in his 50’s and of course, it’s because he’s living proof. He’s living what he preaches. So, get ready to feel amazing no matter what age you are by continuing to listen to the Learn True Health podcast and as always, please share this with those you care about because we got to spread this message and help all of our friends and family and co-workers to feel amazing at every age. 

Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day. Whatever holiday you celebrate, I celebrate Christmas, so Merry Christmas. Whatever holiday you celebrate in the coming months, I hope you have an amazing time and just remember, stress is the worst thing you can do for your body, so let it go. Take some deep breaths and put yourself in a position where you're feeling love and letting go of all that stress because stress is not helping you or anyone you're around. So, just focus on that. Focus on love and let go of the stress. I’m aiming for a completely stress-free holiday season this year and I think it’s going to be very healthy for me. I hope you do as well.

Get Connected with Dr. Oz Garcia

Website

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Books by Dr. Oz Garcia

After Covid: Optimize Your Health in a Changing World

Oz Garcia's The Healthy High-Tech Body

Redesigning 50: The No-Plastic Surgery Guide to 21st-Century Age Defiance

The Balance

Look and Feel Fabulous Forever

It's November, and that means my FAVORITE holistic health products go on sale for the biggest savings of the year! And this year, I have some HUGE discounts to share with you! How does 40% off with free shipping sound?!

Listen to episodes 294, 341, and 391 for the story behind this very special magnesium soak and how it is the world's best at being absorbed through the skin and alleviating issues common with magnesium deficiency, such as pain, muscle tension, cramps, headaches, migraines, fatigue, sleep issues, and restless legs.

The magnesium collection is on sale today till November 30th with up to 30% off WHILE SUPPLIES LAST. In years past, they have completely sold out of inventory, so if you want to take advantage of this deal, I encourage you to do it soon. 

This discount gets even better because Kristen has given my listeners an additional 10% off at checkout when you use the coupon code LTH.  

So you can stock up on your magnesium soak, cream, muscle cream, and magnesium spray for 40% off, plus free shipping on orders over $99. 

Here is the link to what Kristen Bowen calls her "Calm Black Friday Sale" because instead of panicking during the holidays, we can relax and calm our nervous system with highly absorbable magnesium.

BE SURE TO USE COUPON CODE LTH AT CHECKOUT FOR YOUR ADDITIONAL 10% OFF. 

https://livingthegoodlifenaturally.com/collections/currentsale

Get the Summit:
LearnTrueHealth.com/masteringdiabetes
Get the book:
Masteringdiabetes.org/book

492: Healing Insulin Resistance and Diabetes

Do you suffer from blood sugar imbalance? Do you really want to finally get your blood sugar levels under control once and for all? Do you want to avoid insulin injections or stay off of medications? In this episode, Cyrus Khambatta, PhD talks about lowering your blood sugar naturally, mastering this condition without the use of drugs, and how to increase insulin sensitivity and reduce insulin resistance.

Ashley James And Dr. Cyrus Khambatta

Highlights:

• Eating a raw diet
• The ratio of carbohydrate to insulin use
• Cutting out oil and animal products
• Fatty acids
• Diets that make you sick
• Insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. Today, you have such an amazing treat to have a PhD, Cyrus Khambatta on the show today, sharing his side of the story about how him and his partner Robby Barbaro created Mastering Diabetes. Both of them have type 1 diabetes, and both of them hugely, hugely increased their insulin sensitivity so much that they require so little insulin to inject into themselves daily that every type 1 diabetic needs to know about this because it’s going to save them thousands of dollars and it’s going to save them years on their life, disease-free years even on their life. Every type 1 diabetic needs this information. But every type 2 diabetic needs it because this is exactly how you can reverse type 2 diabetes and increase your insulin sensitivity so much that you no longer have hyper- or hypoglycemia. I am so excited for you to have this information because even prediabetics or those who have metabolic syndrome, women who have polycystic ovarian syndrome will benefit from this information because it’s all about the insulin resistance. And today, PhD Cyrus Khambatta shares exactly the science behind it and why we develop insulin resistance and how we can reverse it, and it is all with diet and lifestyle, which is really exciting because that puts the power back in your hands. That’s exactly what my show is intended to do. This is what I set out to do in all these interviews, is get you the information so that you can learn how to create true health.

Now, another tool that I want you to know about is my favorite magnesium soak. Magnesium is the most required mineral in the body. The body needs it for 1800 enzymatic processes. The second most needed mineral is zinc at only 800 enzymatic processes. So, you can imagine as the list goes down and down, magnesium is huge for our health and healing. When we have magnesium deficiency, there's over 200 different illnesses and symptoms associated with magnesium deficiency. Most people are walking around deficient in magnesium and suffering from the side effects of magnesium deficiency without even knowing it, and then they medicate themselves. Doctors will give you a drug for, for example, restless legs syndrome is a magnesium deficiency and yet, the pharmaceutical companies have created a drug for it, which is it’s madness and it is unethical, frankly.

So, I have interviews with Kristen Bowen, the founder of this company that has the most absorbable form of transdermal magnesium. She has a program where you do it for 30 days and you get to full cell saturation. She explains in our interviews how you can do that and how you can even test. There's a special test you have to order. It’s about $40 or $50 when you order it online. But you could do a special magnesium RBC blood test. If you wanted to test your cell saturation of magnesium before and after you do her transdermal magnesium soak, she has an amazing story. I highly recommend that you check it out. You can go back and listen to episode 294 for her story in the Learn True Health podcast episode 294. She also came back on episode 341 to answer listener questions about magnesium, and then at 391 we talked about other very interesting things to know about magnesium, including getting rid of parasites. So, that episode is also very interesting, this particular magnesium soak. And I’ve taken magnesium orally for many years, and I was still magnesium deficient, and that's the thing. Most people who take it orally like by drinking it or taking capsules, they're still magnesium-deficient because it’s very hard to absorb most magnesium supplements. Most magnesium supplements go right through people and yet, when you do the magnesium soak, you absorb it straight through your skin into your lymph system and then that from there, goes into your bloodstream and it circulates and it bathes every cell in the body with this magnesium. It’s very bioavailable and you can see it in the blood tests. And that's what we talk about in episode 294. So, I definitely recommend checking it out.

What is so exciting is that right now, going on for the month of November, while supplies last, she has in past years run out of it because the sale is so good, she gives the best sale, it is 30% off plus she still honors the Learn True Health coupon code, so the LTH coupon code. She still honors it. So, in fact, it’s 40% off. And if your order is over $99, so if it’s a $100 order which you can buy all your magnesium soak for the whole year, for the whole next year, she gives free shipping. So, you basically are getting 40% off with free shipping when you use the coupon code LTH at checkout. You have to remember to use it at checkout because she can’t go back and change it. She says she’s very sorry. They have such a huge amount of orders that come in during the cyber sales. This year, she’s making a cyber sale all the month of November, so check it out, go to Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com. I know it’s a mouthful, it’s such a cute name though and it’s very memorable. Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com. And make sure that you use the coupon code LTH at checkout for the additional 10% off that she’s giving us in addition to the 30% off. All the magnesium stuff is on sale on her website.

Then she’s got a few other things on her website that I really like. Everything she sells is 100% natural, it’s paraben-free, cruelty-free, and fair-trade. She’s really big into that, very big into high-quality ingredients. But I go there for the magnesium. It has been a gamechanger for me. I share about it in past episodes, so you can go back and listen to those—294, 341, and 381. Our son who’s always fought sleep, when we put it in his bath when he was a toddler, he would turn to me and say, “Okay, I’m ready for bed now.” And I was like “Whoa, this is amazing! This stuff really works.” So if you have problems falling asleep, if your kids have problems falling asleep or if you have energy problems, if you have restless legs or if you have migraines, we’ve had listeners actually, over 200 listeners in our Facebook group have shared testimonials through the years of how fantastic this magnesium soak has changed their lives. And we’ve had listeners talk about how their migraines went away and their headaches went away. The tension headaches will go away. And even chronic pain. What’s really interesting is your pain receptors cannot close when there’s a lack of magnesium. So, a deficiency of magnesium can cause chronic pain to continue to persist. In the presence of magnesium, they’re able to close. So, a lot of people have found that this actually is very beneficial if they're struggling with pain as well. So, it’s a great gift to give to those you love. I love the magnesium cream. I love using it if I feel like I’m crampy or if my feet are crampy at the end of the day or my legs, I love using the magnesium cream and it’s very quick, within minutes I’m feeling all my muscles just melt and relax. So, there's that, but then there's the soak and you can go listen to episode 294 to learn how to use the soak. Remember the coupon code is LTH as in Learn True Health. LTH at Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com. Make sure that you go and get some now before supplies run out because it’s such a huge sale and I know that you’re going to love to grab a few of those magnesium creams. It’s only $15. In addition to that, take off 10% for the Learn True Health discount. Those are fantastic stocking stuffers, great for holiday gifts. I know I definitely am going to stock up to give those away as gifts to my friends and family for sure.

Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this episode with those you care about. Please share it with everyone you know who has blood sugar dysregulation and wants to get on the other side of that because this is exactly how you do it and the science is there and I’m so excited to have Cyrus share with you today how he has helped thousands of people, thousands and thousands of people to reverse their type 2 diabetes and thousands of type 1 diabetics to increase their insulin sensitivity so much that they're able to lower their insulin needs hugely. Which is so beneficial for many reasons. That's what we talk about in today’s episode. You can also go back and listen to the episodes I did with Robby Barbaro in episode 233 and 489. Those are good episodes to listen to, to hear his side of the story for mastering diabetes and how he was able to eat—I think he went from eating 30 net grams of carbohydrates on 30 units of insulin, which is a horrible ratio of insulin units to carbs, to being able to maintain the same amount of insulin, but then eat 700 grams of carbohydrates and his blood sugar actually got better. So, Robby’s story is very similar to Cyrus’, but you can go back and listen to his episode 233 and 489. 

Have yourself a fantastic day and just happy holidays! Happy Thanksgiving, a Merry Christmas! Whatever holiday you celebrate—the Hannukah, Kwanzaa, whatever you're celebrating, you're just celebrating and being with your friends and family, my love goes out to you. Really, I’m just hugging you, I’m just sending my hugs to you. This can be a wonderful time of year. It can be a very painful time of year, having lost my parents. It’s bittersweet. So, I can really understand and relate to you. What I love about the magnesium sale is Kristen Bowen calls it her Calm Black Friday sale because magnesium calms, it actually is very therapeutic for our nervous system, for our stress levels. So if you find yourself a little stressed out in the holidays which I do too, and it’s understandable, get some magnesium soak and treat yourself. Treat yourself to that and be gentle and be loving with yourself. I’m giving you big hugs. Give yourself some big hugs. Be gentle with yourself and see what you can do for the next two months to nurture yourself and jump into 2023 with great goals for your health and take everything that Cyrus says to heart because he has a fantastic program for reversing disease and for increasing health to such a monumental level that you will feel like a million bucks has been handed to you every day, every morning you wake up. Enjoy today’s episode!

[00:12:00] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 492.

I am so excited for today’s guest. I have been trying to get Cyrus on the show for years, and just both of our schedules have never come together until now, so I just feel like it’s kismet, you know, it’s meant to be. Today, finally, PhD Cyrus Khambatta is on the show. We’re going to talk about the deep science of why this very specific way of eating completely reverses type 2 diabetes, re-sensitizes insulin and even helps those who have type 1 diabetes to become so much more insulin-sensitive that their ratio of insulin units to carbohydrates becomes very good. Just very, very, very good. So, we see people restore even things like eyesight and neuropathy, improvements in immunity—all of this—heart disease, cancer, blood pressure, all these things get better and better. Inflammation goes way down. What’s great though, is that people feel like a million bucks eating this way. Now, there's a lot of science behind it and it’s a very specific way of eating that it does take a little bit getting used to, but once you're doing it, you never want to stop because you feel so dang good. 

Cyrus, I am really excited to dig deep into the science today to understand how this one way of eating is it’s kind of like the fountain of youth and then it helps reverse so many diseases and helps people live optimal lives. I’m just chomping at the bit, can’t wait to dive in. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. 

[00:13:49] Cyrus Khambatta: Awesome. Thank you, thank you so much. I really appreciate the invitation to be here. I apologize, I wasn’t intending to play hard to get here, but I’m glad we’re talking now.

[00:13:59] Ashley James: I just think your schedule, my schedule, and they just kept not working together, but it’s actually perfect because I had the opportunity to have your partner on the show, Robby on the show several times talking about Mastering Diabetes, this beautiful book you guys have written and also, this whole program you guys have come up with. You guys just launched a summit which was amazing, and listeners should go to Learntruehealth.com/mastering diabetes to check out the summit there. Then to get your book which is now in paperback—congratulations by the way—paperback and in hardcover. And I know this has been a labor of love. And again, what I love is that you have so much science in it, and to prove this is how it works, but you also have so many testimonials. You have thousands and thousands of stories of success backing what you guys do, and that is Masteringdiabetes.org/book. Of course, the links to everything that Cyrus does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at Learntruehealth.com.

Very quickly, let’s just touch on so you have a PhD. Let’s touch on because you’re like the science end of the Mastering Diabetes book, so I’d love to hear a bit about how did you meet Robby and tell us a bit about your background, how you guys came together to create this for so many people to be able to reverse their diabetes. 

[00:15:18] Cyrus Khambatta: Great question. So, I basically was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in the year 2002 when I was a senior. I was studying mechanical engineering at Stanford University and I was just trying to graduate and move on with my life and all of a sudden, I got this strange diagnosis and I just felt very sort of like low energy and I was kind of confused and my vision was getting weird and I was dehydrated all the time. So, I finally ended up going to the health center. They sent me to the emergency room and there, I got diagnosed with not 1, not 2 but 3 autoimmune conditions. So, the first one is Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism. Then, the second one was alopecia universalis which is basically just total hair loss. Then the third one was type 1 diabetes. So, I got diagnosed with all three of these practically overnight and I became a chronic disease patient all of a sudden. It was a pretty tough time and it’s a lot of information to take in at any one given moment in time. So, for the first year, my life with type 1 diabetes, I was just kind of listening what the doctors were telling me which was to eat a low-carbohydrate diet and use that as my primary weapon of choice, if you will, to try and minimize my use of insulin and try and keep my blood glucose very controlled.

So, I did that for about a year and I just found out that my health was just getting worse and worse and worse. The promise that they had given me was that my glucose would become more controllable and that my insulin use would go down or my insulin use wouldn’t go up. And it turns out that neither one of those was true because my blood glucose was very hard to control, extremely hard to control. And in addition to that, my insulin use started out at about 25 units per day, and then before I knew it, it was at 28 and then 32 and then 36 and then 39 and then 41 and then 47 and then 52 and 55. There were days where I was injecting somewhere between 50 and 60 units per day and I was like, the math doesn’t make sense and I was literally not eating the thing that’s supposed to cause my blood glucose to go up which is carbohydrate because that’s what I’ve been told. But yet, my glucose is going high, and my insulin use is climbing. So, like, what am I doing wrong? I just don’t understand. I mean, I’m an active guy. I was exercising 3, 4, 5 times a week, I was riding my bike, I was trying to do everything. I was playing soccer, I was lifting weights. But it didn’t seem to matter. 

So, to answer your question, where did Robby come around? What happened was that I switched over to eating a plant-based diet in the year 2003, and I did under the supervision of, in my opinion, a genius, a guy who saved my life. His name is Dr. Doug Graham. And he went on to write a book called The 80/10/10 Diet. He basically teaches people how to eat a raw food diet. So, under his tutelage, I said, you know what, I’ll do this raw food thing, I got no problem with that. I just want to feel better. Within the first week of eating the way that he described, my glucose fell like a rock. My insulin use fell very quickly.

[00:18:30] Ashley James: Now, sorry to interrupt, raw diets are primarily carbohydrates. 

[00:18:35] Cyrus Khambatta: Yeah, so that’s the kicker. That’s the kicker. So, what you’re saying is absolutely true, which is okay, so, the medical institution said, hey Cyrus, carbs are bad for you. Carbs will make your blood glucose go up. Carbs will make you use more insulin, so eat less carbs. I was like, okay, sounds like a plan. So, while I was doing that, because I was eating less carbohydrate energy, what I was eating more of is protein and fat that came from things like red meat, white meat, fish, chicken, turkey burgers, peanut butter, dairy products, olive oil. And I was trying to limit my intake of things like pastas and potatoes and fruits because, again, that’s where the carbohydrates are found, and I was told that carbohydrates are bad for me. So, I was trying to eat a bunch of these sort of like fat-rich foods and protein-rich foods. And again, while doing that, it was supposed to keep my glucose down and keep my insulin use from going up, but neither one of those happened. So, when I met Doug and he switched me over to eating a raw food diet, I started eating large plates of fruit and large plates of fruits and vegetables together. I was nervous that my glucose would go up because those plates and those bowls are very large with, no exaggeration, between 8 and 12 servings of fruit in one shot, in one meal. The math behind it and sort of what the doctors had led me to believe was that like glucose would go extremely high and instead of seeing like a 200 blood glucose value after eating a meal, that by eating a bowl of fruit, my glucose would go up to a 400 or maybe even a 500. So, that was the fear that I had. But then, once I started to eat the way that Doug had described, I recognized that my blood glucose did the exact opposite thing. 

The expectation was that my glucose would go through the roof, but in reality, instead of hitting a routine 180 or 200 or 220 after a meal, which is what happened on a low-carbohydrate diet. After a meal when eating a fruit-based meal, my blood glucose was like 120 or maybe 130. And then, I would continue this process over and over and over again, and my blood glucose just didn’t seem to go anywhere, didn’t seem to go high at all. What was interesting was that not only was my blood glucose not going high after a meal but in between meals and in the middle of the night, my blood glucose was going down. And so as a result of that now, I had to limit the amount of insulin I was injecting myself and back off because the amount of insulin that I was injecting was now too powerful. So, instead of injecting 42 units, 45 units of insulin per day, all of a sudden it went from 45 down to 35, and then from 35 to 31 to 27, and I ended up at like 24 units of insulin per day after 1 week.

So, Ashley, here’s the kicker. These numbers are ridiculous, okay? Before, I was eating approximately 100 grams of carbohydrate, and I was using approximately 42 units of insulin. So, 100 divided by 42, we’ll call 2 ½. Okay. My ratio of carbohydrate to insulin use was 2 ½, meaning that every time I ate approximately 2 ½ grams of carbohydrate, I would have to inject 1 unit of insulin. When I started to eat a raw food diet, when I started to eat a plant-based diet, my intake of carbohydrate went from 100 grams to 700 grams per day. No exaggeration. And my use of insulin went from 42 units per day down to 25 units per day. So, if you calculate the new ratio of 700 grams of carbohydrate divided by 25 units of insulin, now, instead of operating at a 2.5 to 1 ratio, I was now operating at a 28:1 ratio.

[00:22:54] Ashley James: Which proves your insulin sensitivity.

[00:22:57] Cyrus Khambatta: Bingo. So, my insulin sensitivity had gone up significantly. So, previously, I would have to inject 1 unit of insulin per approximately 2.5 grams of carbohydrate that went into my mouth. Now, eating a plant-based diet, I would have to inject 1 unit of insulin per approximately 28 grams of carbohydrate, and this is almost a 10-fold increase in my insulin sensitivity. That's bonkers.

[00:23:22] Ashley James: It is bonkers. I want to say two things real quick before some people start turning this off. Because they’re like, I’m sure someone is thinking, “I can’t be a raw vegan. I can’t be a fruitarian. That's whacko.” Right? So first of all, what you guys are teaching is not exclusively fruitarian. You can eat cooked food. But Cyrus is telling his story, and which is really important because if we listen for the physiology, the science of how our body works, and this is where I get so angry. Okay, I step on my soapbox, people. We have people dying because they cannot afford their insulin. Type 1 diabetics, the insulin cost in the United States have gone up so much that people are going homeless, going broke trying to afford their insulin and they're deciding whether they need to pay their rent or survive another month because they can’t afford their insulin. I mean, this is so infuriating and yet, they're not told by any of their doctors that there is a way to increase their insulin sensitivity so that they need less units, so that they could afford their rent again. Then they could afford their car payment or the gas. They don’t have to go broke and homeless because they’re deciding whether they're going to live another month because they can’t afford their insulin. And I am so livid with this system where your plan, what you teach in your book Mastering Diabetes, is known, it’s a known thing and yet doctors are not teaching this. And maybe these doctors don’t know it. Some do but it’s not yelled from the rooftops. And if you get into the conspiracy of needing to keep people sick so that they can make money, they would rather sell you a higher amount of insulin than sell you a lower amount of insulin.

So, they're going to promote a diet that “manages” your diabetes and keeps you diabetic, keeps your insulin sensitivity very bad, keeps you insulin resistant. Right? So, they can sell you more drugs. Then the American Diabetes Association ever promoting a diet that would within three months completely reverse diabetes for type 2 diabetics and increase insulin sensitivity so much that type 1 diabetics could lower their insulin intake, saving them money and frankly increasing the quality and increasing the longevity of their life.

[00:25:50] Cyrus Khambatta: Yeah, no questions, Ashley. Absolutely right. I mean, you can ask a hundred doctors how much nutrition did you learn in medical school and all one hundred of them are going to tell you that they learned somewhere between 0 and 20 hours within their entire medical school education. Having gone through a PhD program to learn nutrition inside and out, I can tell you that in 20 hours, you can’t even scratch the surface. I mean, you can’t even get to the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg in nutrition because it’s a very complex subject, and there’s a lot of things to take into account, a lot of things to learn. So, we can’t look at doctors as being authorities on nutrition. It’s not their fault. Doctors are phenomenal human beings and they're very altruistic and they really want to help people, but they just don’t have the tools. And so, we have to look beyond the medical institution if we really want to find a way to use as medicine and that’s where a program like Mastering Diabetes comes into play. 

[00:26:59] Ashley James: Okay, so there you were in your first week trying out Dr. Doug Graham’s protocol. You’re eating as much fruit as you want. Your insulin needs have gone way down. Your blood sugar is balanced. You’re feeling like a million bucks. Then, what? Because at this point, you haven’t even thought of becoming a PhD in nutrition, right? You were on a totally different track.   

[00:27:29] Cyrus Khambatta: That’s exactly right. So, let’s go backward. Basically, I made the transition to eating a plant-based diet in the year 2003. Just for full clarity, going back to what you were saying, my story is about becoming a raw food vegan. That’s just because that’s what was presented to me at the time. But if you fast forward to now, we’re in 2022, which is 19 years beyond, the methodology that I teach people living with all forms of diabetes and the research that I’ve done over the past almost two decades, is that if you want to be a raw foodist, go for it. If you don’t want to be a raw foodist, go for it. Right? If you want to just eat a diet that contains a significant amount of plant material, that is good enough. So, like you were saying, I just don’t want people to get intimidated like “Oh, there’s that raw food guy talking about raw foods” because like I don’t even eat a raw food diet right now anymore. I just happened to start upon that diet back in the day.

So, we go backwards in time, 2003, I felt like a million bucks. I continued to live this way, I continued to adopt this lifestyle and my life got better and better. So, my insulin use stayed down, my blood glucose was very normalized. I became extremely active once again because I grew up as kind of one of these like my mom refers to me as a health cat. I’m one of those guys that just wakes up in the morning and I have so much energy, I don’t know what to do with it. So, from a young age, I would play soccer then baseball then basketball then running then swimming and then hiking and whatnot. In my young 20’s when I did go through this transition and I started to eat a plant-based diet, all of a sudden, I got that excessive amount of energy back and I was like, “Oh, I feel like a 5-year-old kid again. This feels awesome. I love it.” So, I continued to live a very high-energy lifestyle, which was directly a result of eating a plant-based diet. So, 2007 rolls around and I was like, you know what, I want to learn this stuff. I want to not just understand, have a personal story, but I want to actually learn the science.

So, I put myself back to graduate school and I got a PhD in nutritional biochemistry because that’s the super nerd nutrition science that I was looking for. Right? So, I go to UC Berkley for 5 years from 2007 to 2012, and I did a PhD in the subject of nutritional biochemistry. And I wrote a thesis on the ins and outs of insulin resistance and basically how you can manipulate insulin resistance, how you can create insulin resistance, how you can reverse insulin resistance, and how you can use diet and exercise to your advantage to really control the amount of glucose and insulin inside of your blood.

It was an eye-opening experience for me because I got to read thousands of scientific papers, I got to conduct scientific experiments, I got to really get so, so deep in the research that my mind was blown. It gave me an explanation for what was happening inside my own body but then it also completely opened up my mind to the idea that there are so many people on this planet that could benefit from eating a plant-based diet. That this story was no longer about Cyrus Khambatta. The story is about the human race. The story is not about this guy who got type 1 diabetes and happened to eat a plant-based diet. The story is about everybody who eats a diet that predisposes them towards insulin resistance and how they can eat in a way to reverse insulin resistance and lower their chronic disease risk, whether that’s diabetes or heart disease or cancer or autoimmune diseases or dementia or Alzheimer’s disease or fatty liver disease or chronic kidney disease, I don’t care. All of those conditions are influenced by your level of insulin resistance. So, if we can make you an insulin-sensitive individual, then your overall chronic disease risk goes to zero. 

[00:31:41] Ashley James: Oh my gosh, I love it. So, in having your thesis accepted, tell me a bit about, you know, it was peer-reviewed, right, or you have professors reading your thesis, like what was their take on it? Did you blow some people’s minds? Were they resistant to your hypothesis, to your findings?

[00:32:04] Cyrus Khambatta: It was actually really interesting because the actual subject material of my thesis was trying to use intermittent fasting in particular as the primary intervention tool to be able to manipulate insulin resistance. So, what we would do is we would actually induce insulin resistance inside of laboratory animals, inside of mice and rats, and then we would rescue that insulin sensitivity by putting them onto a calorie restriction regimen or an intermittent fasting regimen. And so, my thesis didn’t really necessarily have anything to do with eating a plant-based directly. It was more about how do you manipulate the timing of your food intake in order to rescue your insulin sensitivity once again. When I presented all this to my thesis committee and did my qualifying examination and then my defense, it was never a question about like is this right. It’s not controversial in the world of biology, in the scientific world of biology. If you go to social media and you make a statement like a high-fat diet can induce insulin resistance, you’ll get torn to shreds. Because everyone and their mother has their own opinion about what they think is right and what they don’t think is right. “This is my experience and my mom said this and my brother said this and whatnot…” It all becomes this giant conflict-ridden conversation where people are pointing fingers at each other and saying “Oh no, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” right? But if you go into the scientific world and you present these ideas to people who are in the insulin resistance research-based world and you say yeah, we induce insulin resistance in laboratory mice and laboratory animals using a high-fat diet for 8 weeks, it’s silence. Everyone goes “Oh, okay, great, yeah. I know. That’s the way you create insulin resistance. Of course. Like there’s no argument here, that makes perfect sense.” Right?

It was this disconnect that I was seeing over and over and over again because the scientific world is pretty darn clear about what creates insulin resistance. But then if you go to the general public, the general public literally does the exact opposite. So, the scientific world basically says if you try and create insulin resistance inside of either a laboratory mouse or a rat or a human being or even a monkey, our closest primate ancestors, what you’ll find is that the way to do it repeatedly is to feed these animals and feed a human a high fat diet. It’s not a sugar diet. It’s not a high carbohydrate diet. It’s not a high fruit diet. It’s not a high potato diet. It’s not a high pasta diet. It’s a high fat diet that contains primarily saturated fat. If you feed an animal or you feed a human this type of diet for about 8 weeks, what you will find is that blood glucose levels begin to rise and they get elevated or they’re sustained at an elevated rate or an elevated concentration, and that insulin production also begins to increase in order to try and compensate to bring blood glucose back down again. 

So, this is very well-described, it’s very well-known and it’s literally the exact mechanism that we used over and over and like, literally, hundreds of experiments to induce insulin resistance inside of these laboratory animals. But if you go to the outside world and you actually ask people on the street or you ask doctors or you ask influencers on Instagram or YouTube, well, what causes insulin resistance, they’ll tell you the exact opposite. It’s not about saturated fat for the general public. It’s not about eating a high-fat diet. They’ll tell you it’s carbs. Carbs are bad for you. Sugar is bad for you. Carbs are bad for you. Carbohydrates are bad for you. Don’t eat carbs. Carbs, carbs, carbs, carbs. You go to the American Diabetes Association, it’s about carbs. You go to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the JDRF, the primary research-based organization for people with type 1 diabetes, they're telling you that it’s all about carbohydrates. And I literally sit there and I bang my head against the wall sometimes and I’m like, is the rest of the world under some kind of weird hypnosis? What the hell is going on? It’s like mind-boggling because what the general public is saying is so out of touch with what the research actually shows that I feel like I’m trying to educate the world about something that is absolutely true and is very repeatable, but yet, somehow I’m the minority and I’m the weirdo that gets a finger pointed and that I don’t know how to read research or that we’re citing research that’s not peer reviewed or some collection, if that makes any sense. 

[00:37:06] Ashley James: Well, we’ve got this mass group think where we have been brainwashed since very, very young children. You and I both grew up in the ‘80s. I’m only a few years older than you, I think, or we’re right about the same age. 

[00:37:24] Cyrus Khambatta: Yes, exactly.

[00:37:25] Ashley James: But anyways, growing up in the ‘80s, it was such a time of innocence. I was like 3 years old on my tricycle alone on our street. We could go out. I have memories. Because it was a very quiet street and I knew all the kids on our street. I just remember going out and playing alone on the streets, like this is a time of innocence. Our parents entrusted the TV as a babysitter. I mean, my parents were really, really great and they didn’t give me unlimited TV but there were times when they just popped me in front of TV because I was a hyper kid and it was just easier to manage their lives. I would sit there watching these… and also, my parents did not take me to fast food. Being a kid, we had in the ‘80s less fast food than they have now in the States. I live in the States now but I grew up in Canada. But I watched these commercials and it would be Kellogg’s and it would be all these cereals and it was these magical characters that you could trust. I grew up loving this Tony the Tiger and these spooky animals, whatever. Also, my mom didn’t buy any cereal where sugar was an ingredient. She was as health nut and so, I didn’t get to have any of this stuff, although there would be once in a blue moon like maybe 5 times in my childhood I had like sugary cereal. But, I’d go down the aisles in the grocery store and it was a form of trust and I had these good warm feelings in myself.

Now, having studied neurolinguistic programming and having studied how we create reality and understanding how they do propaganda. Edward Bernays – you study Edward Bernays, that's great. Understanding how they create marketing to do propaganda and brainwashing. When you walk down the aisles and look at brands and look at logos. Now, you have a kid, I have a kid, and before he could read, he knew logos. “Ah, Starbucks!” He would yell. I’m like, this kid, it was like a toddler having maybe a 50-word vocabulary but he would say “Home Depot!” like he’d point out because he knew we were at Home Depot because he could see the logo. Wherever we went, he would point at the logo and I’m like, this is brand marketing. When we go down the aisles and we see these sugary foods or when we drive through the drive-thru, you were raised to love a Ronald McDonald. You were raised to trust him and trust the food because you have these good warm feelings inside of when your parents took you or your grandparents or aunt or uncle or whatever or your big brother took you to the drive-thru or took you in to McDonald’s or whatever, insert fast food restaurant. Or, did a microwave dinner and made some kind of Mac ‘N Cheese, whatever garbage processed food, they have marketed and they have associated really good emotions with it. We grew up on a high fat processed food diet, but it has become part of our belief system that it is good because it is through the marketing of making us feel good and trusting these characters, these cartoon characters. Right?

Also, all the memories we have with our families eating this food, we trust it. Then, someone comes along and says this stuff is the cause of your diabetes and we want to say “No, I was told that Atkins reverses diabetes and keto diet is good for me, and these are high fat diets and therefore, you can’t tell me that a high fat diet is the cause of my problems.”

So, first thing we have to do is say if you're sick, and I’ve had five diseases, so my main listeners who had listened for a while know, but I had raging out-of-control blood sugar, type 2 diabetes. For many years I had out-of-control blood sugar before I was even diagnosed with diabetes. I also had polycystic ovarian syndrome, infertility. I was told that I’d never have kids. After a battery of tests, I reversed that even though other doctors/endocrinologists said I could never reverse that, thank you very much.

[00:41:21] Cyrus Khambatta: I’ll tell you.

[00:41:22] Ashley James: Exactly. Right? The thing is you have to be stubborn. You have to be able to be willing to say no, like don’t bow down to this authority. We put the medical doctor on a pedestal or our parents or whoever in our life is saying you’ll always have this or the reason why you have this heart disease or this diabetes or whatever it is. The reason why you have this is because your genetics or because whatever they want to say, or because of your age. None of that. None of that is the reason. Do not buy into someone telling you how you're going to be and how your body is going to be. You should rage against it and say “No, I want to get healthier.” The thing is, and I think this is the hardest thing to swallow because it is a blow to our ego, we have to accept that what we’ve done both consciously and unconsciously, all the behaviors that we’ve done have led us to where we are right now. So if we’re on medications and we’re sick and we’re feeling horrible, we got to stop pointing the finger and we got to just say okay, what I’m doing and what I’ve been doing isn’t working. Like the person who’s been on and off keto diet or on and off Atkins and they're still sick. And that was me for so many years. 

[00:42:33] Cyrus Khambatta: What ended up happening? How did you end up…

[00:42:35] Ashley James: Okay, I mean, I’ll go back in my story because I think it’s important for listeners who are struggling with diabetes, but I, in my teenage years, had hypoglycemia and it was pretty brutal but I was like you, as a child, incredibly energetic. I was an athlete. I don’t know if you know who Kurt Browning is, a Canadian. He’s our gold medalist in figure skating for many years. His coach was my figure skating coach growing up. So, I was intense. I love figure skating, I love downhill skiing. I love water skiing, tennis. I did everything. I bike rode or rollerbladed. I mean, I was on the rugby team and the swim team, and I weightlifted in high school. I loved being active. My mom, she had a lot of emotional issues around food and weight and she was constantly struggling to lose 5 pounds. Now looking back, I realize, so she was always skinny and also muscular because she worked out a lot because she had almost that anorexic mindset of anorexic and look in the mirror and see that they're fat when they're not. That my mom had that distorted view that she maybe had 5 pounds—maybe—on her body of excess weight. But she was always like, “Oh, I have to lose the 5 pounds!” That was kind of always the background, this panicky-ness around diet and she started projecting that on me when I was 12 years old and I was going through puberty. So, when I started growing hips and breasts, she put me on diets. She put me on diet after diet and that messed with my mindset and my metabolism because I was constantly being told by her that I was fat when I wasn’t. I was athletic.

But she put me on the Dr. Bernstein diet and that was my first introduction to ketosis. I’d have to go visit Dr. Bernstein in Toronto 3 times a week and they’d weigh me. He’d yell at me and here I am, I’m 15 or 16 at the time, I think it was 16, and he would yell at me and say I didn’t lose enough weight because I’m supposed to lose a pound a week when I’m already an athlete and I don’t have a lot to lose to begin with. Like, I’ve got boobs and hips, what do you want? I’m a growing teenage girl. But back then, I really bought the idea that I was fat. Because my mom was telling me and the doctors were telling me, and I think Dr. Bernstein was just happy to keep collecting a paycheck. And then I rebelled against it and started eating the way I’ve never eaten in my life, which was how all my friends were eating, because I was just like, screw you guys, stop trying to control me because I was going through the teenage-hood, which in a sense is good because here I am and I got to learn from this experience. But I was also going to the dojo 4-5 days a week and I really looked up to the black belts. I started eating exactly how they were eating and they were eating not great. But I thought they must be eating great because they’re black belts. So I started eating processed food and subway sandwiches and stuff. I accelerated my sickness and became an out-of-control type 2 diabetic at that point. Then all the other things cascaded and I had chronic infections for which I needed monthly antibiotics for. 

I mean, that was very painful to be in so much pain that I needed antibiotics monthly. Then, just feeling horrible. It just went downhill. In my 20’s where you're supposed to be having the time of your life in 20’s, it was like being in a prison and I was crying myself to sleep every night. And I was struggling. It was really brutal. So, I know what it is to suffer. I know what it is to be so sick. You're just suffering. I never ever wanted to commit suicide, I never wanted to die. I wanted it to stop. I still loved life and I still had a lot of people I loved and I knew loved me. So, it wasn’t that. But I was so sick that I just felt like I was trapped in a prison. And I would cry to my husband and say “I just feel like I’m just trapped in this prison in a sick body,” because I feel like my spirit is healthy, my soul is healthy but I’m living in a sick body. Then, what happened was we just started watching these health documentaries and we learned to shop the perimeter of the grocery store, eat organic, and we just did one thing at a time and eventually, the first thing to go was the chronic infections. That's after shopping the perimeter of the grocery store. So, cutting out all the processed food and eating organic. Within 1 month, all the chronic infections went away. Surprise, surprise. You know, that was like oh, okay.

Then, it was hit or miss because I was learning from all these different people and not everything worked. Some things worked, some things didn’t. But I stumbled upon some really great mineral supplements and was told to cut out some bad foods and went gluten-free and saw that. I lost 25 pounds of inflammation of water weight in 1 month just cutting out the gluten grains. For me, that was a really big thing. Then I got to the point where I was no longer diabetic. At the time, I was like “Keto is the best, yeah, look at me I don’t have diabetes anymore.” This was about 6 years ago. But the problem was I couldn’t get my insulin resistance under control. It was still horrible insulin resistance and anytime I went off of this very controlled low-carb way of eating, it was just like I’d feel like a wreck. My blood sugar would be out of control and it was such a struggle.

Then, I tried the plant-based thing. I’m like, okay, well I’ve done everything else. That’s the thing you got to say to yourself. If what you're doing is getting this result and you don’t like this result, try a different thing. I tried over the 35 diets my entire life. At first, it was because my mom thought I was fat, right? So I was just going on with her diets. But then I actually created a lot of illness in my body so then it was then for me all these diets were chasing, trying to find the thing that helped. I loved the book, it was very cathartic for me to listen to the book Proteinaholic by Dr. Garth Davis. I really want to get him on the show because he said something in the first chapter, and I was just crying. He says you did not fail these diets; these diets failed you. Because their marketing is BS. And he proves, his entire book is proving to you that the science is not there. That these diets don’t have a leg to stand on. When you actually look at the science, these diets don’t have a leg to stand. This whole, like I said, Atkins, keto, and he goes down the list of every single diet I ever was on. I felt like a failure, I felt like there's something wrong with me. I started thinking maybe I have like some hidden trauma or like I was trying to think what was going on in my mind. Maybe I’m secretly sabotaging myself or what is it. All the while, these diets are smoke. They’re fraud. They're just smoke and mirrors. And it’s all marketing. In the long term they do not heal the body on the cellular level and they do not increase insulin sensitivity.

So, the first few weeks, and I don’t exactly remember and I could probably go back because I actually went down to this plant-based convention down in Seattle and I think we got a babysitter, I think we got the grandparents to watch our son. He was pretty young. We went down there and it was like a day date for us. There was a booth there that was checking blood sugar and I had eaten maybe an hour before and I was eating whole food plant-based so I know I was eating a ton of carbs. And I was terrified of carbs. I spent my entire life being afraid of carbs. My mom, once I ordered fish with a side of vegetables and rice and she stood up in the restaurant and screamed at me. And I was a teenager. She screamed at me because there was rice on my plate and she was so angry at me that I would eat rice. So, I was raised in an environment where you would be screamed at if you ate carbohydrates because that’s how bad they are for you. This is the brainwashing that I went through and so many people are brainwashed by the Atkins diet and the keto and all the influencers out there who look like ripped and look like a million bucks telling you that if you eat rice or if you eat mashed potatoes or something, that it’s bad for you. And so, I had been eating high, high, high carbohydrate but again, it was all plant-based and she took my blood sugar. Like I said, I had eaten about an hour before. I hadn’t exactly looked at the time but I knew it was recent. And it was 87. And I burst into tears, I had never seen my blood sugar under 115. Since I had been testing it, I had never seen it below 115. And it was 87. I’ve never been lower than 115 ever even in fasting. First of all, I don’t wake up feeling like I drank a bottle of tequila and got hit like a back truck the night before. Because that's how I used to feel waking up every night if I ate carbs. Because it was like if I ate a pizza, right? So there's carbs in there but there's like a lot of fat, which is what causes the insulin resistance as you're explaining.

And I’d always feel like I was waking up from a night of binge drinking, which I don’t drink alcohol, but like imagine a hangover. It was a sugar hangover. And yet, those few weeks that I had been eating a whole food plant-based diet with no oil, no added fat, no processed fat, I didn’t wake up that way. In fact, I woke up jumping out of bed, tons of energy and just feeling great and even keel the whole day. So I’m like, wait a second, what’s going on? But seeing those numbers, seeing my glucose, and it was funny because all those people there are the booth were like, “Aw! Are you okay?” I’m like, oh my God, I’m so happy, because I’m crying and they're like, “Oh no, what’s wrong?” Like, “No, I’m so happy.” I had never seen that low number. And that was the big a-ha. I’m like okay, there's something going on here. And I didn’t realize at the time that how could you, because I thought it took years to heal insulin resistance. Years. I didn’t realize it was within days that you can have it restored. Within days. So, for me, it’s been just hugely rewarding and cathartic because I’ve been processing and healing my entire childhood and the trauma around food and the belief system. You really have to look at your belief system around food. Because we are rooted so deeply in, well, this is how I was taught to eat, this is how we eat because we’re celebrating, and this is what we eat because we’re sad. We have to look at food and our belief system because we need to change something. If you're sick and suffering, there needs to be some changes because if you keep doing it, you're going to keep getting what you're getting. I had to make some major changes.

Now, I can cook a Thanksgiving meal that is delicious and plant-based and super amazing. I did a dry run last week and I can make a pumpkin pie. I can make this amazing Shepherd’s pie like a lentil loaf Shepherd’s pie that is out of this world and I fed it to someone who isn’t plant-based and they thought it was delicious. You can make really delicious meals. It does take practice. You can saute with that oil which was mind-blowing to me. But yeah, switching this way very quickly, I noticed that my insulin resistance came back online.

So, I want you to dive into the “why”. Why is it that when you cut out oil and animal fat, so you cut out animal products and you cut out oil and you just eat as many plants as you want, what does that make your insulin sensitivity happen? 

[00:54:50] Cyrus Khambatta: There's a lot of science here that we can talk about. So, going back to what I was saying earlier is that the world operates under this paradigm that the thing that causes diabetes and high blood glucose and high insulin is carbohydrate. It is a true statement that when you consume carbohydrate energy in food, that it elicits and insulin release from the beta cells in your pancreas. So, from a biological perspective, it’s a true statement. 

But what people have to understand in the sort of biology I’m going to describe here is that the amount of insulin inside of your blood at any given moment in time and the amount of glucose inside of your blood at any given moment in time are functions of multiple things. You cannot minimize all of the influences and all of the nutrients in your diet and all of the daily habits that you may or may not have. You can’t minimize all of that into one thing and one thing only and say “Oh, that’s the reason why I have diabetes. That's the reason why my insulin level is high.” Okay? So, in other words, chronic disease is multifactorial. Once we understand this, then we start to recognize that the amount of fat that you eat matters. The amount of carbohydrate that you eat matters. The amount of protein that you eat matters. The amount of fiber that you eat matters. The amount of water that you drink matters. The amount of exercise that you perform matters. The amount of intermittent fasting you perform matters. All of these things matter and they each have a very specific role in regulating your blood glucose and your insulin, and the goal for any individual is to try and identify how can I manipulate my fat intake to my advantage. How can I manipulate my fiber intake to my advantage? How can I manipulate my exercise to my advantage? If you start to have 5, 6, 7, or 8 different things in your lifestyle that are to your advantage, then the chances are you’re going to become a very, very optimally healthy person today and also into the future. 

So, if we are willing to accept the premise that diabetes is more than just carbohydrate, we have to ask ourselves what other components of your diet are affecting your blood glucose and insulin use. So, in order to answer that question, again, we got to go back to the research and try and take a look on what the research world knows. So, what I said earlier was that the research world knows that eating a diet that is high in saturated fat will induce insulin resistance in as little as 8 weeks in laboratory animals and even faster in human beings. The reason that that happens is because when you eat a diet that contains a significant amount of fat which is very common in the low carbohydrate world, it’s very common in the ketogenic world, it’s very common in the paleo world. In fact, they encourage you to eat a lot of fat. A lot of the fat that they encourage you to eat is actually saturated fat that comes from animal products like red meat, white meat, like dairy products, like processed meats and also eggs. When you’re consuming these types of foods, the type of fat that you're putting into your mouth is predominantly saturated but most importantly, it comes locked up in a form called a triglyceride. Triglyceride is basically just a fancy super nerd way of describing way the storage form of that fat in nature. The storage form of fat is called a triglyceride simply because tri means three and glyceride means glycerol. So what happens is that you have three fatty acids that are covalently bound to a glycerol molecule. Okay? Don’t worry, that's not going to be on the test. But the idea here is that you got a glycerol backbone with three fatty acids. You consume triglycerides, that's the predominant source of fat in food and you consume the triglycerides, they travel down your esophagus, they go down into your stomach. Inside of your stomach there’s hydrochloric acid that’s secreted by the walls of your stomach that's there to sort of start to unfold protein and unfold these fatty acids or unfold the triglyceride molecule and unfold carbohydrate as well. 

Finally, the next chamber is called your small intestine. Your small intestine is where the bulk of all the nutrient digestion and absorption takes place. So your small intestine is a chamber in which your multiple tissues secrete digestive enzymes. These tissues that secrete digestive enzymes include your liver, your pancreas and your small intestine. So all three of them have responsibilities to make things called lipases and proteases and carbohydrases and elastases and beyond. There's literally hundreds of different types of -ases and -ase basically refers to an enzyme. An enzyme is required in order to do some biological work to try and cut large molecules into smaller pieces. The triglyceride molecule in particular gets cut multiple times. The three fatty acids that are bound to glycerol basically get released from the glycerol molecule. Glycerol basically goes on to have a whole collection of effects. But the three fatty acids are then absorbed through the walls of your small intestine. They get put into these little spaceships called chylomicron particles. The chylomicron particles then circulate through your lymph system and then eventually into your blood. And these chylomicron particles, there's billions, if not trillions of them. They have one mission. Their one mission is to basically take the fatty acids that came in from your food and distribute them to tissues to put them somewhere. 

These chylomicron particles become very numerous right after you eat a meal because they basically take on a lot of cargo from the food that you just ate and they’re there to try and deliver those fatty acids to tissues. So, what are the tissues that they're going to try and choose to deliver these fatty acids to?

Number one, your adipose tissue which is your fat tissue. This is actually a safe place to put fatty acids because from a mechanical perspective and from an enzymatic perspective, your adipose tissue is literally perfectly designed to absorb food from your blood when it is present. Most people think of your adipose tissue, your fat tissue as basically being this bad tissue. I hate fat because I don’t like the way it looks and it’s in my abdomen, it’s in my butt and it’s in my chest and it’s my armpits and it makes me look overweight. The reason for that is because there's excess fat that is being put into those tissues or put into that tissue. But in a normal metabolic situation where there isn’t an excess amount of fatty acids coming in, those fatty acids are supposed to go into your fat tissue. That's literally their home. So, you put those fatty acids inside of the fat tissue exactly where they're supposed to belong. But if you're eating a high fat diet, there is also a spillover. The spillover means that there are some fatty acids that get directed outside of your fat tissue to other tissues. Well, what are those other tissues? 

Number one, your liver. Number two, your muscle. The spillover of excess fatty acids that come in from a high fat diet end up going inside of your liver and inside of your muscle. That's okay as long as the amount of fat that goes inside of your liver and muscle after a meal is a small amount. Because your liver and muscle are specifically designed to be able to absorb fatty acids from the chylomicron particles when it’s present in small quantities. They absorb those fatty acids and they stick them into this thing called a lipid droplet, and the lipid droplet has a physical location and the present inside of muscle and inside of your liver, so everything is fine. No problems at all. 

The problem is that when you consume a diet that is low in carbohydrate aka high in fat, you end up overconsuming fat which puts a significant amount of fat inside of your adipose tissue and then the spillover inside of your liver or into your liver and into your muscle is greater than what they are designed to be able to absorb at any moment in time. So within a short period of time, if you eat one high-fat meal and then another high-fat meal, and then another high-fat meal, and then another high-fat meal, you end up overwhelming your liver and muscle with too much fatty acid and as a result of that, the lipid droplet inside of both of these tissues ends up becoming larger and larger and larger. 

If you look at the research and try and figure out, well, what happens to a call inside of your liver? What happens to a cell inside of your muscle when it over accumulates fatty acids? What you’ll find is that there’s these very complicated scientific terms that are used to describe it. Number one, they refer to it as intramyocellular lipid deposition. What the heck does that mean? Intramyocellular refers to intra means inside, myo refers to muscle, cellular means in the cellular environment. So, intramyocellular means inside of the muscle tissue. So, intramyocellular lipid accumulation means putting lipid or putting fatty acids inside of the muscle tissue. If you look at it from the liver perspective, it’s called intrahepatic triglyceride. IHTG. Meaning putting fatty acids inside of the liver aka the hepatocyte. So, the research demonstrates that when there is intrahepatic triglyceride accumulation and intramyocellular lipid accumulation, that the first thing that those two tissues do is they go whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Where did all this stuff come from? I didn’t ask for this. This is beyond my biological design. Why is there so much lipid coming inside of me? So, they initiate a self-defense mechanism to try and block more lipid from coming in. And try and block amino acids from protein and glucose from carbohydrate at the same time. 

The simplest thing that these cells can do in order to initiate so it protects themselves against the overaccumulation of more energy which is really what they're trying to block, the simplest thing that they can do is they can basically tell the insulin receptors on the plasma membrane to become less functional. What the cell does is it initiates this program known as insulin resistance or insulin rejection so that it can block insulin from signaling. Because it makes perfect sense. Insulin is a signaling molecule. Insulin’s job is to knock on the door and go “Knock, knock.” There's glucose in the blood, there's amino acids in the blood, would you like to take it up? The cell can respond by either saying “Sure, sounds like a plan. Why don’t you go ahead and put it inside? I’m going to open my doors to glucose and I’m going to open my doors to amino acids, put it inside of me.” 

But if these cells are suffering from a high energy environment and they don’t want any more energy, then it makes sense to try and block insulin because the next time insulin comes and knocks on the door, it goes “Knock, knock. I got glucose and amino acids in the blood. What do you want to do?” these two tissues can respond by saying “No, no, no, I’m closed for business. Thank you very much. I have a whole bunch of lipid inside of me, let me go deal with this lipid stuff first.” So that’s what they do. They initiate a self-defense mechanism aka insulin resistance so that the next time you as an individual go eat something that contains any amount of carbohydrate, literally one banana that contains something like 20 grams of carbohydrate or maybe an orange or maybe a bowl of black beans or maybe a bowl of quinoa, something that doesn’t have that much carbohydrate energy, insulin goes “Knock, knock, there's glucose in the blood. Would you like to take it up?” and both of these tissues respond by saying “No, no, no, I don’t have room for you right now. It’s not time.”

What ends up happening is that this metabolic traffic jam that has been created by an excess deposition of saturated fat ends up decreasing insulin signaling inside of your liver and insulin signaling inside of your muscle. That then results in two problems. Number one, glucose gets trapped. Glucose cannot get inside of your liver and muscle as effectively as it used to before because both of those tissues are saying no, you don’t have a time and you don’t have a place to get in here right now.

Number two, insulin who’s knocking on the door saying “Hey, open up, open up, open up,” insulin literally cannot even dock onto its insulin receptor and as a result of that, insulin accumulates inside of the blood. So now you have both glucose and insulin that are trapped inside of the blood accumulating in high concentrations. What that means is that if you eat yourself into an insulin-resistant state and then you follow that up by eating a banana or a bowl of black beans or anything with carbohydrate, then your blood glucose goes high within an hour or two hours of eating that meal. You look at your blood glucose meter and you go, “Damn it! I told you. I told you I can’t eat carbohydrates because carbohydrates are bad for me. Potatoes are bad for me. Bananas are bad for me.” And I can prove it to you because I just ate 1 banana and now my blood glucose is high. So what that means is that I’m not going to eat any more bananas because carbs are bad. Atkins was right, the paleo diet is right, the ketogenic diet is right. All of these carbohydrates are bad for me. So then, people shy away from eating more carbohydrate energy and they go and they eat more fat-rich foods and more saturated fat, and they make the problem worse. Okay? What they're doing is they're blaming the carbohydrate. They’re blaming the banana and the potato and the black beans and the quinoa and they're saying, “Look, I can’t any more of you because when I do, my glucose goes high.” But what they don’t realize is that those are just the messengers. Those are just the secondary effect of the metabolic traffic jam that began by consuming too much lipid to begin with. 

If you can clear out that traffic jam and get rid of that excess lipid deposition inside of your liver and muscle, then those two tissues aren’t forced to create a self-defense mechanism, then the next time you go eat something that's carbohydrate-rich and insulin comes and knocks on the door and says “Knock, knock, I got glucose and amino acids in the blood. Do you want to take it up?” both of these tissues respond by saying, “Sure! Give it to me. I’ve been looking for this stuff. Put it inside of me. Game on.” Does this make sense at all?

[01:09:46] Ashley James: Absolutely. It makes sense to me. We have a dance between insulin and glucose. We have been told since we were kids by the media that sugar is the problem, so stop eating sugar and by the way, all these plants contain sugar carbohydrates, so these are the problems. I mean, donuts, they contain sugar too. They're the problem but I think there's more fat in a donut than there is even sugar. 

[01:10:12] Cyrus Khambatta: Correct.

[01:10:13] Ashley James: Which is crazy because you think donuts are all sugary. I mean, they're both. They’re both not healthy in many ways. But the point is, is that we’re told sugar is the problem, sugar is the problem. Diabetes is a blood sugar problem. Sugar is the problem, stop eating sugar. Well, what do you have left? Well, you’ve got protein and fat. Then we turn to the keto diet and Atkins diet and all that stuff.

I did Atkins several times. The reason why I kept doing all these different diets, I’d get to the point where I do a diet between 1 and 3 months and I would feel good at first and then I would become sicker and sicker and I become worse on the diet. I have to eventually stop because I was so sick, the diets would make me so sick. So, I remember the last time I did keto diet was actually with a doctor or the naturopathic physician. I came into her office weekly. This was about 6 years ago, closer to 7 years ago now, and they did a DEXA scan to monitor how much fat to muscle to bone tissue there was because they didn’t want us to lose bone mass or muscle mass while we were doing this keto diet. It was a doctor-instructed ketogenic diet where we were eating like it was stricter than Atkins, less than 20 grams of carbs, and lots of animal fat and lots of protein, which you can’t eat too much protein because then the liver is going to convert it to blood sugar by gluconeogenesis. 

So, we were doing exactly what the doctor told us to do. First few days, I feel good maybe because I had cut out some processed food that snuck into my lifestyle, which is why I think a lot of people end up feeling good originally on these diets because they're cutting out the donuts, they're cutting out maybe the highly processed flour grains and all the stuff that comes with it. So they're cutting out some stuff that was proinflammatory. But then I started to feel worse and worse and worse, and eventually, what happened was after three months of being on this program, my liver became so inflamed that you could actually see my liver pushed beyond my ribcage. I couldn’t sleep on my right-hand side. I went for an ultrasound. My blood work showed my liver enzymes were through the roof and I went for an ultrasound. My doctor was like, “I really am curious to do a biopsy.” But I’m like, nope, no, you are not sticking that needle in me. But I did go for an ultrasound and they said this is not fatty liver, there is no fatty liver detected. It’s just angry. Your liver is completely inflamed and angry. They couldn’t figure out anything wrong with it other than it was very inflamed. My husband who luckily we got him tested because while I was like wow, this ketogenic diet really messed my liver up, it really messed me up, and then we got him tested and they’d actually damaged his kidneys and was causing massive kidney damage. We were concerned because it was like almost borderline kidney failure and he is otherwise a very healthy person. But he did a bunch of tests and then luckily, very soon after that, we actually discovered the whole food plant-based diet. Believe it or not, I didn’t really know that this was a thing. I knew what a vegetarian diet was or a vegan diet, but I didn’t understand that there's this whole other realm which the whole food plant-based, no oil, salt, sugar, this very clean way of eating. It was introduced to me through a guest I had on the show. 

So, we adapted it and my husband was 100 percent onboard which was crazy to me because of how much of a big meat eater he was. I kind of went kicking and screaming because what I now understand is food addiction, and 1/3 of the population has addiction brain. You have to face that. If you know that you're like, wait a second, I can’t give up my __, if that's the conversation you're having, you go like “I can’t give up my donuts, I can’t give up my pasta or my meatballs,” whatever it is, if there's a voice in your brain saying “I can’t give up my cheese or whatever,” you have addiction brain. That's something you need to heal and work on because that's holding you back and keeping you sick. Is it really worth it? Is a moment on the lips worth the illness? I did go kicking and screaming and I finally gave up 100 percent of the animal products just as an experiment. Okay, I can do this, I can do this experiment. I actually never had one day, in my entire life I never had one day that I hadn’t eaten an animal product. 

I remember my first day, I was expecting to feel tired because I was told protein gives you energy, which is not physiologically what happens at all. And you can explain that. But we’re told that you need protein for energy. “Protein” meaning you need to eat eggs, you need to eat cheese, you need to drink dairy, you need to eat animal flesh to have muscles and have energy and feel strong. So, the first day of eating this way, I couldn’t believe how like wait a second, I feel good, what’s going on? Because I had been on and off Atkins for over 20 years. Also, I had to face that fear of carbohydrates. But I felt really good. So that keto, coming up against that idea that eating fat is what’s good for you and the carbs are what’s bad for you and then having to go wait a second, we’ve been lied to, it’s actually completely the opposite, and Cyrus can explain why. But what the doctors were impressed by though by using the whole food plant-based diet, my husband healed his kidney and I healed my liver so fast. The naturopaths were very impressed with how quickly our bodies recovered and healed from the damage the ketogenic diet did using the whole food plant-based diet.

[01:16:20] Cyrus Khambatta: That’s amazing. It’s funny how I think the commonality between what you experienced and what I experienced is that the speed at which your liver can improve, the speed at which your insulin sensitivity can improve, the speed at which your overall energy levels can improve is very, very fast. It doesn’t actually have to take weeks or months necessarily. You can start to see the improvements within a very short period of time and then that right there can reverse or begin the process of reversing years and years and years of damage.

[01:16:55] Ashley James: Now, did you get to tell us how you met Robby and how you formed this alliance together where you're teaching people how to do Mastering Diabetes? What I want to say though is that if listeners go back to episode 233 and episode 489, Robby explains exactly how your program works and how to eat this way. He really goes into great detail in episode 489. Those links to those episodes will be in the show notes as well because I definitely want listeners to go back and listen to that. But what I want to understand from you because you have so much with the science, I mean, I want to know all the stories and I’d love to talk to you for hours, and I know you're pressed for time, so what I want us to learn from you is how is it that there are some people out there like the influencers who are eating this incredibly high fat diet and they're ripped and they keep taking pictures of themselves in the gym and they keep showing how they're drinking ketones and drinking MCT oil and they don’t gain weight. We’re told “Oh, you don’t gain weight when you eat fat. Fat that you eat doesn’t become fat. Carbohydrates that you eat become fat.” 

And yet, what I learned from Dr. McDougall, he says, you know, if you eat potatoes and you don’t add like let’s say butter, olive oil, or sour cream, if you don’t add any fat to potatoes and you eat an excessive like let’s say you eat 5000 calories of potatoes and your body only burns 2000 calories, let’s just say, your body is not going to take that excessive 3000 calories and convert it to fat and store it as energy. It actually converts it to heat. When I read that, it blew my mind because I had noticed. Our house is 66 degrees Fahrenheit. I don’t like spending money on heating. But we’re all warm. We’re all just wearing extra layer. But I go around barefoot now and our house is cold. We keep our house cold and I am hot all the time ever since switching to a high-carbohydrate low-fat diet. When I read that, I was like oh my gosh, this makes sense, because I used to be the person that had to wear microwave slippers because my feet were always so cold and ever since eating this way, my body’s just pumping out heat and it’s not gaining weight from eating any kind of excessive amount if I happen to eat more carbohydrates. It doesn’t convert to fat. Can you explain that? Why is it that what we see in the media, we see that eating high fat doesn’t convert to fat because we see these like ripped bodies in the influencers, and yet, what you're telling is is the physiology is when we eat excessive fat, it gets stored in the adipose tissue and when we eat carbohydrates without fat present in the diet, we don’t store it as fat. 

[01:19:46] Cyrus Khambatta: So when you're consuming a diet that's high in fat, what I don’t want people to think of is that “Oh, Cyrus told me that if I’m eating a lot of fat, then all of a sudden I’m going to become fat.” Because that can happen. But in order to determine whether or not you're going to become fat, you have to take a look at your overall energy balance. So your energy balance is basically what is the total number of calories that you're consuming from your food and how does that relate to the total number of calories that you are burning on a daily basis or that you are getting rid of on a daily basis through your basal metabolic rate plus your activity level plus the thermic effect of food, the amount of heat that's being dissipated from the calories that you're consuming. 

We’re going to have to go into a lot of fancy detail in order to really understand what all that means. But the idea here is let’s say that there is some random person who claims that eating a ketogenic diet is an ideal solution for their body. So, they’re a normal weight individual. They might be a 175 pounds. They might look good, they might go to the gym on a daily basis. They might be ripped. You might look at them and be like “Damn, you're clearly doing something right.” So that individual, if they're not gaining any weight on a daily basis and they're completely weight neutral or preventing themselves from gaining weight over the course of time, what that means is that they're in energy balance. So, the amount of energy that they're taking in on a daily basis is roughly equal to the amount of energy that they're expending and that's actually a good thing, so I would say great, I’ll give you a high five, my hat goes off to you.

So, being in energy balance is a good thing because it’s going to prevent against the accumulation of weight over the course of time or the accumulation of mass over the course of time. But just because you are weight neutral does not mean that you are living in an insulin sensitive state. Okay? So, we have to decouple the two of those because you could be living in an energy-neutral position and preventing yourself from gaining weight over the course of time but if you are eating a high fat diet, then that means that likely, you are in an insulin-resistant state. So, you are in an insulin-resistant state, your liver and muscle are over accumulating fat as we talked about earlier and as a result of that, insulin signaling is not working very effectively inside of both of those tissues. Okay? So it becomes this sort of confusing picture because on one hand, you're saying, well, you're not gaining weight, so then what’s the problem, Cyrus? It doesn’t really make any sense. And I could say okay, fine. Just because you're not gaining weight does not necessarily mean that you're in a healthy metabolic situation, okay? You can take two individuals that are both weight stable and one of them could be in a highly insulin sensitive state because they're eating a low-fat diet and the other individual can be a highly insulin-resistant state because they’re eating a low-carbohydrate diet. Both of them could look good from the outside, both of them could be weight stable from the outside, both of them could actually have a low A1C and a low blood glucose and a low blood pressure but yet one of them is highly insulin-resistant and the other one is highly insulin-sensitive. 

What that means is that if you fast forward over the course of time, each of them is going to have a slightly different chronic disease risk into the future. The person that’s living in an insulin resistant state because they're eating a low carbohydrate diet is going to be at an advanced risk or a higher risk for the development of many chronic diseases including heart disease and cancer in particular. The person who is in an insulin sensitive state is going to be at a low risk for the development of chronic diseases including cancer and heart disease. So, we have to add time as a variable because the amount of time that you are consuming food in an insulin-resistant state or the amount of time that you are consuming food in an insulin-sensitive state is a very, very, very important factor into understanding what is your chronic disease risk is going to be like into the future. This is something that I think most people just don’t understand. They’re not willing to understand it, it doesn’t compute in their brain. Which is that if I look good today and if I am normal weight today and if my glucose level is low today and my insulin level is low today and my cholesterol level was low and my blood pressure is low today, does that mean that I’m doing everything right? My answer to you would be well, it may suggest that but it may not also suggest that because the research demonstrates that people who are eating a diet that’s higher in saturated fat and higher actually in animal-based protein over the course of time are at an advanced risk for many chronic diseases. It’s really important that we understand that what you're doing today is important, but what you're doing today and how it’s going to influence your risk for many metabolic diseases into the future is more important and that’s what I really care about in the long term. Does that make sense?

[01:25:11] Ashley James: Absolutely. In your book Mastering Diabetes, is that everything that we need to know, if we read that book and do what it says, is that everything that we need to know for type 2, so no longer have diabetes or type 1’s to be able to get their insulin to carb ratio at a really good rate, and reverse these diseases and prevent these diseases. Is that everything we need to know in that book?

[01:25:35] Cyrus Khambatta: Yeah. So effectively, Mastering Diabetes is a book that we have written that took 3 years to write and has been out for two years now and has really shaped, changed the way that so many people think, that book is not only a prescription for becoming an insulin sensitive individual. What it is truly is a prescription for lowering your overall chronic disease risk. And if you can think of it from that perspective, then what you're going to learn is a way, a system that’s going to lower your blood glucose today and lower your insulin use today and lower your body weight today. But if you again multiply that times time then it’s going to lower your overall chronic disease risk tomorrow and 5 years into the future, and that's a really good thing because I want you to live in an optimal metabolic state today, but I also want that to continue to unfold 5, 10, 15, 20 years into the future. Up to this point, I have not found a way of eating that is more powerful than a plant-based diet at improving your current metabolic state and improving your metabolic state into the future. I simply haven’t found anything that’s more powerful. 

[01:27:01] Ashley James: I love it. There are so many athletes who are doing this and they're winning gold medals. It improves immediately. They're seeing that when they switch this way, that there are improved outcomes. To watch someone who’s an athlete hone their body as a tool and then they see that they're able to run longer, they’re able to do whatever they do longer and they're able to recover faster, we can see that in them. Even though we might not be pro athletes, we do the same thing and then we see that we get similar results. We’re just able to go longer and recover faster and feel better. If you’ve ever been around older relatives and watched them passed away too early and suffer too many years from a disease that was preventable, as I have, you don’t want that for yourself. You don’t want that for your spouse. You don’t want that for your children. And we have to do something different from the masses to not be a statistic. 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 people depending on whether you're male or female will have a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. 1 in 3 people is obese, is pre-diabetic, or is diabetic. It is a huge juggernaut that we’re facing. If you want to be a statistic, keep going to Krispy Kreme. Keep going to Starbucks. Keep going to the McDonald’s. Just keep eating the way everyone is eating. Just keep doing what everyone is doing to do whatever your doctor says and you will end up as a statistic. But if you want to be an outlier, you have to do something different from everyone else, and that definitely takes that mental switch. I highly encourage listeners go to MasteringDiabetes.org/book, get the book, check it out. Give it as Christmas gifts or Hannukah gifts or holiday gifts, whatever. Give it as birthday gifts. Give this book out. Encourage your friends and family to listen to this episode. If you’d rather consume videos and video interviews as I love, go to Learntruehealth.com/masteringdiabetes and check out their summit, and purchase that, show it to your friends and family. This is something that we can make a difference. We can turn this ripple into a tidal wave and help so many people. If you throw a stone, you're going to hit someone with type 2 diabetes. I can’t believe how many people I know have type 2 diabetes or on metformin or insulin. I had a friend who is in and out of the hospital for a year and the doctors couldn’t figure out why. Actually, I was the one that figured out why. My friend was suffering from chronic acute pancreatitis. She was living in the hospital more than living at home for a year. Could only consume liquids and was so sick, in so much pain and I was like, “just tell me everything you're taking. What’s going on?” I listened to all her meds and I went and looked on the drug website, the actual pharmaceutical manufacturer’s website and I saw that pancreatitis can be caused by metformin. She wasn’t even diabetic. Her doctor had her on metformin as a preventive which just boggles my mind. I said, listen, ask your doctors to get you off of this. She did and the pancreatitis went away. I’m like, geez, that wasted a year of her life of suffering, in needless suffering. How many people are needlessly suffering because they’re blindly listening to their doctor and blindly eating how everyone else eats just because that's how everyone else does. Don’t be a sheep. Don’t be a lemming. If you don’t like how your health is now, get this book and change your life. Just try. Try it for a week.

Within days, you feel a difference. How many days would you say, Cyrus, does it take for even the worst of insulin resistances to kind of come back online and for people to start noticing a difference? Would you say giving it a full week, would they start to see a difference? Giving it a month or three days? How long would it take before they start feeling a difference? 

[01:30:50] Cyrus Khambatta: I like the term that you use which is coming back online. I love that. What it makes you realize is that reversing insulin resistance is a long-term metabolic change that has to happen and it’s going to unfold over the course of many months to many years. Literally, it’s a never-ending process. You can always become more insulin sensitive and you can do it by continuing to eat a plant-based diet and continuing to exercise and continuing to intermittent fast over the course of time. But the question really becomes, well, how quickly can you start to see the effects? How quickly can you go online. And the answer is, in my situation, I saw it within 24 hours. I’ve talked to so many people that have seen the same thing happen within 24-48 hours. So, I would say worst-case scenario, you’ll feel the effects within 7 to 10 days. But chances are, you're going to feel it a lot quicker. 

[01:31:42] Ashley James: So just give it a try. It’s like you're doing a detox or a cleanse. Just do it. Just try it. Going to that restaurant because that friend or family member wants you to eat that way, is that really worth your health? Is that really worth sick and suffering and having limbs? People will have limbs amputated, will lose their eyesight, like will have heart attacks or strokes when they're way too young because of this issue, this very issue. You could just say I’m just going to say no, I’m just going to try for 7 days, just give it a try. Get the book. All the links are in the show notes today. Masteringdiabetes.org/book. Just get the book or watch the videos. Learntruehealth.com/masteringdiabetes. Try it. See how you feel. The jury is out. Just try it for yourself. See how you feel, maybe test your blood sugars now and test them after a week of doing it. Just see how you feel.

I can’t convey how good it feels. The hardest thing is all in your head. The hardest thing is the mental shift. It’s actually easy to cook this way, easy to eat this way. The hardest thing is the mental shift. Once you're sold on it, you just have to enforce healthy boundaries with those around you because people are addicted to food and they're going to want to try to suck you back and just like alcoholics when they get you to drink with them. They're going to try to suck you back into their Krispy Kreme or whatever. And if you say listen, I’m on a health journey right now and I love you and you can eat that way, but I’m going to eat this way, and just try it. 

Cyrus, I’d love to have you back on. Thank you so much for coming on. I’d love to have you back on. I’d love for you to share more. We didn’t even get to talk about stories of success. You’ve helped thousands of people. You and Robby. Robby talks about more in episode 233, but you guys have helped so many people and done one-on-one’s and done group coaching where you’ve guided people through this and had outstanding results. We’ve been told by the media you cannot reverse diabetes that you are stuck with it, that you have to “manage” it because the system is designed to keep you sick, to keep making a profit off of your sickness. You're here listening to this today because you don’t believe that crap and you want to get healthy and you’re sick of being sick. If you're sick of being sick and you want to feel amazing every morning, you want to feel like you're that 5-year-old again jumping out of bed, bouncing with energy and just loving life, try something different. Because what you’ve been doing isn’t working, so try this. 

Cyrus, thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s such a pleasure having you here. Really, please, come back on the show, share more stories of success, share more of the science. I know you're always diving in and learning more and sharing more, and I’d love to have you back. 

[01:34:17] Cyrus Khambatta: Thank you so much. I really appreciate the invitation to be here and I do hope that your listeners have learned a lot in this process. Truth be told, I’m happy we can come on here and we can talk over and over again and do more episodes in the future because the message is very important and what I’m trying to do is provide as much clarity as possible so that people can really transform their lives using the power of a plant-based diet. Thank you so much for all that you do. I know you’ve been podcasting for a very long time and you’ve changed the lives of thousands of people. We’re on the same team. And I’m here for you and I’m hoping to do whatever I can to continue to relay this message and have you on my team as we do so into the future.

[01:34:59] Ashley James: Love it. Thank you so much.

Get Connected with Dr. Cyrus Khambatta!

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Mastering Diabetes

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Checkout Pat's Humic Fulvic probiotic that increases cellular oxygen and mitochondrial function: https://www.learntruehealth.com/blackgold

491: UFC World Champion’s Secret To Maximize Endurance and Improve Body Performance, Pat Miletich

https://www.learntruehealth.com/ufc-world-champions-secret-to-maximize-endurance-and-improve-body-performance-pat-miletich

There are countless supplements you can take for endurance and performance. There are even more supplements you can take for recovery. But on today’s podcast episode with UFC World Champion Pat Miletich, we discuss one supplement that can do all these things at once: the fulvic humics. We also talk about the science behind it, fulvic humic trace mineral absorption and uptake, maximizing endurance, recovery, and energy production, plus so much more!

Highlights:

• Where fulvic humic acids are derived from
• Terra preta soil
• Super Soldier Black Gold Oxygen Booster 
• How many capsules to take
• Studies done on how fulvic humics help with mitochondrial function
• Why you should care about farming practices
• How metals are converted to organic
• Effects of atrazine

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. We have on the show today a UFC World Champion and highly successful MMA trainer. He has won many awards. He’s in the UFC Hall of Fame, and he’s gone on to train other athletes in the mixed martial arts realm to go on and become amazingly successful and well-accomplished UFC fighters as well. Pat Miletich is here on the show today. I’m excited for you to hear this because he struggled for many years his entire childhood with health issues, with lung issues, with mold. And he overcame them. He figured out how to dial in his body. I love learning from elite athletes who’ve had to overcome something. And I’m not expecting all of us. Like, I don’t want to become an elite athlete, but I want to be the healthiest I can be, right? So, we can learn from those who are absolute excellence, who have figured out how to master something and create absolute excellence. His body is a finely tuned machine. So, he’s figured out, and he’s gone on to help many other athletes do the same and reproduce the same results. He’s here today to share some of the things that has really made a difference, including this very specific fulvic humic probiotic trace mineral supplement. It’s all natural from the earth. It’s unique in many ways. That's why it’s so exciting because it does things that hugely increase oxygen in the cells and help mitochondrial function, and we’re seeing some really, really great results.

In the interview, I mention a link where you can go purchase this. You can go to Learntruehealth.com/blackgold. But before you do, I want to make sure that you get the discount because I love saving money and I want to save you money too. When you go to Learntruehealth.com/gifts, you have right there on the homepage there, Learntruehealth.com/gifts, put in your name and email address and you’re going to be given a $10 discount as well as a 30-minute free health coach strategy session and also a fantastic e-book on the foundations of holistic health. So, great gifts to get. But definitely want to make sure that you get that extra $10 off, and of course, always use coupon code LTH on any of the websites. Because every time I have a guest on, I ask them, “Hey, if you have the ability to on your website, if they're selling something, can they include a discount for the listener?” And often, I end up getting a great discount for you guys. So, LTH is the discount code for most of the time when I have guests on. Always try that code, of course. But make sure you go to Learntruehealth.com/gifts and put in your name and email address to get that $10 gift card, and then go to Learntruehealth.com/blackgold after listening to this episode if you want to try the fulvic humic acid supplement that has a natural probiotic from the earth. It’s really fascinating.

Well, just listen to the episode. You’ll see what I’m talking about. Enjoy today’s episode. Those links are going to be in the show notes of this podcast. So, just go down the description in the show notes wherever you're listening from. And you should be able to see those links there. You could, of course, always jump into the Learn True Health Facebook group. We have over 5000 listeners in that group, and it’s very active, wonderfully supportive holistic community of listeners. A lot of our guests also are there answering questions along with me. You know what I love? I love learning from other listeners, and we’re all just sharing together. So, it’s a wonderfully supportive community. If you do decide to try this humic fulvic probiotic supplement, definitely jump in the Learn True Health Facebook group and start a chat about it. Let’s talk about your results. I’d love to hear from other listeners as you guys add this to your healing journey. If you have any questions for Pat, you can always jump in the Facebook group also because I have his ear and I can always ask him for you guys. And that goes for any of our guests. If you ever have a question for them after an episode, you can jump in the Learn True Health Facebook group and ask. I can always reach out to them if you have anything, and an episode was like “Hey, what about this?” or “Now, I’m struggling with this. What do you think they would say about that?” I can always reach out to a guest. I can have them back on the show to answer your questions or I can just ask for you and then answer in the Learn True Health Facebook group. The Learn True Health Facebook group is about supporting each other in our healing journey. It’s dynamic, it’s always changing and wonderful questions are coming up and so many people are helping, and we can just pull from all the information. If you have any questions after listening to an episode, for sure jump in the Facebook group and ask. Let’s keep supporting each other and learning from each other. Excellent. And thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about, especially athletes that you know. I think they would appreciate learning from elite athletes on how to hone in their health. But also, share this with anyone who has energy issues, who’s tired or fatigued all the time and really wants to get on the other side of that and no longer struggle with energy because anything that has to do with mitochondrial health and healing is going to be something you're going to want to share with them. Learntruehealth.com/gifts first and make sure you put in your email address and name to get that $10 discount code and then go to Learntruehealth.com/blackgold to try the fulvic humic probiotic supplement that Pat is going to talk about today in addition to all the other stuff we talk about. Enjoy today’s show, and have yourself a fantastic rest of your day!

[00:06:01] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 491.

I am so excited for today’s guest. We have on the show Pat Miletich who I’m just going to let you tell your story because I’m in awe of what you have created out of everything that you’ve been doing, there’s a fulvic humic supplement that increases oxygen in the body and has had a tremendous effect on so many people’s lives. I am really excited just to jump in and hear the story of how you figured this out. So Pat, welcome to the show, and just jump in and tell your story so that we can catch up and understand what you were doing in your life that made you want to find this and figure it out. Then, we’re going to jump into what it does for the body.

[00:06:55] Pat Miletich: Thank you, Ashley. I appreciate you having me, number one, and I guess the best way for me to explain it is, so I was a very sick kid all the way into my 20's. Even though I was a pretty good athlete, I just couldn’t get to the very pinnacle of sports because I had such severely damaged respiratory system. And my mother’s basement had leaks in the foundation and every time, there would be three inches of water down there, and that's where my bedroom was. So, I lived in black mold for basically my entire life. Again, most people know me as former UFC Champ and UFC Hall of Famer and things like that. But it wasn’t until I was about ready to turn professional in kickboxing and I was giving it my best. I was training as hard as I could. You know, my wrestling matches in high school and college were me always never standing on the gas pedal because I was always worried about running out of gas. And running out of gas in a wrestling match can be kind of painful when you start getting thrown around because you can’t breathe.

So, a good friend of mine got me on some organic antioxidants, some capsules back in the day many, many years ago. I have a lot of really good antioxidants. I would spar a lot with really high-level professional boxers to work on my boxing skills. In 10 days, I went from sparring 3 to 4 rounds to about 10 rounds and feeling like I hadn’t even worked out. I felt like I went from breathing through a straw that was filled with mucus to breathing through a perfectly clear giant PVC tube. It took the inflammation out of my respiratory system, and now, all of a sudden, I’ve got endurance for days. And I went from struggling in my runs to running 16.5-minute 5K’s, got to where I was dunking a basketball, I’m only 5’10”, bench-pressing 375 pounds, and eventually, winning a UFC world title and held that for about 3.5 years. Then, I was lucky enough because of the organics that I was introduced to to train. We put 95 kids in televised careers and 12 world champions. Then, all of a sudden, I’m getting called by law enforcement and military units and I’m training them all the way up to special forces in different branches of the military. And then, a broadcasting career. 

None of this stuff would have ever happened is my main point. God knows what I’d be knowing right now had I not discovered organics. Right? So, it changed my life and it woke me up and a light bulb went off in my head. I got a lot of my athletes on these organics as well. And everybody always wondered why our team had such good endurance. Well, number one, we could train very hard because we grew up in the wrestling world, which is a pretty tough sport, to begin with. But also, our bodies were at a cellular level having so much more oxygen that we weren’t running out of oxygen in our muscles, and therefore, our muscles weren’t burning sugar for energy, so we weren’t building up lactic acid. So, we could just go and go and go. It has, yeah, really been a cool life journey for me because of organics.

[00:10:13] Ashley James: That is absolutely fascinating. So, you said it was a bunch of antioxidants at the beginning that you took. What led you to figure out the supplement that you’ve created now?

[00:10:28] Pat Miletich: You know, I got a call several years ago from a guy that I had known for about 20 years and he was always into the supplement world and very well-versed in organics. He called me up and he started talking to me about fulvic humic acid. As he was explaining the benefits of it for humans, he got to the point where he said up to 45 percent more oxygen at a cellular level. And I said, “Hold on, stop, say that again.” He said 45 percent more oxygen at a cellular level. I said if that’s true, people are going to break world records in endurance sports and combat sports. I’ve never heard of any number near that amount. I said, send it to me immediately and I want to get on it immediately. So, I got myself and my daughters on it right away. 

About 10 days into it, at the dinner table, my oldest daughter who was on the rowing team, one of the top rowing clubs in the world actually in Moline, Illinois right across the river from us, said that she was keeping up with the number two girl in the world on her team going upriver in the Mississippi River and asked my middle daughter if her swim practices were getting any easier. Of course, she was swimming for a guy that was a former Navy SEAL, so you can imagine what those practices are like. My middle daughter said, “We did 100-100 yesterday on the clock, and I was the only girl to finish practice.” So, I said, “Okay, I think yes, this is definitely working, so I’m going to go run 22 miles tomorrow,” because it was Memorial Day. For the 22 veterans on average that die per day, I figured I was going to go run 22 miles. And I hadn’t run in about a year really at all. I’ve been lifting weights but not really running because I had done a lot of ultrarunning distant stuff, and it just took so much time to go out and do a training run of 20, 30, 40 miles that I decided I was going to spend time in the weight room. 

So, I went out, and I ran 11 miles out and 11 miles back in my 50’s and thought I’m going to be really sore tomorrow. I woke up the next day and I wasn’t really sore at all and I ran a 5-mile recovery run, and I said, “Okay, yup, this is exactly what he said it is.” So, from there, I’ve shared it with a lot of people and we’ve had a lot of amazing athletic stories. Guys who are in their 50’s who are my buddies that are ultrarunners who’ve been running marathons and ultramarathons for decades in their 50’s, dropped their per-mile times by over a minute, and at the same time, their heart rates dropped by 30 beats a minute. So, you just don’t do that in your 50’s unless you’re putting something very potent and very effective in your body.

[00:13:23] Ashley James: This makes so much sense because my husband, he started taking it and then he went on a hike. We’ve been kind of sedentary, let’s just say. The last few years have been stressful. A few months ago, he spent five months sitting for five months straight doing 24-hour hospice care for his dad. So, he was very sedentary. We haven’t been as active. We have probably been the least active in the last few years that we have in our lives. He got up, this is a few days after getting on your supplement, he’s like, “I’m going for a walk.” He just went and he hiked up a really steep hill, and he went, and he went, and he went. And I thought maybe he goes a few blocks, but he went miles, he went absolute miles. I mean, you know, if you have been really sedentary just sitting for years, and then you get up and you just start hiking, and he walks pretty fast, he’s 6’6” so he’s got long legs, and he went and just went. He was, “Yeah, I made it to Starbucks.” I mean, Starbucks is miles away. Then, he walked back. And he wasn’t sore the next day. It didn’t even faze him. I didn’t connect the dots until just now. But that was a few days after like maybe a week or so after he started taking your supplement. But since he started taking it, he’s been more energetic, more motivated, more active than he’s been in a long time. 

[00:15:05] Pat Miletich: That's amazing.

[00:15:09] Ashley James: I’m an extrovert and I go, go, go, and I manage so many different things, so I’m just always kind of on the move. But we’ve been both organizing more, cleaning more, just being more active around the house instead of being lazy bums. The first thing I noticed, so I joined the choir and we’re practicing for Christmas and that particular Thursday, we have a choir practice on Thursday evenings. My mornings start pretty early, so it was a long day. Usually, on those long days because I’m working, I’m doing homeschooling, I’m managing a large homeschooling group, I’m shopping, I’m cooking, I’m cleaning, I’m doing the laundry, so it’s like go, go, go, and then, at 6:30 after I’ve made dinner, after we’ve driven our son around to all of his Taekwondo class and all the other classes he does, and then, I get to the church and I’m in the choir, and normally, right around dinnertime, I am done. I’m wiped. I just want to sit down and I just want to put me to bed; I’m done. It’s been a long day. Just let me be, right? 

But there I was getting ready to go to church, and I am, like, my body is telling me it’s 11:00 AM. Now it’s 6:30 at night, but my body is like, do you know how you feel at 11:00 AM? That's pretty much high peak energy, right? Your body has processed breakfast, you got lots of energy, you haven’t spent all your energy that day. Ever since I started taking it, my body feels it’s not like jittery like coffee. It’s not like energy that coffee tricks you into having energy. That's not it. It’s not like sugar tricks you into feeling like you're hyper or energetic before a crash. It’s not that. It doesn’t necessarily feel like it’s giving me energy. It just feels like it’s like my body is at 11:00 AM all day long until I’m ready to go to bed. That's what I noticed. I just don’t hit that exhaustion. I don’t hit that like “Oh, I need a break. I need to sit down. I need something to get me through the day.” I don’t hit that since I started taking it and it’s not like a bunch of capsules. It was like 2 or 3 of these tiny capsules. So, I’m kind of like, what’s going on? I always think it’s a placebo effect. But I didn’t know it would do this. In a placebo effect, you have to have some belief it’s going to do something. I didn’t know what it was going to do. But I just noticed like, wow, it’s 6:30 at night and I can keep going. And I just feel myself steady, even-keel energy all day long until I’m ready to go to bed. Then, I’m just like, okay, then I go to bed.

[00:17:58] Pat Miletich: Beautiful.

[00:17:59] Ashley James: Yeah, that's what I felt. I thought, man, this is very interesting. I haven’t tried pushing myself like, okay, I’m going to go to the gym. Because when I do go to the gym, I get like very alpha and I push myself pretty hard. I love weightlifting, I love grabbing those ropes and throwing them around until the burn hits and my muscles stop working. So, it’ll be interesting to see what happens when I get back in the gym. But right now, I’m just being kind of trying to put out fires in my life. I’m running around, and I just notice that I can do that with ease instead of with exhaustion. So, I thought that was really cool.

[00:18:30] Pat Miletich: Beautiful. And I can explain where this comes from, why it’s so effective, how it works, all that sort of stuff. So fulvic humic acids are derived from different places. Some are derived from leonardite, which is a soft coal, which is fossilized. I don’t want to put that in my body. They have to use harsh chemical processes to remove the humic fulvic from the coal and then they would add pre- and probiotics in it for agriculture to call it organic, so to speak. Same thing from dead seafloor beds. They’ll mine it from places like that. 

But the ones that I’m going to put in my body come from living, breathing peat bogs in North America. The gentleman that discovered this searched for about 6 years testing bogs all over North America to find the most nutrient-rich ones. Once he found that area where there were the most nutrient-rich, he knew to go down roughly about 45 to 50 feet to the sediment layer where all those nutrients are concentrated from 1500 different types of plants that have basically decomposed for 60,000 years. So, they’re able to auger that up. They put metal tubes down into the bog and then they auger that up and then they have a process that uses zero chemicals, puts it under extreme pressure and separates the powder from the pulp. The pulp goes back in the bog to continue what’s called the humification process and breaking down. So, it’s actually as sustainable as you're going to get. 

When you add that powder in water, some people put it in their coffee in the morning. I used to drink coffee like crazy. But I drink one cup of coffee a day now because yes, this product gives you so much energy. In testing, fulvic humics are known to be organic forms of the metals will be burned by the mitochondria which is the furnace of the cell to create energy within the cell, and that's where you get the real energy that a human being or an animal is supposed to feel when they're healthy and putting proper levels of organics in their body. So, that's where the energy comes from.

Also, fulvic humics are known in test to bond with hydrogen within the cell to create more oxygen in the cell which is very beneficial. Then, the last thing they do before they leave is they have the ability to bond with heavy metals and toxins and then your cell recognizes those organic substances that are water-soluble and will then release the heavy metals and toxins attached to the organics to chelate those toxins and heavy metals out of your cells. So, when you have better cellular function throughout your entire body, you're just going to feel better. That's really one of the things that it’s done.

Fulvic humics are also known to be able to help balance hormonal levels—testosterone and estrogen. The organic iodine that is in fulvic humics is known to benefit thyroid function as well as even they say it protects you from radiation, which with 5G and all the other stuff that we’re dealing with these days, probably not a bad thing. So, there’s a lot of benefits to this and, ultimately, what you want is to remove as much inflammation out of your body as possible and with the heavy metals and toxins in our cells, a lot of the inflammation comes from those toxins being trapped within us and that, of course, ends up manifesting in some form of disease many times.  

[00:22:10] Ashley James: Listeners, to get it, can go to Learntruehealth.com/blackgold. But on the website, it says one of the things it does is build your gut biome, which is the single most important thing we need. I mean, obviously we need our heart to be like there’s certain things we need immediately. But for sustained health, for optimal health, the first thing we have to do is make sure we have a healthy guy because the gut makes our neurotransmitters, it houses them too, it digests and basically makes the nutrients for us. I’ve done a few interviews on this where we discovered that there’s over 100,000 genetic expressions of your microbiome, and they can see that what your particular gut bacteria are doing is digesting food and changing its chemical composition and then you uptake that, and that becomes this nutrient. So, we have a delicate relationship and an essential relationship with these 6 pounds of bacteria in our gut, and it’s constantly under threat because if you don’t eat organic, life is safe for example and all the other chemicals on conventionally grown food destroy the gut, lots of different over-the-counter medications and prescription medications destroy the microbiome of the gut. So, we’re constantly under threat and we need to support our microbiome. We need to repopulate it and support it. So, any time I see a product that works really well, helping us maintain good gut health. It’s essential. It’s essential for our emotional and mental health as well because there is a direct link between gut health and emotional and mental health.

[00:24:02] Pat Miletich: Sure.

[00:24:04] Ashley James: And there’s a direct link to our immune function. Just every cell in our body requires this delicate balance to be protected. So, can you explain how your supplement helps build the gut biome?

[00:24:21] Pat Miletich: Well, basically, what’s being tested right now and there’s been several studies done on mitochondrial function and cellular function and heavy metal toxicity removal. But the really cool thing that a lot of people are testing right now at universities here in Iowa as well as at the university in British Columbia, is they're very interested in the specific types, families of microbes, and the numbers because when this comes up out of the ground, again, this is not fossilized, this is living. So, there’s 60,000-year-old pristine microbes that come up with it. And when it is flash-frozen, those microbes are frozen in time. But when you put them back in water, they come to life like sea monkeys again. And that’s the best way that I can describe it for people.

So, that’s what they’re very interested in because that’s what’s going on inside your body. It’s also when they talk about the terra preta soil, have you heard Gram Hancock on Joe Rogan talk about the terra preta soil from Brazil at all?

[00:25:27] Ashley James: No.

[00:25:29] Pat Miletich: So, very interesting. Gram Hancock is a guy that’s been on my podcast several times. Super, super intelligent guy. One area of his study is history, talking about the massive ancient civilization cities that they're finding within the Amazon jungle that pre-date back to 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. These cities, these civilizations had a really unique composting method that created a super-rich and microbial-rich soil called the terra preta soil or the Amazon black earth. You can take a handful of that and put it down on barren soil, and his words exactly, and bring that barren soil back to life through the microbial activity and the nutrients in that soil. So, this is a 60,000-year-old version of that but even more concentrated because this has been, again, 1500 types of plants that have decomposed for 60,000 years. It’s the most nutrient-rich substance that I’ve ever found, and I think the gentleman that discovered this actually should get a Nobel Prize for it.

[00:26:46] Ashley James:  That’s fascinating. And they're doing studies on it right now. It would be interesting to see if it repopulates and stays in the gut because a lot of probiotics only work as long as you take them and they don’t stay in the gut months after you have stopped taking them. Whereas eating fermented foods, they tend to see that that has a greater effect. But again, this is not a probiotic. This is, in a sense, that it’s been constructed in the lab or cultured in a lab, I should say. This has been taken from the earth. So, it’s different. It’s different than taking a probiotic. 

[00:27:30] Pat Miletich: I, over the past 35 years, have found that to be honest with you, whatever our Creator has created is always better than what is created in laboratories from what I’ve found. I mean, of course, nutraceuticals, taking organics, revving them up, doing the things that they do with them, are very beneficial. But I’ve not seen a laboratory produce anything that has these effects on people’s endurance and overall well-being, to be honest with you.

[00:28:00] Ashley James: That is fascinating. So you’ve given us some examples of athletes who have benefited from it. Do you have stories of average everyday people or even people who are sick have some transformations where we’ve seen people be able to really recover from an illness because of this?

[00:28:21] Pat Miletich: Well, I don’t make any medical claims but I can tell you that there’s been some very dramatic health turnarounds, 180’s with people who were in dire straits with their health and it certainly helped them a lot. For me, again, with my respiratory system, I’ve tried over the past four years several different fulvic humics just to see how they compare. Generally, about 10 days into using other fulvic humics, my respiratory system starts to deteriorate again. And so, then I get back on my own product and my respiratory system seems to come back. So, yeah, I can’t make any specific stories. I won’t do that just for obvious reasons. But I can tell you that I’ve had a lot of very good friends with a myriad of pretty serious health issues seem to make some pretty good recoveries.

[00:29:22] Ashley James: I love it. And now, I saw that one of the things that you have added to it is acerola cherry powder which is a fantastic way to get vitamin C-wise, that you include that in with the fulvic humics inside the capsules.

[00:29:40] Pat Miletich: Yeah, the fulvic humic is an amazing transporter of nutrients into the cell. So, it’s going to transport that organic vitamin C much better into the cell so it’s going to make that even more effective for immune function. The organic vitamin C is also an incredible antioxidant, so they both work well together. For me, I’m thanking way ahead of taking every possible antioxidant that I can find along with fulvic humic and throw them in one capsule and just turn people into literally just machines. 

[00:30:17] Ashley James: I love it. Now, you call it Super Soldier Black Gold Oxygen Booster. Can you explain why you’ve decided to call your supplement that?

[00:30:32] Pat Miletich: I’m a guy who has followed a lot of the folks. I hosted a podcast for about 7 years that we dealt with a lot of the stuff that was going on in the world kind of behind the scenes. Listening to guys or folks who are talking about digital implants in people’s brains and a lot of the things that they’re talking about building digital super soldiers, China is talking about building military digital super soldiers and things like that. I thought, you know, in all the athletic endeavors that I’ve ever been involved in and I believe and I know because I’ve seen them, I’ve had to rustle them, I’ve had to fight them, I’ve run with them, that the X-men actually do exist on this planet. There’s people in their 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s who can run 100 miles at high altitude at level 100 without stopping, within 24 hours they get it done. And I can’t explain to people who have not experienced altitude how brutally hard that is just to hike up one mountain is brutally hard for healthy people. I work at a gym where people regularly carry around over 1,000 pounds on their shoulders at a strongman gym. I’ve had people grab me that are so unbelievably powerful that it’s almost beyond, you know, and I was a guy who was in my prime very strong. And these people, there was no comparison in strength. I mean, they threw me around like a ragdoll. Olympic-level wrestlers and people like that. So, they do exist and they were all these people that were raised and ate whole foods, real foods from the earth, not boxed and not processed foods, so to speak, right?

So, my goal, you know, when I hear Dennis Bushnell from NASA saying we’re going to build digital super soldiers, I said, well, I’m going to build organic super soldiers. Let’s see who’s better. And I know who’s better.

[00:32:29] Ashley James: I love it. Building organic super soldiers. I love it. We all want to be. When I first heard that name, I’m like, man, I just think so many people won’t relate to this thinking of super soldier, right? There’s the, you know, mom who’s at home doing homeschooling. I’m not sure that that would be relatable. But then, when you explain in that way, like I want to be an organic super soldier, I want to feel especially the experience I’ve had now with your product where I’m just like yeah, I’m go, go, go and my body just doesn’t go into fatigue, and it’s so cool. Our church is pretty extreme, our services are two-hours long, and we do choir. We get there at 8:00 AM, we don’t leave until 1:00. And we’re standing and singing for at least 3 hours because we do two services. I did that yesterday. I got my family ready, fed my family breakfast. We got to church, was there until 1, got home, made lunch, served lunch to the family, cleaned, did all the stuff around the house and made dinner, and then had a friend over. It was like at 9:00 at night and I’m like, I don’t want my friend to leave, I want to just keep hanging out. But, you know, it’s Sunday night, right? And I’m just like, I can’t believe how just consistent my energy is and I could get so much done, and that is like I’m organic super soldier mom level.

[00:34:01] Pat Miletich: There you go. No, that’s it. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. It’s about changing people’s lives and if we can’t get people to just eat even remotely sensibly to educate them on what’s making them sick, what’s causing inflammation in their diet, and then put proper organic nutrients into their body from the supplementation, we can literally change somebody’s life so dramatically with their health that then they sit back and go “wow, what do I want to do with my life now? Now that I can actually do things I want to do?” I’ve had people just break down in tears numerous times because their health had changed so dramatically by just simply changing their diet a little bit and putting proper organic nutrients into their body supplementation and it’s all I care about right now, is just helping people understand that they don’t have to be sick, that you can change your life.

For the past several days, for the past week, I’ve been helping DownRange Excursions which is a local group that helps local veterans here in the quad cities, Iowa, Illinois. They take them on excursions, canoe trips, kayak trips, fishing trips, hunting trips, things like that to get them back into the wilderness and help them cope a little bit with what they’re going through. They also have a supplement line. So, I like helping them and explain the benefits. As we’re in these grocery stores, I’m telling probably 9 out of 10 people are either obese, they’re sadly disfigured, their musculoskeletal system, you can tell that they're not with it mentally. It breaks my heart to watch this happen to Americans because I’ve watched it for so many years because I’ve been involved in high-level sports and nutrients and understanding this stuff, that I understand why it’s happening because they're not getting the nutrients from their food anymore, because our soil has been so beat up by chemicals and things like that. 

So, as I was sitting there yesterday and as I was talking to the owner of the company DownRange Supplements, I said to him, it’s sad—it’s sad to watch this. He said yes, and that's why we’re here. We’re here to explain that people can change their lives. Just the message I try to get out to people for those people that are hurting right now that maybe have obesity issues that are in pain, suffering from a myriad of health issues, that you can change it if you put the right things in your body and just give it a chance. That’s the main thing. 

[00:36:44] Ashley James: We’ve been discussing inflammation and you brought up food, so I think this is a wonderful transition. I’d love for you to share your expertise. I mean, you see trained world champions, trained amazing fighters, trained soldiers, so many people, and helped hundreds and hundreds of people in this becoming elite athletes, becoming the best versions of themselves athletically. Right? And you can’t do that and then go to McDonald’s. You can’t do that. Medical doctors, it just drives me nuts when they say this: “Your diet has nothing to do with your health.” I have heard that so many times from doctors. “Well, you can’t fix this with diet. You can’t fix this with food. You need a drug.” It’s ridiculous that it’s a huge myth that you can just eat whatever you want because “diabetes is genetics, so just eat whatever you want and take the insulin or take the metformin.” There's this whole mentality around maintaining sickness. With that, I want to shift people’s mindsets. I want to help them understand what you’ve been doing for so long, is helping people to become the absolute best versions of themselves.

[00:38:12] Pat Miletich: Yeah.

[00:38:13] Ashley James: So, I’d love for you to share the insight with the masses. Tell us what the masses don’t know that the elite athletes do know about what they can do on a daily basis to create optimal health. 

[00:38:26] Pat Miletich: Well, I can tell you this. If it needs a commercial and it’s in a box, you generally don’t want to eat it, right? There are simple things when you're going through the organic section or the produce section where you can look for the numbers. There's a hashtag with a four- or five-digit code on there that you want to stay away from the 3’s and 4’s, when they start with 3’s and 4’s. You want to go to the 8’s and 9’s that are truly organic, so that’s something that is super important. But years ago, you know, at one time I had between 40 and 50 world-rank fighters training in my facility at the same time. So, it was a roomful of very high-level professional fighters. And fighters from all over the world would travel to train with my team for their upcoming fights. It was my job to coach these guys, but it was not my job to babysit them, so I would tell them “This is where you stay. Rent an apartment across the street. And then this is where the grocery store is, and this is where you can get this and take care of this. And you're on your own.”

So, all the fighters from Asia, from South America, from Europe, they would go to the grocery store and every single time, and this is over two decades ago, said “Now, we understand why Americans are obese and disease-ridden. Your grocery stores are grotesque. There's nothing but poison in your grocery stores.” They couldn’t believe what they saw. That's another lightbulb that went off for me and because I was doing things like on Sundays I would boil three chickens and then take the meat off and put it in big Tupperware, steam a bunch of broccoli, cook a bunch of brown rice, hard-boil 48 eggs and peel them all and have them ready for the week, things like that, and eat super clean while I was getting ready for my own fights. But yeah, and that was the problem is, is I started seeing Americans getting bigger and bigger. There was a gentleman named Dr. Ed Thomas that periodically that periodically I would be blessed by his presence and his education. He was saying 25 years ago that it was a national security crisis that was taking place with obesity in America and we’re seeing that manifest now where people who are obese and diabetic and have comorbidities are very, very vulnerable to what’s been going on in the last few years. So, it’s got to be a terrifying experience for them and to those folks, again, you can change your health, you can change your immune system, build your immune system and that's super, super important in modern times for certain. 

That's really something that’s very important as well as kids were brought to me when I was teaching, you know, I taught children for years anywhere from 3 years old all the way up. All of a sudden, boys started to be brought to me to take lessons because the parents wanted them to be able to work on their concentration and their focus. And they had this new thing called autism. It was growing and back then it was 1 in 5000 kids I guess roughly, and now, I believe we’re up to 1 in 36 children, specifically boys, that have autistic symptoms or characteristics. So, it’s obviously our environment, the chemicals and a lot of the other stuff that's going on, the toxic chemicals and heavy metals that are in our environment are getting into these children and everybody else into our cells and are causing us to short-circuit, so to speak. That's really what it comes down to, is just you’ve got to really pay attention to labels, what you put in your body, what chemicals you do not want to put in your body and as well as deodorants, shampoos, things like that that have aluminum and other substances in them that you don’t want to put on your skin because your skin is going to absorb that into your system and cause hormonal disruptions and a lot of other issues. 

[00:42:37] Ashley James: Yeah, we’ve got to really advocate for ourselves and take care of ourselves and be very cognizant of what we’re putting in our body, around our body. You talked about mold. So many people live in homes with mold. Mold is so bad for the immune system. It causes neurological problems. We just have to be very clear and understand what’s in our environment and where our food is coming from. And we have to question everything. We have to be the person that questions everything that reads labels. I become a food detective; it drives my husband nuts. There are certain brains I know I can trust so I don’t read the labels. But I have still been shocked because I’ll find a brand, I’ll read the labels, I’ll vet them. I’ll go, “Okay.” I don’t buy a lot of processed foods but there's a few things, you know, like maybe packages of brown rice noodles for our son or something. Right? And I’ll read the labels. Or some hot sauce. Sometimes I’ll make my own hot sauce, sometimes I buy it from the store and I’ll read the label and everything looks good. And then, I’ll be buying that for a few years and then I’ll just it’s sort of a habit to look at labels and I’ll read the ingredients, and they’ve changed it. They’ve changed the ingredients. Now there’s, all of a sudden, sugar added or some weird “natural” flavoring which is a cover for MSG and all kinds of stuff. We have to be diligent and question everything. That’s why I love finding these.

There's just a handful of amazing supplement companies out there that have incredibly high ethics, that are actually doing good in the world, that are making a difference for people. It’s like 1 percent or maybe even less than 1 percent of the supplement companies out there. Then there's a ton of really bad supplement companies that are giving the good ones a bad name. It’s so unfortunate. I spent thousands of dollars in many, many years when I was sick, taking like go to Trader Joe’s and just buying all the vitamins there. They just go right through me and I never felt a difference ever. Ever, ever, ever. I’d go to Whole Foods or wherever supplement store. I didn’t get a difference. Then I was introduced to a really high-quality brand that was made by a naturopath and not sold in the stores. And I felt amazing. Amazing. Totally a game-changer for me.

There's only been a handful of game-changer supplements. Yours is one of them for me.

[00:45:13] Pat Miletich: Beautiful.

[00:45:15] Ashley James: For me, that's why you can’t out-supplement a bad diet. I couldn’t take your supplement every day and then just eat McDonald’s and expect amazing health. Right? The diet absolutely is key, but even more so than diet, we have to make sure that's clean in terms of organic. Make sure that it’s clean. We have to eat right. We need to move our body in a way that brings us joy. We have to go to bed on time, drink enough water, destress ourselves, make sure that we’re feeling fulfilled in life. These are key to health. These are fundamental key things to health.

Then there's these little things that come along that are complete gamechangers that take you to the next level, right? I want everyone to do all the fundamentals and then they get something like your supplement that oxygenates their cells, boosts their gut biome, helps their immune system. I want to get into understanding a bit more, if you could explain further. Can you explain further how this helps the immune system function better, how it fortifies the immune system and how does it work to oxygenate the cells even better than just a regular body does it on its own?

[00:46:28] Pat Miletich: Sure, yeah. So, the fulvic humic combination, the humic is a bigger molecule, a bigger chain, and it protects the outside of the cell. The fulvic is what goes into the cell and will bond with hydrogen to create more oxygen within the cell. I mean, we’re water, we’re oxygen and what I like to say good bugs and bad bugs, technically. But we’re the same as dirt. If you take human cells only in clay, that's the starting point, right? And then we add water, oxygen, decomposing organic matter and microbes, and that makes rich dirt that can grow food and it also makes a human being. So, that's super important for people to understand. So, the more you can raise your oxygen, stay hydrated with good quality water, and control the bad bugs, so to speak, to a certain extent, is super important. There have been a lot of tests done on the ability of humic and fulvic acids to have a greater affinity for viruses than viruses have affinity for the cell itself. So, it’s something that's very powerful. They’ve been proven to be very good natural antivirals. And people can look those tests up on a myriad of different fulvic humic acids. So, that's something that does exist. But that's super important for folks to understand that as well.

I’ve had a lot of good conversations, interesting, colorful conversations, to say the least, when you talk about doctors. I’ve had good conversations with doctors, I’ve had very interesting conversations with agronomists, horticulturalists, and I was laughed at the other or probably a week and a half ago or whatever by a chemist. I was at a digital currency meeting and a lady that owns a CBD company was asking me about humic fulvic. And I was talking about organic forms of metal. The guy started just laughing in my face from across the table. Then, his friends started laughing at me and pointed at his friend and goes, “He’s a chemist.” I was thinking to myself, I can tell. So, anyway, I said, “Do I have to explain how organic metals are formed?” And they said, “Give it a shot.”

And so, I said when metals are chelated up out of the ground by a plant and bonded with a carbon molecule, they become very stable and useful for the mitochondria to burn as fuel to generate energy again. And he looked at me and all he could say to me was, “Well, I’ll agree that things can be bonded with carbon molecules.” And I was thinking to myself, how much did that chemistry degree cost him. I mean, I got punched in the head for a living and had figured this stuff out. But people have been educated only one way and it’s about synthetics. And he had the gall to ask me, he said, “Wait a minute, can this substance by synthesized?” And I said, why would you want to do that? That’s the problem that’s getting everybody sick, is synthetics. I go stop it, just stop. So, that was an interesting conversation.

[00:49:51] Ashley James: How different is this from store-bought, let’s say, humic shale and fulvic acid? I have a lot of friends who said, “Oh, well, you know, I’ve been taking…” and then they’ll just name off some stuff they bought at some supplement store. “And I’m taking a humic shale and a fulvic acid.” The reason why I ask them is because my friends know I’m like a health nut and they’ll tell me what they take and I’ll start talking about their symptoms. Then I’ll say, “So is it working for you? Are you feeling a difference?” “Oh, maybe. Maybe I’m getting a little better sleep.” But they have 20 other symptoms. They’re still riddled with health issues. They’re still exhausted. And I’m like, “Well, first of all, let’s look at the supplement company. You did buy it from a store, right?” And in my experience, most supplements bought at a store are not the highest quality ones out there. Some of them are middle of the road, some of them are okay, you can get away with it. But I’ve never met a friend who said “I’ve totally noticed the difference. My life is completely changed,” when they talk about using an over-the-counter humic shale and fulvic acid supplement. I’m just thinking there’s probably a few listeners out there saying “Oh yeah, one of my supplements I’m taking says it has humic shale and fulvic acid.” So, how different could yours possibly be?

[00:51:15] Pat Miletich: Well again, we go back to organic or inorganic sources—dead sea floor bed or coal that has to use harsh chemical processes to remove the humic fulvic from it in the first place, is something that I don’t want to put in my body and I’m certainly not going to put it in my kid’s bodies. So, it’s got to come from an organic source. Peat bogs–living breathing peat bogs has got to be the first source. Now, a lot of peat bog derived humic fulvics, they will take and they will heat pasteurize and kill the microbes that are in it, which are again, pristine microbes from thousands of years ago, and then they take pre and probiotics that have been cultured in a lab and add them back into it. And I don’t understand why you would want to do that. 

Now, some people say, “Well, we want to be able to control what type of microbes are in it and things like that.” I always say it’s obvious that God created some really powerful stuff. Every time man seems to mess with what God created, they screw it up really bad. Genetically modified grains, for instance. Synthetic fertilizers and glyphosate and everything else that was patented as an antibiotic originally. You spray it on plants because they’re sick and they can’t fend off bugs because they don’t give off the natural enzymes. So, again, most vitamin mineral supplements, for instance, come from rock that’s inorganic. You're an inorganic organism. You're not going to absorb it. It’s not an organic substance so it’s not meant to be in your body. And that’s just the way it is. So, you're always going to benefit and feel the organics, at least high-level organics, especially for sick people or people that are looking for huge gains and endurance, they're going to feel it a lot more when they put powerful concentrated organics in their body.

[00:53:16] Ashley James: I’m a huge believer in trace minerals and your supplement has over 70 trace minerals in it. There’s 60 minerals that are essential to the body. There’s many trace minerals that are necessary and the body absolutely needs them and yet we’re deficient in them because of the farming practices of over the last 100 years. I had Dr. Wallach on my show twice. His degree is in veterinary medicine, pathology, soil agriculture and he’s a naturopathic physician. He also spent many years, decades being a research scientist. So with all that, and what he concluded, with all that, because he actually discovered what is not in the mainstream, which drives me nuts. We know how to prevent neural tube defects in utero because we know to take folate, not fulvic acid, that's synthetic. We’re talking about that’s synthetic versus like an organic. Folic acid actually blocks folate from uptake and we still then can develop neural tube defects. So, we’ve got to make sure that if you are taking a supplement during pregnancy and also even before pregnancy when you're waiting to get pregnant, we should be making sure that it’s folate. We have to make sure it’s folate in its organic form. Also, eating lots of leafy greens that are organic will help us get there as well. 

But he discovered that selenium deficiency in utero is the cause of muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis and that Down syndrome is a zinc deficiency at the moment of conception. There's many other birth defects that can happen because of not optimal conditions while the baby is being built. We can build humans without all the key nutrients. We’re just going to build sort of broken humans, right? And most of us are walking around like, you know, our parents drank alcohol while they were pregnant and smoked cigarettes and weren’t taking supplements and were eating not-so-great nutrients. We see poor health as a result and so we have to overcome it. What’s amazing is the body is just an absolute miracle and I’ve seen people on their deathbeds be able to recover and live absolutely healthy lives when they're able to make some powerful changes in their diet, in their supplementation to fill in those gaps. It’s like supplements, really high-quality ones are the mortar and the food is the bricks. Right? 

We can overcome so much. But Dr. Wallach discovered that the key thing for health, beyond anything else, are minerals. He says you can accidentally get vitamins by eating fruits and vegetables. You can accidentally get them. But it’s really hard to accidentally get all minerals that we need. The farming practices, again, his background is in soil agriculture so he saw this. He tested soil samples and found that the Amish for example who had incredibly high birth defect rights, he tested their soil. Because they were primarily only eating the food they grew and he discovered that their soil was completely void of certain key minerals like selenium and so they kept having these birth defects. He helped them re-mineralize their soil and get on the trace minerals, and boom, they were able to stop those birth defects immediately. So, I’ve seen it over and over again. And I’m a huge believer in making sure we take trace minerals as a supplement because you don’t know if the farm you’re buying your organic produce from has been re-mineralizing their soil and most farmland has been farmed for almost 100 years or more without re-mineralizing. We used to over 100 years ago up until electricity took over. We did wood burning. We had ash. We had so much ash and that's minerals and we’d throw it onto the garden. We always were eating food from re-mineralized gardens.

If you look at cookbooks from 200 years ago, it will say in the recipes to add pot ash as a thickening agent. We were adding minerals back into our food as part of a regular practice. 

[00:57:53] Pat Miletich: Very cool. 

[00:57:54] Ashley James: So yeah, I’m a big believer in minerals. It’s one of the things that helped me to regain my health after being sick for so many years. So, your supplement has these minerals but you're saying that because they’re an organic form, it’s like it was predigested by the plant. So the plant up-took, plants digest minerals and it digests it to the point where we can absorb it.

[00:58:20] Pat Miletich: Yes.

[00:58:22] Ashley James: So 50 million years ago or however long this peat bog has been in there, the plants digested the minerals and they stayed in this chelated form, this very microscopic form that is easy to uptake from the body. But we’ve been sold. So, I grew up, as you did too, grow up watching commercials on milk, it does the body good. We grew up being told that we have to drink milk to get our calcium. I kind of grew up thinking cows made calcium like a lot of people think.

[00:58:55] Pat Miletich: And eat wheat bread.

[00:58:56] Ashley James: Right. Fortified. Eat fortified. And it’s synthetic. By the way, people who like me have MTHFR, who can’t process non-methylated B vitamins, eating fortified bread and fortified foods and flowers is really bad for us. It clogs up our liver and makes it so we can’t detox heavy metals. It’s crazy how if you go out there and eat the standard American diet, and I say this often on my show, if you want to be a statistic, do what everyone else is doing. Seventy percent of the adult population is on at least one prescription medication. Many of them are on pain meds. People who are chronically in pain, their bodies are in pain because they’re nutrient deficient and they’re just screaming in inflammation. We have got 1/3 of the population’s obese or prediabetic or diabetic. The leading causes of death—heart disease, diabetes, cancer—these are not fun diseases to die off. This is like the last 20 years of your life just goes downhill worse and worse and worse. It is suffering, it is hospital visits. It is not nice. I would rather sacrifice the fun that food brings me now, like I would rather not go eat fun food. Like I’d rather say no to that whatever chocolate cake, whatever. I’d rather say no to that and be climbing mountains in my 90’s than live how everyone else is living.

So, I need to be the black sheep or I need to be the salmon. I need to go completely against the grain. I need to be okay to doing it differently from everyone else and saying no to the things that people say yes to. But I have to really make sure I secure my minerals. So, looking where we get our minerals from, because people have been brainwashed to think “Well, I get all my minerals from dairy products or from fortified wheat or fortified grains.” I had Dr. Neal Bernard on my show twice and he talks about studies that show that countries who do more cow dairy have the highest rates of broken hips, broken lips, have the highest rates of osteopenia/osteoporosis. Those countries that almost don’t do any dairy at all have the lowest rates of basically all the bone diseases. So, very interesting that we’ve been brainwashed through marketing to eat fortified cereal that’s laced with sugar, drink the excretions from another mammal past infancy, which is actually drinking an immune system from a different animal, which kind of just drives me nuts. When you look through Neal Barnard’s research and you read his books or listen to those two episodes, it’s a real eye-opener. So, we’ve been conned through food marketing to create ill health. And I wonder if there’s some real evil people in a backroom somewhere like you’ve got big food, big agri sitting back there menacingly with Monsanto and the pharmaceutical industry and they're like “Ha-ha-ha! So we’re going to tell people that they have high cholesterol and we need to make them eat no fat but they have to eat lots of sugar instead because low-fat foods are filled with sugar. Then we’re going to get them on this drug.” The way we see how much we’ve been manipulated, I just wonder if they're all kind of in cahoots together and maybe that's my little conspiracy brain going. But basically, what we’ve been taught is the exact opposite of the truth. 

[01:02:45] Pat Miletich: Sure.

[01:02:46] Ashley James: So people are walking around completely mineral deficient, believing that they're getting their minerals because they're getting their 8 ounces of milk a day or whatever they’ve been told by the marketing. They're actually not getting anywhere near what they need. So, these minerals that are in your particular supplement, the 70+ trace minerals, they’ve already been digested by these plants. The body uptakes them very quickly. I wonder how much though are we supposed to take because they’re very small capsules and I was surprised, I was just taking two twice a day and I got really great results. So I’m like, man, how is it that it is so tiny and yet I’m getting such a good result? What if I took more? Could you go through a detox if you take too much? Maybe can we just talk about that. Like are there any adverse effects at first or does the body go through a detox if we take too much? Can you kind of lay out what the appropriate amount to take is?

[01:03:46] Pat Miletich: For starters, again, the chelation process and it will clean off your intestinal walls. At the smaller does that you're taking, it’s going to do it a lot slower. There are people who have, say, an athlete who’s pushing the envelope every single day, the things that I used to do as an athlete where we would kickbox on Wednesday nights. It was sparring at the gym for all the professional fighters. And we would spar 10 to 15 rounds—and that's a lot, that's very taxing. But then we’d throw in our running shoes and go run a hill over and over and over for extra endurance. Now you got to get up the next morning and you’ve got to come back and you’ve got to train again, so you have to be able to recover and you have to put the nutrients back in the body, the hydration, proper sleep, you know, all those sorts of things.

So, people that are really pushing the envelope in terms of endurance and strength training and a lot of the other stuff that people like to do that look crazy to other people, they’re going to definitely take more to replenish their body. But 2 to 4 capsules a day is plenty for the average person, generally. I’ve gotten a lot of messages from people on social media who are saying. I had a guy and it’s funny because I’ve had several guys that I know say the same thing, they go, “Hey, does this do something for your testosterone?” I go, “Oh, you’re chasing your wife around the house?” They go, “Yeah.” And so, I’ve gotten a lot of that. A lot of digestive issues, the symptoms are waning and a lot of other stuff with inflammation. So, it just varies, I think, depending on activity, to be honest with you.

[01:05:35] Ashley James: Would starting with 2 twice a day be a good place to start?

[01:05:41] Pat Miletich: A lot of people can take just 2 in the morning to start with if they want. That's fine. But like I said, I mean, I’m a guy who’s going to use a lot more because I’m trying to push my body. Today, I tried to do a bunch of crazy stuff. I like to do workouts where I’ll do 10 burpee jump pull-ups and then go run half a mile and do that 10 times, things like that that are breaking my body down pretty good. I’m in my 50’s, so I want to be able to come back tomorrow and get on the treadmill and hike a bunch of miles at 10 incline to work my rear chain and then the next day I’ll do something like beat on the heavy bag and then get on the treadmill and do some sprints, just different things like that to try and keep myself at least in pretty, pretty good shape in my 50’s. Not quite as intense as I used to be but I’m going to still push myself. The older we get and a lot of times the more inflammation we get as we get older because the cells build up those heavy metals and toxins, the more we’re going to feel when we put really good organics in our body and start cleaning it out.

[01:06:50] Ashley James: Yes. Can you tell me more about the studies? You said some studies have been done and some studies are in the process. Is there anything more you can tell us about studies around this?

[01:07:02] Pat Miletich: Yeah. So the mitochondrial studies that was done on it, it definitely improves mitochondrial function and output. So, that's something that’s obviously very good. Because a lot of people come 1:00 in the afternoon are starting to drift off and fall asleep. A lot of times that can be thyroid related, it can be mitochondrial function that's deficient as well and a lot of other things that are going on. So, a lot of people that get on this, as you have said, have no desire to take a nap. They were somebody who was prone to falling asleep at 1:00 and they just have energy all day long, so that's something that proves that it’s obviously doing something with mitochondrial function and other things. But the heavy metal toxicity showing people the levels of the heavy metals have dropped considerably in their bodies even from their hair follicles, so that's something that's really big. There’s a lady who owns a farm on an island in Canada near Vancouver and she got on the product, and she had blood work done of her metal toxicity before and after, and it was very, very dramatic decrease in the heavy metals in her system and likewise there's been a lot of people who have gotten the same results.

[01:08:23] Ashley James: That's really interesting. That was actually my next question. If you could share blood work. Have you guys done blood work with a section of people? Or what are the results that people see are changed after 3 or 6 months on this supplement when they compare blood work? 

[01:08:39] Pat Miletich: Well, some people who have been very sick with really high white blood cell and red blood cell deficiencies and a lot of those types of things, and the 14 chemicals that they test for generally in regular blood work, will be really out of whack and after being on the product for a while, their white blood cell counts and their red blood cell counts go back into the normal range many times and the different chemicals within the body go back into the normal range quite a bit as well. So, that's something that’s empirical, it’s data that’s super important for people to understand that there have been a lot of people who have, yes, gotten blood work. One of the farmers that I’ve been working with, I’ve done some speeches at some Ag gatherings like I said, and talking to farmers because they’ve been exposed to so many harsh chemicals, many times their health is pretty bad. I remember my grandma and grandpa on both sides of the family having Parkinson’s disease from using chemicals on the farm and things like that, so we got to get that stuff out of them.

When I talk to them about their own health and talk to them about fulvic humics because fulvic humics—and they’re called humic fulvics in agriculture—are used quite a bit by a lot of farmers to help with yields, to help with soil health and plant health as well. And so, when I talk to them about their health and I get them on the human form of this product, this Super Soldier, and their health greatly improves, then they tend to perk up and listen to me. Because I ask them about their humic fulvic that's derived from coal and I say, “Would you put that in your body?” And they say, “Absolutely not.” And I said so now we’re starting to talk about the difference in the quality and where it’s derived from is super important. That's when they start to listen to me a little bit.

I’ve got one friend who’s probably one of the most knowledgeable farmers in the country in terms of mixing and conventional and organic products to do biological farming. His pants are literally falling off in right now. He’s lost so much weight and his health has improved greatly. His wife’s health has improved greatly. That's been something that it’s my pathway, my vehicle to getting through to farmers and helping them understand how we can change not only their health but the quality of their crops.

[01:11:05] Ashley James: I met you through Tim James and I’ve had him on my show and I’ve been on his show, and that's his passion too. I’m sure you guys have talked about that. That’s his passion to help farmers to, first of all, just educate them so that they’ll stop using these horrible chemicals that are killing their families and killing the land and destroying the earth. Maybe they’ll get a higher yield for a while by doing GMO and glyphosate or whatever the horrible chemicals. We’re sacrificing the long-term for the short gain. When we have barren lands that are unusable, what’s the point? What we thought in the old days, we thought that the soil was dead, that it’s inert, that it’s not organic. And now, we’ve discovered that farming and the soil is as complex is as our own microbiome in our body, you know, that it’s kind of like so above so below, right? As on earth as in heaven. As in the soil as it is in our body. As in nature, as it is in our body. We can see the similarities between the microbiome of soil and the microbiome of our gut and that we need to maintain a health soil to maintain a healthy body. And by them putting these chemicals on that glyphosate being a chelator but it’s also an antibiotic. So, it’s destroying the microbiome of our gut and of the soil, just killing the soil dead. Then on top of that, it chelates heavy metals to the brain and the kidneys, depositing them into the brain and kidneys. And I have two interviews on that with Stephanie Seneff, PhD, top research scientist at MIT who explains that what we’re seeing is an epidemic of heavy metals being deposited into the brain and the kidneys because glyphosate is rampant and now it’s in our waters. It’s not only in our soil; it’s in our waters.

[01:13:16] Pat Miletich: Our land, everything.

[01:13:18] Ashley James: Yeah, it’s everywhere. It’s just so high, the cancer rates are just going up and up and up. If we look in the farming areas, if we look, for example, in the United States but we could look at any country, the areas where they spray, I was woken up. When I was first pregnant 8 years ago, my midwife who’s also a naturopathic physician who used to be the dean of Bastyr, incredibly knowledgeable woman, been practicing for over 30 years, delivered over a thousand babies, she said to me, you know, it’s good that you don’t live on the other side of the mountains in eastern Washington because during the times, if you're pregnant, I think it was spring or something, if you're pregnant, if you're in the first trimester or whatever, there’s a certain very vulnerable time of a pregnancy. If it coincides with the farming schedule, you will likely lose your baby. Just by living in an area because they do the spring, you inhale the fumes from miles down the road, you inhale what is being sprayed and you will lose your baby. This happens across the world.

So, we really, really need to wake up that our farmers are our line of first defense. We need to support them in changing their ways because it’s going to trickle downstream and then we’re all messed up. These chemicals, it is possible short-term gain but long-term detriment and long-term in our lifetime. So, I love what you're doing. I love that you're supporting the farmers and helping them, I want to say, wake them up but, you know, they're just doing the best they can. They’re scraping by. They can barely make a profit.

[01:15:06] Pat Miletich: Yeah. They’re getting beat up right now. It’s pretty bad. That's the scary thing. So I was talking to a very good friend of mine who’s an advisor. He’s a professor of biology at one of the universities here in the State of Iowa. I asked him, I said, you know, this is a question that I’ve been pondering quite a bit lately for a lot of years, actually, a couple of decades because in the State of Iowa and I know around the Midwest, when they're going to build a development or an office park or whatever, they bring in earth scrapers and they scrape off all the top soil and they put it in massive piles, and then they’ll go back out and I think they're required to put 4 inches back down. So, they’re scraping off all the living soil and then there's clay and then they put a few inches of black earth back down which is not going to hold the water. The water is going to run off into the streams, in the rivers and away from the area, and so, there's not proper, and I said, “You tell me if I’m correct in my assumption that now we do not have proper evaporation rates and therefore, we’re seeing droughts around the country in a big way right now.” And he said, “Yes. You're correct.” And also, by putting synthetics on farm fields and on golf courses and our own yards and everything else, we’re all part of the problem, is that we are creating dead soil that does not hold water and it’s running off and we are creating… the Mississippi River is at the lowest, I think, it’s ever been. There's rivers around the world that are starting to run dry right now because of this, and so, we’ve got to stop it. We really have to stop it and we’ve got to change our ways because it seems like humans are so easily, whether miseducated or I guess programmed so to speak, for the better lack of term, to literally extinct ourselves. I mean, that's what’s happening. People have got to wake up and understand that we’re doing this to ourselves. This is where we talk about the free will, for those that believe in a Creator. He gave us free will. And everything, every calamity, every genocide, every war has always been free will but it always seems to be an atmosphere that has been created by folks that run this planet and somehow humans end up not seeing through it and turning on each other and even turning on ourselves. That's all I ask, is that people take a step back and realize that yes, you’ve got to be the change that you want in the world. You’ve got to change your own health. Then, people start asking you, what are you doing? And then you can teach them. That's really important where you talk about the old saying “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.” It really is that simple. 

[01:17:52] Ashley James: Yes. And we need to start questioning everything and stop and go, what I’m doing now is not working. If I am not happy with my health, it’s not working. Not to throw it all out. Maybe some of it is half working. But we need to be able to question our own belief system. We need to stop and go the farming practices are not working. The evaporation rates around the world are causing droughts around the world. This is not working. We need to stop. We need to go back to a farming practice that is sustainable, that is healthy for humans and for the planet and because what’s healthy for the planet is healthy for humans. Let’s go back to how we used to do it a hundred years ago, right, where we cared about top soil, where we didn’t dig deep into the earth and remove the layers that have the wonderful microbiome in there.

So, I love the work that you're doing and understanding more about healthy agriculture that allows us to understand more about how we can create a healthy body. So, there is that direct correlation. I want to know though I’ve heard this a lot. That people are afraid to take trace minerals because of heavy metals. I’ve even heard naturopaths say, “Oh, I don’t give trace minerals to my patients because I’m worried that those trace minerals are going to be full of heavy metals and that this is actually toxic, and fulvic acid is actually toxic.” Now, of course we’ve talked about this, the stuff that comes from coal, yes, I could understand that. But can you please explain how your supplement does not contain these heavy metals that are dangerous to the body?

[01:19:33] Pat Miletich: I mean, anybody that has done even a little bit of investigation and again, this is where people are miseducated. So chemists, doctors, agronomists, having a high-level chemist tell me there's no such thing as organic forms of metal and laughing at me, and they stopped laughing as soon as I educated him on how metals are converted to organic to be bonded with carbon. So, there are drastic differences. Heavy metals are very bad for you. When you have heavy metals such as aluminum and lead trapped in your cells, they're very toxic. They will cause you health problems. Period. End of story. 

But when those same exact metals have been chelated out of the ground by a plant and bonded with a carbon molecule, they now can be used again as fuel by your mitochondria. So, there's a huge difference. And trust me, after 35 years of research, I would not put this stuff in my children’s bodies. And people have to understand I just got done giving a speech, I don’t know, a month ago to the school board here in Bettendorf, Iowa. We’ve been having a lot of problems here Bettendorf, Iowa with the education system, the behavioral issues, a lot of other things. And we’ve got 5 of 7 school board members and a superintendent who are, it’s impossible to explain the insanity that I’ve witnessed when I go and I listen to these people talk. So, I went and I said, “I’m not going to get into the division that’s been falsely created by designed. I’m not going to get into politics. I’m absolutely done with politics. But I’m going to tell you flat out that our children are being systemically poisoned by the food, the water.” I talked about the 22 chemicals in our local water, one of them being atrazine that not only converts the testosterone and estrogen levels of frogs in the wild from runoff and of lab rats, not only destroys their hormonal levels of testosterone and estrogen, but male frogs and male rats actually grow female genitalia. This stuff is so powerful. And I said this is what’s happening to our children. Our boys are being destroyed, our girls are being destroyed. Their hormonal levels are out of whack. They have no clue how they're supposed to feel. Then they're told by you guys that it’s perfectly okay to feel the way you feel, dress the way you want to dress. And it's wrong. Because eventually, these kids are going to end up under the knife of some Dr. Frankenstein. This goes against all laws of nature. Even if you don’t believe in a Creator, it goes against all laws of nature and it’s horrible. It is the mutilation of and destruction of an entire generation of children. And it’s got to stop. And I told them flat out my children have never had a serious illness. When a lot of other kids are getting strep throat, flus, pneumonias, bronchitis, everything else, my kids have never experienced that because I make sure to put powerful organics in their bodies and they are constantly cleaned out and they are healthy as they can be.

So, that's what I want to try and get through to people, is that we have to save our kids and we’ve got to save our planet for those kids because are we going to leave them a toxic synthetic world that’s going to just destroy them? No! We can’t do that. 

[01:22:58] Ashley James: You talked about atrazine. I just recently shared a video with a scientist and his team of scientists about atrazine. One area of California has the highest levels of atrazine than across America. They were testing the water supply, the runoff in the streams near the farms. Incredibly high levels of atrazine. They were collecting the frogs and studying them. The head scientist was showing that look, this frog is a genetic male and he has both genitalia. They were showing that there were two frogs that were both genetically male and they were able to mate and reproduce. He was explaining it. Very fascinating. He goes this is terrifying for the health effects of humans because it is an endocrine disruptor. I think if we take the politics out, and I support children and families, I want them to be the healthiest they can be, and if there's something that’s hidden in their water supply, that they’re drinking, they're trusting their tap water, and I don’t even know if atrazine has been removed when you pour it through a Brita filter or whatever filter you're using that you think removes chemicals. Maybe it’s not being removed. Because there's certain filters that can’t remove everything. Even the Berkey can’t remove nitrites. So there's certain compounds that are so small, they can get through a lot of filters unless of course it’s like reverse osmosis. There's a few ones that can remove everything but they're also removing the trace minerals. So, the thing is, people are going around, trusting their water supply. They're getting atrazine in their body. It’s an endocrine disruptor. Whether that then as a child that’s growing up, all of a sudden now they're not having the appropriate amounts of hormones, which is disrupting them and making them feel very weird. I’d feel very weird if my hormones are being disrupted or like when women get put on birth control, it makes you feel different. It absolutely makes you feel different.

But not only that. And I agree with what you're saying that we need to be very cautious for our children. And it’s in our food, the atrazine is in our food. It’s now hidden in our water because it’s runoff, all these chemicals. But it’s an endocrine disruptor while you are maturing but also past maturity, that is going to cause cancer. That is going to cause other diseases. We see this. We see this that anything that’s an endocrine disruptor affects. We might see on the outside it’s affecting hugely the reproductive system and the testosterone and all the estrogens. But then, it trickles down and it affects because all of our hormonal systems are in this crazy balance, so you're throwing this out of balance. Then we see down the road, increase in childhood cancers. Increase in ADD or ADHD now because it’s disrupting how we function, how our brain functions, how we learn. And you're affecting the child’s future. Everything. You're affecting fertility. So, we need to come back and take control. We need to come back and go, okay, I need clean water, I need clean food, I need clean water and clean food into my families at all times. I need to make sure that we’re getting good clean food that's healthy and I need to make sure I’m filling in those gaps like mortar. You know, bricks are food, the mortar is the supplements. And making sure I’m getting all the minerals I need to optimize our health.

I appreciate that you’ve brought up atrazine because that’s something I haven’t covered on the show specifically. We’ve covered other chemicals but that specifically is so important. We’re seeing girls getting their period younger and younger. We’re seeing 8-year-olds growing breasts. It used to be like maybe grade 8 or 9 that this would happen. Now, it’s in middle school, right? Something’s changed.

[01:27:12] Pat Miletich: You know, it’s funny but it’s not funny. But, you know, somebody as crazy as Alex Jones talked about it, but he framed it completely wrong because he’s such a theatrical lunatic that he would scream “They’re turning the frogs gay!” And he was correct in what was happening to the frogs and the lab rats that they were being destroyed with their hormone levels, but he wasn’t explaining it scientifically what was happening to them and what’s happening to our children that are children are being destroyed. And this is something that, yeah, we’ve got to wake people up and we’ve got to help them educate themselves. And that's what’s frustrating about an education system that is basically almost an accomplice to the crimes that are being committed against our children because they’re not educated in the family, they're not educating the children about what’s happening to them, to their bodies, to their minds and everything else that’s going on and instead are just saying it’s okay, it’s perfectly—it’s perfectly normal that you're being poisoned. So, that's where we’ve really got to change things.

Again, that's the whole thing is I don’t care one way or another what people do with their lives, but we’ve got to have them healthy physically and mentally for them to make the decisions of what they want to do with their lives. If they're sick mentally and physically and are so confused that they don’t know how to feel, they're not making educated decisions for their own lives at all. 

[01:28:46] Ashley James: Well, it’s like this. What if atrazine caused diabetes and obesity? Let’s just say that it caused that. And the school board said, you know, it’s perfectly normal to be incredibly sick and have diabetes. It’s perfectly normal and we’re just going to support this and we’re going to feed you lots of sugar, we’re going to fill you up with chemical processed crap. We’re not going to feed you any healthy food, we’re going to cut out recess. We’re going to decrease PE. Just do everything to support your unhealthy habit and lifestyle, right? And to make sure that you continue to have it. I mean, that is not in any way in the child’s best interest. What’s in the child’s best interest is we’re going to give you a healthy diet, we’re going to support you in reversing type 2 diabetes and increasing insulin sensitivity. We’re going to give you more recess time. We’re going to let you run around and be a kid and be as healthy as possible. We’re going to make sure your food is clean, your water is clean, your air is clean. We’re going to put you in buildings that don’t have mold that don’t have toxic off-gassing. We’re going to just do the best we can and give you a healthy environment. Whatever. The child decides to grow up to be fantastic because they’ve been given a healthy body and a clean and healthy environment—that’s what I want for them. That’s what I want. But they don’t have that right now. And the whole system is designed to keep people sick, so that’s why we have to take matters into our own hands. We have to get the right supplements. We have to get the clean food. We have to be the advocates for ourselves. We cannot leave our health up to any system especially a government system. There is my soapbox and it’s probably why I do homeschooling because I have a strong distrust of these large systems that I don’t feel are out for my child’s best interest.

Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing what you’ve shared. I’m again in awe of your product and of course, listeners can go to Learntruehealth.com/blackgold. Check it out. Try it for yourself. See how you like it. Do what my husband did. Take it for a few days, take it for a week and then go on a massive hike and see what happens. Or just do like me and be like a crazy mom with their head cut off and run around and do a million things like all moms do. Run around all day. And just notice that you don’t have to live off of energy drinks to Starbucks, like I don’t. I just feel amazing. I don’t do coffee all the time. And if I do, it’s one. It’s one little coffee. But I don’t do it all the time. I just feel great. And of course, I’m doing the foundation stuff and I just think it’s so important that we look to everywhere. We don’t just do one thing. We look to all the things. There are so many listeners who want to take their health to the next level and maybe it’s this one where it’s these really powerful probiotics from the earth and trace minerals from the earth to bring their health to the next level. I love that it fortifies the immune system and it helps oxygenate all the cells even more so. It helps the body remove heavy metals. You’ve checked every box on my list. So, the fact that it helps the mitochondria, I’m thinking about people with MS and people with mitochondrial disease and how this could help them. It’s very exciting. People with diabetes, with cardiovascular issues because it helps the vascular system. I think there’s so many people who are sick that could benefit from this in addition to doing all the other good things that are important for our health.

Yeah, Learntruehealth.com/blackgold. Is there anything you’d like to say to the listener who’s struggling with health and just learning about all these changes they could make to get on the other side and just overcome what they’re facing? Is there anything you’d like to say to them?

[01:32:40] Pat Miletich: I can just tell you that I can relate to severe health issues because I suffered as a kid for my entire childhood, again, into my early 20’s. To experience a life-changing event, putting organics in my body and being able to accomplish the things that I have, it was ultimately about changing other people’s lives, not just mine. What I was capable of then to help everybody from little kids to learn how to defend themselves and learn discipline all the way up to adults that just wanted to stay in shape and learn self-defense to professional athletes to military law enforcement. You can change your life. You really can and just take that step. It’s not scary. It’s an amazing adventure when you can wake up one day and go, “Wow, I really can now dream of things that I want to do with my life.” And that's what we want to give you. 

[01:33:33] Ashley James: I love it. Thank you so much, Pat, for coming on the show. Please come back when you’ve got the rest of those studies done. I want to hear it. I want to hear all the science that you guys discover as these studies continue. 

[01:33:46] Pat Miletich: Okay. You got it. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. 

[01:33:50] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you.

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490: How To Recover From Stress Through Magnesium Soak, Kristen Bowen

https://www.learntruehealth.com/how-to-recover-from-stress-through-magnesium-soak-kristen-bowen

Stress is something that is constantly around us and sometimes unavoidable. You need to stay on top of stress levels so they don't get out of control. Learning how to relax is important, but so is getting your body the nutrients it needs to heal itself. In this episode, Kristen talks about magnesium soaks, how to get a better night’s sleep, and managing the stress in our daily lives.

Highlights:

• Ways to lower stress levels
• Magnesium soaks
• Insulin resistance
• Knowing your “why”
• Taking care of your circadian rhythm
• Achieving cell saturation

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. Today, we have back on the show Kristen Bowen. She is so amazing. She was in episodes 294, 341, and 381. Although if you haven’t listened to those episodes, you will still enjoy today’s episode. I do recommend though that you eventually go back and listen to episode 294 because she shares her story, and it will bring you to tears in a good way. Let me just give you a little bit of a spoiler. She was about 90-something pounds in a wheelchair, having 30 seizures a day. Now, she’s fully recovered from that. She shares her story as to what caused it and how she got over it, and it will shock you. It is just amazing and sad how many people are suffering out there needlessly. It is people who, like Kristen, who advocate and her family who advocated for her health. I know that’s what you’re doing right now by listening to the show, you're advocating for your health. So, make sure you go back and listen to episode 294. You can always find if you're ever looking for a topic or an episode, you can go to Learntruehealth.com and search it in the search bar. Just type in, for example, magnesium or Kristen Bowen, and other wonderful episodes will come up.

In today’s episode, we do cover magnesium and the way that we can absorb the best forms of magnesium. We also go into recovering from the stress of the last two years and learning from the stressors of the last few years, learning from it, learning from our own stress and learning how to heal, overcome and grow, so that we can be better the next time we’re hit with a stressful situation in life, which I think is so important to learn from each other and learn from our past as well. 

Make sure you go to Kristen Bowen’s website, Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com. That's Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com and be sure to use the coupon code that she gives you. She gives a wonderful discount to our listeners. The coupon code is LTH as in Learn True Health. So that’s coupon code LTH at Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com. I love her magnesium soak. If you’ve listened to any of my previous episodes, I even talk about it in other interviews whenever we bring up magnesium because it’s made such a difference in my life. And there’s over 200 listener testimonials in the Learn True Health Facebook group. Go there and type in “magnesium soak” and you’ll see so many people talking about how wonderful this magnesium soak is. Listeners have shared that it has help them get rid of their migraines, their sleep problems, muscle cramps, their restless legs syndrome, energy. They got more energy out of it. I definitely notice that my muscles felt relaxed. It helped me with my detox. I’m doing heavy metal detox for the last 4 years. It’s helped me with that. It’s helped me with my liver functioning better.

Magnesium is needed for over 1800 enzymatic processes in the body. It’s the most needed mineral. The second most needed mineral is zinc at 800 enzymatic processes. So, when we think minerals, we always think calcium is the most needed but it’s not even in the top two. Magnesium is the most important. And we’re often walking around completely deficient in magnesium, and that's why a lot of people have these things like restless leg, digestion, adrenal burnout. And the list goes on and on. It’s pretty wild. So yes, listen to episodes 294, 341, and 381, the past episodes with Kristen. And today’s episode, you're just going to love where we just continue this wonderful conversation of how we can use magnesium to help heal the body. So, enjoy today’s interview, and thank you so much for being a listener and thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about.

[00:04:02] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 490.

I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show Kristen Bowen who, if you guys have been long-time listeners, well, remember my absolute favorite magnesium soak product. And the whole company, Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com, of course, you can use coupon code LTH as in Learn True Health for so many of their amazing products. Kristen, I love your company. You’ve been on the show with episode 294 where you shared and honestly, I dare you guys listen to episode 294 without crying tears of joy and inspiration because Kristen shares her story where she was crippled in a wheelchair and just so close to death, and she was able to regain her health and now she is an advocate to help those who are sick and suffering that no longer need to be sick and suffering. We can gain our health back and we can create optimal health. Kristen’s here to help. She’s like a sister from another mother, I don’t know. I don’t know.

[00:05:17] Kristen Bowen: It’s official, Ashley. We’re sisters. 

[00:05:20] Ashley James: We are, we are. So there’s episode 294, and then there’s 341 and 381. And we talk about all kinds of great things.

[00:05:28] Kristen Bowen: That’s what I love about your podcast, Ashley, is who knows where we’re going to go. 

[00:05:33] Ashley James: Who knows where we’re going to go? We definitely talked about parasites. You know it’s a real good interview when we talk about all the things we can get out of the body, detox and parasites. And I love this that you noticed in your coaching because you do this wonderful group coaching that women who held on to shame and guilt, no matter what lifestyle changes or supplements or diet changes they made, their bloodwork still showed that they weren’t getting the healing that they should be doing based on other lifestyle changes. When they were able to heal and move through shame and guilt and let go of it, that’s when their body then caught up.

So, you’ve observed some amazing things in the many years that you’ve been working with people. 

[00:06:22] Kristen Bowen: Oh, it’s been 20 now, Ashley. Just over 20 years I’ve had the privilege of connecting with the women I’ve connected with.

[00:06:32] Ashley James: And men, you can listen too. My husband loves the magnesium soak. So, men are here too. But, you know, as women, we definitely see relationship between our stress, between our magnesium levels, and between our hormone balance, and I think that’s really interesting. And we’re going to get into that today because Kristen and I, we’ve both been through it as I think everyone has who’s listening. The last two years, there was high, high levels of stress, higher levels than normal. And, now, what we’re seeing after two years of just this background noise of higher stress in people’s lives.

[00:07:12] Kristen Bowen: And disconnect.  

[00:07:14] Ashley James: Yeah. It’s now showing up in bloodwork. And we’re now seeing not just stress hormones and blood work, but we’re seeing other things. So, Kristen was telling me about that before we hit record. And I thought, how interesting. Right now, what we need to do is a mass healing. So, everyone who’s listening is here to gain better health, to learn true health, and acknowledge and heal from the last few years, let it go, and now, we need to heal from it on an emotional level but also on a physical level, and make sure that we’re checking in with our physical body and our emotional mental body, and then making the lifestyle changes, the diet changes that we need to make to bring that healing in so that we can go back to health and then from before the last two years, and even then, even get more health from that. Because I want to be able to use the last two years, even though we’ve kind of sort of stepped back in our health, some people, like I know I have, with the stress that I’ve been under in the recent past, and now I’m back into healing mode. Right? We’re going to be able to take the last two years, learn from it, and then grow even more.

[00:08:34] Kristen Bowen: I love that. 

[00:08:35] Ashley James: Yeah. And there’s something that was taught at our church recently where we talked about how Jesus, there’s times where He would go into the wilderness, he went to the wilderness, and then He goes up on the mountain. Right? And sometimes, we’re in the thick of it. We’re in the wilderness, and that’s when we’re stressed and we’re suffering. Then there’s times we go up on the mountain and that’s when we’re rejoicing, and we’re loving life, and we got a whole new perspective. And so, I’m inviting everyone to walk out of the wilderness, up into the mountain, and learn from the last two years. But right now, today, we’re going to learn from Kristen what we can do to check in with ourselves and to get back up on that mountain of health.

[00:09:23] Kristen Bowen: You know, Ashley, I loved so many things that you said. I love the fact that you talked about and spoke of the different dimensions of healing because I think everyone listening right now could share their hard time. You can share your hard time, I can share my hard time. Your listeners can share their hard times. One of the things that happens as a trauma response, is we stay in one dimension to heal. And it is a trauma response. We need to recognize it as a trauma response so that we’re not stuck in singular dimensional healing because that’s where we get frustrated, that’s where I hear women say, “I’ve tried everything, nothing works”. And we are multifaceted dimensional beings, and we need to heal on all of those dimensions.

Before we get started, can I just tell you, I had never even thought of going on a podcast like that. It hadn’t even crossed my mind. You were the very first podcast that I went on. And Ashley, you’re my favorite. It’s okay to say that, it’s the truth, because right now, I do not have to filter “Oh my gosh, say that in a soundbite. Get done in 30 minutes, they want this podcast over in 30 minutes.” Oh, I can’t even go there because just helping them understand so that they understand that concept, that’d take me 15 minutes and then that podcaster is going to be frustrated. And it’s just so nice, Ashley, to come on to your podcast knowing that it’s not a set place of where we’re going to go in our conversation that you will help me to flesh out anything and everything. So, I am just sending you this big massive, warm, enveloping hug of gratitude for the gift that you have in taking and leading your guests who come on to your podcast. I’m pretty confident that your listeners are sending that right along with me, so thank you. 

[00:11:45] Ashley James: Absolutely. Well, thank you. For listeners who didn’t listen to our previous episodes with Kristen Bowen, in episode 294 I explained how we met. My friend found out that Kristen was flying all the way into Seattle to host…

[00:12:02] Kristen Bowen: Downtown Seattle. 

[00:12:03] Ashley James: Downtown Seattle, in the summer. No one goes to downtown Seattle. You don’t do that.  

[00:12:09] Kristen Bowen: I didn’t know. I didn’t know. 

[00:12:12] Ashley James: It was a free health lecture on magnesium and it was like a Facebook advertisement, my friend told me about it, and I said, “Okay, well let’s carpool down there.” And it was ridiculous because you just don’t go into Seattle in the evening in the summertime. There’s construction, there’s crosstown traffic. It’s ridiculous.

[00:12:33] Kristen Bowen: I think at one point my team and I were two minutes from walking. The Google Maps told us two minutes walking to the thing and we were in our van that I had rented to get everything there. It was over an hour to drive there. It was so bad.

[00:12:53] Ashley James: Right. It’s like New York City. Just get out and walk. So, it’s pretty crazy, the traffic here. So, I just thought it was hilarious. Anyone who knows Seattle, you do conferences outside like you do it in the suburbs. People would rather join up north than drive into it. But there we were in this gorgeous conference room overlooking the sounds, like overlooking the ferries. It was beautiful. The sun was setting. It looked like you spent a million dollars in this place. And like maybe 7 people showed up, I felt so bad for you. But you paid so much attention and gave an amazing health demonstration/health lecture. You let us all soak in your magnesium. And then you answered everyone’s questions and you acted like the room was filled with a thousand people.

[00:13:41] Kristen Bowen: To me, those 7 people who came were as important as 1000 people, Ashley.

[00:13:49] Ashley James: But I’ve hosted these things before. That’s what I used to do. I used to work for a training company, and I used to travel around and host these. I know how much that costs, so I was sitting in the backroom going —

[00:13:59] Kristen Bowen: Yeah, I was upside down. 

[00:14:00] Ashley James: I was like, she has lost a lot of money on this. I’m just sitting in the backroom. Because that’s what I used to do in my previous life, was lead those kind of trainings and book them and budget them and advertise and all that stuff. So, in the back of the room, when I thought it was just so funny because I was thinking to myself, you know, Kristen doesn’t know it yet, but I’m going to expose her to like 100,000 people, and this is going to be so great. Sure enough, at the end of it, I say, “hey, you got to get on my show.” And I felt drunk by the end because I was soaking her magnesium. Now, I’ve done a magnesium intravenous before and it felt like that. I’m like, this stuff is legit. Because I’ve soaked in other magnesium products, didn’t feel a difference. I’ve soaked in Epsom salt, that feels relaxing, but nothing felt like actually getting it in my veins.

[00:14:55] Kristen Bowen: You got to get the real deal, baby. 

[00:14:56] Ashley James: Like the real stuff. So, Kristen’s magnesium soak, to me, felt like I was getting an IV of magnesium and it felt amazing. I’m like, this stuff is awesome. Then I started to have a detox reaction in a good way, and I started to taste heavy metals, then she told me what I needed to do. So, I’ve used it in conjunction with all the other things that I do for my heavy metal detox. I soak in the magnesium while in my sauna, and that’s something I learned from you as well. And it’s a great one-two punch. But I noticed almost immediately feeling better, but what was really cool is our son who fights sleep like you wouldn’t believe, I put it in his bath without telling him, and he was a toddler at the time, and he turned to me and said halfway through the bath, he goes, “Let’s just go straight to bed. You can skip books. I’m too tired. Let’s just go straight to bed.”

And I’m like, what? First of all, who is this kid? So really, this stuff was working and then I had you on the show and then we got over 200 testimonials in our Facebook group of people saying how much the magnesium soak made a difference. And your magnesium cream is fantastic. When I was pregnant, I had like those achy kind of muscles in my legs, almost like restless leg syndrome and I immediately rubbed it with your magnesium, really concentrated magnesium cream. And then, just immediately the muscles would let go.

[00:16:27] Kristen Bowen: I think it’s so interesting to remember that especially when we’re pregnant, we’re now taking the magnesium our body has and ensuring that with the baby. And if you don’t upgrade your magnesium levels during the pregnancy, one or both of you is going to become deficient. So, it’s the critical time to be soaking during that pregnancy. Studies have shown that as the baby comes down the birth canal, that the head bends more easily when magnesium levels are high to get in the proper position for birth. So, magnesium is important always, very important during pregnancy.

[00:17:11] Ashley James: Well, I felt it. Your products have saved me so many times. Another thing I wanted to say was that you have, in the past I bought a coconut powder on your website as an electrolyte. I recommend anyone who likes to build their medicine cabinet filled natural stuff that they can just run to. Having that coconut powder in my medicine cabinet has really helped because there's…

[00:17:39] Kristen Bowen: Ashley, I have bad news.

[00:17:41] Ashley James: No! I’ll just take this out then.

[00:17:47] Kristen Bowen: Well, let me share with you though and then you can decide. So, in 2020, businesses had a decision to make. That decision was, do I change suppliers and sell any kind of junk? Or, do I get real with my customers and say we can’t source the quality that we usually have? And Living the Good Life Naturally, with me being the CEO of that company made the decision that because we lost our supply chain, we were not willing to compromise on quality of that product. What the company sent us was not acceptable. Everything goes through third-party testing before it goes into our warehouse. And so, I made the decision with team Good Life absolutely supporting me that this was not a product we were willing to sell to people. And so, because of that, we are temporarily out of stock of that. We are looking for another supplier but we will not put that back into stock until we find that supply chain that meets our rigorous standard. 

[00:19:03] Ashley James: You know what, I’m not deleting that. I’m not deleting it. I want listeners to hear what you just said. Now there's only two companies. Yours and one other company I know of that's willing to lose money to ensure quality products and it’s rare. It’s such a rare thing for a founder of a company to cut their own profits for the safety and efficacy and for their customer. Right? You’re making ethical decisions that prove to me and this is again why I really love your products. So, when it gets back to stock, I love the coconut powder. It’s a fantastic electrolyte. And you don’t know when you need an electrolyte. There's only been about three times that I’ve needed it. My husband likes to do fast once a year. He does like a 30-day fast. And all of a sudden I’m like, oh, his electrolytes are off and I made him some, and it restored him right away. Then there was two more times during the summer when my son or I, I think we were like at the fair or something all day long and we both became almost like beyond dehydrated. You know what I mean when you're in the sun too long and you start getting headache-y. Man, that stuff immediately brought us back.

So, as far as electrolytes go, that is my favorite electrolyte drink. So, when you get it back in stock, you’re going to have to let me know because that coconut powder. And it hardly tastes like anything. It’s not very strong but it’s all those different trace elements and minerals the body needs to just restore it. So, it’s not just magnesium that Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com has, and I love that you really look at quality. In terms of your skin care lines, it’s stuff that I would make if I was in a kitchen filled with ingredients and I needed to make like a facemask or I needed to make a cream for my face. It’s just all real ingredients that are very pure. So, I really appreciate you.

[00:21:13] Kristen Bowen: Thank you. We’ve lost so many products because of supply chain issues. But here’s the thing. And I think that your listeners might enjoy understanding the concept of when you know your values, decisions are easier. So, in the company, we work every year on our values and fine tuning our values. I am a company, I have to make profit, payroll and keep the lights on—money does not drive my decisions. That is not one of my core values. And so, once you’ve fleshed out your values, decisions are so much easier. That plays for your health also. Knowing your personal values will help you to make those decisions when it comes to your health with more ease.

So in January is what I do every year, is I reassess values and ask myself those questions. “Am I making decisions based on my own personal core values?”

[00:22:30] Ashley James: Absolutely. When I check in with myself, when it comes to my values, I will make better health decisions. I’ll say “No, I don’t want to eat out” even though eating out is fun. It’s easy, it’s convenient, I don’t have to wash dishes after, like I’m tired. All these reasons that sound really good. So, that would lead me to a behavior of eating out a lot. But when I check in with myself and I go “I value my health above all else,” I know the ingredients they put in that food. Don’t put your head in the sand. When you eat out, you're getting the lowest quality foods because restaurants need to make a profit and you're getting a ton of pesticides and those oils and those free radicals, lots of sugar, just highly processed food versus eating at home. Or, I’ll be at the grocery store and something looks good, I will always read the label. I will read that whole label, all those crazy ingredients, and then I’ll decide, is this fuel for my cells? Are my cells going to rejoice at these ingredients? Or are my cells going to shrink, shrivel up, and die from these ingredients? And that's because I value my health. Right?

So your decisions, your behavior and then your results in life are directly impacted by making sure that your values are motivating and driving your decisions. It is always good to check in because sometimes we sort of fall off the bandwagon. I know talking about stress in the last year, losing our daughter, moving twice and then losing a major family member in our little family unit, so we’ve had two deaths and two moves in a year. And I did have some PTSD that was acting up. I’ve never had it in my life until then, but that's why I didn’t know what it was at first. But I was very dysfunctional in my life. Couldn’t even walk into a kitchen and complete cooking a meal. And I love cooking and I’ve been cooking since I was a kid.

So, I was like wow, why can’t I focus, why can’t I cook. I went from publishing 2 to 3 episodes a week to 1 a month. That, for me, was like what is going on? Why am I not functioning correctly? And I was eating out a lot. Because that's the only way I could get food in me because I couldn’t even cook a meal. So that, for me, like at my peak stress and then I had to step back and go, okay, I need to do some triage, do some deep breaths and I need to do baby steps. And that's some coaching I got from this amazing psychologist, Dr. Glen Livingston who’s been on the show multiple times. I just love him. He said, you know, “You need to choose some baby steps. What can you do?” Because of course, I was feeling so much guilt and shame for I am this big health advocate, I love being healthy, but I’m eating out and not taking care of myself because that's all I could manage. 

So, he invited me to figure out what I could do versus what I thought I should do. Right? I had to really scale back. Okay, what can I do? And maybe it’s a 5-minute walk. Maybe it’s just 2 minutes of deep breathing. Maybe it’s just steaming some vegetables. What can I do? And those little baby steps got me back on track. But I love that you said to check in with your values because we can use that in our business to help steer an ethical business. We can use it in our health to help us steer in the direction towards better and better health.

[00:26:11] Kristen Bowen: Ashley, I want to take a minute and just recognize that we mourn to the level that we love and just sit with you. That's a lot that you went through. And just honor all the work that you put in, the support that you had, the trauma, the heartache, the love, the refining that happened for you and your family during that time. We love you, Ashley.

[00:26:49] Ashley James: Thank you. Why I’m sharing and why I’ve always been vulnerable in my show even before all this, is that I know the listener, whoever is listening also has been through it or is going through it. Right? This is a bridge. We are so connected. I want people to feel like they’re being heard and they're being understood, and it’s like, wow, I’m going through to giving them permission to self-nurture, to heal. 

[00:27:24] Kristen Bowen: You know what could be happening right now, Ashley? Could I talk about it for a little bit? Kind of our first little sideways jaunt. So, you experienced like that is so many major traumas stacked on top of each other. Patterns can walk us toward health or walk us away from health. We all carry healthy patterns, and we all carry broken patterns. I’ve watched over the last 20 years as I’ve helped women achieve self-saturation through soaking in magnesium from Living the Good Life Naturally, I have watched women not even be able to see their broken patterns. As they start to bring those broken patterns into the light and heal them, that’s when the flow kicks in and health becomes easier to create. One broken pattern that could have been happening with some of your listeners that I know comes up for me a lot is the pattern of what I call “compare and contrast”.

Now, when I’m buying beautiful shoes, I’m a shoe girl and I love shoes, when I am buying shoes, I am comparing them to other shoes. And I am contrasting them to determine is this a shoe that I’m willing to bring into my closet? Because I’m also someone who operates from the belief that I don’t want too many pairs of shoes. So, it slows me down; I have to be very conscious about my purchasing decision with my clothing and my shoes. And so, I’m comparing and contrasting, and that's an appropriate way to use the pattern of compare and contrast. But if I was listening to you say that and I was in a stressed-out state, but I took that pattern of compare and contrast, I could be increasing my guilt and shame right now by saying, “Oh, my stress isn’t as bad as Ashley’s stress.” So, therefore, what I’m going through, I’m minimizing that like oh, it’s no big deal. Because here’s the thing. Trauma is trauma. Making that change in my business from teaching classes in person to now I spend my day teaching classes online, I can put my body into a trauma mode by sitting too long, Ashley. And it can go back into a dysregulated nervous system because I forgot to stand up every hour and move and make sure that that psoas muscle is not stuck in fight or flight. 

So, there are definitely degrees of trauma when my husband experience double amputation. That's a different level of trauma than me sitting at my desk. But trauma is trauma, and walks us away from healing and focusing on not comparing my trauma to your trauma, but recognizing we all need to be regulating our nervous systems because if we’re not achieving cell saturation with magnesium from Living the Good Life Naturally, is not going to happen as easily. I like that ease and flow. It’s one of the reasons I love coming on your podcast. There’s an ease in the flow to have a conversation, and I want that same ease and flow in creating health. If I’m comparing my trauma to your trauma, I’m just increasing my own personal trauma. Hard is hard no matter what it is ease.

Now, some of it has more complexity, some of it has more layers. But when we’re in a dysregulated nervous system state, it doesn’t matter the food we’re eating. It doesn’t matter the supplements we’re taking. It doesn’t matter how often we’re soaking in magnesium. We’re not in healing mode. And so, making sure that we’re adding layers to our day throughout the day to help keep our bodies regulated, our nervous system regulated is one of those dimensions that you spoke of earlier that if you are not focusing on that right now, you are slowing down your own healing. 

[00:32:25] Ashley James: Yes, stress is stress. I did a recent interview where a doctor talked about how your nervous system and your body and your hormones, they can’t differentiate the difference between stress from your boss yelling at you, stress from eating a fried food, drinking alcohol. Stress is stress. Or breathing in smoke from a nearby forest fire or mold exposure. And the body responds to stress in the same way. Just like drinking alcohol and eating a Mars bar is all the same to your liver really. It converts to sugar and your body still has to deal with it. So, a lot of times when people give up alcohol, alcoholics give up alcohol, they will run to sugar. Go to an AA meeting and you’ll always see sugar at an AA meeting. They’re actually still doing addictive behavior. Luckily, they're sober. They're not sober from sugar but they're sober from being drunk. So, it is an improvement, but they're still feeding the addiction brain and that's still a high state of stress. 

[00:33:37] Kristen Bowen: Can I share one of my favorite tools that pretty much I think all of your listeners would have access to? It has helped regulate my nervous system. And I actually do it while I soak in magnesium. Have we got a minute that we can go there, Ashley?

[00:33:53] Ashley James: We have all the minutes you need.

[00:33:55] Kristen Bowen: Okay, I love that. So, now, please remember I’m not a doctor. I’m not prescribing, I’m not diagnosing. I am not a psychologist. So, please make sure that you are using a strong filter to make sure that this is an appropriate activity for you. For me, it was like a great big deep glass of water on every dimension of my health. But I don’t know what each individual experience will be like, so please remember that. 

Go to YouTube. Put in the search your favorite song that you just, you know, that song. In fact, do you have one, Ashley? Do you have a song that you just love? One of my mine is Hallelujah. I love that song. Do you have a song that you love, Ashley, that you can think off the top of your head?

[00:34:53] Ashley James: I am thinking of a song, but I forgot the name.

[00:34:56] Kristen Bowen: Okay, that's fine. So, one of mine is Hallelujah and I love listening to different renditions of that song. So, if you go to YouTube, and this works better if you have headphones on. You go to YouTube with your headphones on, put in the name of your favorite song, and then put 8D. Now, my experience was incredible, deep relaxation, which when you're soaking in magnesium, if you're in fight or flight, it’s going to take longer for your body, your lymph specifically, to pump up that magnesium through your body because you're in fight or flight. And so, by putting that music on in 8D, it just helps relax me. Now, my husband –

[00:35:54] Ashley James: Did you say N? Could you just explain? Is it like N as in Nancy, the number 8 and D as in dog?

[00:36:02] Kristen Bowen: No. Just the song that you like, so Hallelujah, and then 8, and then D as in dog. So the numeral 8 and then D as in dog. It’s the same song but a different format and different waves for your brain. Now, some people, it will be irritating. So please, filter this to your own experience. If it’s irritating to you, be done. It’s not a good fit. For many people, it is just soothing at the cellular level. My husband is a Styx fan. I cannot tell you how many times that man has driven through the night to go to a Styx concert. He loves Styx. So, I said to him, for those that don’t know, he’s a double amputee recently in the last couple of years. He was born without the proper veins in his body and so, certain parts of his body don’t get enough oxygen and blood, and so, the body part dies. He has a higher level of pain than most people have and experience. So, I’m always looking for things to help facilitate and help him manage his pain. And magnesium is one of those. So, he was in soaking in magnesium, he does it in the tub because he doesn’t have feet, so the tub is the best option for him. I said to him, just put these headphones on and listen to this music. It was a Styx in 8D. He now has headphones on all of the time. And now, in our marriage, I’m like “okay, take the headphones off, talk with me, connect with me, come on, come back to me,” because it’s helped him so much relax. When you find those tools that help you relax, it increases the ability that your body has to hold on to magnesium, to stay at cell saturation, which activates your stored vitamin D to convert to active vitamin D, which is the first gateway we need built for optimal health. So, that simple task of music in the 8D form can be an incredible tool to help you achieve cell saturation faster.

[00:38:40] Ashley James: It makes sense that we absorb less or takes longer to absorb when in fight or flight, understanding that the sympathetic nervous system response of the autonomic nervous system, it shuns blood away from certain areas and puts blood more into the muscle so that we’re running. It gets us ready to fight or to run. It increases insulin so that it drives sugar into the cells and obviously, there's an increase in stress hormones as well. It shuns blood away from the logic centers of the brain so it’s harder to think clearly and make rational decisions, and it’s harder to decide that it’s a good idea to sit down and soak in magnesium. When we’re in a state of stress, we’re like, “Okay, we got to go, go, go,” and then we’re kind of tired and exhausted. Some people go, “Well, I don’t feel like…” This is my husband. “I don’t feel like a magnesium soak right now.” I’m like, “That's because you’re in stress response. I’m just going to put a bowl under you and you're going to put your feet in it, and then by the end of it, you’ll be happy you did.” And he’s always happy he did.

Another thing in addition to listening to the music, and I can’t wait to try that, is doing a specific type of deep breathing that was taught by Forrest Knutson on the show. This is a type of breathing that increases heart rate variability which heart rate variability is, if listeners didn’t hear that episode, heart rate variability is the variation between heart beats, the heart rate on an inhale versus an exhale. If there's no difference in your heart rate when you're inhaling versus exhaling, you are in a high state of stress. Health insurance companies are now experimenting with using this metric to determine life expectancy and whether they're going to give you a life policy or not because those who have good heart rate variability will die sooner basically is what they're proposing based on what they’ve been seeing. So, you want to get your body out of state of stress.

Recently, Dr. Alan Christianson came on the show, talked about a massive study where they followed a huge amount of people for their entire lives. They found that the number one cause of early death was stress. Number one cause. And it didn’t matter what kind of stress. It could be like staying up till midnight every night. It could be smoking, it could be drinking alcohol. But it could just be bad habits like not walking, not breathing, allowing yourself to stay in stress and staying up late at night, choosing to eat the standard American diet. But just stress levels, they saw that if you stay in stress, it all costs mortality, die younger than people who chose to be not in stress or figured out how to not be in stress.

So, I know it sounds like I’m just saying, “Oh, just get out of stress,” right? Just do it. But, it’s little tricks like you said. Closing your eyes, listening to this music. Another thing is this breathing. The breathing is you take as deep of a breath as you can, make sure that you expand your lungs, you expand your ribs, you feel your ribs expand, you feel your tummy expand, you feel your clavicle and your sternum rise, or you're feeling your whole being expand. Then when you think you’ve got to the top of the breath, you can even add a few more ounces of air. But you take about 5 seconds to do this big deep breath and then you take 7 seconds and there's no pause in between. So, 5 seconds in, inhale, inhale, inhale, inhale; and immediately, 7 seconds out, so you're counting, you can do it even longer, but as long as the exhale is longer than the inhale and then there's no pause at the bottom, you’ll then immediately inhale again.

So, if you're doing a longer inhale than 5 seconds, you can make it 7 but then you need to make your exhale 10 seconds. So, you do this and you do that after a few minutes, you’ve increased your heart rate variability and that you’ve taken yourself out of the stress response. So, that's a very powerful breathing technique.

To pair it with sitting in a magnesium soak would be really good because the diaphragm is one of the major components of pumping the lymphatic system, which is all the fluid outside your cells, to get them back up into the circulatory system, into the veins, and back into the arteries. And that's where the body removes all the junk and that's where it brings all the nutrients. That's where all the good stuff happens. So, the magnesium soak comes into our skin, through our skin, into the lymphatic system, and by pumping the lymphatic system, we’re washing the cells with nutrients and taking out the garbage and reoxygenating. It’s so good for us. So, doing that deep breathing along with the magnesium, along with listening to the music, if we can do this every day, we’ve now cut down significantly our stress levels. To figure out how to do something throughout the day to lower stress is so important.

What other patterns do you have that could really help us?

[00:44:18] Kristen Bowen: One thing that I tell my clients, so we had ended up on a trip to Hawaii with a couple of our kids. It was amazing. I said to my husband, if I could do this every month, my stress levels would just be spectacular. He looked at me and he’s like, “Yeah, we’re not doing this every month.” So, I realize in that moment, oh, I need tools that I can do when I have 10 seconds, tools that I can do when I have 5 minutes, tools that I can do when I have an hour, tools that I can look forward to that are a vacation that if it’s a destressing vacation, if you're married up and so my vacations with my husband are incredibly destressing, they're not stressful, and so we need tools that we can apply every day because if I only have the tool of oh, when I have that opportunity to go to Hawaii, my stress levels will drop. That doesn’t happen all the time. So, we need to make sure that we have tools that we can use in a moment and when we have more time so that we have this varied array of tools.

While you were talking, Ashley, I just again found it so interesting that it’s those small moments that get us to where we want to be. The space in between our heartbeat is what determines our health. We can change that through the way that we breathe. It’s the smallest of things that make the most profound difference in the long-term quality of our life. I think that's a good pattern for all of us to remember. We can sometimes be looking for that next new cutting-edge thing to learn, the big tool that we have to save up and buy, but in reality, it’s changing our breath pattern. And that increases the quality and the space between our heartbeat which now we know and science has shown how absolutely vital that is for our vitality. 

You said something else, Ashley, that I would love to dive a little bit deeper. Because I don’t think the connection is talked about enough on the connection to inflammation. We know that inflammation drives disease. We know that inflammation increases pain. And so, with my filter on, with my husband, I’m always looking at things that I can do to help with inflammation. Because if you are someone like my husband who manages pain, that inflammation aggravates it.

You talked about the insulin and going into the cell. We have a problem in our country in that insulin is not going into the cell. The cell is not getting the insulin that it needs because of a cell that hasn’t been made from proper healthy materials. So, the cell knows it needs insulin and it calls out for more, so the pancreas creates more insulin and sends it over to the cell, but the cell is blind to the insulin and so then, we have all this free-floating insulin that’s incredibly inflammatory because it’s not in the right place. So, making sure that your body is seeing, you're at the cellular level that you're seeing the insulin, that the insulin can enter the cell, is so important. If someone ever says to me “I’ve tried everything,” that is what I hear in my language in my head is, “I might be insulin-resistant and not understand it and not have the tools to put into place to walk away from that” because that free-floating insulin is incredibly inflammatory.

[00:48:53] Ashley James: So, I used to have type 2 diabetes and I reversed it naturally. I’ve gone on studying with naturopaths, I’ve gone on to do a lot of coaching around blood sugar balance. When the body becomes insulin-resistant, which like you said, the cells, they're unhealthy cells, there's a few reasons for this, which is quite interesting. One of them being that there are 16 trace minerals required for insulin to open the door to allow glucose in. So, glucose will rise and rise and rise in the blood which is very pro-inflammatory, and the pancreas has to produce more and more and more insulin until it busts the cell open to allow glucose in. It’s opposite of type 1 diabetes being too little insulin. Type 2 diabetes, the pancreas often is fantastic at producing insulin, it’s producing enough insulin for 5 people, but the cells are sick and the cells are not responding to the insulin, so the glucose is rising and rising and rising on the outside of the cell, but the cells are starving on the inside. I remember experiencing this first hand. I was hungry all the time. I had to eat all the time. Every 45 minutes, I had to eat. It wasn’t until I took in trace minerals and I changed my diet and I started walking and within days I felt just this huge shift. But minerals were the first things that stopped the hunger, the constant gnawing hunger, was taking in trace minerals and then the hunger went away first time in years.

That’s the first thing that helps the insulin work with the cells. But when we have high stress, the body is trying to force more glucose into the cells so that we have more cellular energy to be able to run from the bare. So, people are often hyper- and hypoglycemic. They’re just a rollercoaster. So, under stress, they’re a rollercoaster of blood sugar. And then that often with the lifestyles that’s happening today and with stress, people have insulin resistance and don’t even know it.

[00:51:17] Kristen Bowen: Well, and there’s such a simple way that they can look at their bloodwork. And if they're willing to look at the relationships in their bloodwork, not all, but a lot of people are very familiar with a cholesterol panel. If you look at your triglycerides and you look at your HDL, the relationship of those two numbers can give you some data into your body into how insulin resistant you are.  

[00:51:54] Ashley James: Can you explain? I’m really excited to learn this. 

[00:51:57] Kristen Bowen:  Absolutely. So, grab a phone, grab your bloodwork, your cholesterol. You want your triglycerides and your HDL. You take your triglycerides and you put that into the calculator first, your triglyceride number. And then hit ‘divide’ and then enter your HDL number and then hit ‘equals’. That number will give you a feedback. It’s a feedback tool for you to know how deep into how insulin resistant you have become. Because some people on being insulin resistant are like what you experience that you just never felt full. Some people with insulin resistance wake up in the morning and they don’t want any food and so they go all day long without having any hunger pains and they don’t recognize that’s a sign of insulin resistance. Some people with insulin resistance are putting weight on as a spare tire around their belly and they don’t realize that’s a sign of insulin resistance.

And so, it used to be, and it depends on who you listen to and different studies, that you want that number minimum at 1.5. I see women creating optimal health when that number is closer to 1. If it’s in the 2’s, we're in trouble. If it’s in the 3’s, 4’s or 5’s, that’s a fire that has got to be taken care of so that it can be turned around and that communication between the cell and glucose and insulin can be balanced back out to where it needs to be.

[00:53:51] Ashley James: So, what lifestyle changes do you have your clients do in order to see those numbers change? 

[00:53:58] Kristen Bowen: Three things to start with that it doesn’t matter what a person is working on. There are three things that build the first gate of a strong vitamin D panel and the cells working. They soak in magnesium, they achieve cell saturation, they walk in the early morning sunshine. If you get on Google right now and you search for red light machines, you can spend thousands of dollars. I think we’ve forgotten the common sense. The original red light machine is the sun. And that first 2 hours that the sun comes up, the spectrum of colors specifically reduce inflammation in our body and help the insulin and the glucose to do what they’re supposed to do and interact in an appropriate relationship with the cell. So that red light therapy from waking up in the morning, within 2 hours if you can be there as the sun comes up, that’s the most powerful spectrum. And it helps to set that circadian rhythm and it also helps determine how much melatonin your body will produce to go to sleep that night. So, when we start to set that circadian rhythm in our cell, it’s like a wave. I’m able, I live in Morro Bay and so I walk the ocean every day for my walk. There’s that big crash of the wave that comes in and then it gets pulled out. And our cell has that same thing. That circadian rhythm needs to be a great big crash of the wave coming in and then going out. The way that we set that circadian rhythm is when we have strong magnesium levels, we’re walking, we’re in that sunshine and watching the sun come up and watching the sun go down.  

[00:56:03] Ashley James: Love it. I had Dr. Carolyn Dean on the show talking about magnesium. That was a really long interview. So good. And she’s a naturopath and an MD. She’s dedicated her life to magnesium. She says that magnesium is used in over 1800 enzymatic processes in the body. The next mineral or element is zinc at, I think, she said 700. So, calcium wasn’t even in the top 2. In terms of the body needing it for enzymatic functions, magnesium is absolutely the most important nutrient. Now, all the trace minerals and elements are important for the body. If you’re missing one, it’s like building a building and being like, okay, well, but you don’t have any cement. You have everything else but you don’t have cement really. Like, so you need everything. The body needs everything. And unfortunately, so many people are deficient and what they need in the body will take unhealthy substitutes to build because it’s like let’s just duct tape this together and keep going and maybe one day we’ll get the nutrients we need. 

That’s when cholesterol builds up. A lot of cardiologists have come forward and said that cholesterol is actually the body trying to patch up an area because it didn’t have enough building blocks for elastin and collagen. Like vitamin C, for example, is a needed nutrient for elastin. And if it doesn’t have enough of these nutrients, it’ll make patches, kind of like if you had a bike that the tire was ballooning but you didn’t have any tape, you would use glue or whatever. You’re going to use whatever you can to tape it up. And that’s what the body does. The body will take unhealthy heavy metals or halogens and replace and put them in our bones and put them in areas instead of the healthy ones.

So, that’s why every bite of food, I always have to remind myself like pleasure from food, it’s kind of the silliest thing, and we’ve just been so brainwashed and so marketed to. To put a donut in your mouth, for example, what are we building ourselves out of? A lot of sugar, flour, inflammatory foods, oil. Fifty different processed manmade chemicals. Like, what are we trying to build cells out of?

[00:58:36] Kristen Bowen: Oh Ashley, I have a donut story. Can I tell you my donut story? 

[00:58:41] Ashley James: Sure.

[00:58:42] Kristen Bowen: My husband used to work on campaigns. He’d be the manager of a campaign and he’d have a vision. He only did the campaigns that, for example, a school district that he worked on to recall the school district because the kids didn’t have pens and paper but the school district officials were taking private jets and flying their girlfriends to Las Vegas. And so, he wanted to help them recall those people who had been elected to office that were misusing funds. Do you know what his strongest strategy was? 

[00:59:28] Ashley James: Don’t tell me donut. 

[00:59:29] Kristen Bowen: It was. He would come up with different strategies and he’d evaluate, okay, what was the most effective. And here’s what he would do. He would take the opposing team because you’d have two political teams that were working against each other. In his situation, it was usually school boards that had forgotten who they were serving. And so, he would go in and do the recall and when it got down to the wire, he would take his campaign money and buy donuts and send to the other campaign the last week. They would be like, “Oh, who sent all these donuts?” When all those volunteers and all the workers are supposed to be out walking precincts to get their version of the story out, they were exhausted, tired, and couldn’t think because they had eaten his free donuts.

[01:00:26] Ashley James: No! 

[01:00:27] Kristen Bowen: Yup. He scrambled their brains with donuts and it was so effective, he used it every time. They couldn’t figure out like, “Who got these donuts?” “Oh, I don’t know. Here’s all these donuts showing up, though.” And it scrambled. Now, you can talk about whether that’s ethical, you know. But in the end, the bigger picture was, that school district, those people who had been elected to serve children were recalled because he scrambled the other side getting their word out that was actually a lie and broken, and they just wanted to hang onto the money that they had to be able to fly and go and misuse that money. It was used for a higher good because he wanted that money back developing the hearts and minds of children, but that’s how he scrambled the other side, was donuts. And it works, incredibly effective. And then, you take that and you look at our children. And what are we feeding them? We’re setting them up to fail, Ashley, because of the way that we’re feeding them.

[01:01:43] Ashley James: Mm-hmm. Oh, it is so sad. It is absolutely so sad. Go down a cereal aisle and I dare you to find a cereal that doesn’t have any sugar in it and also barley, wheat, rye or oats, because those are highly inflammatory and harmful. I have other interviews about that. 

But back when I was a kid, my mom was super strict when it came to eating clean. I had amazing health. After the age of 6, my mom found a naturopath. It was actually Dr. D’Adamo, the man that created Eat Right 4 Your Blood Type diet. He was my naturopath as a kid and I went from being sick all the time to overnight no longer being sick because he’s like, you’re O blood type, you can’t do dairy anymore, you can’t do sugar, you can’t do flour. I was 6 years old and boom, I remember waking up and all of a sudden, I had energy for the first time in my life. And I’m like woah, this is great. And I could go all day long just bike ride, bike ride. And I couldn’t do that before on the cereal and the cow’s milk and all the junk that I was being fed before. So, all of a sudden now, I was eating super clean and taking supplements and my whole life… it was almost like Paleo kind of. It was like just grilled chicken breast or eggs and lots of steamed vegetables and lentils. That’s what I grew up on. Then, of course, in my teenage years I rebelled, and that’s why I gave myself all those health issues because in my teenage years, completely the opposite and ate the standard American diet.

So, I’ve watched myself go from ill health to really amazing health to ill health, and then I’ve been building my health back up and giving myself amazing health. It’s simple as what meal you choose. So many doctors have done bloodwork and shown that even one meal makes a difference. Because some people go, “Oh, I’ll start that diet next week,” or, “I’ll start eating healthy next week and I’m just going to do this. I’m just going to eat these donuts now and then I’ll start…” But that one meal, just one good meal of steamed vegetables and brown rice and lentils, for example, instead of the burger and the fries, that shows up in your bloodwork right away. Right away. Every single thing you put in your mouth is feeding your cells. Because your body is constantly making new cells. You have over 37 trillion cells. It’s like 37.2 trillion cells. 

And so, millions of cells are dying every day. Millions of cells are being born or being created. Do you want those next 10 million cells to be fed fries and be built out of fries and a milkshake or a donut? Or do you want them to be built out of really nutritious food?

So, we actually will feel good after we start making these choices. So much of it, there’s so many components, right? When we’re under stress, we’re not thinking clearly. We can’t organize. Cooking, it’s like we have to have a break state. We have to get in there somewhere and just make a good choice. Just buy some apples. Something. We got to somehow get a wedge and then go “I need to insert a healthy habit here because I’ve been on a rollercoaster of bad choices because I’m under stress.”  

[01:05:03] Kristen Bowen: Okay, we’ve got to talk about this. Okay. So, I’ve experienced hard times. When my husband, during that amputation, and the one leg was taken and then six wees later, the second leg was taken. Ashley, I was not eating how I normally eat. It was all I could do to figure out how to get the ramp on the house, how to sell the car to get the new car that I’d be able to get him in to remodel the inside of the house, to show up at the hospital and learn the techniques of how I was going to help him get out of bed while I held the fear of I’m losing this man, I’m losing him.

Ashley, I was not out in my garden picking vegetables, steaming them. What I experienced was increased stress because I knew better, but I wasn’t living up to it. So, it kicked in even more stress because of what I know. So, sometimes, my concern is, am I helping to create more stress when people listen, who maybe aren’t in that place right now that they are making the greatest choices?

So, I want to stop right now and I want to share a couple of things that I do and I want to ask you what are some really simple things that you do when life is happening in a way that we’re doing our very best to just hang on. So, for me, stewing apples. When the apples are stewed and that skin goes shiny on an apple, so I just cut it up, shallow pan of water. A cooked apple is actually more nutritious than just eating an apple. It releases the pectin. And when that skin turns shiny, that means your body has access to that pectin. Incredibly healthy, incredibly easy. Apples can sit on your counter for a long time without going bad. Super simple way to stop, take a moment, and increase. And if you don’t have time to cook it, when you’re taking that apple and eating it, chew it really, really well. Chew it so very well and that will increase your health.

So, Ashley, share with me something because I do not want to do a podcast that gives someone more ammunition to throw more guilt on themselves when they're having their own hard time. Because one thing I’ve found that people do is they’ll project on me that during that hard time, I was eating perfectly. And Ashley, I did not. It was all I could do to get the modifications in our home. The insurance kicked him out of the hospital. I had to fight the insurance. Plus, I just wanted to be with him in the hospital. There were times I was eating out of the vending machine just because my caloric intake had dropped so low and there was nothing around me and it was midnight. I didn’t even have enough to take the next step to do what I needed to do. And so, I want to make sure, number one, that people are not projecting that during my personal hard time that I was eating impeccably—because I was not.

You talked about how adaptive our bodies are. When we build, when we take that pattern of building trust and trusting our bodies, and when we build healthy habits like hydration, chewing our foods well, our bodies can adapt. My body had the ability to create health for me even though I wasn’t doing things perfectly. But if our belief is that we have to do everything perfectly to deserve the health, then we never create health. Because our beliefs drive what our body can do. Our body is listening to our internal dialogue, and we are so powerful that it will create what we’re thinking. And if we think, “Oh I can’t have optimal health because I didn’t do everything that I’ve learned perfectly today,” that’s actually a trauma response. You’re in fight or flight. And part of creating health is rebuilding that trust bank with our body. My health got better when I was taking care of him even though I was not doing things perfectly. And I ate things from that vending machine that right now, I would no more make that choice. But at the time, Ashley, truly it was the best choice for me. It was the only choice that I had.

So, that pattern of rebuilding trust with our body and knowing “No, I’m not doing it perfectly. I’m doing the best that I can with the tools that I have in this moment.”

[01:10:31] Ashley James: Yeah. Well, there’s good, better, best. Right? My mother-in-law taught our son the little poem. Maybe you guys should learn this because it’s such a good reminder. Good, better, best. Never let it rest until you’re good is better and your better best.

She taught him that when he was just a toddler. It was so cute too hear his little toddler voice say it. I always have frozen vegetables like an assortment, like the giant bags. I like Costco. Our Costco has got a lot of organic choices. Frozen vegetables, I wouldn’t want to live off of them for the rest of my life. It’s a better choice than fried food and takeout. Okay? So, I always have frozen vegetables that I can grab. Or I actually have a few bags that I’ve made my own where I’ve cut up my own vegetables. Because if you’re like me and you buy a bunch of vegetables and all of a sudden, four days go by and you realize your vegetables are going bad and you haven’t cooked them all. You can chop them all up, put them in a big freezer bag, put them in the freezer, and then throw them in a stew or soup for later, so you don’t have to let them go bad. 

But at a moment’s notice, I can make rice in the instant pot. So, I woke up this morning and the first thing I did is I threw brown rice in the instant pot and I took 4 cups of brown rice, I washed it, rinsed it, poured out the water, and then I put 5 cups of water because it’s 1.25 cup of water per cup of brown rice for the instant pot. If it’s white rice, it’s 1 to 1 ratio of water to rice. And then I set the instant pot on high pressure, seal the lid, high pressure for 30 minutes. And I just hit start. Now, when I finish this podcast, I’m going to go downstairs, I’m going to steam some vegetables. I already have some lentils in the fridge, I’m going to add them to the vegetables. And I have like a tahini. I’m dairy-free so it’s not taziki, but like a tahini sauce that’s really easy to make. Garlic, lemon, water, a bit of liquid amino’s, and tahini, which is sesame paste. I just blend that. That’s really delicious to put over steamed vegetables. And I can do fresh because I have some time this afternoon to be able to prep that. But if I didn’t have time, I can grab the frozen, put it on the stove and have vegetables in a minute.

So, that’s my quick just like throw-a-meal together. 

[01:13:24] Kristen Bowen: Oh, I love that. It’s so important that we have those, that we’ve got things like oh, what can I do in a really quick moment. And I want people remembering the chant “good, better, best”. Because getting healthy is not about eating perfectly; it’s about good, better, best. And I have to throw in, I think every home needs the book Favorite Poems Old and New because it’s got that poem in it. 

[01:13:52] Ashley James: Oh, really? Oh, that’s cool.

[01:13:54] Kristen Bowen: Favorite Poems Old and New is an incredible collection of poetry that is just… I always had my kids memorize poetry, and it’s just got some of our family favorites in it. 

[01:14:07] Ashley James: That's fun. So, when I was under high stress earlier this year, that meal that I just described which is very simple, they’re going to take me less than 15 minutes to make that, that was too complicated for my brain to handle under high stress. I did actually manage to make apple butter. I don’t add sugar to apple butter. I just condense apples on the stove or on the instant pot. It’s like applesauce.

I had just done an interview actually where we talked about how every day we should eat homemade applesauce because it is the number one thing to heal the gut. It heals the gut. He actually explained the science behind it which I geeked out on. But he said just if you can do one thing for your gut health, eat homemade applesauce every day, put it in the instant pot if you can’t by a stove and cook it. That's what I did. I just took the core out, threw it in the instant pot with a little bit of water and just put it on for a few minutes and then let the instant pot do the work. What I would do, if I had to eat out, is here’s a really quick great thing. Any Thai restaurant will have in the back—I’ve never seen a Thai restaurant not do this, so far it’s been every Thai restaurant that I’ve been to—in the back there's side dishes and you can order steamed vegetables and steamed rice.

[01:15:37] Kristen Bowen: And kimchi.

[01:15:39] Ashley James: Yeah. If you're at a Korean restaurant, you could ask for kimchi with steamed vegetables. But there are so many restaurants. I even went to an Italian restaurant and I said I just wanted some really beautiful grilled vegetables. I asked for no oil. So, you can ask for even at a restaurant you could say or takeout, “I just want a bunch of steamed vegetables and some brown rice.” Or even if you're on the road. A lot of people forget that there’s some really healthy choices you can make at a takeout. Wendy’s has a baked potato. You could just order a few baked potatoes. And don’t eat the skins. Skins of baked potatoes, when it’s dry heat, when they bake it, it causes a free radical that’s very damaging to the body. But if you steam it, that free radical doesn’t get created. So, you can eat the skins of baked potatoes when it’s steamed, but when it’s baked, you shouldn’t. Don’t add anything to it. Just eat it. That starch is incredibly good. It gives the body energy for over 7 hours. It’s a slow drip, so it won’t cause you to go into hypoglycemia.

So, there's these little choices that I’d make here and there and I just ask myself is there a better choice. Is there a better choice in this moment? Not looking to be perfect because you're right, I had to catch myself and go, “Wait a second. I’m really creating a lot of guilt.” I’m putting on a mom guilt, I’m creating a lot of wife guilt, I’m creating a lot, you know, health coach guilt. I’m just creating a lot of guilt not making these amazingly amazing excellent choices because I was just having to keep it altogether. Right? Keep my family together and keep everything functioning. So, I had to go, okay, what’s the best choice I can make in this moment? Then I had to find peace in that. 

[01:17:29] Kristen Bowen: And that’s the part that you can only claim for yourself and you can say that you’ve done it. But then you need to check in with your body and feel that your body is not in fight or flight. Because if you don’t do that part that you just talked about, taking action on it, Ashley, you’re still in fight or flight. And we have the most educated sick people walking this planet than we’ve ever had. We’ve got the education. There’s so much that we can learn. But we’ve got to take it and put it into action. And the gap of our education and our action is creating a fight or flight, or freeze or fawn state. And that's what we’ve got to close down as a society. 

[01:18:19] Ashley James: And I would say what I found really helpful was always having snacks in my purse and in the car that were incredibly healthy. So, the apples, you could just have a bag of apples in your purse. I’d always have apples, I’d have healthy snacks for my son always. Always, always, always I have a big pile of healthy snacks for him. This is not processed food. I’m thinking like nuts and clean trail mix. Organic. Always buy organic apples. Always buy organic nuts. They did tests on conventionally grown apples and found that there's at least 50 pesticides, 50 different chemicals that they could detect on conventional apples that’s really hard for the body over time. So, I’d rather choose an organic over non-organic when that choice is available.

Then, algae. Spirulina and chlorella. I love ENERGYbits.com. I’ve had the founder of that company on the show several times and just having a handful of chlorella or spirulina with some nuts, just throwing that in my mouth, that is actually sometimes a meal replacement. It’s an incredible amount of protein and available nutrients. So, just being able to do that on-the-go, really helpful. Those healthy proteins from nuts and from chlorella and spirulina, protein helps the body with stress. My chiropractor who is just such an avid, every time I talk to him, he’s like, “Make sure you're eating protein. Just a little bit of nuts or little bit of lentils or something,” because protein, he sees it that it helps to regulate the stress response. So, those little habits.

But the big thing was for me, and not everyone, it’s about 1/3 of the population deals with addiction, and for me, I’ve got addiction brain. And checking in with myself because in times of stress, I want to self-soothe. I want to go for something. Not now but in the past, I’ve gone for those crazy, sugary drinks at Starbucks, for example. I’m not into alcohol. I was a bartender, so that's not my thing, but going for something that is like potato chips, chocolate bar, something that is going to increase the dopamine response that’s going to get my brain jacked up to help self-soothe when I’m under stress. So, a big bowl of noodles, a big bowl of some Asian noodles, that's like my alcohol, basically. To the liver, it’s the same thing. It’s quick sugar to the body. 

And so, in those times of high stress, I needed to step back and go “Is this choice me self-soothing? Is there a better choice I could make to regulate my emotional state and my stress?” Because when we self-soothe with sugar and with food and with an addiction, we actually are checking ourselves into a rollercoaster ride for the next 24 hours. Because I eat that bowl of noodles, I end up having bad sleep. The next day, my stress is even higher. Same with alcohol, same with that sugary coffee drink or same with that choco bar or that ice cream. Whatever we’re choosing to self-soothe, that putting in our mouth to self-soothe or that donut, whatever we’re choosing. And people will be like, “Oh, I’m celebrating. Let’s go out for pizza and wings” or whatever. Like, “Oh, I’m celebrating.” Or, “Oh, I had such a stressful day. Let’s go out and get this.” Right? Whatever it is that we’re putting in our mouth or the activity that we’re doing that we know is an addictive activity, that is going to make our stress levels even worse.

I have a family member who always turns to wine. I keep talking to them about it in a gentle way and I say, “I know you're under high stress, I know you're on antidepressants. I know you're on anxiety meds.” This person keeps talking to me about not wanting to be on them anymore and I say unfortunately, alcohol, you go… and she’s admitted to this. Alcohol in the moment makes you feel good. That's why she goes to it. But the next day, she’s wrecked. She’s not even drinking a ton. It’s like two glasses maybe. But it causes our body to go through even more stress for 24 hours after. So, that's the thing for me when I’m dealing with stress and when I’m healing from it, is checking in with myself and going, is this the best choice I can make right now? And, is this choice a self-soothing choice? Or, is this actually a nourishing choice?

[01:23:22] Kristen Bowen: Ashley, you and I are very similar in that addictive brain. And two foods, well, one’s not a food, two things that I have cut from my diet entirely because I didn’t understand how deeply triggering they were for me in craving other foods that didn’t support my health, and one is natural flavors. It excites my brain and it gets it looking for things that cannot be found in nature. So, I do everything I can to avoid those natural flavors and it decreased my cravings. The other is Stevia. Now, for some people, Stevia is great. For me, it just triggers me wanting more and more sweet things and looking everywhere to get that sweet thing. Now, I do use other sweeteners but Stevia, for me, is a trigger. So, I think it’s so important as each of us are on our individual journey that we recognize that part of this journey that we’re on in supporting our bodies is learning what your triggers are. And those two, for me, staying away from them as much as possible has been a gamechanger in my ability to not be driven by cravings. 

[01:24:50] Ashley James: At the moment it doesn’t even feel like you're craving, right? Because let’s say having to drive to and from the hospital, taking care of a family member, taking care of a sick kid, it’s like go, go, go. You're just trying to get some food in you. Then, you're standing in front of, maybe you're looking at the menu at the restaurant or at the hospital, or you're looking at that vending machine. The moment you just need to put the best choice in you as possible, right, because it’s maybe that apple in your purse and that's a great choice.

[01:25:21] Kristen Bowen: I have a hospital go pack now. And it literally is packed in my car foods that do not perish so that I never have to be in front of a vending machine feeling that desperately hungry with that being my only options. I just call them my go-bags and I’ve got them in all my cars. So, I never have to be in that position again. But I made that position worse because of the stress that I experienced over the options and what was going in my mouth. That’s where I needed help from your son chanting “good, better, best”. Just make the best choice that you can, Kristen, and move on. Instead of buying into perfectionism, which we know is driven by shame and guilt. And so, wrapping that together has been such an important realization for me and not buying into perfectionism, which means for me, I’m not letting shame and guilt drive my decisions. 

[01:26:32] Ashley James: Yeah. Exactly. And so in front of that vending machine, you’d never put yourself in front of the vending machine under regular circumstances.

[01:26:42] Kristen Bowen: No, never.

[01:26:43] Ashley James: With a menu in front of a restaurant or in front of a hospital restaurant. In normal circumstances, there’s times, or maybe you're at a potluck or at a banquet or something. You need to make the best choice in that moment and there's things you wouldn’t normally eat. I had to check in with myself and go, I want to make the best choice that I have given the limited options, and I also want to make sure I’m choosing something that isn’t going to feed into my addiction brain, or isn’t being chosen by my addiction brain. Because there are times when it’s like oh, ooh, we’re at this place and they have these choices. My addiction brain goes “Ooh, good. We get to indulge.” And I have to rein myself back in because that is a rollercoaster. I don’t want to go down. I think the movie’s called Leaving Last Vegas. I just see that spiral down through alcoholism. I just remember that. That image comes to my mind that there's this little addiction brain in me that just wants to get completely trashed, but it's on sugar or it’s on Asian noodles or something. Or it’s on some kind of pleasurable food or donuts, right? Or pumpkin spiced lattes. Whatever it is, it’s a spiral that then causes my entire body to have inflammation, have bad sleep, have bad energy, and then I have a short fuse.

My interview with Joan Ifland was really good. She’s a PhD in processed food addiction. She talks about how when we are using a substance, it can be sugar, it can be flour, it can be eating fries, it’s the weirdest thing but when we’re using to up the brain chemicals, then we have a shorter fuse and we’re quick to anger. I’m just sort of summarizing it but when she described it, I could see in both my parents, their struggles with food addiction, their struggles. And I wouldn’t say they’re alcoholics but they would come home and my mom would have 1 or 2 shots of vodka and they’d split a bottle of wine. They were never drunk but you could tell it was going towards a substance to regulate your stress, to regulate your emotional state. I liken it to as a baby needs a binky or a blanket or a toy to soothe them if they don’t have the mom’s boob, right? We’ve all seen it, right? The baby wanted its blanket or the toddler wants its blanket or its binky. And we never really grew out of that. Not everyone but a lot of people. They say, statistically, 1/3 of the population has this propensity, their brain has this propensity to do this. And we have to catch ourselves and ask ourselves is there that little addiction brain in me looking for its binky? And catch ourselves and go, okay, if I eat a food that triggers that or feeds into that addiction brain, I’m going to put myself in that rollercoaster for the next 24 hours. I don’t want to be put on that rollercoaster because I’m already under stress and so I want to make the best choices for me to maintain my health levels.

JJ Virgin was on the show, this was a few years ago and she had to live in the hospital where they didn’t think their son would make it. A car hit him at 50 miles an hour. Every bone in his body was broken. They had to fly him to a special hospital and I think they had to fly him to a second hospital. It was ridiculous. He had a feeding tube. She was sneaking supplements down his feeding tube. But she shared in that interview how she maintained her sanity by choosing the best foods possible in the menu at the hospital and she would take breaks to go walk up and down flights of stairs because she knew that sitting the whole day by her son and then eating the junk food at the hospital, that she could not be in peak performance emotionally and mentally to be there for her son.

I’ve actually had feedback from a listener who said that that interview, there were three different interviews but that interview and then two others helped her save her mother’s life when her mother was dying in the hospital. They were able to save her mother’s life. And she said that strategy of get up, walk some stairs, drink some water, make sure you're hydrated, make sure you're eating the absolute best food. If you're only eating fruit, that's better than the fries, right? A handful of nuts and some fruit is so much better. But making those good little tiny baby step choices to keep you on the top of your game so that then you can handle and ride the stress as best as possible and do things like the deep breathing, the walking. I love that idea of getting up in the morning with the sunlight, with the red light of the sun, and save yourself thousands of dollars with a red-light machine.

[01:31:57] Kristen Bowen: It’s the OG of red light. You know, the pattern, I’m always looking for patterns, Ashley. That pattern of learning how to take care of yourself in any situation is so important. The other thing that I was thinking that you really highlighted pattern-wise, was the pattern of making decisions in a way that support our health. Okay, I’ve decided this good but now I’m going to be stressed because I didn’t soak the nut to get rid of the problems in the nut. You made that decision strongly and you did the best that you could in that moment.

Also, another pattern that I thought of that you highlighted was knowing your why. I am very driven by my why and my choices. One of my why’s is I want the physical strength to be there for my husband. His body does not have the benefit of oxygen and blood like my body does. It’s a higher maintenance body. I love having that ability to massage him down and use some different melt massage techniques at night for 60 to 90 minutes every night. If I’m not caring for my body and putting myself first in some experiences in the morning especially, then I don’t have it to give to him. So, knowing your why, not just “Oh, I want to be healthy. I want more energy,” but specifically, what will you do with that energy, how will you utilize. When you get to the why of the why, that’s what starts to motivate and change the behaviors of what you're doing during the day. If “Oh yeah, I want to be healthy, I want more energy,” why? Why? Because I love climbing trees with grandchildren. I love being able to take 90 minutes at the end of an incredibly full busy day and still have the capacity to take my body and put every ounce of my being into massaging him and helping him manage his pain.

So, knowing your why and being connected to it helps to drive just like your value. Knowing your why and your values and being deeply connected to them, number one, helps you maintain your magnesium levels because we know that’s the first foundational piece of creating health, because that magnesium activates stored and active vitamin D, and then it helps you to become deeply connected to your why and your values. 

[01:34:57] Ashley James: I love it. When I do coaching, most of the time it’s with women. Most of the time, we talk about their life, their day like tell me about your day. So, you wake up and what you eat. Like, tell me about your routine. Most women go to bed way later than they should. 

[01:35:21] Kristen Bowen: Which crashes their circadian rhythm, which creates disharmony in their hormones. But then we’re all going “Oh, I want better hormone balance, I want better hormone balance. I’m willing to spend thousands of dollars over here,” when in actuality, get your butt to bed on time. Really. Said with love. My grandma vibe just came out. It’s official. But really, we’re saying “Oh, I want this, I want this.” Are you taking care of your circadian rhythm? It's the foundation of your health. It will determine your heart rate variability. You get up with the sun and you go to sleep with the son. And that sunlight from being outside with that sun sets that circadian rhythm. It’s not found in going and buying a supplement. It’s found in your basic daily habits.

[01:36:20] Ashley James: Yeah. So, the biggest thing, with these women, and the biggest reason, and I think that a lot of listeners can relate, they get their kids to sleep or their spouse is doing whatever, their house is finally quiet and it’s their alone time, and it’s like, well, after 10:00 or after 11:00 is my time. So, they’ll stay up until midnight or to 1:00. I had a friend that stayed up until 4:00 AM the other day reading a good book. And I’m like, I’m all about reading good books, but get your butt to bed. Or Netflix or whatever. And I’ve done it too. The problem is, is that if you are aware past 10:30, and it doesn’t matter what time zone you're in, it’s kind of cool and weird how the body works, but 10:30, if you're still awake at 10:30, you get a second wind. You ever notice that you're tired at 9:00. At 9:00 PM you could be like, yeah, I could go to bed now. And then you're “But I have to do the dishes and I have to do this, and I got to put the kids to bed, and I have to send that email,” or whatever. “I want to watch that TV show.” Then at 10:30 or 11:00, you're like, “Oh, I’m awake now. Now I’m going to clean the toilet or I’m going to clean the kitchen or I’m going to…” whatever, go watch more TV or I’m going to work out. 

The problem is, like we were tribal people for many generations and the person that had to stay up and guard the tribe while everyone else slept, they got the second wind. They’re sitting around the campfire watching for the lion or whatever. So our biology will kick into stress mode to survive. If you stay up past 10:30, you’ll get a second wind of cortisol, which tells the melatonin to go away. Because they’re opposite. So melatonin tells the body to fall asleep, it doesn’t make the body fall asleep, but tells it it’s time to fall asleep. It’s an antioxidant. You want your melatonin up there. 

[01:38:16] Kristen Bowen: You create melatonin in the morning. It’s determined that two hours in the morning of sunlight determines the quality and the quantity of your melatonin that your body can kick in that night. So truly, your sleep starts with how you spend your morning.

[01:38:37] Ashley James: I love it. So, the best thing that my clients have done, the ones that do, oh my gosh, it’s lifechanging. I say, okay, here’s the deal. I had this one client who she ran her own business, she said, “Listen, I do all my emails at night after I get the kids to bed.” I said, what if, just what if, I said, how long does it take you to write these emails, like come on. She goes, “Well, I’m so tired, it takes me longer to write them.” I said, exactly. You're not putting your best brain power in your business because you're doing it at 11:00 at night. So, I said, eat dinner with the kids at 6:00 or the bedtime routine starts at 7:00, get them all into bed at 8:00, fall asleep by 9:00, you and the kids. Then, you wake up, because kids will sleep for like 11 hours, they should. If your kids aren’t sleeping for 11 hours, then they're not going to bed early enough. You’ll wake up at 5:00, you’ll wake up at 4:00 or 5:00. If you go to bed at 9:00, you’ll wake up at 4:00 or 5:00, you’ll feel amazing, really refreshed. You go downstairs, make yourself breakfast, drink a big glass of lemon water and sit there on your computer. And she goes, it was amazing. She was, “I had a good three hours of me time and I was at 100 percent energy and mental clarity.” That was more productive better me time than the at night. But the thing is, if you are one of the people that’s the 1/3 of the population that has the addiction brain like I do, that addiction brain will try to take over and convince you it’s fun to stay up late. “Oh let’s just watch another show. Oh, come on.” That addiction brain is looking for more and more dopamine and will try to keep you awake, so you have to talk to yourself and go, okay, it’s now 9:30, I’m getting into bed with a good book, not the cellphone. Or, I’m going to listen to a podcast but don’t look at the cellphone. Get into bed at 9:30 and try to be asleep between 10:00 or 10:30. Then have an earlier morning. All the stuff you like doing late at night, do early in the morning, and you go for that walk in the morning to set the tone for the next evening. But that is a way to significantly lower stress in the body. 

What this last year of the last two years has taught me, is my sleep is one of the most important things to me, and that's where I put myself first is to make sure I’m getting to bed. My husband sometimes, the thing is he can lie down and he’s immediately asleep, snoring right away. So, I got to get in bed before he falls asleep. Otherwise, he’s snoring every side of me. But yeah, that's it. Just putting yourself first, putting your health first and knowing that it’s going to set you up for an amazing day the next day. Sometimes, if you have adrenal fatigue, sometimes that takes time. I have a friend who says, you know, I did that, but I’m still tired the next day. I’m like, yeah, well, it’s going to take those baby steps. We got to get your magnesium up, soak in the magnesium to full cell saturation. We need to shift your diet so that your cortisol, insulin and your glucose are all in this harmony together, and decrease the stressors. But the sleep is so important earlier in the evening, falling asleep, and then just do all the fun stuff you want to do at night, do it in the morning. 

[01:42:10] Kristen Bowen: So, I love staying up late. I know that I feel better when I’m in bed early. So, the compromise, like there's optimal and then there's life. So, for me, over the years as I’ve tracked and I’ve always watched my heartrate variability and I track my temperature and all sorts of things, I’ve found that once every 10 to 12 days, I can handle a late night without my data dropping or changing too drastically. So, that way, it doesn’t kick me into all or nothing thinking. Because when I’m there, that’s being driven by that perfectionism and shame.

So, it’s okay with the fact that I stay up late every once in a while. I just know I don’t do it often and then that way, I’m not driven and triggered back into fight or flight. Because if you're being driven by that guilt and shame, you are in fight or flight. So, by giving myself permission to do it imperfectly, it helps to keep me out of that fight or flight which helps decrease the rate that my body is burning up that magnesium because I want my cell saturation at 6.3 or above.

[01:43:36] Ashley James: Right, right. And we talked about blood tests or getting blood tests. On my website down in the sidebar, if you're on a cellphone it’s all the way at the bottom, there’s a link to a lab that you can buy your own labs. If you’re in the United States, you can buy your own labs and I believe you can buy the magnesium RBC lab which is about $40 to $50. 

[01:44:08] Kristen Bowen: Almost always a coupon out for it.

[01:44:12] Ashley James: Yeah, you can look for that. But it’s not incredibly expensive. And that's kind of a hard test to get a doctor to do, which is annoying, but you can just buy it yourself and then go to LabCorp, go to Quest with that receipt from that company and then you can get it. Same with the cholesterol labs. It’s good to look at labs because it checks us in with stuff that we don’t feel in our body. But also, not a good thing to stress about. So, labs don’t really help if you don’t know what it means. Right? So, a lot of times we’re going to the wrong kind of doctor because MDs are not trained in nutrition, they're trained in drugs. The best thing to do is go to a functional medicine practitioner or go to a health coach that’s trained in it or go to a naturopathic physician that’s trained in looking at labs through the lens of how can I help you achieve optimal health. I love all doctors, I believe they want to help people. Their education, MDs have a lens that they look through that informs them. What they do is they look to see what drugs they can put you on, they are not taught how to help you achieve optimal health. Unless they went after medical school and took extracurricular activities and became like a functional medicine practitioner, MDs are not taught how to help us achieve true health. They're taught how to help us save our lives. I love them for emergency medicine, absolutely. But we have to know when to take our body to the right practitioner.

And going to an MD for chronic illness to get better and to get so healthy you no longer need medication oftentimes doesn’t work because they're not trained to do that. They're not trained to get you so healthy you don’t need medication. Just like you wouldn’t take your car to a plumber, you got to find the right practitioner. Then labs are a really great tool but also, we have to check in because I tend to feel the guilt and the shame comes up when my labs aren’t perfect-perfect. But I also rejoice when my labs are great. So, I also have to check in and go okay, this is not who I am, my labs aren’t who I am. Just like a diagnosis is not who you are, diabetes is not who you are. It is a manmade construct of a set of parameters that they have detected and you can change those parameters so you no longer are labeled diabetic. Right? So, you are not your diagnosis, you are not your labs. These are all feedback to help you on your journey. We have to really check in and make sure that we’re not putting ourselves down when we’re looking at this information in front of us.

[01:47:12] Kristen Bowen: So, I love to look at labs as neutral data. When I get on the scale, it’s neutral data. Now, I didn’t always look at it that way. So, please know that was a huge journey for me on healing that relationship. It’s neutral data. We’re asking for feedback and what I was doing was throwing a fit about the feedback. So, instead of throwing the fit and putting it into fight or flight, I’m looking at it as neutral data. For some, that comes easily and for some, we’ve got to build a relationship of healing, take that healing journey back to the point where it’s neutral data.

I think there's a lot of confusion, I’d like to touch on just really quickly about the magnesium testing for cell saturation. Number one, they don’t even throw out the number anymore of 6.3 because years ago, nobody was hitting it and so they dropped the standard. I’m not dropping my standard of cell saturation because the rest of the country is not eating how they should. So, I still hold myself to that old standard of 6.3 or above.

Number two, I’ve had a lot of people email in lately about oh my gosh, my test came in at 2.1 but they said that was fine. They’re looking at blood serum. So, you want to make sure it’s not serum but red blood cell. Then the next one is, there was new magnesium testing. Ashley, I was so excited because I thought oh my goodness, easier to do, less inexpensive, but it’s not ready yet. So, there's a lot of people jumping on about testing your magnesium through your urine. So, I bought a bunch of them to just test and evaluate because I thought oh my gosh, I cannot wait to share this with my clients and it is so inaccurate. I would take one strip and it would tell me I was low. I would test it 10 minutes later, it would tell me I was high. And it was actually an investor out of San Diego that really blew this company up. I think eventually, the science will be there that we can accurately test magnesium levels through our urine, but at this point, it’s just not sound and solid enough. So, the gold standard is, the magnesium red blood cell test. 

[01:49:53] Ashley James: Yeah. That's really good to know. Going into the 30-day challenge, we talk about this in episode 294, 341, and 381, so listeners, definitely want to go back and check out those previous interviews with Kristen. You do a 30-day challenge. And you don’t have to do a blood test. I was too excited. I’m like impatient. So, I just jumped in and did a 30-day challenge and I felt it in my body so I knew it was making a difference. I saw it in our sleep and I saw it in my energy, and I saw it in my detox. I just feel fantastic. Some people, when they do your magnesium soak, which is really easy. You get a bowl that’s not plastic. So anything that’s not plastic. It could be a bowl from the kitchen big enough for your feet or a pan like a roasting pan. We went to a kitchen supply store actually and got like a chafing dish that’s metal. I have a big glass bowl and sometimes we just use that. Whatever’s kicking around that’s big enough for your feet, you're just putting enough water to cover your feet. You don’t have to go all the way up to your ankles or calves. Then you're putting a quarter cup which is 2 ounces of the magnesium soak in the water and you sit there, it can be any temperature of water although I personally like hot water, but in the summer I’ve done it with cold water and I got the same results. It’s really good to move your limb beforehand, so walking up and down the stairs, doing some jumping jacks or bouncing on the rebounder or going for a walk. But if you can’t, then just doing some deep breathing while you're in the soak. I like to tell people to do it for an hour, but half an hour, I think you said you uptake about 70 percent of the magnesium you're going to absorb in 20 minutes.

[01:51:34] Kristen Bowen: In 20 minutes, the average absorption of the elemental magnesium was 80 percent. In 45 minutes, the average absorption of the elemental magnesium was 98 percent. Realizing that's going to vary a little bit from person to person, depending on inflammation levels. So if your inflammation is high, then that's going to change a little bit. But on average. 

[01:52:04] Ashley James: I just like telling people to do it for an hour, you know. If you can do it for 45 minutes, do it for 45 minutes. If you can do it for half an hour, do it for half an hour. Definitely do it longer than 20 minutes. But if all you have is 20 minutes, you're up-taking a lot. I throw it in my son’s bath and his baths are 20 minutes long. He’s a kid. So he just wants to go do something else. But he absorbs it and he gets better sleep. So, I see it.

We had a family member who was in hospice and doing magnesium soaks, decreased his pain significantly. He went from moaning, moving was very difficult for him, he was in so much pain. We do a magnesium soak and then he’d just be walking. Sometimes, he wouldn’t even use his walker. And we’re looking at him like, are you kidding me? You were in pain all day and after a magnesium soak he’s walking around like nothing, no pain at all. It was really cool. We couldn’t really get him to talk about it like hey, how’d you like it? He’d be like, eh, it’s okay. But then we’d walk around and he wouldn’t moan. I thought that was really interesting because times he would sit, he would moan and then sit and then stand. He’d be like “ugh…” the whole time, he’d be moaning. It was so sad, we just wanted to take his pain away and he was refusing pain meds. He was in hospice care and he’s like, “I don’t want to become addicted to them.” I’m like, I can appreciate your principle; however, let’s get your quality of life up at this point.

[01:53:31] Kristen Bowen: That's a tough one though. That was a real challenge for my husband especially because he comes from a family that there’s been end-of-life was because of addiction. So, that can be a real challenge for people in how do I balance this pain and not become addicted to that. So, that can be a whole journey for somebody.

[01:53:56] Ashley James: We saw with the magnesium that it made a huge difference in his quality of life. He wasn’t doing anything else for his health. When I work with the magnesium soak and with clients, they're doing a lot of changes at once. But to see how drastically, how much it helps someone who is not eating healthy, who is not making any changes to their lifestyle and the only thing they did was magnesium soak, it significantly lowered his pain. I thought was really cool. 

[01:54:24] Kristen Bowen: You know, Ashley, when you were talking about that, it connected me to something you said earlier that I want people to understand. You commented calcium’s down the list of things that we need. When we become magnesium deficient, we become calcium dominant. So, take someone who experiences chronic pain, it puts them in fight or flight which drains the very magnesium that they need and then they become calcium dominant. Then, what happens, those pain receptor sites stay open because of calcium dominance. So, magnesium becomes so, I mean, it’s important, it’s foundational. Someone who’s in pain is going to need more soak time in magnesium because we’ve got to walk away from the calcium dominance so the body can shut down the pain receptor sites that get stuck and open with the feedback loop being always having pain.

[01:55:35] Ashley James: Exactly. It’s incredible for pain. Asthma, for example, my son, this was a few years ago. We took him to Children’s, he was in respiratory distress. It was like 10 out of 11 respiratory distress. All these doctors are rushing around this emergency room and they’re hooking him up to an IV. They’re about to put something in his body and I said, “Stop, I need informed consent,” because I had no idea what they're putting in his body. And I wanted them to save his life but at the same time, I also need to know what’s going on. The doctor looked at me and she took her mask off, this was more than 2 years ago, she took her stuff off so we could make eye contact and make an emotional contact and she smiled. And I’m like, woah. Because I was expecting her to get angry and she was, “Oh, okay.” Then she started explaining what was going on. You have to say to doctors “I need informed consent.” They have to perform this where they need to tell you the benefits of the procedure, the downside to the procedure, and the alternatives to this procedure. She said, “We are giving your son magnesium intravenously because magnesium is so important for the body.” In some cases, when children or adults even are in respiratory distress, the muscles in the alveoli and the lungs are spasming and the way to release them is through magnesium. Muscles in your body, when they don’t have enough of that magnesium because magnesium relaxes muscles and calcium contracts muscles. So when you have that neck tension, when you have the cramps or your eyes twitching or you have restless legs, that's magnesium deficiency. That's an imbalance of magnesium to calcium. And I was so happy to hear the first thing that they were administering at Children’s Hospital to our son, was a bag of IV magnesium. How cool was that? It wasn’t a bunch of drugs they were trying to pump him with. I was so grateful. I was like, okay, go ahead! Give him magnesium, that's great.

[01:57:48] Kristen Bowen: Many hospitals when you go in with symptoms of a heart attack, that's what they’ll do for you because they know the magnesium will relax the heart muscle. Yeah. 

[01:58:00] Ashley James: It’s so important.

[01:58:01] Kristen Bowen: It is.

[01:58:03] Ashley James: I was just reading an article about magnesium deficiency in adults who are prone to A-fib, to going into atrial fibrillation where the upper part of the heart is beating rapidly and out of sync with the ventricle, with the lower part of the heart. So, that's dangerous because it can cause clots in the body and cause strokes. They’re analyzing why do some people go in and out of A-fib or why are some people jumping into A-fib whereas others don’t. One of the causes, they saw, one of the similarities was that people who had chronic low levels of magnesium were more likely to enter A-fib than people who had a history of A-fib and got their magnesium levels up were less likely to reenter A-fib. So, I thought that was interesting. 

[01:59:04] Kristen Bowen: It’s that foundational mineral. It’s not the only mineral. It’s the mineral that we start with to put the pieces and the gates back together to create a strong foundation. Ashley, I could get it for so cheap out of Utah, I won’t because of the arsenic levels. Right now, Utah has got some problems happening because there are water issues and they're in a drought. The arsenic is just being exposed like crazy. Well, of course I could get that really, really inexpensively, but I’m not soaking in magnesium to increase my arsenic levels. I could get it from Russia for pennies, but that's very high in heavy metals. I could have lab-manufactured magnesium. That's not why I carry magnesium. I carry magnesium to help clients achieve cell saturation. Currently, undiluted sea brine from the cleanest source in the Zechstein Sea is the best magnesium available to help you achieve cell saturation.

[02:00:20] Ashley James: Yeah, well, I noticed the difference. Like I said, I could feel it. When I soak in it, to me it’s like getting an IV of magnesium. I can feel it. It’s really cool.

One thing that you mentioned before we hit record, we were kind of catching up.

[02:00:37] Kristen Bowen: It was nice to catch up, wasn’t it?

[02:00:39] Ashley James: It is. And it’s been a while. But you talked about how, well, when I first interviewed you, I was your first podcast, so I was so excited. Episode 294. You have mentioned since then, you’ve been on the show a few times and you’ve mentioned being on other shows, but since then, you’ve grown your company. Have you moved twice or three times? You’ve gone bigger and bigger. Tell us about how the company has grown since you’ve last come on the show.

[02:01:13] Kristen Bowen: So, we had decided because we’re a family-owned company, and we had decided okay, we are jumping in at a deeper level. We want to share on a bigger stage more magnesium. So, we had decided to do the traveling magnesium parties of which I met you. And it ended up being so much more expensive than what we thought it would be. And it was one of those this is either going to work or the company is going to fold. And you made that comment, I think there were 7, was that 7 including my team or was that 7 people?

[02:02:05] Ashley James:  I think it was like 7 people in the whole room.

[02:02:08] Kristen Bowen: So that was 7 people including my team and just in advertising I had spent $1000. Just in advertising. Let alone driving out with the magnesium, the payroll hours, the gas to get there, all of that kind of stuff. So, my husband, because before, it was the day before I turned to my husband and I said Seattle is a bust, we cannot go here. And he looked at me and he said “Two things I’m going to remind you of. You’ve never cared about the numbers. Why start now? And someone will show up to that that will help you get the word out to more people and they will connect with your heart.”

[02:03:00] Ashley James: Give your husband a hug for me. 

[02:03:02] Kristen Bowen: And I was stressed the day before because I’m like, I’ve got more of my team here than people showing up. As I saw the people who were there, I think there were 3 actual new people that weren’t my team, I just thought, okay, I’m being driven by my values. These three people are important, their lives are important. The people that they’re connected to are important. And I threw away my stress and worry about how much money I had spent and determined to make it a value to those people who had driven into Seattle at night in the summer and had done all of the things that they needed to do to get there. Little did I know that Ashley James was sitting there with the potential to connect me to other like-minded people who are passionate about creating health. And I do podcasts all the time now and you're still my favorite podcaster because of your ability to not like “We’ve got to be done in 30 minutes” but to just really flesh out and have true communication instead of staged question-and-answer. I love the true communication versus the staged question-and-answer. And all of your listeners, Ashley, we so appreciate what you do and our heart broke as we watched what you went through and you have inspired us to remember and remind ourselves that we can take the ashes and we can create something beautiful and make a difference in the lives of other people. So, we’re so grateful that you’re back and on your road of recovery, and we appreciate the authenticity of sharing it with us because in those moments of our own darkness, even though they're different than what your hard times were, we remember that we are not alone and we can take that next step and take that next step, whether we’re standing in front of a vending machine, getting a Nature Valley granola bar or we’re grabbing apples and nuts. We’re taking that next step together without judgment and with love connecting as humans to each other and supporting each other in the process.

[02:05:41] Ashley James: Absolutely. You know, life is incredibly messy and incredibly beautiful, and there are moments where you feel like the pain will never end. I promise you if you hold on, it will end in the biggest thing, is getting out of your head and sometimes the biggest thing is being in service to others. When you need help the most, I know that sounds crazy because you're like “I need help. Why am I helping others?” Sometimes, being in service to others is the best way to get out of your head, to get out of your depression, to get out of your funk. Yes, asking for help is important to asking, and it’s not about pride. It’s about loving yourself enough to go “Please, this is a moment in my life where I’m requesting some backup. I need some backup here.” And it’s not a weakness; it’s a strength. It’s a strength to be able to say I need some help holding it together. And it’s okay to cry and find your friend that will cry with you and you will put it back together. You know, I turned to God and we felt His grace with us.

[02:07:00] Kristen Bowen: So glad.

[02:07:02] Ashley James: We felt. And I grew up in the church but my husband did not and he turned to me something like 2 or 3 days after she died, our daughter, and he said “I feel God giving me a hug.” It was something like both of us, we felt His grace and His presence. We felt His protection, we felt His love. And it was so beautiful and so intense and so real to us, both of us.

[02:07:33] Kristen Bowen: It is tangible, I can hear it in your voice.

[02:07:34] Ashley James: It was. It was tangible. For my husband…

[02:07:39] Kristen Bowen: A new experience for him probably.

[02:07:41] Ashley James: It’s a new experience. I mean, I brought him to church a few times but him, this was a new experience. And I do not believe that God causes bad things. You know some people go “oh well, God has a plan.” God does not cause suffering or bad stuff. The more you study and the more you build a relationship, God loves you the most out of everyone, wants the best for you. In your life, some perfect life is messy and in those moments of mine, we can find connection. Another thing that came out of it was my community of friends and family and my community of homeschool moms came together and supported us in a way. Even the listeners of the podcast supported us in a way that my husband said “I’ve never felt so loved before.” He’s an introvert, he doesn’t have like a lot of friends. He just likes to hang out with me. It was a nonstop flow of people coming in. Because I said, you know, my door is open, right, but he said “I’ve never felt so supported. I’ve never felt so loved.” 

And I was told that some friends and even when we were arranging the burial, a woman who works at the cemetery, and several people told me this that other people when they experience a loss of a child, they sort of just get silent and they don’t ask for help and they don’t get public about it, and they don’t tell friends and family and they don’t reach out. They just suffer in silence. And whether it’s a miscarriage, a stillbirth or a child dying early in infancy, there are so many parents that feel guilt or shame or they don’t know how to reach out. And they just get silent and suffer in silence. I did the opposite. I suffered openly. And I opened my heart aloud for love and healing and connection, and I communicated. I think that's how I healed and survived. 

But what I was amazed at is so many women came out of the woodwork and said, “When I lost my child, I never told anyone. When I had a miscarriage, I didn’t tell people. When I had a stillbirth, I didn’t tell people. And I suffered for years in silence and seeing you do it publicly has been healing for me because now I want to talk about the child I lost. Now I want to get it off my heart and I want to share it.” 

[02:10:27] Kristen Bowen: And feel comfort.

[02:10:29] Ashley James: The thing is, whatever, listen, all of us, if you live long enough, you're going to suffer. There’s going to be a loss. I mean, I want everyone to live to be 120, right? We want to live long and beautiful glorious lives. And all of us are going to be, at some point, in a hospital supporting a loved one. Right? In an emergency. In a situation where we’re taking care of a sick family member or a sick friend. Or where our needs are going to go on the backburner for a day or a week or a month because we’re taking care of someone we love. The strategies we talked about today are so important to think about and learn because if you live a long enough, full enough life, you will have those moments. No matter how healthy you are, you could be a marathon runner that’s like whole-food plant-based and eating your own food from the garden, you could be just like the healthiest person in the world. And when you're up against it and you're up against the wall and you're in a hospital taking care of a loved one or your entire routine is thrown off or you're sleep-deprived, you're nutrient-deprived, it’s those times of stress. Or maybe you're just under the gun at work. Whatever your stress is, it throws off our routine and that's where the patterns, the little habits, the little choices, the little baby steps that we talked about today can make your experience be a healthier one, be a better one, be one where you can manage it with grace. That's what I want for everyone. Life is messy, life is not perfect, and you can learn the good, better, best of the choices to help yourself so that you can help the ones you love during those crucial times.

But I love that we talked about that's like there's no perfect, right? When I started the podcast, I wasn’t the perfect weight, I wasn’t the perfect health. I’m incredibly passionate. My number one value is health. I study health. I eat healthy. I make the best choices I can. 

My husband is the one that pushed me to start the podcast. I wanted to do the podcast but there was that voice in my head that said I don’t look like an Instagram model yet or I don’t look like these people on Instagram. You know what I mean? Like these raw vegans who have their own garden in the backyard and they all look perfect and they all eat acai berry bowls or whatever it’s called. Okay, that smoothie bowl looks disgusting, I’m sorry. But like the people that eat smoothie bowls every day, right? That level, it seems superficial. I mean, I don’t know. Those people, I’m not putting them down because those people probably have beautiful authentic life, but that compare and contrast that we look at these people, the health gurus. You look at them and you go like, “Oh.” Like there's that little voice in your head that goes “I’m not like that. I’m not good enough. I can’t do that. I wish I could do that.”

[02:13:39] Kristen Bowen: That's a way we keep ourselves safe. It’s a way that our subconscious is keeping us safe because ultimately, we know like okay, that's not going to happen and so I’m just going to watch them and follow them, and it’s a very convenient excuse to stay exactly where you're at. One of the things that I’ve recently done, Ashley, that I finally stepped out of that perfectionism is I’ve always wanted to become certified in Pilates. It stopped me because I don’t have a flat Pilates tummy. It doesn’t look like the Instagram Pilates tummy. And Ashley, it has been one of the most enjoyable journeys and I just realize I’m not waiting to do that until I look like that. I’m creating it now. And it has been life-changing for me. So, hairs up for imperfect action.

[02:14:41] Ashley James: Yes, thank you. So, that's what I was saying. It’s like when I started the podcast, I had to let go. I just say, you know what, “No. I’m on a journey. I’ve come a long way.” Like when I started the podcast, I had already healed. Polycystic ovarian syndrome, type 2 diabetes, infertility, chronic adrenal fatigue and chronic infections. That's five things that I had healed in my body. And I’m still working. I’m still working on my health. There's no promise land where it’s like okay, I achieved it, I’m up Mt. Everest of health and now I’m the guru. It’s like no, that's not it. Life is messy, life’s not perfect. Make good, better, or best choices.

And I started the podcast going, people are suffering, I can’t wait any longer. There's an urgency. These people to know this information and we’re going to get healthy together. We’re all going to learn to make good, better, and best decisions, make better decisions every day and we’re going to get there together. We’re going to shed those layers of symptoms and ill health together. I love that you didn’t wait to have a flat stomach before you started studying Pilates. I love that. I think that we should grab on to the things that we love to do or things we want to do and just go and run with it. 

[02:16:00] Kristen Bowen: Healthy women create. 

[02:16:02] Ashley James: We will grow as we learn, as we do, as we experience. So, good. Awesome. It’s so exciting to have you on the show and I know there's a lot more I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about the growth of your business. We got a little sidetracked into health talk, of course.

[02:16:18] Kristen Bowen: Imagine that. You and I, Ashley, getting sidetracked. But thank you so much for having me on today. Hopefully, I can come back again and we can talk some more. 

[02:16:29] Ashley James: Yeah, businesses are recovering from the last two years from supply chain issues and quality issues. You have kept your quality high. And as the world heals from the last two years and the supply chain heals…

[02:16:44] Kristen Bowen: We dropped 13 products and we lost.

[02:16:48] Ashley James: I know you want to get those products back. When everything comes back to the high standards that you hold, come back on the show and we can talk about the products you're able to offer again. But I’m so happy that obviously, your flagship which is the magnesium soak is still at Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com and listeners can use coupon code LTH to get the discount and do the 30-day challenge, the soak every day. If you can do it for 20 minutes, do it for 20 minutes. If you can do it for an hour, do it for an hour. I like doing it at night because it helps me sleep but for some people, it gives them more energy. So, I say the first soak or two, do it like in the middle of the day, if you can, like maybe on your lunch break because then you will figure out whether your body gets more energy from magnesium or whether you fall asleep from magnesium. And yeah, listen to the previous episodes of Kristen because they're just packed full of amazing information—294, 341, and 381. Kristen, wonderful having you on the show again, as always. Can’t wait to have you back and thank you so much for being on this journey with us. Thank you for not waiting to be perfect before you took action because you would have never started. Just like me, I would have never started the podcast if I waited to be perfect before I took action. Just remember, baby steps, good, better and best. Make your choice. You’re always improving upon yourself and shed that guilt and shame. There's no place in that for your life. Your life is filled with joy and love.

[02:18:18] Kristen Bowen: Love it. Thank you, Ashley.

[02:18:21] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Kristen Bowen. She’s absolutely amazing and I highly recommend you go back and listen to the other episodes that’s she’s been in and you can go to Learntruehealth.com and type in “Kristen Bowen” in the search bar there to find the other episodes where she shares about how to get rid of parasites and more about magnesium. Just incredible information about magnesium. And of course, her health journey which she has an amazing story, so it’s really worth listening to. Please go to her website Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com and use coupon code LTH as in Learn True Health. Use coupon code LTH to get the listener discount. Please share this episode with those you care about who you know this would help. We’re all recovering from the last few years in some way or another and let’s support each other in our health journey. Have yourself a wonderful rest of your day.

Get Connected with Kristen Bowen:

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Recommended Reading by Kristen Bowen

Healing Is Voltage by Jerry L. Tennant

If you have blood sugar issues, fatty liver, kidney issues, weight issues, heart health issues or immune issues you MUST check out this FREE summit! Please sign up (free) and share this link with your friends!
https://www.learntruehealth.com/masteringdiabetes

489: Mastering Diabetes: How To Reverse Insulin Resistance and Restore Insulin Sensitivity with Robby Barbaro

https://www.learntruehealth.com/mastering-diabetes-how-to-reverse-insulin-resistance-and-restore-insulin-sensitivity-with-robby-barbaro

The quest to restore insulin sensitivity is a long, arduous one. In this episode, Robby Barbaro talks about the right approach, combined with progressive health habits and lifestyle changes, to help anybody achieve their ideal weight, master diabetes, and reverse their metabolic issues once and for all. He also talks about his upcoming summit, the most comprehensive one you can ever attend, all in one place with no travel and at no cost.

Highlights:

• Endotoxins
• Recommended foods in Robby’s program
• Green light, yellow light, red light food categories, etc.
• Insulin sensitivity and resistance
• Robby’s summit

Intro:

Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 489.

Ashley James: I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show Robby Barbaro who was in episode 233. You should definitely go back and listen to that. That was all the way back in 2018. Since then, you’ve published an amazing book. I’ve actually given your book as gifts before. Mastering Diabetes is a phenomenal book. You guys have coached thousands of people to reversing type 2 diabetes completely blowing it out of the water, completely reversing it. These people are getting off meds, losing weight, getting balanced blood sugar, living amazing lives, and even type 1 diabetics like yourself have cut insulin. Crazy amounts, 50 percent, 70 percent. They have had the best health success in their lives from the program that you and Cyrus have created and have been doing for many years. And I’m so excited to have you back on the show because you are about to launch a summit which I want all my listeners to attend because honestly, statistically, you as a listener probably have blood sugar issues or someone in your household or one of your friends does. Because statistically, I think, what is it, 1/3 of the population has diabetes or prediabetes.

[00:01:25] Robby Barbaro: That's absolutely right. It’s unbelievable. I’m just so excited to be here, Ashley. We have so much to talk about. And you’re exactly right. This our big event every year, happens once a year. It’s the Blood Sugar Revolution Summit. It’s absolutely free and people should absolutely register so they can get involved. We do free webinars in the evenings of this event, so we can answer questions live and some people call in, they do a phone call. It’s an incredible even. We have over 22 incredible experts talking on a wide range of topics. So, we’re just really stoked on it and people are going to definitely benefit. If you want to learn how to reverse insulin resistance, if you want to learn how to get rid of excess weight, if you want to learn about how you can prevent and reverse conditions like kidney disease, we have heart disease experts, we have fatty liver disease, we have gut health experts, we have cancer experts. It’s an amazing event with incredible speakers. Our goal is to help people really take full control of their health and understand the truth because it’s a very confusing landscape right now when it comes to nutrition, but it doesn’t have to be confusing. 

[00:02:39] Ashley James: I love that you brought up that you’re addressing kidney disease, fatty liver, heart disease, cancer. These are issues that are it’s kind of like an octopus like here we have diabetes but then you see all these arms of diabetes and we see that. It’s like what came first, right, chicken or the egg? When you go to a medical doctor, they’re trained. Now, I love all doctors. The unfortunate part is their education. They’re taught to see the body through the lens of reductionism and to see the body reduced to different parts, and then they're taught to prescribe pills to alter the body. They don’t teach us how to have optimal health and they don’t cure. These are standard medical doctors, right? And they’re doing the best they can with the tools they have but you wouldn’t take your car to a plumber.

[00:03:30] Robby Barbaro: That's right.

[00:03:31] Ashley James: Right? So, when we go to a medical doctor with chronic disease, their tools are drugs that manage symptoms but these drugs have other side effects and you go down a road of early death and disease.

[00:03:44] Robby Barbaro: That's exactly right.

[00:03:45] Ashley James: When we maintain having diabetes, because if you go to a medical doctor, I know like I’m preaching to the choir here, right, I’m talking to you, but this has been my experience also. I had, for many years, uncontrolled type 2 diabetes and every medical doctor “you’re going to be on metformin for the rest of your life, you’re going to be on insulin for the rest of your life. Like you're going to be on this drug and we’re just going to keep adding drug after drug.” And you're going to “manage” your diabetes. You're not going to “master” it, you're going to “manage” it, meaning you get to keep diabetes and these drugs.

But here’s the thing. Medical doctors have probably told the listeners, several listeners just like me that you’ll always have it, which is complete nonsense. It’s like saying there's dirt on your face. You're always going to have that dirt on your face. It’s like, you just wash it off. Just wash it off. So yes, with amazing change in lifestyle and diet and nutrition, we can heal the body to the point where it no longer has diabetes.

But now you’ve got all these arms of the octopus because with diabetes comes inflammation and with inflammation comes heart disease, cancer, fatty liver, kidney issues, eyesight issues, neuropathy. You’re losing your limbs. And I have a friend whose boyfriend has erectile dysfunction and he’s in his early 40s and he now can’t get it up because of his blood sugar issues. There’s certain jobs that he’s been fired from and he can’t be hired because he falls asleep. Like he wanted to be a bus driver. Can’t be a bus driver because he falls asleep. That's all out of control blood sugar. But he’s not willing to change his diet. So those who are listening today are willing, they're excited and willing. They want to know what are the answers because they’ve been told so many wrong things. So, I want you to demystify. Let’s talk about how are we going to demystify and this juggernaut because we’ve been lied to by the pharmaceutical industry, by the medical industry, the giant medical complex which makes so much money. Maybe you have some statistics here because I have some old statistics, but maybe you have new statistics of keeping someone diabetic. The medical industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the hospitals and the doctors. I saw an old statistic where they make $120,000 off of these patients.

[00:06:00] Robby Barbaro: The statistic I have is that the average is $16,752 per year, costs that are incurred by diabetes patients. So, that's like medical expenditures. That number you got might refer to other things.

[00:06:19] Ashley James: Might be when it’s the end stage like when they're in heart failure and diabetes, stuff like that. Either way, it’s costing. It’s costing you.

[00:06:27] Robby Barbaro: It’s absolutely costly.

[00:06:28] Ashley James: But if it’s costing you, it’s profit for them. They're profiting to keep people sick instead of reversing it, and you have a program that you’ve been doing for many years that reverses these issues.

[00:06:40] Robby Barbaro: Absolutely. Just to add to that cost, basically 1 out of every 4 dollars in the US healthcare cost, is spent on caring for people with diabetes. That amounts to $237 billion each year on direct medical cost for diabetes. So, it’s expensive, it’s costing.

[00:07:04] Ashley James: It costs us but it’s a $237 billion profit to keep people having diabetes and to keep everyone in the old way of thinking that you have to eat lots of fat and lots of meat and you can’t eat any vegetables or fruit because those are carbs, carbs are bad, and you definitely need to take all these meds. To keep them in the old way of thinking keeps them sick, so it keeps them profitable. $237 dollars of profit for the medical industry which is costing us.

[00:07:38] Robby Barbaro: Exactly. There's definitely some misaligned incentives for sure in our healthcare system. Like you said, something that's really disappointing and you know this to your own experience, is going to a doctor, being made aware that your A1C is high or your fasting blood glucose is high and that you are living with either prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, and then being told okay, the first line of defense is metformin. “Here’s some metformin.” And maybe the doctor will say, “Hey, you should also adjust your diet and move your body.” But it’s not very clear guidance, there's not a lot of support there. There's not any really mentality of, “actually, let’s address the cause. Let’s see what we can do to actually take care of this now and make sure it doesn’t progress. This doesn’t have to be a chronic disease.”

It’s such a missed opportunity because diabetes, in particular, can be a great wakeup call. Especially pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes because if you catch it early enough, it is quite easy to reverse and turn it around. If you don’t catch it early enough and you let the disease progress, you can get to a point where your beta cells are burned out. So the beta cells inside your pancreas are responsible for producing insulin. When you're in an insulin resistant state, those beta cells have to work overtime and they have to work extra hard to produce more and more insulin to compensate for your insulin resistance and eventually, they can get exhausted and they just die out. So the population is diminished and all of a sudden you get to a point where you're not living with an autoimmune version of diabetes, you still have type 2 but you can become insulin-dependent simply because your beta cell supply has been reduced too much.

Now, there are people who come into our program where that has happened. Their beta cell supply, the produce of insulin has been diminished, but because our program helps them become so insulin sensitive, even with a smaller amount of insulin being produced, they can maintain a healthy A1c in the nondiabetic range. They can maintain a healthy fasting blood glucose all while eating the foods they’ve been told that they should not be eating just like you were insinuating before.

Another point I want to touch on here is you were talking about something like the octopus and the tentacles here, and how when you're living with any form of diabetes, your chronic disease risk for a range of conditions is increased. The number one cause of death for people living with all forms of diabetes is heart disease. So, that is the most important tentacle, okay? And it is something that you can address. You can absolutely in many cases reverse heart disease. You can also halt it and make sure it does not progress. So, this is an important part of our program. And again, we have a few interviews in our summit. Dr. Brian Asbill, he’s a cardiologist and he’s interviewed in our summit and talks about this in detail to go in depth on cardiovascular issues, tests you can get and all that important information.

But what you highlighted is very important to understand. When you are living with diabetes, there are many other concerns. And so, our approach is a blessing in a sense that it addresses all of them simultaneously and that’s what’s really fun about this. When you follow a low-fat plant-based whole food diet and you start addressing the root cause which is insulin resistance, you can absolutely turn your health around. Does that make sense?

[00:11:34] Ashley James: Absolutely. I had the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, on my show in episode 437 and he talks about how having diabetes was the wakeup call for him. He was losing his eyesight, not feeling really good, went to the doctor and came home with a bag of prescriptions and a pamphlet that said living with diabetes. And he rejected that. He thought, “I don’t want to live with it. I don’t want to have it anymore.” And so, he was called to. He just felt inspired to type into Google instead of like how to manage diabetes, he felt inspired to type in like how to beat it. And it led him to your information, it led him to eating a whole food plant-based diet, a very specific way of eating where you’re not eating processed oils and you're not eating processed sugar or processed flours, and you're eating real food. He had a huge bag of prescriptions. It was pretty gnarly. He was able to get rid of all of them and be taken off all of them and reverse all of his health issues. So, he is just a big advocate for this way of living because we can reverse the heart disease, the kidney disease, the liver disease, the diabetes, and prevent things like cancer. But also, people go from feeling incredibly crappy to feeling amazing.

Dr. Richard Fleming came on my show in episode 463 and he’s a research cardiologist, PhD, and he discovered way back over 30 years ago, discovered the root cause or the beginnings of heart disease before it was detectable in any machines. He invented a way of scanning in the body and he could then tell you if you kept doing the same thing, if you kept eating the same way, kept living the same way, he could predict where heart disease would show up. What he saw was that inflammation was the first thing that he would see in the body, the very first thing he would see was inflammation and that was the precursor to heart disease and as we know, that when we are in a diabetic state, the body is just full of inflammation. Is there anything you can say to that? Because I know that your program is incredibly anti-inflammatory. But just getting people’s blood sugar under control is also anti-inflammatory.

[00:13:56] Robby Barbaro: Absolutely. So, there's no question. I mean, having high blood glucose is a problem there. But really, it comes down to the foods that people were eating that led them to have a high blood glucose reading in the first place. It’s the foods that people are eating that cause them to be living in a state of insulin resistance. Okay? So foods like meat, cheese, and processed foods, they elevate your levels of inflammation in your body. But at the same time, what’s important to understand is when you eat those foods, you’re eating foods that cause inflammation, but also, you're missing out on the opportunity to consume those same calories with foods that actually naturally are anti-inflammatory. Okay? Those are foods that are high in fiber, antioxidants and other phytochemicals. These foods lower inflammation in your body. Okay? They do not have this saturated fat, the endotoxins. Okay? So, these are foods, the endotoxins that basically are toxins released from bacteria commonly found in animal food. So, these are the types of toxins that you avoid when you're not eating animal-based products and high fat products and foods high in saturated fat.

So, it’s kind of like a double whammy. It’s like, okay, we’re taking away the things that cause a problem, but then we’re replacing those calories with foods that actually address the problem. They’re anti-inflammatory. And that's really important to understand here. I mean, I would love to go a little deeper into the exact foods that we have people eating on the Mastering Diabetes program. Is that okay with you, Ashley?

[00:15:44] Ashley James: Yeah, I definitely want to touch that. First, I just want to talk about the endotoxins for a minute. Other guests recently have been talking about this and how harmful endotoxins are. But no one said, hey, you know, if you're really struggling and you know endotoxins are a problem for you, especially people with leaky brain, leaky gut, people who had Lyme disease or overcoming mold sensitivities, there's just certain people who are way more sensitive to endotoxins. You're saying that we get it from eating animal flesh. 

[00:16:17] Robby Barbaro: That's exactly right. So, basically, it’s present inside a bacterial cell and it’s released when that cell disintegrates. Okay? So, you have more of these cells when you're consuming animal products. It’s really that simple. And it’s a big deal. Actually, what’s fascinating is Dr. Joel Fuhrman in his summit, I think he’s on the first or second day, he almost talks about this for like the entire podcast interview. These toxins that are created inside your body when you're eating foods that are not designed for your body. Does that make sense?

[00:16:56] Ashley James: I love Joel Fuhrman. I’ve had him on the show. I also learned a lot from him when I went through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition’s coach training program and he was my favorite teacher.

[00:17:06] Robby Barbaro: I love that.

[00:17:08] Ashley James: He is so amazing. Just the things that he teaches. I love how he takes like the science of food to a whole new level and makes me so motivated to eat my broccoli and eat my mushrooms and eat my berries, all the good stuff. Oh my gosh. Yeah, okay, let’s talk about the food. One thing we didn’t touch on because I told listeners just go back and listen to episode 233 where you tell your story. But for those who don’t know your story, because I really want people to get what’s possible. Can you just give us the highlight reel? 

[00:17:42] Robby Barbaro: Absolutely. So, I’ve been living with type 1 diabetes since 2000, so that’s now over 22 years. It was in December of 2006 when I decided to switch to a low-fat plant-based whole food diet. So prior to that, I had tried many different dietary approaches. And my goal, my personal mission in life still to this day, is I would love to find a solution to how to reverse type 1 diabetes. I would love for my beta cells to produce insulin once again. That sent me on this mission to do anything and everything I possibly could to optimize my health from the inside out. That's why I learned so much and that's why I tried so many different diets. 

Just for those who don’t know, type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes, they're different. They’re different and they're the same in some ways. The reason they're different is type 1 is an autoimmune condition. We don’t know the cause, we don’t know why beta cells are damaged. But if you're living with type 1 diabetes, you don’t produce sufficient quantities of insulin. Your beta cells have been damaged and you have to inject insulin in order to eat food and survive. If you're living with type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, in the initial phase, you're actually producing excess insulin. So, your body is in overdrive. It’s a lifestyle condition and it is caused by diet, exercise, genes are a very small component here. It’s really your lifestyle that causes type 2 diabetes. So, both of them, both type 1 and type 2, insulin resistance can be present. It’s insulin resistant that is the driver of the chronic disease risk that's associated with, again, both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

So, I’m living with type 1. I, again, tried many different approaches and really, the last 2 things I tried. So, the one before this approach we’re going to talk about in more detail, was a ketogenic plant-based diet. They didn’t really call it keto diet back then. But I basically ate nuts, seeds, avocado, I had lots of oil, I had tons of greens. But I kept my total carbohydrate intake to less than 30 net carbohydrate. Okay? So, 70 because there was plenty of fiber in the greens. So about 70 total per day, about 30 net. So, at this time, I did it. I did it very diligently and I did see how because I reduced my carbohydrate intake, my insulin went down. The insulin I needed to inject as a type 1 went down. But what didn’t improve was my carbohydrate to insulin ratio. So, how many grams, how much insulin I needed per gram of carbohydrate that I consumed, that got worse. I became more insulin-resistant. I ate myself into a state of insulin resistance. At that time, if I had berries or if I had a banana, my blood glucose would skyrocket. I could not metabolize those foods. Now, after doing lots of research and looking into this topic and having a whole new experience, I can see why that is so problematic. I can also see and understand why people with diabetes are so confused, why this condition is so confusing to the general public. It’s one of the few conditions that you can self-monitor, and that is part of what makes if confusing. You can test your blood glucose as often as you want and that confuses people.

Back to my story here. So, I did that ketogenic diet and I lose energy, I’m losing weight. I’m a freshman at the University of Florida. I’m not feeling well, and I’m like, I got to find something else, I got to keep searching. And I heard a podcast. It’s so funny to say that while doing a podcast.

[00:21:40] Ashley James: Right.

[00:21:41] Robby Barbaro: But I heard a podcast with this guy, Doug Graham. He was explaining how he had an approach where you could eat lots of fruits, mainly fruit and lots of greens and lots of vegetables. And that could actually, you know, help people reverse chronic disease, improve your health, and improve blood glucose controls. Like, wow, this is amazing, I’m going to try this. So, I bought the book. This is in September of 2006 when I heard this podcast. And he was talking about a book that he was going to have coming out. It didn’t come out until December. So between September and December, I was a little bit confused. I was buying some of his older books to try and figure this out and started to follow a fruit-based diet. But it was December when I started coaching with Doug. And I would email him every single day and he emailed me back every single day. For 90 days straight. I really learned his program. And I started eating unlimited quantities of whole fruit and lots of greens. My life just transformed. All of a sudden, I was super energetic. All of a sudden, my skin started to radiate. It was unbelievable what happened to my skin. And I had really struggled with skin problems growing up. It was so bad I took Accutane. It was one of the most serious drugs you can possibly take for acne. I tried all the treatments you could do at the dermatologist. The pills, the laser treatments, the microdermabrasion, the creams. Everything. Accutane was the last resort.

But I get on this fruit-based diet and all of a sudden, my skin is radiating. It was amazing. And my blood glucose control was mind-blowing. So I started eating over 700 grams. So, we go from a total of 70 to 700. And my insulin use stays at a physiologically normal amount. Right now to this day, I’ll inject like roughly 27 to 30-ish units of insulin per day. That's basal plus bolus. And I’m eating, again, well, over 700 grams of carbohydrate. So, my insulin sensitivity changed by 900 percent when you look at it on just a glucose basis. So with modern nutrition software, you can remove fiber and you can remove fructose. Okay? Because fructose does not require insulin to be metabolized and neither does fiber. So, if you compare just the amount of glucose I was consuming on the low carbohydrate diet, the ketogenic plant-based low-carb diet, compared to now my low-fat plant-based whole food diet, it’s a 900 percent change in the glucose tolerance. So, it’s basically 1 to 1 for me. For every gram of glucose I consumed, I needed 1 unit of insulin. And now, for every 10 grams of glucose, I consume/I need 1 unit of insulin. So, 900 percent change. 

I love talking about that because on this podcast, we can go deep because we have plenty of time, I love that. Most people don’t understand. Most people, 99 percent of people listening don’t even know how to do that calculation. But you can do it in a nutrition logging software called Cronometer. When you look at the carbohydrates, it’s broken down inside the software and you basically take the sucrose and divide that by 2, then you add the glucose and then you add, what’s the other number… I’m blanking on the other number. But there's three things you end up adding together and you can do that.

But the bottom line is, I eat far more carbohydrate than anybody thinks that somebody with diabetes should be eating. And I use a physiologically normal amount of insulin. And that’s the goal for a person living with type 1. So, my pancreas doesn’t produce any insulin anymore. So, what I have to do is I have to inject what it normally would have produced on its own. That’s the goal. And so, oftentimes, people in the low-carb world, they get confused for type 1. They’re like, “Oh, I want to take as little insulin as possible. Therefore, I’m just not going to eat carbohydrates.” That’s not a good idea. Yeah, you can get lower and lower and lower, you probably could get below 27. You could get below 20 if you’re very disciplined. But your insulin sensitivity is terrible. You can’t eat a banana. You can’t eat blueberries. So, you’re trading 1 problem from a longer list of other problems that are associated with living with insulin resistance. So, people are confused about that.

But even when you look at published research on type 1, we wrote about this in our book, on average, the low-carb community in this particular paper was following the Dr. Bernstein diet. They would consume 30 grams of carbohydrate per day and inject 30 units of insulin per day. So again, just think about that math. Again, compare to other type 1’s, they're using 30 units of insulin which is more insulin than I am using, they’re eating 30 grams of carbohydrate and I’m having over 700. So, the magnitude of change here is very important. And again, as we talked about earlier, insulin sensitivity matters. It absolutely matters. It matters for everybody listening to the show. If you have low energy, if you’re looking to lose excess weight, if you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, if cognitive decline is something you’re struggling with, neuropathy, retinopathy, cancer, like all these conditions are connected to insulin resistance. And that’s why this topic is so important. That’s why I’m so passionate about it. And that’s what led us to create Mastering Diabetes, is Cyrus had a similar personal experience.

We, as people living with type 1, have this unique advantage of understanding what decisions impact our insulin sensitivity on a moment by moment basis. The reason we have this advantage is because we know how much insulin we need to inject. So there’s three key metrics you’re going to have to know in order to understand insulin sensitivity. You have to know what’s your blood glucose. You can test yourself. You can get a CGM, anybody can do that. You have to count the carbohydrates you’re consuming. You have to know how much glucose is coming into your body. Number three is, you have to know the insulin levels. And that’s the number that a majority of people listening to the show don’t have but us type 1’s we do have. And so, I can see okay, what happens if I have like a whole avocado for dinner? What happens if I snack on too many brazil nuts? How much insulin do I need to inject over the next 24 to 48 hours because of that decision? Or let’s say if I’m not being as active or maybe I’m being more active, what happens to the amount of insulin I need for the grams of carbohydrate I’m consuming? We see that instantly like we are required to monitor that and manage it; otherwise, we wouldn’t survive. 

So, when I had that insight, okay, wow, like I know exactly what to do to make insulin work more efficiently, I can then translate that into okay, wow, we have over 100 million people in the US alone who are living with prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, and all they need to do is optimize the function of insulin inside their own body. They're trying to optimize the insulin that their pancreas is producing and their disease can go away in the vast majority of cases. So, that’s what we do at Mastering Diabetes. We help people with all forms of diabetes reverse insulin resistance. That is the cornerstone, we’re all doing that together. And the results are extraordinary. It’s amazing that we talked before our book came out and we were very excited to see that it became a New York Times bestselling book and the people continue to recommend it and it’s still a bestseller on Amazon. And we also have our own audiobook which is super fun. But to see this message being shared and the reviews on Amazon are incredible, we have well over 3000 reviews, and people are finally getting the truth. Thank you to podcasts like yours, truly beginning to understand why carbohydrate-rich foods are actually the best foods to eat, if you want to reverse insulin resistance. It’s just got to be the right carbohydrate-rich foods with the right combination of other foods, and we can get into that if you’d like me to.

[00:30:11] Ashley James: Yeah, absolutely. I definitely want to get into that. Listeners got to go to LearnTrueHealth.com/masteringdiabetes to sign up for your summit which is coming out on November 2, which is perfect timing, right after the Halloween candy orgy. I mean, it’s just this crazy amount of candy. I can’t believe how much candy. I don’t do this with my son. We go out and have fun and we enjoy all the festivities, but I’ve never made it about the sugar with him. I know it’s difficult for a kid but also, like I explained it to a few moms, you’re not going to go down to downtown Seattle, which is horrible by the way now in the last 2 years. It looks like a Third World country. It’s just graffiti everywhere. I feel so bad for the people who are like in the homeless camps and it is just overrun with drugs and crime. So, it’s very scary downtown Seattle. I would not go to downtown Seattle and score some drugs, some street drugs for my kid. Right? Like you wouldn’t do that. And yet, we’re giving children sugar which has almost the same effect on the brain. There’s brain scans you can go on YouTube and find where they do brain scans. Street drugs and brain scans of people on sugar, the same areas of the brain light up. You got dopamine. You’re triggering addiction brain and we’re training our children to be in addiction brain.

And I had a great interview with Joan Ifland, PhD. She earned her PhD in processed food addiction and she’s the reason why it’s in the DSM IV, which is now the DSM V. But she’s the reason why it’s now we understand it’s a problem to the point where people have a condition called processed food addiction. It is real. And about 1/3 of the population has addiction brain. Whether you choose to feed into it or not, people are susceptible, a certain percent of our population are susceptible to like someone can just go and eat some Halloween candy and it’d be fine, and in the next day they go to work or they go to school and they’re fine, but then there are those with addiction brain. You eat some candy and it triggers the dopamine high and crash and now that kid is looking for their next dopamine fix. And they don’t even understand it because it’s very unconscious, but now they’re going to binge on Netflix or screens or they’re going to go find more candy, or maybe they’ll do more daring things, more exciting, daring things. Whatever they do to get the dopamine. So much of processed food out there is the same. It’s meant to do dopamine spikes. It’s not just dopamine. There’s other chemicals in the brain that it spikes, but we like to go towards pleasure and away from pain.

What are we doing with kids during Halloween? We’re letting them have an almost unlimited access to a drug that affects the brain just like if we went to downtown Seattle and scored some drugs. We are training our children’s brains to do this. And like I have this love-hate relationship with Halloween because in my childhood it was so much fun. I loved the idea of making my costume, I spent a whole month working on my costume. For me, it was like I get to do theater. It’s just like it was so much fun. And yet, what’s happening now is as an adult, I look back and go, wow, this is just training us to be alcoholics, training us to be drug addicts. Training us to be sugar-holics when we’re adults. So, I do this fine dance with our sun where it’s like okay, we find some organic like just fruit candy kind of thing and I give him one or something. But we make it be about the fun. And I talk to him, I dialogue with him about how does your body feel when you eat these good foods versus if you ate this junk food, how do you feel. And he doesn’t like how he feels when he eats the garbage food. And so, you know, I wanted to be his choice. Right? I want him to grow up when he goes to his friend’s house, he goes, “No, I don’t want to feel crappy.” I’ve watched him do it which I’m really proud of him. I watched him go, “No, I really don’t want to feel sick. Like, give me the banana, I don’t want to feel sick.” I don’t want to feel gross in my body. 

And it’s that consciousness, but we have to also recognize in ourselves like here we’re coming out of Halloween and you’ve got your summit on November 2, and I really want all my listeners to sign up for it because everyone’s going to learn something whether it’s fatty liver, healing fatty liver, healing heart disease, cancer and preventing cancer, and how to heal the body from inflammation. Everyone could benefit from this insulin resistance. But if you don’t personally have any blood sugar issues, you know someone who does, and so you could be sharing LearnTrueHealth.com/masteringdiabetes with your friends. We can get everyone that we know and love, at least give them this information. Let them make the choice. If they're ready, if they're ready to no longer suffer, then they’ll make those steps, which is really, really exciting. 

So, we’re coming at a perfect time. It’s between Valentine’s Day and the Christmas holidays and all the really high sugar kind of holidays. I think Halloween is the highest sugar holiday. So you’re really catching people at a good time and I hope that my listeners will be more conscious of making the best choices they can during this candy season and making the better choices, knowing that the foods they eat can heal their body, which is really exciting. So yeah, let’s get into the foods that your program helps us reverse disease and heal disease.

[00:36:23] Robby Barbaro: Okay, this is my favorite topic. So, I’m going to go through a resource that we created. It’s free, it’s online, you can check it out. You just type in “High Carb Foods: Mastering Diabetes”. It’s going to take you to this article where we have a list and a photo of all our green light foods. So we’ve taken food, we’ve put it into green light, yellow light, and red light categories. Okay, so it’s very simple. And I’m going to list some of the key foods in each category that you can easily access that are affordable and some that are also particularly in season right now.

So, the green light category, it starts out with fruits. Fruits, as a general class of food, are high in water content, they’re high in fiber, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytochemicals. Fruit is a great food for people living with diabetes because it’s a whole food. It’s the package that is special and important here, all right?

[00:37:27] Ashley James: What package the fruit comes in? Like frozen, dehydrated, fresh, blended? Is there any way that they shouldn’t be consuming fruit or can they consume it like can they consume frozen and blended? Can they make a smoothie? Does it all have to be unadulterated? 

[00:37:46] Robby Barbaro: That’s a great question. I love that you’re asking this. These nuances, they really do matter. So, when you are living with insulin resistance, you have any chronic disease that you want to reverse, like you’re trying to truly, truly heal a chronic disease, there are nuances that we recommend you pay attention to, particularly in the beginning. Okay, you’re in a very insulin-resistant state and you’re on a path to get out of that state. So, in that case, it is ideal to eat whole fruit unadulterated, right? Like, just the whole fruit and chew it. And it’s important to eat that fruit with greens or non-starchy vegetables, especially in the beginning, okay? All our recipes provide that, we make it really fun and easy to do. But the whole food, chewing it.

Now, the next best form of fruit, as far as package, would be if you took whole fruit and you blended it. Okay, you put it in the blender. Now, the reason it’s not ideal especially for people who are struggling with blood sugar challenges and they see spikes in their blood glucose and they have a high A1C, is that what you’ve done when you blended the fruit, is you have broken up the fibers. What you’ve done is you have increased the surface area and because you’ve done that, it can get absorbed into your cells faster. And an analogy I’d like to share to help understand this increased surface area, is to imagine you have a gigantic block of ice sitting in your front lawn. Okay? It’s the summer, it’s in Florida, it’s hot, it’s 90 degrees outside, and there’s this block of ice literally the size of your car. Okay? And it’s sitting in your front yard. And as the day goes along, that ice is going to melt and it’s going to disperse into the grass, okay? It’s going to be absorbed into the soil. And it’s going to take all day. okay? It’s going to take a while. If you took that big block of ice and you broke it up into individual shards like you took a weed wacker or saw and you started just breaking it up into tiny little pieces, little shards all over the place, that will get absorbed into the soil rapidly. Okay? You’ve broken it up. You’ve altered the structure of the fibers. That’s what’s happening when you take the fruit and you put it in the blender and you blend it up. It’s going to get absorbed faster. Okay? So, number one is whole. Number two is put it in a blender.

Number three would be dehydrating. Okay? The less dehydrated, the better. Let’s say you put something in a dehydrator and you want it to be a little gooey. Instead of making a banana into a really, really dense strip, you kind of made it just a little bit of gooey, only took maybe half the water content out. That’s going to be better because you still maintain some of the water content. But the more and more dry it becomes, the more calorie dense it becomes, the easier it is to overeat. The reason it’s easier to overeat dried fruit is because you remove the water content. And what makes you feel satisfied, what holds you from meal to meal, is bulk. And bulk is water plus fiber. So this is the whole concept of calorie. Density which we talk about in detail in our book and it’s a lot of research done by Barbara Rolls from Penn State University, and she has established clearly through decades of research that it’s water plus fiber and it’s bulk that makes you feel satisfied. So, when you’re removing the water, you can easily overeat. 

Then I would say regular dehydrating, once you get into like freeze dried fruit, it really becomes like candy and stuff like that, like it sticks to your teeth. It’s not ideal. I would not recommend that at all. I’d probably go and put that closer to like a red light category to really try to minimize or completely avoid. You really want to focus on whole fruits. Does that make sense, Ashley?

[00:42:01] Ashley James: Mm-hmm. 

[00:42:03] Robby Barbaro: Okay, good. All right. So, I want to mention a few fruits here. Plantains. When you go and when you look at this article, you will see that we have organized all of these categories. So, the fruit category is organized by calorie density, meaning that the foods that are the most rich in their caloric content are going to be at the top of the list. And the reason this is important is because when people adopt a plant-based diet, they are shocked at the volume of food they have to eat in order to stay satisfied and actually get the right number of calories. In the beginning, it’s part of the reason why people lose weight so quickly and easily in the beginning, is because their stomach is starting to adjust to even get in enough volume to meet their normal caloric requirement. So you kind of get into a calorie deficit just because it’s difficult to eat the right volume of food. Now, the problem is if you maintain that calorie deficit too long especially beyond the point of where you’re looking to lose weight or if you’re losing weight potentially too fast, you’re just not satisfied, then the diet becomes unsustainable and you start to crave other foods and all of a sudden you go and you eat a cheeseburger, which is way more calorie dense, and you feel better. It’s mainly because you got calories. You are missing calories.

So, in the green light category, basically of all the foods in the green light category, you need to actually focus on the most calorie dense green light foods in order to stay satisfied. So for example, something like watermelon is very calorie dilute. It’d be very, very difficult to just eat watermelon all day and be satisfied. You could try to eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but you would be hungry like “I want more food” but you’d feel full. So your stomach would just be a little bit bloated because you had so much water, so much fiber with not that many calories.

So, the reason we have these calorie-dense fruits listed at the top, is to make this diet satisfying. And plantains are one of the best foods in the fruit category because they have 554 calories per pound. That’s the calorie density. The goal, when following this low-fat plant-based whole food diet for optimal weight and optimal energy and overall health, is to basically eat as much as you want that is under 750 calories per pound. And just for context, the most calorie dense food on the planet is oil. That is 4000 calories per pound. Okay? There is no water, there is no fiber, there is no carbohydrate, there is no protein, it’s just pure fat. Okay? So, that is the most calories. Then when you get into foods like animal products and processed food, that’s going to go much higher. So, let me give you an example here. Something like chips. Okay, let’s say you had some processed chips. That’s about 1200 calories per pound. Okay? Let’s say even sugar, 1700 calories per pound. You go to bread, 1200 calories per pound. Ice cream, 1000 calories per pound. Beef, 1000. Okay? Eggs are at about closer to 800.

So, what we got to understand here is that those foods, as you increase that calorie density and you decrease the nutrition value, it’s technically a junk food. Okay? So, oil is the ultimate junk food because it’s very high in calories, it’s the most calorie-dense food in the planet with very little nutrition.

So back to the green light foods here, plantains are in the appropriate calorie density. Now, you wouldn’t want to eat just foods let’s say like lettuce or something, or watercress like 40-50 calories per pound. Again, that wouldn’t be enough. You’d have to eat so many pounds of those foods, you wouldn’t be satisfied. So, there’s a sweet spot. There’s a sweet spot of somewhere between like 400 and 600 calories per pound is where you want the majority of your calorie-providing foods to come from and then you supplement the rest with nutrient-dense non-starchy vegetables and greens.

Another food that’s worth talking about is persimmons. Ashley, do you like persimmons?

[00:46:50] Ashley James: Oh, yeah.

[00:46:51] Robby Barbaro: It’s an amazing fruit. A lot of people don’t know about persimmons. They’re commonly found in two forms. Fuyu persimmons are round, Hachiya persimmons are cone-shaped. And this is a fall fruit. You can get it almost any grocery store. If your local store doesn’t have it, definitely find it at local Asian markets or Mexican markets. And with the Hachiya, you have to wait till it gets really soft like a balloon. And if you eat it before then, you’ll get a bunch of like a chalky sensation in your mouth and you won’t enjoy the persimmon anymore. The Fuyu, you can eat like an apple. That you can eat crunchy or you can wait till like it’s soft. That’s 477 calories per pound.

Then, bananas, 404 calories per pound. Jackfruit – have you ever had a jackfruit, Ashley? 

[00:47:35] Ashley James: Yes.

[00:47:37] Robby Barbaro: I love jackfruit.

[00:47:38] Ashley James: It takes a bit to process. A really, really big one. My son loves it. To me, it tastes like Juicy Fruit bubblegum which I imagine…  

[00:47:49] Robby Barbaro: Do you know what Juicy Fruit bubblegum literally mimicked the entire flavor? That’s why it’s called Juicy Fruit.

[00:47:56] Ashley James: Right. When the first time I ever had jackfruit, I’m like, wow, this tastes like my favorite bubblegum as a kid! Then I was like, oh no, no, the bubblegum tastes like jackfruit. 

[00:48:06] Robby Barbaro: That’s hilarious. I love that, I love that. That’s a way to look at it.

Okay, figs, a great fruit. Okay? Oranges, cherries, mangoes, longans, kiwi, pears, all the different varieties of pears, all the varieties of apples, pineapple, raspberries, tangerines. There are so many fruits. The variety that you can have on this program is surprising to many people and it’s an opportunity to expand your palate. So, there’s a lot of fruits. Okay?

Now, the next category is starchy vegetables. There’s less variety here as far as different produce items, but there’s a lot of variety within the fact that there’s over like 500 different types of potatoes. I mean, there’s so many types of potatoes and you can commonly get at least like 6 or 7 different ones at a grocery store. But potatoes are in this category. For example, the calorie density of a russet potato is 440. That’s the perfect place. You can eat these when hungry till satisfied. It’s very, very difficult to overeat because of the water content and the fiber. And similar to the question you asked about the package of the fruits, the ideal way to consume a potato would be steaming. That’s going to maintain the largest amount of water content and going to produce the lowest amount of advanced glycation end products which occur in the cooking process.

Then you’d go to something like you can do broiling, you can do baking, then you can do air-frying, but all these processes are doing more and more removal of water content and you want to focus on the whole food. So, we also have yams in this category. Taro is a great starch. Corn. There’s white potatoes, sweet potatoes, red potatoes, parsnips is a starchy vegetable that a lot of people love. The flavor is actually much better when you bake parsnips. And then squash, acorn squash, hubbard squash. That’s what’s in season right now. We have pumpkin here, spaghetti squash, butternut squash. There’s a lot of different squash varieties that you can try, and these are really, really beautiful foods. You can try and reverse insulin resistance.

The next green light category are beans, peas, and lentils. So many varieties of beans, so many varieties of lentils. Get the red ones, the green ones. Green peas are a wonderful food. So, we have on this article which you can access for free, it’s on the website. Chickpeas, pig beans, pinto beans, small white beans, black beans, adzuki beans, kidney beans, pigeon beans, great northern beans. These are things you can easily get in a can if you want to, and if you’re going to get it from a can, get the option that has no salt added, which is plenty of those available. And if it does have salt added, you can just try and rinse it off with water to reduce the sodium. But that’s going to be important for, again, addressing insulin resistance and also addressing high blood pressure which comes along with insulin resistance and diabetes in a majority of cases. So, lower your sodium intake, get the right package products. And I just want to say, a lot of people are scared of packaged foods. All of a sudden there’s this culture that we put like all packaged food into a class of being terrible. That’s not really true.

In 2022, there is an amazing amount of foods that do come in a package but like a plastic bag or a can, but they’re absolutely nutritious and delicious and convenient. So, don’t buy bypass some of the conveniences of the 2022 world where you can get these foods some of them pre-made. The next category here is intact whole grains. So for example, you can get intact whole grains that have already been precooked and you can heat them up. And if you need to save time, heat them up in the microwave, it’s great. So intact whole grains, those include spelt, barley, brown rice, quinoa, millet, rye, sorghum, wheat, wild rice, teff, amaranth, buckwheat, bulgur. There are so many intact whole grains and again, published research shows how beneficial these foods are for reversing insulin resistance and also for longevity. 

All right. So, Ashley, we just went over the first 4 categories. Fruits, starchy vegetables, then we had beans, peas, lentils, then we had intact whole grains. Those foods are listed first because like I said earlier, you have to focus on foods that provide you energy, provide you with calories. Too many people transition to a plant-based diet, they go, “I’m just going to eat a bunch of salads. I’m going to have tomatoes and carrots and onions and greens, and just eat all these salads.” It’s not enough. The bulk will make you feel satisfied for maybe the first 30 minutes or an hour, but then an hour and a half come by, two hours come by, and you're like, you’re starving like “Well, I need some food.” And it’s because you didn’t get enough calories. You didn’t eat foods from the appropriate category of calorie density.

So, the next part of the green light category, these are foods you add to the calorie-providing foods. These are foods that are very dense in their micronutrients which again, Dr. Fuhrman loves to talk about. And he talks about it in our summit. These foods are also even higher in their fiber content and they help stabilize your blood glucose. So things like shallots, artichokes, brussels sprouts, onions, beets, egg plants, broccoli, mushrooms, bell peppers, fennel, rutabaga, kohlrabi, chayote, cauliflower, okra, turnips, radicchio, asparagus, tomatoes, zucchini, celery, summer squash, cucumber, bok choy. These are amazing non-starchy vegetables that you can add to your life. When you get amazing recipes, learn how to prepare these foods, they can become very satisfying.

Then same thing with leafy greens, their nutrient density. Leafy greens are so important. We actually had an entire interview with Dr. Rick Dina in this year’s summit where he goes and does a nutritional analysis of what happens when you add in some more greens and in some cases, you replace some starchy vegetables with more fruit, what happens to your nutrient intake. It’s absolutely fascinating, you don’t want to miss that.

So, in this category we have foods like parsley, leeks, colored greens, kale, green onions, spinach, arugula, mustard greens, beet greens, Swiss chard, purslane, endive, romaine lettuce, red leaf lettuce, green leaf lettuce, iceberg lettuce, butterhead lettuce. The nopales. Have you ever had nopales, Ashley?

[00:55:10] Ashley James: I’ve never heard of it.

[00:55:12] Robby Barbaro: Nopales is fun. It’s kind of a Mexican food and it’s quite crunchy and has sort of like a little bit of a slimy texture, but it’s actually quite good. So if you’re listening, you guys got to Google that. Nopales recipes. You’ll have some fun with it. So, that's the greens.

Then we have herbs and spices in the green light category. These are foods you can essentially eat when hungry till satisfied. You really don’t have to worry about the quantity. The key is, again, we talked about this in the first podcast, Ashley, so I’m not like repeating too much of that old stuff. But the key is that you're having these foods in a low-fat environment. So if you eat a bunch of fruit and a bunch of fat, don’t expect to reverse your insulin resistance. You’re increasing your carbohydrate intake while simultaneously decreasing your fat intake. That includes even some of the foods that people are calling good fats these days, the healthy fats. That's why we have the yellow light category.

The yellow light category lists foods that are healthy, they’re nutritious, they’re nutrient-dense, but you have to be cognizant of how much you're consuming. So this includes avocadoes, nuts and seeds, soy products, olives, and some particular fruits which one of them would be durian. Durian is a high-fat fruit. Those are all whole foods, absolutely delicious, absolutely nutritious, can be a great part of your program, but you can’t sit down and watch a movie and just start snacking on cashews and almonds and Brazil nuts. You’re going to eat way too many, you're going to exceed your fat intake very quickly, and it’s going to cause insulin resistance even though these are plant-based fats. You can still have too much. So to be very clear, to make sure everyone understands our program, to maximize your insulin sensitivity, we want you to keep your total fat intake under 30 grams per day. And just by eating whole plant foods and having a normal day of eating greens and beans and fruits and non-starchy vegetables, all whole foods contain fat. As a matter of fact, all whole foods contain essential fatty acids. When you eat a large enough volume of them, you meet your requirements. You can have chia seeds and flax seeds as an insurance policy, but it’s just a typical day of eating. You’ll get 15, 16, 17 grams of total fat without consuming any high fat foods. 

The moment you start adding in, you know, a handful of nuts, half an avocado, all of a sudden, you're going to go past 30 very quickly. I highly recommend that people listening use a nutrition logging software to actually become aware of how much fat they’re consuming per day. It’s really important.

So, we have those high-fat plant-based foods in the yellow light category. We also have processed carbohydrate-rich foods that are still healthy but they're a little bit more processed. This is like pastas. You could have brown rice pasta, you could have chickpea pasta. You can also have something like Ezekiel bread, okay? Whatever these foods were originally made out of, it’s better to have the whole form. So brown rice is better than brown rice pasta. Okay? If Ezekiel bread was made out of some sprouted bread, whatever that original grain was, just eat the whole grain. That's the better option. It’s less refined, the calorie density is lower in most cases. To be clear, in the pasta case, the calorie density is actually quite similar. So brown rice pasta ends up having similar calorie density because of the water that's absorbed in the cooking pastas. But it’s still a little more refined and it’s better to have brown rice. 

So, we clarified that. We also have put fermented foods in the yellow light category only because of the sodium content. So, plenty of research showing the benefits of fermented foods. But the sodium content is a concern for people who are looking to reverse insulin resistance. So again, the distinction is, you don’t just eat an unlimited amount of fermented foods. You be cognizant of how much you’re consuming, keep it at an appropriate amount in your overall diet, and you’ll be just fine. Whereas the green light foods, you just don’t need to think about it. You just eat as much as you want. They’re self-limiting with their fiber and water content. 

Now, the red light foods, these are foods we suggest you completely avoid and minimize them. We put animal products in here, so that's going to be things like chicken, beef, dairy, even things like shellfish, salmon, particularly because of the fat content, the advanced glycation end products that are higher animal products, and a lot of the pro-inflammatory compound. So, animal products are out. 

We already talked a little bit about oil. But I really do want to go a little bit deeper on the oil topic because people really get crazy. They get up in arms about not having oil. It’s just upsetting to them. What I want to clarify for anybody who’s in that category and have just been concerned like, “Oh, but it’s just so good. I’ve read so much research. This is so good for me.” Here’s the deal. It’s better to consume the whole foot. There is no research that's showing that having olive oil is better than having olives. What I was looking at was a study where they documented the 100 richest dietary sources of polyphenols. This is a fascinating paper. Within the list of 100, black olives is in the list and so is olive oil. Okay? So, what I want people to understand is this paper documented the dramatic difference in nutrition content of whole black olives versus olive oil. When you consume the same weight of olives, the study did 100 grams of olives and 100 grams of olive oil, the polyphenol content is 9x greater in the whole black olives, the antioxidant content is 2x greater and it’s 75 percent less calories. So, it’s more nutrition, less calories. For a society that is generally overweight and needs to lose weight, it’s just better to have the whole food. It’s going to be the same thing across the board where you're talking about avocado oil, sesame oil, or any other of your favorite oils. It’s just better to have the whole food. You don’t need to have this processed food where so much is removed. So in this particular study, we see how in the olive oil, not only was the fiber removed and the protein removed and the carbohydrate removed, but a great portion of the nutrition was removed in the processing. It’s just unnecessary.

So, we’re big advocates of whole foods. Again, it’s not like we’re anti-fat like oh, just don’t have any fat. No, it’s have the appropriate fats in the whole food format and keep your fat intake, again, under 30 grams per day, or another way to look at it, is no more than 15 percent of your total calories coming from fat. That is how you optimize your insulin sensitivity. And this is where there's actually a lot of confusion in the research world because you’ll see a lot of papers where people are comparing a low carb diet to a low fat diet, but the low-fat diet wasn’t actually a low fat diet. It was usually 30 percent of calories from fat. High 20’s. Not under 15. That's a big mistake that’s happening in research. 

A few other red light foods that are obvious but I want to state them anyways, processed food in general. So, obviously we’re not telling people to have Twinkies or M&M’s or Snickers bars. That's not going to be helpful. But it’s also important to clarify that even some of the modern new plant-based foods you're finding in grocery stores, plant-based burgers, these foods are made in a laboratory. They're processed, they're high in fat, we’re not recommending you consume those. You can make amazing burgers from beans and other ingredients and you can really enjoy your life that way. You don’t need these processed foods. It’s not going to help you reverse insulin resistance. That's our really simple traffic light system, Ashley.

[01:04:00] Ashley James: I love it. So much to talk about. With the keto, I think so many people have been told or like so many people say “Well, I saw a study,” or, “I heard, or, “My doctors says that eating keto or Atkins increases insulin sensitivity. When I cut out most of my carbs and I eat really high fat, that increased my insulin sensitivity.” Can you speak to that?

[01:04:31] Robby Barbaro: Absolutely. I love this topic. I understand why it’s confusing and you’re exactly right, Ashley. You're seeing that all over the media, right? You're even seeing papers of people publishing saying olive oil. It’s in the research like the actual researchers are concluding that olive oil increases insulin sensitivity.

A big mistake that’s happening is number one, how insulin sensitivity is measured in the research papers. There are a few common ways. The gold standard in testing insulin sensitivity is euglycemic clamp test. This is a test. It’s very expensive. It’s done in a laboratory. It takes many, many hours. There's a solution being injected and insulin being injected simultaneously and a lot of things being tested. It’s not practical to be doing often. But it is the gold standard. Then after that would be the oral glucose tolerance test. And that's where you go to a laboratory, you consume 75 grams of glucose, and your insulin levels and your glucose levels are measured in your blood over the course of 3 hours every 30 minutes. You can see a graph of okay, well, how much insulin is required and what was your blood glucose levels as your body is metabolizing this glucose solution.

These two are both valid forms of testing insulin sensitivity because they contain a glucose challenge. The mistake that's being made is that there is a new form of insulin sensitivity being reported or basically being measured. It’s called the HOMA-IR. HOMA-IR is a surrogate basically allowing researchers to measure insulin sensitivity in a much less expensive, less invasive way. This test only requires a fasting blood glucose number and a fasting insulin level. So you can easily get that done. Those are very easy blood tests. Okay? What’s missing here is there’s no glucose challenge. So, of course, when you stop eating carbohydrate-rich foods, you in that case don’t need to produce as much insulin. You can have a depressed insulin requirement because you're not even eating carbohydrates. Okay? In the same case, you can have your blood glucose levels come down. But you're not testing insulin sensitivity. You're not assessing how well can your body metabolize glucose. So, this is a big mistake that’s happening in the research and people are getting erroneous conclusions because there is no glucose challenge. Does that make sense? 

[01:07:33] Ashley James: I just realize that some listeners might not even understand what insulin does. Could you just very quickly explain here’s the cell, here’s glucose, here’s insulin. What’s the dance?

[01:07:45] Robby Barbaro: For sure. Okay, so insulin is a hormone that does many different functions in your body. But the primary function is that it ushers glucose out of your bloodstream and into your cells. The way it does that is think of insulin as a key. So, insulin is the key that opens the door so glucose can then go out of your bloodstream into your muscle and liver cells. What happens is when you consume a diet that is too high in fat, particularly trans fat and saturated fat, you end up storing excess fat inside your cells. It’s called intramyocellular lipid. This excess fat interferes with insulin signaling. Insulin resistance is a defense mechanism. Your body is trying to prevent your cells from intaking excess energy. So, if there's too much fat inside the cell, your body is saying, “okay, I don’t want that glucose. The glucose that's sitting in the bloodstream, I don’t want it. I have too much. I’m overloaded when it comes to fuel in here. I don’t need anymore. So, I’m not going to allow you to open the doors. Stay in the bloodstream.”

Again, it’s a protective mechanism. So, what’s happening in that case is you're going to develop a state of hyperinsulinemia. Your body is going to try and produce more and more insulin in order to shove the glucose into the cell. So now, you have high insulin levels, and high glucose levels. That is the classic state of insulin resistance, of metabolic dysfunction, and is at the root of a longer list of chronic conditions which we’ve discussed throughout this show.

[01:09:37] Ashley James: And the longer the blood sugar remains high in the bloodstream because the cells are rejecting it, the cells are like “I’m full” goes somewhere else, the sugar is staying high, the glucose is staying high in the bloodstream, the longer that happens, the more inflammation and damage it causes.

[01:09:54] Robby Barbaro: That is correct.

[01:09:56] Ashley James: What’s also been described to me by someone else is that the more insulin like when you have excess insulin, insulin is almost like banging down the door of the receptors of the cell and damaging the cell wall because it’s just like more and more and more and try to force it in, and it’s kind of like shoving the key in the lock so hard that it damages the keyhole. But there’s damage being done on a cellular level throughout the body and we’re overconsuming fat and so the cells are like, “I’ve got too much to handle right now, we filled the cells with fat, and then we filled the cells with sugar,” because let’s face it, the standard American diet is a high processed fat, high processed sugar diet. Then, we’re starving. Then, we feel like we’re starving. That's how I felt.

When I had type 2 diabetes, I was hungry every 45 minutes, I would just cry. This was back when we lived in Vegas, we loved going on drives. This was pre kids, just my husband and I, and we decided one day to go for this fun drive out into the dessert and we did this loop around one of the mountains and came back around, it’s beautiful out there especially when it was a little stormy and you see these beautiful thunderstorms off in the distance, and we talk and talk. So, we went for a drive, and I ate before we left and we’re out in the middle of the dessert, there's nowhere to eat, and I’m like, the hunger starts hitting me harder and harder and harder. I started feeling crazier and crazier. I just cried. I just was bawling. We were newlyweds and I’m bawling to my husband. I’m just like, I feel like a prisoner trapped in my body, I’m hungry all the time. I’m panicking. My body is actually physically panicking because there's nowhere to get food. I said the first restaurant you see, we’re stopping at and I don’t care what it is. 

This happened multiple times where we’d be out running errands or we’d be late to go meet someone or pick something up. My body would just get into this panic mode of needing to eat. And I wasn’t crashing. I’m not type 1 diabetic. I’m not going to go into a coma. I would survive. But it was this constant gnawing hunger that would get worse and worse and worse like 45 minutes after a meal. It would come on suddenly and I said, “Just pull over. I don’t care what it is. Arby’s, McDonald’s, whatever the first food. I just needed to put food in me. And that was back then when I was eating the standard American diet and listening to the MDs and all they had was drugs and they had no answers for me. I finally got sick of being sick and that's when I started to dive into the holistic health and shop the perimeter of the grocery store is what I was told, eat organic. I could not believe how one condition after another dropped off when I changed my diet. I found a naturopath who mentored me. I was able to reverse. I had chronic adrenal fatigue that was so bad I couldn’t process human language in the morning. I couldn’t even understand people talking. Like my chronic adrenal fatigue was really bad.

I had infertility. I was told I’d never have kids. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and then I had chronic infections I was on monthly antibiotics for. The infections went away when I started eating organic and I shopped the perimeter of the grocery store. I still at the time was eating cheese and meat, but I cut out all the stuff in all the aisles, basically. I was just going around the outside of the grocery store. Anything that was in the produce section was safe in my mind. That was back in 2008. That was my first big thing where I was like, wow, if in 1 month of changing just this little thing, if I can no longer be on constant antibiotics, then what else can I do? Right? I was able to just go bang, bang, bang down that list and reverse all those issues.

[01:14:00] Robby Barbaro: I’d love to know more about your story, Ashley. So, what was your A1c when you got diagnosed?

[01:14:10] Ashley James: This was 9.5 I think.

[01:14:15] Robby Barbaro: Wow. Okay. Then what’s been your most recent A1c that you remember?

[01:14:21] Ashley James: Oh, 4.7.

[01:14:22] Robby Barbaro: See, that’s what I’m talking about, okay. That's powerful.

[01:14:31] Ashley James: My midwife was like, “You have better blood sugar than I do.” And then I told her to get your book. 

[01:14:37] Robby Barbaro: Yeah, I love that. Okay. I mean, tell the audience, like what did you eat.

[01:14:41] Ashley James: What did I eat when I was sick?

[01:14:43] Robby Barbaro: To reverse insulin resistance.

[01:14:46] Ashley James: So it was a process for me because I was actually one of Dr. Bernstein’s patients. You mentioned the Dr. Bernstein diet. I was one of his patients. I love getting vulnerable and sharing my story and I could totally go on forever, so I want to be cognizant of the time. But I was not sick. When I was in my early teens, I was really healthy. I was very athletic. I didn’t care about food. I just ate whatever was put in front of me. We just ate a lot of vegetables and lean meat and brown rice and that kind of thing. My mom was pretty healthy, so we ate healthy. But I didn’t care about food. Then when I hit puberty, because women gain hips and boobs. My mom had the psychosis around weight and so she started putting me on diets when I was 12. She put me on diet after diet. I wasn’t overweight. She took me to the weight watchers, she took me to Dr. Bernstein. And that started messing with me because now I’m doing keto, I’m 16 years old, an athlete. I was on the rugby team, I was on the swim team. I rollerbladed and cycled. I weightlifted. I was very athletic. I thought I ate healthy but my mom in her mind thought I needed to lose weight. 

For me, I rebelled. I pushed against that, I rebelled. But I did his diet and after his diet, it messed my body up so much because it was this weird keto thing. Oh man, he would yell at me if I didn’t lose more than a pound a week. I remember losing less than a pound in 1 week. I’m 16 years old and I’m an athlete. And he yelled at me and he told me I cheated. I walked out of their crying. Actually, that wasn’t the first time that my mom sent me to a doctor or nutritionist. I’m surprised now looking back, like all these doctors were yes, telling my mom “yeah, she could lose some weight.” I can show you pictures. No one would think I was overweight, so I don’t know what these doctors were thinking. But they all put me on all these diets and my mom would buy all the latest. We went and met Dr. Barry Sears when he wrote his first version of the Zone Diet and met him, shook his hand, did the Zone Diet with my mom. She was so diet obsessed that it really messed with me. Then, I rejected all of it and said no, and then I started just eating like my boyfriend. I had never eaten that way. He was going to Subway and eating Subway sandwiches and baloney and Wonder bread. He was a black belt and I’m like, well, you know, I was into martial arts at the time going to the dojo 5 days a week, and I’m like, well, I’m going to eat just like the black belts because they know what they're doing. That made it worse. That's when really my blood sugar started spiraling out of control because I was eating literally no healthy food, it was all processed. 

[01:17:48] Robby Barbaro: That's an incredible journey you’ve been on.

[01:17:49] Ashley James: Right? Both my parents have passed away. I love my parents and now as a parent myself, I really understand that my mom was coming from a place of fear and love, and how many times as parents our love comes out as fear, and then that fear is anger. What we’re trying to do is we’re so afraid we’re going to screw up our kids and we actually end up screwing up our kids which is just life. My mom, she loved me so much. She put my through that craziness and it has led me to where I am today. Now I’m on my own healing journey, I can help others heal themselves. I don’t regret any of that. But I can look back and go, that was really messed up. Like I can look at my childhood and go, that wasn’t okay but at the time I thought it was normal. Right? Because we always think what we’re going through is normal. But now I can go back and say, you know, those doctors were wrong and they shouldn’t have done that with me. I’m surprised that not one of those doctors took my mom aside and said there's nothing wrong with her, stop putting her on diets, just let her eat healthy food. It’s just crazy how messed up this world is. Man, I wish I had known about the whole food plant-based diet sooner. I kind of kick myself. I think about man, what would my life had been like if I was on this diet back when I was a teenager.

I hate the word “diet”. It’s really just a lifestyle and a way of eating. As Dr. Joel Fuhrman puts it, it’s like a nutritarian diet where you're nutrient dense. You're eating as much nutrients possible. So I’d rather eat olives that have 9x greater the polyphenols than drink olive oil. Plus, olives are really fun to eat. Olive oil is not really fun to drink. So, I’d rather take in the nutrients from something instead of have to pay for the processing to take out the nutrients and eat a processed food. But for me, it’s been a journey. So, I really fought this idea of not eating meat because I had been on Atkins several times and Dr. Bernstein. I’d been so many times on these diets where doctors told me or books told me that meat was the solution and that carbohydrates were the devil. My mom would accost me if I ate any carbohydrates, she’d yell at me. So, I had a lot of emotional trauma around carbohydrates. This idea of eating even a banana was so foreign to me because I thought it was so dangerous.

[01:20:19] Robby Barbaro: I’m so glad you're sharing this experience because this is just another reminder. It’s also very unique that you’ve been an actual patient of Dr. Bernstein who literally is teaching the exact opposite, like literally says no fruit.

[01:20:34] Ashley James: It was really weird like if you could have seen the diet, just the regular way of eating I did before Bernstein, you’ve been like “That’s not bad.” I mean, it was steamed vegetables, rice, lentils. That was all in my diet. I wasn’t the picky kid. You put it in front of me, I ate it. I wasn’t picky. I’d have some kind of cream of wheat or some cream of rice pablum cereal for breakfast kind of thing. Then, just pretty much the same stuff. I did not like the lunches my mom sent because I’d open up my lunch at school and there would be brussels sprouts and they smelled really bad by the time you get to school. But I’d have brussels sprouts in a salad and apple and maybe some almonds, she’d throw in a few almonds. It wasn’t like I was eating unhealthy before. Then, doing these doctor diets were so radical and so unhealthy now that I look back. It’s really crazy. Of course, I lost weight but then my metabolism freaked out and I rejected it.

Then I got into, you know, there's a sense of control and fighting that control and then addiction brain, and I really acknowledge now how much addiction brain there is. So, I was depressed and angry and food was a soothing mechanism like babies want their blanket or they want their binky. My brain wanted the sugar binky or the bread binky. I really did feel like if my brain was suffering, I’m upset or angry or stressed going to that food, like a sandwich for example and all of a sudden, a sense of relief. Yeah, it’s a drug. We, more times than not, will turn to food for that “comfort”. And we’re just filling ourselves with crap and then we’re causing these diseases. Then the pharmaceutical industry and the medical industry gets to profit, what was it? $237 billion.

[01:22:49] Robby Barbaro: No one really knows how much profit is in there. But it is a large number. 

[01:22:55] Ashley James: A stupid amount of profit for big pharma and hospitals. None of them want us to be healthy, so of course, the world is upside down and we have to really acknowledge that. If what you're doing is not working and so for many years, what all these doctors and what all these sicko diets that I was on constantly wasn’t working, and then my own way wasn’t working, my own way was like addiction brain, processed food, standard American diet, all that wasn’t working. It’s like okay, well, what’s left? What’s left is this whole food plant-based diet that works and that people get results. So, I fought it and it actually wasn’t until I started doing the podcast. Because when I started doing the podcast, I was full on keto. I was like, keto is the best thing in the world! And if you listened to early episodes, it’s like keto, keto, keto. 

Then I started to get these whole food plant-based doctors on and of course, I’m open minded, I want my listeners to learn. I want to learn because nothing is perfect, right? And I didn’t have diabetes anymore but I didn’t have insulin sensitivity. And so I couldn’t go away from like, for example, if you went and ate a pizza, if you went and just ate the standard American diet for a day, would you be okay? The next day, would you be okay or would you feel like your blood sugar be so off and would everything be so off because you don’t have insulin resistance. You do have insulin resistance or you don’t.

[01:24:37] Robby Barbaro: That's okay. But you're asking me if I went and had like a standard American pizza, I would feel awful.

[01:24:43] Ashley James: You’d feel awful because you're so used to eating a healthy diet. 

[01:24:46] Robby Barbaro: Yeah, of course. It’d be super heavy. I would be eating myself into a state of what’s called situational insulin resistance. I’d become insulin resistant over the next 24-48 hours because of the garbage that I just ate. I mean, could I get back into my normal state of insulin sensitivity? Yeah. If I didn’t continue to eat a bunch of that garbage, then yeah, I’d be back to normal.

[01:25:16] Ashley James: You can situationally. Because of all the fat that fills your cells, does that mean that after 24 hours of not eating crap, can people already see insulin sensitivity coming back online?

[01:25:31] Robby Barbaro: When people come to our in-person retreats, which are about 3 ½ days long, people fly in on a Thursday, we have dinner on Thursday, we kick it off, all day Friday, all day Saturday, all day Sunday, people leave on Monday morning. In that rapid short period of time, every single person who’s come to one of our retreats in person, experiences an improvement in insulin sensitivity rapidly. Within the first day, type 1’s are reducing their insulin, type 2’s are reducing their oral meds, they're reducing their blood pressure medications. We have a doctor who comes in to oversee the whole process. We’ve had many amazing plant-based doctors come and join us. It happens rapidly, no question. And that's because when they're under our care to retreat, we do choose to give people optimal results as fast as possible, which means all three meals are changed immediately, it’s extremely high nutrient density, very low fat, and we’re having people move their body twice a day. So, we speed this up to show people what’s possible and help them give a plan to maintain it when they go home. Which is a little it different than, again, like if you read our book, most people transition one meal at a time over an extended period of time, but when you do everything in an optimal way, results come in very fast.

[01:26:59] Ashley James: Cool. So, going back to your question. So, at the time when I was keto, keto, keto, it was the best thing in the world, at the beginning of starting this podcast six years ago, if I ate outside of keto, but even if it was healthy like potatoes or had the Ezekiel bread like you talked about, but mine would be gluten-free, like sprouted gluten-free bread, I don’t know, I would be a mess. I would have felt like crap because even though when I was eating low carb in keto, I thought it was good. Go out of those boundaries of keto and I felt horrible. I also developed inflamed liver. It wasn’t fatty liver, it was inflamed liver. I had an ultrasound done and blood work done and my liver enzymes were through the roof. You could see my liver. It was pushing out, it was do distended, it was pushing out beyond my rib cage. It was so painful I couldn’t sleep on my right side. It was really painful. That was from the keto diet.

And so, I had to go, “Okay, this isn’t working.” I went down the list of like this isn’t working, I’ve done this over and over again. It’s just like Bernstein. Although Bernstein wasn’t as high fat or anything, but it was still keto. And Atkins and all that. It was just a repackaged Atkins over and over and over again, this whole low-carb high-fat thing that keeps getting sold to us. And it wasn’t working. It was very restrictive and then I would start feeling sicker and sicker and sicker, and then eating outside of it, I would feel even worse. 

So, when I started interviewing doctors who were on a whole food plant-based diet, I was open-minded but I was also resistant because I had my mom’s voice in the back of my head going, you know, rice is bad for you, potatoes are bad for you, what are you doing. She’s this little voice in the back of my head that I had to stop and go, I really need to examine my beliefs around food. Because I had been carrying some beliefs from childhood that aren’t true. And I need to examine my food beliefs.

When I had an expert, I don’t even think he was a doctor, he was an author. Because my last little reasoning why I shouldn’t eat a whole food plant-based diet was there's not enough protein. Because back in my mind, again, meat, meat, meat, meat is the answer. That had been my belief system that I had around food. But my belief system wasn’t serving me anymore because I was not optimal health. And I don’t believe in diet dogma. Here’s the thing. If we have a dogma and then something changes in the body, we need to adapt our diet to help our body. So dogma will stop us from doing that. I had to examine my own diet dogma and this one author that I had on the show said, “Well, you know, you can get 16 grams of protein from a serving of lentils.” And I was sold. I was like, wait, that's like two eggs or whatever, right? I was like, oh, I can trade out my eggs for lentils? And I can trade out my chicken for beans. Then I started kind of going down this list of wow, there's a lot of protein in vegetables and a lot of other nutrients also. But then, hearing like well, where does the ape and the elephant, you know, those strongest land mammals get their protein from? They're eating plants, right? So it was kind of the middleman.

But I started doing that and then shortly after eating, I decided to basically do the program that you recommend and chef AJ and Dr. Goldhamer and Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Fuhrman and all these other plant-based doctors that I’ve had on the show, they all pretty much say the same thing. There's nuances, right, like yours is really geared to reversing diabetes. Dr. Esselstyn has a slightly different spin and that's more for heart disease. But they all complement each other. You would still probably reverse diabetes on any of their programs because they’re all very, very similar. But I like had like you said, the nuances were dialing stuff in for your program which is fantastic. And watching people reverse disease.

I went and tested my blood sugar, which I hadn’t done, because again, I wasn’t diabetic anymore, but I didn’t have insulin resistance. And I always, always, always could not get below 115. Fasting, couldn’t get below 115. Two hours after a meal or four hours after a meal, couldn’t get below 115. It was just no matter what, even on keto, couldn’t get below 115. It was like the weirdest thing. It was like this barrier. And I remember, I don’t know if it was weeks or months into eating this way, but it wasn’t long after. It was still new to me. So, I was kind of on this high of how excited I was because I was feeling better and better and better. My rings were loose on my hand. I was like, wow, I’m doing really well. I tested my blood sugar and it was 87. And I just started crying tears of joy.

[01:32:13] Robby Barbaro: Good for you.

[01:32:15] Ashley James: I had eaten like a snack an hour before and it wasn’t a big snack, but like, this isn’t even fasting. I ate something an hour before. And I felt so even keel. I wasn’t hungry for hours. I know you said like when people first go plant-based, they’re hungry because they only ate 200 calories for a meal because they don’t realize that you kind of have to eat more. And so I was like, oh, I just had seconds. I’m like, okay, I’m just going to have a second serving of brown rice, beans, and my stir fry of vegetables that are done with water instead of oil. I’m just going to have a second serving, and that's fine and now I’m full. But I go hours, hours without crashing. I mean, I don’t crash. I go hours without feeling hungry. I mean, if I have to skip a meal because I’m super busy, I don’t have jitters, I don’t have panic. My body isn’t panicking. I just go, okay, I’m just a little hungry, I’m going to drink water and then I’m going to get something in me when I can. It’s so much freedom. 

Here's the paradox. Because the paradox is like people who don’t eat this way think they won’t have freedom like “Well, I can’t eat. You can’t eat it.” Like, I can’t eat at restaurants, I can’t eat at my mom’s house anymore, whatever, my aunt’s house or whatever relative. I can’t go have wings with the boys… they’re thinking about all the limitations on how they won’t have freedom. But that way of eating caused them health freedom and freedom in their body.

[01:33:42] Robby Barbaro: That's so right.

[01:33:43] Ashley James: So, what I love is I jump out of bed in the morning, I don’t need coffee anymore. If I do partake in coffee, I do a tiny, tiny, tiny amount and it’s kind of just my little fun drug of choice. But I don’t need it. So I don’t do it every day. I used to need coffee. I wake up, I jump out of bed like I didn’t have any stimulants this morning to get on the show with you. I just jump out of bed and I’m like, boom, my mind is awake, I’m awake. That is totally not me when I was on animal products and when I was on processed food. So, I have body freedom, I have energy throughout the day. I have so much body freedom. So yeah, I have traded the freedom of eating crap food for health in my body.

But yeah, so there are limitations. I can’t eat at certain people’s homes. But I’ll bring my own food. Or you know what, my friends are really accommodating. I’ll just tell them like listen, these are our restrictions and also, our son has some allergies so I’ll just say these are the things we eat, these things we can’t eat. Honestly, if a friend isn’t willing to make accommodations for you, like how much are they your friend? I’ve been impressed with like when our daughter died last year, people came out of the woodwork to bring us food and they all brought us whole food plant-based. They came out of the woodwork. My neighbor cooked me so much food. I had a friend that lives 45 minutes away brought just days’ worth of food. Everyone cooked us to our diet. Some of our friends even went and found websites that had whole food plant-based recipes. Our friends just Googled whole food plant-based recipes and accommodated. There was no one that was like, I don’t know, mean about the way we eat. So, it was how they showed love. And people who really care about you, there's always going to be someone who’s upset about your diet because what it does is if they have addiction and I’ve seen this before, if they have addiction and they're addicted to their processed foods, your change threatens that. Just like alcohol, people who choose to stop drinking and they tell their friends who they used to drink socially with, there's always a friend that gets angry about it and gets defensive about it. And that is because you're challenging their addiction. You're not asking them to stop eating meat, you're not asking them to stop drinking alcohol. Your change is a reflection of their addiction and it’ll make them angry. So, don’t take it personally, but you got to do you. You’ve got to stick up for yourself and just love those friends and family, but don’t let their discomfort influence the longevity you're giving yourself. 

[01:36:39] Robby Barbaro: So true. So true. 

[01:36:43] Ashley James: Yeah, so there’s my soapbox. 

[01:36:44] Robby Barbaro: I love that. What an amazing example, what an amazing story you have. And I mean, also the practicality of doing this lifestyle, communicating with people, with friends, with loved ones, like that can be an entire show. We should do a whole show on that topic. 

[01:37:01] Ashley James: Yeah, right? Your coaching, I love your coaching on helping people navigate once they’ve made these changes. Navigating those friends and family. Because that’s something that, you know, I’ve grown a thick skin. But I acknowledge that there's a lot of listeners who haven’t yet. Right? I don’t know what it was. Honestly, I think it was giving birth to our son. He’s 7 ½. So I think right about that time, I was in the hospital for 5 days, in labor for 3 ½ days straight. And it was pretty ridiculous and I was just like, people were walking in and out, and I was half naked, all naked, I don’t remember. I think that's when I just lost that ability to care about or like have what other people think of me, have me want to change the good that I’m doing for myself to make other people feel comfortable. And I was like, you know, somewhere around there, I grew a pair and I’m like, you know what, I love my friends and family, but if my health choices that are healing my body is making someone uncomfortable, they need to work on their baggage. I am not going to make myself unhealthy to make someone comfortable. And this is what we’re doing as a society, is we’re trying to make people comfortable by making ourselves unhealthy. And we really need to cut that out. That is not healthy for anyone. It’s okay to be that black sheep, the salmon that's swimming upstream, that’s saying no to the things they know are unhealthy for them when everyone else is saying yes to them. It’s okay.

[01:38:47] Robby Barbaro: Couldn’t be more. Be proud, proud of what you're doing. You’re reducing the healthcare cost in this country. You're reducing the impact on the environment and you're becoming an example of what’s possible and the having more energy and having less missed work days because you're actually healthy. I mean, that's actually another big cost of our country. When people are unwell, they can’t contribute to the workforce. It’s a problem. So, you have to be proud of yourself.

[01:39:18] Ashley James: I’m just proud that I’m reducing the profits to big pharma.

[01:39:21] Robby Barbaro: There you go. That's another thing to be very proud of. Fantastic.

[01:39:27] Ashley James: So you keep talking about half an avocado and I don’t have a concept for that because you cut open an avocado, you eat the whole thing. If someone were to eat too much nuts or too much avocado and too much for your program, do they not get results? What does this look like?

[01:39:46] Robby Barbaro: It’s a big question. Here’s what happens. If people start eating too much of those foods, it does inhibit weight loss for a lot of people. What it does is it also makes it more challenging to have certain fruits. So, you’ll hear a lot of people that say oh well, look, if you're going to have these nuts and seeds and you have diabetes, you should be careful with the “high glycemic” fruits. This is only a problem when you are in an insulin-resistant state. Basically, then if you're going to have more fat from plant-based sources, then you're going to be limited to things like berries and pears and foods like that in order to keep your blood glucose under control. So, that's the main concern. But again, nuts and seeds are fantastic, they’re great. It’s just that the quantity, you don’t want to sit down and just start snacking on them because it’s just easy to overeat them. It’s just really that simple.

[01:40:46] Ashley James: It’s so easy. I don’t love nuts or seeds, like they're okay, that’s not my thing. My husband, he did go through a phase where he’d eat like a huge bag of cashews in a day. He went vegan before ever considered going whole food plant-based. He was the guy when I met 14 years ago, he would only eat meat and yeah, he never ate vegetables. He would do like nachos. There might be a vegetable in nachos, but pretty much he was the meat and potatoes and the nachos guy. And oh, ice cream and just all the junk food and alcohol and the sugar and all that. When I first met him, I got him off of sugar, alcohol. I mean, he was not an alcoholic but just socially and I was like, no, this is not good. And we made some good changes but he was still just like beef for breakfast, lunch and dinner kind of thing. And even that was too much for me. I was like, always on and off Atkins. He was just go, go, go meat only. Meat and coffee basically. Then one day, he woke up and I think it was about five years ago, he just woke up and he said “I’m never eating the flesh of an animal again.” That was a complete opposite. And he goes, “Yeah.” And he’s the kind of guy who’d never kill a spider for me. He’s 6 foot 6. He’s very tall. No one has ever picked a fight with him just because he looks like he’d take you down, but he’s a total pacifist. He’ll take the spider outside but he won’t kill out. He goes, you know, “killing things just doesn’t feel right to me and it doesn’t sit well in my soul. It’s been really bothering me for a while. And I don’t want to partake in that anymore.”

I had been also telling him about stuff from my podcasts. I think the last thing I told him that might have been the very, very final thing that made him flip over was I had Robyn Openshaw on talking about one of her books which was something called like Vibe or High Vibration Life, and she’s talking about the vibration of food and that there's hertz, like you can measure the hertz of food. So if you go to the grocery store, you can take this machine that measures the hertz or the energy frequency of something. She says broccoli and carrots and apples and bananas, they’ll all be like 60 hertz, 90 hertz. They’ll be high in hertz. Then she goes, you know how much pork is? And I’m like, no. And I just had had like pork sausage just that morning for breakfast. She goes it’s 6 hertz. Well, why does this matter? They measure the hertz of people who are healthy and I can’t remember the exact number but something like 200 hertz if you're healthy. If you’re sick or have cancer, maybe you're like 120. People who are in the hospital dying are at 60, and people who are the day they’re going to die, they’re down to 40.

So, you can measure basically in health. You can measure hertz. And you see that the healthier you are, the higher your hertz; the unhealthy you are, the lower your hertz. Why wouldn’t you be consuming foods that are higher in hertz and not consuming foods that have no energy in them? I know that correlation is not causation, but it just was like an interesting thought like oh, why don’t I eat foods that are high vibration to increase, at least help my body have a high vibration that makes sense because we are all energy, anyway, if you study quantum physics. In chemistry you see that we’re more energy than matter. So, we should eat foods that are higher in energy to feed ourselves in that way.

And yeah, the next day, he woke up and said “I’m never eating meat again.” So I had to figure out how to cook for him. Then, of course, I had all these doctors on the show, we’re constantly talking about whole food plant-based diet. I kicking and screaming started eating that way, just dragging, it was so hard to say goodbye to chicken and eggs. I’ve struggled at times. I’m not perfect, I’ve struggled at times. But cutting out oil was fine. I had done that years ago because Dr. Wallach back 12 years ago told me to not eat oil. He wants people to eat gee or rendered duck fat. I’m like ugh, I can just cook with water, that's fine, I don’t need that.

So I started learning like from Chef AJ and other whole food plant-based chefs and it became really easy for me because I love cooking in the kitchen and making delicious food. it became really easy for me to do that switch. But what I was surprised with was that I didn’t miss meat. My body didn’t crave it. My brain did because of addiction brain. But my body didn’t feel like it needed it and I was surprised because I had never eaten a meal without meat. Then all of a sudden to have meals without it, I’m like, oh wow, I’m full. I didn’t think I’d be full. I thought I had to eat meat to be full. I thought I had to eat meat to have energy. And it was the opposite. I had way more energy without meat. Meat was causing me to feel sluggish. I couldn’t believe that. So, it was a big night and day. There was a lot of old belief systems that had to drop away.

So, I’m really excited about your summit, and thank you for breaking down those foods. If people just started eating that way right now, they’re going to see a difference. But we want to give them tools and we want to arm them with so much good information, which is what your summit is going to do. So, people can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/masteringdiabetes and get access to your summit. Sign up now because it starts on November 2. Tell us about your summit. What are we going to get out of it, what does it look like, how long is it. Are people going to be able to do your summit, and then dive into this and master their diabetes?

[01:46:32] Robby Barbaro: You said the most important word there. Practical. We’re all about practicality at Mastering Diabetes. Each interview, each expert is summing up what they're teaching with practical tips for you to put into action. That is what makes this summit so viable, is because whether you're coming in because you want to lower your blood glucose, or you want to lose weight, or you want to gain more energy. Or you're struggling with kidney disease or fatty liver disease. You have high blood pressure. Like it doesn’t matter what you're coming in with. There is something in here for you and there are action items. It’s an amazing event. So it's 22 speakers. It’s from November 2 to November 9, and the whole thing is free. You just enter your email, you're going to get emails inviting you to listen to the presentations during the day. It’s very, very powerful. We learn a lot. Every year we interview these experts and it’s a real honor and privilege to be able to share this with all of you out there. Again, it’s free. It’s November 2 to 9. We have an incredible lineup of experts. Once you register, you’ll be able to see all those details. But it’s just an incredible event and I really can’t wait for everybody to get involved. 

I can’t also emphasize enough the importance of the webinars. There's live webinars that happen and you get a chance to interact with us and our coaches, ask questions, and we’re here to set you up for success and get you going on the right direction. And really addressing the nuances. There are so many, and you’ve learned this and you’ve applied it in your own life. You’ve had so many amazing experts on the show. You’ve been able to dig into the details. But there are nuances to doing this successfully in your life and that's what the summit is going to help deliver for you. 

[01:48:24] Ashley James: I love it. I am so excited for it, I can’t wait. I’m definitely going to attend. I can’t wait for it and I know that my listeners should definitely check it out. Please, though, everyone share this with your friends and family. You can share this episode with your friends and family, or you can just tell them to go to learntruehealth.com/masteringdiabetes, let’s get all of us signed up to learn. If someone is struggling, let’s help them and maybe they’ll make that leap. Maybe they will give it a try and they will see the results. The results speak for themselves. When people feel so good like when you feel so good eating this way, you just notice you don’t want to go back to feeling like crap and so the old way of being doesn’t serve you anymore and you're like you know what, I can still go hang out with my friends, I just don’t have to eat the food. That's okay. You still get to have all the fun and you get to have all the health. So, learntruehealth.com/masteringdiabetes. I’m very excited.

Thank you so much, Robby, for coming on the show again and sharing all this information. It has been so fantastic that you’ve been doing this and you’ve been eating this way for, what, 16 years now.

[01:49:37] Robby Barbaro: 16 years now, yeah.

[01:49:39] Ashley James: So awesome. Also, the links to your podcast will be in the show notes and all the links to everything that you do will be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Is there anything you want to say to wrap up today’s interview?

[01:49:50] Robby Barbaro: I just want to say thank you for everything you do and your consistent contribution to this movement of healthy eating and having people get well and address the root cause of chronic disease and you're so passionate about not giving profits and revenue to these pharmaceutical companies that aren’t acting in our best interest. Thank you for everything you do. It’s amazing, keep doing it, and I appreciate you having me on.

[01:50:13] Ashley James: Thank you. I appreciate you too. This is awesome. You’ve saved thousands and thousands of lives and we’re just going to keep turning this ripple into a tidal wave. I’ll see you at the summit, Learntruehealth.com/masteringdiabetes.

[01:50:24] Robby Barbaro: See you there.

Get Connected With Robby Barbaro:

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Recommended Reading by Robby Barbaro

The Forks Over Knives Plan by Alona Pulde M.D.

Dr. Biamonte's website: www.health-truth.com 
Join the Learn True Health Facebook group: learntruehealth.com/group
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The Minerals Ashley takes and recommends: TakeYourSupplements.com

488: Kill Candida Holistically and Restore True Gut Health, Dr. Michael Biamonte

https://www.learntruehealth.com/kill-candida-holistically-and-restore-true-gut-health-dr-michael-biamonte

Looking for a way to eradicate candida for good? Join me on this episode as I again interview Dr. Michael Biamonte, who has a unique and effective protocol to heal the gut, eliminate toxins in your body, and get rid of candida that is causing immune dysfunction.

Highlights:

• MARCoNS and biofilm
• What die-off is
• Effects of candida on bowel movements
• Dr. Biamonte’s diet recommendation to heal the gut
• The different phases of Dr. Biamonte’s program
• Candida and allergies
• Candida strains
• Female yeast infections

Intro:

Hello, true health seekers, and welcome to another exciting episode of Learn True Health podcast. I am really, really excited for you to hear today’s interview with Dr. Michael Biamonte. It is mind-blowing. This is going to be one of those interviews, you know, once in a while. I definitely have done several interviews that are life-changing, and this is one of them. You know sometimes I’ve got some feel-good health interviews and mental health, emotional health, that kind of stuff, spiritual health. This is the one where rubber hits the road and I know that we’re onto something with his protocol.

I’m really excited to dive in and excited for you guys to hear how you can finally get rid of that elusive candida which it sounds like is a major contributor to many illnesses that people continue to suffer from and it’s just like playing darts in the dark. You keep trying different things, taking different supplements, changing diets, eliminating … I know some people who they can hardly eat anything. They’ve eliminated so many foods and yet, they’re always so sick. And candida is the root cause. It’s just amazing how so many people are walking around suffering from candida infection and here we have today the information that is going to change their life. So, I’m very excited for you to hear today’s interview.

I want you to plug in with the Learn True Health podcast to make sure that you don’t miss out on anymore life-changing interviews. Please, of course, subscribe to wherever you listen like Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Podbean, even the podcast app on your phone whether it’s Android or iPhone.

You can also come to LearnTrueHealth.com. I spent all summer long revamping the website and so it looks fantastic. It’s much more mobile-friendly. Please come to the website LearnTrueHealth.com and pour through great information there. I also transcribe every interview to make sure that you can get the information you need, so that all the content is searchable on the website. You can use the “search” function if you're looking for, let’s say, you're like, “I want to learn more about detox or heavy metals.” You can type in “mercury” or “heavy metals” or “detox” in the search function of every episode where we talk about that and teach about it is going to show up for you. Also, I know that there are some people who like to take notes or like to read instead of listen to the show, and that's why the transcripts are there for you. And they're all at LearnTrueHealth.com.

Now, many of you are not on Facebook, but I encourage you to come join just to get into the Facebook group. For those who are on Facebook and are not in the group already, I invite you to come check it out and be part of our community because you are really missing out if you're not part of the Learn True Health Facebook group. We’ve got over 5,000 listeners in there, and together, we answer each other’s questions, we learn from each other, and we share our successes with each other. It’s a very supportive environment. I have learned so much and I’ve also shared. I answer all the questions I can and I help to bring all my expertise and all my knowledge from all the guests that I’ve interviewed and all the naturopathic physicians that have mentored me for the last 11+ years. I bring all that to the table. I help as much as I can. But, you know, we also have experts in that Facebook group. We have some of our past guests in the Facebook group. They’ll show up and answer questions as well. And we have naturopathic physicians. I’m so pleased that we have such a wonderful community of health nuts just like myself there to show up and to help each other. 

And so, whether you're brand-new to the holistic space and you're looking finally to get your health back or whether you're an avid long-time listener or long-time advocate for holistic health, you're going to love the Learn True Health Facebook group. It’s free. Come join it and just experience that either you could be someone who helps or you could be someone that receives the help, or both. And that’s why I think it’s such an enriching environment. So, please subscribe. I have a bunch of really great interviews coming out this month and I’m really excited for you to hear them. And I want to make sure that you continue to get access to my interviews. Make sure you come to LearnTrueHealth.com, my website. Check it out, use the search function, take advantage of all the features that I’ve added to it. And come join the Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook group. You can find it by going to LearnTrueHealth.com/group.

Now, this episode I know is going to make a huge difference in people’s lives. So, please share it with any of your friends that have eczema, that have chronic health issues that don’t seem to resolve, that have chronic gut issues that don’t seem to resolve. This is definitely the interview that’s going to help them.

I’m really excited though for the next few interviews I have planned out that I’m going to be releasing soon, so definitely stay tuned because this one’s amazing and the next few are equally as amazing. I’m so excited. I hope you guys are having a wonderful, wonderful month. And thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing, thank you so much for listening, thank you so much for coming into the Facebook group and sharing your testimonials of how the Learn True Health podcast has made a difference in your life. There is recently a testimonial that left me absolutely in tears, in a good way. And actually, I think what I’m going to do, because it is such a good testimonial, I think I’m going to read it out loud soon in an episode because I feel that it is worth everyone hearing it. And just spoiler alert: some of the information that she got from my show helped her save her mom’s life. So, how cool is that?

When I set out to do this podcast, it was to help people no longer suffer like I had suffered, and it was to help people. If we could save someone’s mom or save someone’s dad from dying of cancer or heart disease, if we could prevent illness, if we could stop suffering and prevent illness in other people’s lives, then mission accomplished. And I love getting your testimonials because that’s the fuel. That's the fuel that keeps me doing this because I want to help as many people as possible to learn true health. I want to stop the suffering of as many people as possible and help as many people as possible to save their loved ones. 

So, together, by sharing this, you are helping to do that. You're onboard with my mission to help as many people as possible. So, thank you for spreading this information by sharing my podcast with those you care about. Because we are really making a difference. When we get testimonials like that, that is why I do it and that is why. And so, I know that’s why you share it as well. Because if you can share it with a friend and they're able to resolve their chronic illness from the information you shared, that is better than any Christmas gift or any birthday gift or any gift you could ever receive, that is the best gift. To give someone the gift of knowledge that they apply that then allows them to no longer suffer, I mean, touching someone’s life in that way feels so good. So, thank you for helping me to spread this information. And you are part of that. You are part of helping people to get out and end suffering, get out of suffering and start feeling amazing, and living lives that are full. So, thank you.

Awesome. Enjoy today’s episode. I know you're going to love it because with Dr. Biamonte’s protocol, we’re going to help a lot of people. I’m very excited about that.

[00:07:55] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 488.

I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show for part 2 of the candida chronicles. We’re just diving deep into the gut today and we have listener questions because we just published recently our first part of our interview. And now, we’re going deep and I’m so excited to have you back on the show, Dr. Michael Biamonte. We have fantastic questions from the listeners, but first, I want to pick up where we left off. We were talking about your candida protocol. And for listeners who haven’t heard our first episode, we definitely want to go back to episode 486, so that they can hear the first part where we talked about how Dr. Biamonte came about understanding candida on such a deep, deep level and how to finally resolve it because it is a very elusive beast. And I’m so happy that we’re finally digging into the meat today.

So, let’s just pick up where we left off. You were talking about the treatments that work and that you see really work, and that before you even start treatments, you sort of have a pre-treatment protocol. Can we get into that?

[00:09:22] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Sure. We start typically with phase 0. The program runs phase 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4. One of the major discoveries that I made in handling candida was that you needed to do certain things in a certain order and if you violated the order, it wasn’t going to work.

So, the first phase that we have, Phase 0, is like a preparatory phase, in a sense, where it is like a colon cleanse for someone with parasites and candida or let’s just say dysbiosis. What that phase essentially does is it removes any of the major organisms that are hanging out there that if we try to kill them with the latter phases would just create so much die-off that it would make it intolerable for the person.

So, phase 0 works mechanically. The products that we use in phase 0 destroy candida enzymatically by digesting it using diatomaceous earth which slashes into it. And by using herbal and fiber products, which sort of scrub this and get it to release off the lining of your intestine which is a very tricky thing with parasites and candida because they make certain proteins that lock themselves onto the lining of your intestine.

Then there’s the biofilm that's there too. So, phase 0 neutralizes all those things so that the organisms that are easily accessible are being able to mechanically be drawn out which is another thing that two of the phase 0 products, in particular, mechanically draw out candida and harmful organisms that are kind of living in the creases of your intestinal tract.

[00:11:17] Ashley James: We talked about biofilm a little bit in the part 1 of this interview. So, biofilm, because I keep seeing it in those colon cleansing parasite groups where people take a picture of this long weird thing that's not quite a worm but really, it looks like they shed something that molded. It was like a perfect mold of their intestines.

[00:11:42] Dr. Michael Biamonte: No, that's not biofilm. That's considered to be hardened feces and hardened mucus, which has stagnated in the intestinal tract. And you don’t find that in everybody. Dr. Jensen’s book on bowel management, I think it was Colon Cleansing Through Bowel Management, or Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management, that book had many, many pictures of people who had been very constipated, who excreted this black rubbery material that was literally like a mold of the intestinal tract, that's not typical. That's in more extreme cases. The average person doesn’t have that. The average person will have biofilm.

Biofilm is produced typically by MARCoN bacteria. MARCoNS or bacteria which are unfortunately drug-resistive and they become antibiotic resistive, and these MARCoNS, they're in the family of MRSA. These types of bacteria, these MARCoNS produce this mucus-like substance that they hide in. Unfortunately, the way bad organisms work is they cluster together. So if you have candida, you can be guaranteed that in the area of your intestinal tract where the candida is living, MARCoNS are going to find their way. They're going to become attracted to that candida as will protozoa and other harmful pathogens that will get sort of stuck together. Then, the MARCoNS produce the biofilm which is like a slime that they get covered in.

This was before until we learned about MARCoNS and biofilm, it made it harder to get rid of these microorganisms. But the advent of technology on biofilm has made it much easier because we know that the average person who is doing any kind of like a cleansing program to try to get rid of candida or parasites, if they have a lot of biofilm, you have to cut through that biofilm for those products to be able to reach those organisms. We now know that's essential. 

But it is typical that people who have biofilm – you touched on this before a little – people who have biofilm typically will excrete mucus. That's one of the ways we know that they have biofilm and the product to get rid of the biofilm is working. They’ll call and they’ll say, “You know, I pooped before and it was really slimy.”

[00:14:13] Ashley James: And that's an indicator.

[00:14:14] Dr. Michael Biamonte: That's an indicator. So, that’s for phase 0 of our program.

[00:14:17] Ashley James: I’m hearing how important phase 0 is because I know so many people who will jump into a “cleanse.” They’ll go to the health food store, they’ll buy something with a bunch of herbs in it and then they’ll just start taking it. And they’ll end up feeling horrible because there's a big die-off, but they're not addressing the hood/the neighborhood inside the gut where the candida has set up shop, basically, within this biofilm. And as long as we’re keeping the biofilm in there, then they hide inside us and can avoid these protozoa, these bad bacteria, the candida. They’ll hide together in their little bunker that they’ve created inside our gut.

[00:15:06] Dr. Michael Biamonte: It’s a pretty accurate picture. Phase 0 was originally developed when I was doing some work with Hulda Clark who wrote a lot of popular books. She made me aware of just how common parasites were in a lot of my patients. So, the original phase 0 was a parasite cleanse. Then, we discovered that the phase 0 was also busting our biofilm and doing all these other things that we discovered that the people who did phase 0 before they went on to the other phase is that we had less die-offs, and then we decided to extend phase 0. We gave the person phase 0 for the first month and then after that, the person continued phase 0 along with phase 1 and phase 2, which are the two major killing or elimination phases. The die-off was less in those people than if they did not take the phase 0. But still all relative because if you have somebody with bad leaky gut, people with leaky gut get very bad die-off as well because the nature of the leaky gut allows all those dead toxins from the organisms you're killing just to spill into the bloodstream and overload it and cause mast cell activation. But it still is less. Phase 0 still does cut back the die-off the person is bound to have. That's kind of the bottom line and that's why phase 0 is useful because it does lower the die-off and it does continually act like an ongoing colon cleanse, so that as the person is taking phase 1 and phase 2, the phase 0 allows them to get deeper and deeper and deeper, and make it work better. It’s just very synergistic.

[00:16:47] Ashley James: I love it. Can you just back up for those that don’t know die-off? When we say die-off, what we’re referring to? Could you please explain the mechanism in the body of die-off?

[00:16:57] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Sure. Die-off is technically referred to as Herxheimer reaction because it was Dr. Herxheimer who identified die-off. He had found that when he treated people for Lyme disease and parasites and things like that, they had a bad reaction, like a toxic or an allergic reaction that was generated by the dead organisms. So, if you give somebody some kind of antimicrobial, it goes into their system, it kills the candida, it kills the bacteria, it kills the yeast, whatever. Now you have this dead organism there, dead debris. The dead debris starts to denature. There’s a lysis that occurs which means the cells break down and they split, and it’s decomposing essentially. So, you have decomposing dead microorganisms in your gut that release all kinds of toxins and antigens and harmful toxic proteins and whatnot. They can even release viruses. Candida and certain parasites harbor viruses. They themselves are the carrier of a virus. So, this is why you’ll get some people with herpes, when they do a candida cleanse or a parasite cleanse, their herpes will get worse temporarily, and that's because killing those organisms, you're killing the host. And that's releasing the virus from that host, which is the microorganism.

So, that's what die-off is basically. Die-off is basically an allergic reaction that one has to the dead organisms they're killing on their cleansing program.

[00:18:28] Ashley James: Right. The mycotoxins and just all of it. Dr. Jay Davidson was on our show and he talked about how parasites can almost be like sponges for heavy metals and that when they die off, they end up releasing heavy metals right back into the body.

[00:18:45] Dr. Michael Biamonte: The same thing is true of candida, and that’s a very dangerous concept because it’s caused some people and some practitioners who are very intelligent to be misled into thinking that candida or parasites actually are a protective mechanism of the body to entrap these heavy metals, which is totally false. It’s completely false. The major reason why I can say it’s false that we can easily look at, is the fact that heavy metals, especially mercury, suppress fecal IgE and IgA. The mercury depresses your intestinal immune system. It suppresses your intestinal immune system. That's what allows candida and parasites to even flourish more, is that due to the presence of mercury, your own intestinal immune system is suppressed.

[00:19:35] Ashley James: I mean, this is such a strong point to make that the parasites are mopping up mercury, for example, and then they die off, they're releasing the mercury which is suppressing the immune system which is allowing things like candida to overtake it. Does candida itself also mop up or hold on to these heavy metals? What does candida release when it dies?

[00:19:59] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Candida can release and can accumulate all heavy metals. This is, again, why you’ve got to eliminate candida in a specific order and you have to know that it does this because when you put somebody on a program to kill candida, if you don’t have them on things that are also binders, which my phase 0 program covers, that are going to absorb the mercury or the heavy metals, then you're just throwing those metals back into their system.

[00:20:25] Ashley James: I want to talk more about the products that you figured out work, we’re definitely going to talk about. I’d like to also address food. Because you’ve talked about constipation and I wonder, do people with constipation have greater chances of candida, or do people with diarrhea, do people on either side of the spectrum, when it comes to bowel movements have candida issues? Or does candida end up causing constipation or diarrhea?

[00:20:52] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Actually, both are true. If you're fine and not having any issue and you suddenly get candida, it will constipate you. It can cause diarrhea, but mostly it will constipate you. But on the other hand, if you're prone to constipation for whatever reason or you suddenly get it, the constipation will cause you to develop candida because constipation causes your bowels to become more alkaline. And candida lives in an alkaline environment in your intestinal tract.

[00:21:21] Ashley James: And this is really interesting. That was actually one of the questions our listeners brought up in our Learn True Health Facebook group. The idea that if flourishes in an alkaline environment. Because you know, everyone is running around drinking alkaline water and saying we should alkalize our body. But there's areas of the body where we want it to be acidic for a reason as part of our defense mechanism.

[00:21:42] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Right. We have to separate this out. This is where a little knowledge becomes dangerous. The pH of the intestinal tract, a normal good pH for your intestines is somewhere between 6 and 7.2. When you go higher than 7.2, the acidophilus there dies. The probiotics die and then candida takes over. When you go below 6, you have other parts of your normal flora which die and then it’s very easy to have organisms that would cause diarrhea to take over. So, an alkaline colon tends to be constipated. An acid colon tends to be diarrhea. In the middle is where we want to be because that's where the pH is correct for all your normal flora to live.

And there is also a large majority of the normal flora, is E. coli. Now when I say E. coli right away, they're thinking of hamburger that’s putrefying and it’s going to be poisonous. But the large majority of your normal gram-negative bacteria in your intestinal tract is sort of a friendly E. coli which is non-pathogenic. You can even buy it in supplements in Europe, in Germany and other countries there. You can buy E. coli supplements just like you were buying acidophilus. They don’t allow that here in this country because they would be very concerned about whether or not the E. coli you're getting is the right strain or is it a pathogenic strain, so the FDA just doesn’t allow it.

[00:23:11] Ashley James: But we need the healthy E. coli?

[00:23:12] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes, we do. The majority of your bacteria in your intestinal tract actually is the healthy E. coli. It’s not even the healthy gram-positive acidophilus and bifidus. The healthy E. coli outnumbers those.

[00:23:30] Ashley James: When we’re doing phase 0 and someone let’s say is either they have diarrhea or they have constipation and they're doing the protocol to bind and to get rid of the biofilm and all that, what foods are the best foods to support this program?

[00:23:46] Dr. Michael Biamonte: You know what, it’s funny, when it comes to candida, there is no food that helps you get rid of candida. There are only foods that make it worse. 

[00:23:56] Ashley James: So just don’t feed it.

[00:23:57] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Right. That's really the simplest answer. There is no food that really gets rid of candida. When we really cut down to the nitty-gritty of it, there isn’t really any food or any diet that's going to get rid of candida. Even if you go on a really low-carb diet that's high in vegetables and high in al these beneficial foods, you’re still not going to get rid of the candida because the candida has grown roots into your tiny capillaries in your intestinal tract to siphon off glucose to keep itself alive.

[00:24:26] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

[00:24:27] Dr. Michael Biamonte: So, you're not going to get rid of it. But an ideal diet for candida would include organic non-GMO grass-fed meat and animal products. It would include a high amount of vegetables. It would be low in carb and low in sugar. It would be also very low in grain and gluten-free. That would be the essential makeup of the diet that would be helpful to somebody with dysbiosis. And on an individual level, it’s important that they avoid foods they know they’re allergic to that they say they have reactions to or maybe show up on an allergy test that they're reacting to. That would be important too.

[00:25:10] Ashley James: I’m going to ask the question just a little bit differently, but you did answer it. So, I’m asking the question again but slightly different. Certain diets claim to heal the gut like the GAPS diet, for example, that has a lot of bone broth. Do you see benefit? When it comes to treating candida and healing the gut, have you seen a benefit to specific diets that aim to heal the gut?

[00:25:37] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Some. Again, it’s kind of more important what you don’t do than what you do. When it comes to healing the gut, raw food, believe it or not, raw salads, raw vegetables are actually harmful. They further irritate a leaky gut. And fermented food also irritates the leaky gut. So, on the leaky gut diets that I give my patients, the first thing we’re concerned about is they're not eating fermented foods. They're not eating a lot of raw foods. And of course, because almost everyone with leaky gut has candida, you also want to make sure the diet is low in carb and low in sugar.

[00:26:13] Ashley James: But the carbohydrates from vegetables is okay, but you're saying maybe like remove fruit?

[00:26:18] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yeah, because fruit is more of a refined sugar. Fructose and fruit juice and things like this, get absorbed into your blood stream and in your body too quickly because you’re separating the fiber from the sugar. Like as an example, when you make a juice. That's a great example. But when you eat fruit, your body eventually separates out the sugars from the fibers and the fructose is pretty volatile. It does aggravate candida regardless of what some people out there say.

We had a patient who went whacko once with this concept that fruit would not be a good sugar to eat or fruit would be bad for candida. But anyway, so the fruit is bad for candida because it is sugar. Lactose is bad for candida. Maltose is bad for candida. Sucrose is bad. Just about anything that's sweet. Twenty years ago, we found that a lot of the alcohol sugars like mannitol and xylitol, these sugars were not really affecting candida patients. And it just happened to be we’ve noticed in the last few years that people who eat these sugars are now reacting where their candida is. And I’ve been scrounging, trying to find data, trying to find evidence from somewhere in some university where someone is able to prove that candida has genetically, let’s say, morph to where it can now feed off alcohol sugars, but I haven’t been able to find anything. I can only say that I hear more complaints from patients when they try to eat these called low-impact carbs. People are reacting to them now where they didn’t 10-15 years ago. But I think a general rule with anything that you taste that’s sweet is going to be bad for a candida program.

[00:28:11] Ashley James: Yeah. We’re using food as medicine, so these foods, like fruit is healthy for people who don’t have candida, right?

[00:28:17] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes, it does.

[00:28:18] Ashley James: Get rid of the candida, you can start eating fruit again as long as you don’t redevelop candida. So, it’s not that fruit is bad; it’s that we’re really looking to use food as medicine.

[00:28:29] Dr. Michael Biamonte: This is therapeutic. This is a therapeutic use of foods specifically for an individual case. And so, someone who’s an apple farmer shouldn’t be offended by what I’m saying. This just happens to be the science and this is only, as you're saying, it’s only temporary. It doesn’t mean you can never again eat the fruit, but you have to get your flora back so that you don’t end up feeding these bad sugar-dependent organisms that are out to give you trouble.

[00:28:55] Ashley James: I wonder about the anti-candida diet. We’re starving the candida but at the same time, are we also starving all the good stuff that’s also keeping it at bay. There's that fine balance. 

[00:29:07] Dr. Michael Biamonte: To a degree because sugars do feed friendly bacteria. There are certain sugars that are found in certain foods and just right off the top of my head, artichokes and bananas are very high in sugars, which very often feed friendly bacteria without overfeeding bad organisms, although fructooligosaccharides (FOS) which is a popular product can feed harmful bacteria. So, when you use it, you have to be careful because if you have a bacteria like klebsiella, let’s say, in your system, which is a bacteria that causes a lot of autoimmune illness, if you take FOS, you're going to feed the klebsiella and make it grow. So, you need to be careful with this.

But to a degree, you're correct, there are certain sugars and things which do help feed the friendly guys. It’s kind of a war of attrition, this whole subject matter we’re talking about. We need to put a diet together that's going to starve the candida long enough for the supplements and the other, let’s say, products that we take to kill it. And then, once we get the candida low enough, then we need to reestablish the probiotics by giving the intestinal tract the prebiotics which are the different foods that help feed the probiotics so they could grow back.

[00:30:28] Ashley James: This is a very complicated garden that we are balancing within us. I love that you have these phases because we really need to take that seriously, the idea of phase 0 and phase 1. So, we’ve discussed phase 0 and I want to talk about the other phases. I want to talk about the products that you recommend that you’ve created or have seen really work. So, phase 0 being incredibly important, they do it for a month. Are there times when someone would do it for longer than a month or if they have certain symptoms, they do it for longer or a month would suffice?

[00:31:03] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Well, phase 0 is continued with phase 1 and phase 2. That’s my first answer.

[00:31:09] Ashley James: Okay, good. So after a month, they add phase 1. So, what does phase 1 look like?

[00:31:13] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Phase 1 is typically 4 to 5 naturopathic or herbal antifungals that I choose based on the testing I do on the person, and they rotate these every 4 days. Most typically, it would be 4 items they take 4 days each, that would mean it would be 16 days for them to go through the cycle once. Normally, we have them go through the cycle twice before we speak to them or retest them to see how much they’ve killed off with phase 1.

The herbals that we chose on phase 1 work systemically. They absorb into your blood in your lymphatic system and kill candida there as well as killing it in the intestinal tract. That phase typically will last 2-3 months. And we know when they're finished because the urine test that we do on them has a certain reaction when they're finished with that phase, and that tells us they're ready to go to phase 2, which is probably the most important of the phases in a way. Because on phase 2, we use fatty acid-based antifungals, which are able to absorb into the intestinal lining and kill the candida at its roots. That is the very candida we’re killing on phase 2, which prevents the probiotics from coming back. And right here, there’s a little microcosm of why all the people out there who are self-treating are constantly failing. They don’t know categorically which antifungals would fit into a phase 0 or phase 1 or phase 2. So, they just have everything thrown together. In Yiddish, the word is ungapatchka. Everything thrown together.

So, they don’t know specifically to select the antifungals for phase 2 that are going to be able to kill that candida that’s blocking their prebiotics from coming back. But you see, even if they knew the products and tried them, it still wouldn’t work because they hadn’t done phase 0 and phase 1 yet.

[00:33:03] Ashley James: Right. How long through trial and error? And this is why they call it practicing medicine. How long did this take you to dial in?

[00:33:15] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Let’s see. I started researching this in 1986-1987. We had a basic framework in about 1992 or 1993. A lot of the research took off when I met Scott Gregory who was the author of a book called the holistic protocol for the immune system. He helped a lot. We shared ideas to put together this because he had a basic structure. He had the concept of phase 1. Phase 1 would be killing the organisms. Phase 2 would be detoxing the body and phase 3 would be putting nutrients that are essential back in in phase 4 would be boosting the immune system. That was the skeleton he had. You can still buy the book. The book is out there. It’s called Holistic Protocol for the Immune System by Dr. Scott Gregory. So, he gave me a basic map and from that, I was able to fill in all the empty spaces and also include the correct testing that would go at each phase because he didn’t have anything on testing. And the testing is very important because you don’t know when to stop the phase. You don’t know when the phase has reached its end phenomena if you don’t have some kind of test to say, “Well, is this now complete? Is the action we’re carrying on complete?” You have to have that; otherwise, it’s not scientific.

[00:34:38] Ashley James: Absolutely. Yeah, we want to be pragmatic about it. I love this idea, the phase 2, the fatty acid-based antifungals, so that then we’re preparing the way for those good bacteria to come in and proliferate and like soldiers not allow for the candida, to not giving the space for the candida to come back. So, how do you know when phase 2 is done?

[00:35:07] Dr. Michael Biamonte: When phase 2 is over, the person no longer has die-off from these antifungals. And on the urine test that we do, the candida levels have reached a certain point. They’ve dropped down to a certain point that we know we can now give the probiotics, and the probiotics will work.

[00:35:27] Ashley James: Is that phase 3? No, you said phase 3 was the …

[00:35:30] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Well, phase 2, we split. We split into three sections. There’s the first part of phase 2 that everybody would do that has these anti-fungals we’re talking about. Then, there’s potentially the leaky gut section where the person would then heal leaky gut. And then, the probiotic section would be last. This is because people who have leaky gut tend to have bad reactions to probiotics. So, we never give prebiotics to people who have leaky gut. They have to handle their leaky gut first and then we give them the probiotics. Then, when they go on the probiotics, normally they will have bloating and gas for about 3 to 4 weeks and then the bloating and gas goes away. That's actually a sign that the probiotics are replicating and they're killing off or fermenting any remaining harmful organisms.

Also, the urine test that we do on them has a very, very particular reaction that it does when those probiotics have come back. Now, if we reach 2 or 3 months, let’s say, on the probiotics, and the person is still having bloating and gas and the urine test hasn’t reacted in that way that we’re looking, we know we need to go back to phase 2 part A, back to those fatty acid-based antifungals and do more killing.

[00:36:43] Ashley James: Now, what about small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or fungal overgrowth? Is that a concern through this?

[00:36:51] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Well, everyone with candida has it. It’s become in the last few months I think like a little bit of a kitschy that they’re talking, but it’s nothing new to me. It’s existed as long as I’ve been researching candida and there's nothing special we do about it. We just follow our typical protocol and that goes away. I think there’s somebody in a lab some place noticed that the small intestine may get candida overgrowth as well as the colon and he decided to try to turn this into some kind of a new thing It’s actually nothing new and I really don’t have very much to say about it other than what else is new. 

[00:37:33] Ashley James: How do you know that your patient has leaky gut? What tests prove that?

[00:37:37] Dr. Michael Biamonte: We do a test that’s done by a lab called Medisol. It’s a breath test. For years, I’ve been searching for tests for leaky gut. The original one we did, which everyone did, was called the lactulose mannitol recovery test where you have the patient drink a small bottle of lactulose and mannitol and then you collect their urine and you see how much they absorb and how much they peed out, and that will tell you if they had leaky gut.

Nowadays, we have the Zonulin test which is very good, which tells us about the integrity of the brush border cells. That's a very good test. They’re including it now in certain stool tests. Of course you can have it done as a blood test. But I have found that sometimes it’s a little bit iffy. The best results I’ve had had been with this breath test. The lab can actually tell us if the person has leaky gut based on the gases that are in the person’s breath. I have found that to be from trial and error with using all these tests, that so far has been the one that's the most reliable. 

[00:38:43] Ashley James: So fascinating.

[00:38:44] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Keep something in mind here. This is a very important point. When we do these tests, we follow up with them. This is where, unfortunately, a lot of practitioners and a lot of patients become very sloppy. We do a test on someone, we find they have leaky gut, they go on the program for leaky gut. When we feel that they’ve improved significantly enough, we retest them so that we have actual proof the leaky gut is gone. And if you don’t do that, your whole program is going to be very sloppy and you’re not going to be really assured of what direction and what’s happening because you don’t really know. You're guessing. You're guessing your leaky gut is gone because this main symptom I had of the pimple on my nose hurting, every time I ate this food went away. Well, that's not scientific. Because you can have other reasons why that's happening. We’ve had people who’ve done the leaky gut test. They were positive. They went on the leaky gut program. They got better to some degree. We repeated the test, the leaky gut was gone and they said it can’t be “because I still have this symptom.” Well, we end up finding that that symptom is caused by something else and not leaky gut.

You got to get away from opinionated, subjective concepts and you have to think more objectively if you're really going to get a result.

[00:40:00] Ashley James: It’s good to know your body and listen to your symptoms, but it’s not good to just decide that those symptoms are caused by this without doing any follow up test and proving it. I love your program because you're checking in with the body and what’s happening in the gut throughout the program so that you can make the most informed decision as to what’s best next.

My mom was on the anti-candida diet for half her life. I bet people get stuck, right? They go to a practitioner, they do a test, they say they have leaky gut, and then they end up eating for years and years and years like the leaky gut program without completing it, without getting to the final phase and getting true health like getting to the other side. They just get stuck in a cycle of just having to eat a certain way or take a bunch of herbs without completing it. So, I really love that you are so pragmatic about this. 

[00:40:59] Dr. Michael Biamonte: You’ve got to be objective and subjective. You have to know when to use both and when they fit in.

[00:41:04] Ashley James: At what point is phase 2 complete? What does phase 3 look like?

[00:41:10] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Well, phase 2 is complete when we have the flora restored. As I said, the evidence that the flora is restored is usually they’ll go through a period of a few weeks when they're on the correct flora program where they’ll have bloating and gas. The bloating and gas will go away with it. There's that particular reaction in the urine test that we’re looking for that occurs, we know they're cool.

Now, the next thing, the very first thing we do on phase 3 is we do a hair and mineral analysis, and we do a test called the organics test. The reason why we do these two tests is because the organics test will tell us if they’re being exposed to any kind of chemical toxicity. They’ll also tell us how well they detoxify. It also has a GI panel that looks for arabinol and some other organic acids which will further confirm the candida is gone. 

Then we look at the hair analysis for toxic metals. So, if we find any toxicity, if we find toxic metals, toxic chemicals, anything like this in the person, then we either can do some further testing to identify exactly what it is, or if we feel like we have the date and we know what it is, then we put them on a program to detoxify the metals or the chemicals or the molds or whatever it is we happen to find. 

 Once we do that which can last quite a few months, depending on what the person has, it could be 5 to 6 months easy to get rid of the metals. Once we have that done, then we repeat those tests to verify and confirm that the toxicity is gone. Now we look at their balance of nutrients in the body. We look at all their amino acids, we look at their hormones, we look at their vitamins, we look at their minerals, we look at their fatty acids, etc. We look at virtually every nutrient in the person’s body and look to see what we need to do now to rebalance that and get that into a normal level. When that's done, that's the end of phase 3 and then we can look at them from a phase 4 viewpoint. 

The phase 4 is dealing strictly with the immune system. If the person, and this again goes back to what I was saying about the order you do things in, if you're going to try to handle somebody’s immune system while they still have toxic metals, you're going to fail. If you're going to try to handle somebody’s immune system while they still have improper adrenal or thyroid function, you're going to fail. If you're going to try to handle their immune system while they're liver or their insulin levels are still off, you're going to fail. If you're going to try to handle the immune system while the person is deficient in testosterone or DHA or they have high cortisol, you're going to fail. So, all of those things have to be handled on phase 3 first before we touch their immune system.

[00:43:54] Ashley James: This thought came to mind. This would be an amazing program for those who are choosing to battle cancer in a holistic way. This would be perfect from the go-through because all these things you’ve mentioned cause the immune system to be totally drained and totally focused on these things instead of actually beating the cancer.

[00:44:19] Dr. Michael Biamonte: I would agree with you. You do have genetic factors when it comes to cancer. And even candida. There are genetics that make people more prone to candida. There are certain snips that actually make a person much more prone to candida than not. And of course, with cancer, we know that cancer and looking at the genes that are involved in cancer is an absolutely fascinating study and very, very warranted. What’s even more interesting is when you're studying genetics is when you look at the genes and you get a physiologist who is well-schooled in nutrition and herbology and things, and they're able to look at those genes and they’re able to actually tell you what nutrients or what herbs are good in trying to control that gene from manifesting and doing its damage. To me, that's the future of a lot of medicine is looking at somebody’s genes and then putting them on a program where they actually are taking nutrients that are going to try to control the aberration that the gene may cause.

[00:45:26] Ashley James: The epigenetic expressions being affected by levels of toxicity or lack of nutrients. What you're doing is perfect for that because you're looking at the body holistically but you're going about it in the correct order.

You mentioned how in phase 3 you're looking at the balance of nutrients and hormones and it occurs to me, does having a chronic candida infection affect? Or how does it affect our hormones?

[00:45:58] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Candida is very estrogenic. So if you have candida, you're going to become estrogen dominant. It may not show in your lab work, but it’s going to happen with your estrogen receptor sites. So, you're going to manifest being estrogen dominant. If a man has candida, he is going to have low testosterone. Generally, people who have candida have elevated cortisol.

[00:46:21] Ashley James: So their body is in a higher state of stress which is that fight or flight, so they're less likely to be in that rest and digest healing mode as well.

[00:46:28] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Right. Then the biggest one is thyroid. This is why if you do a search for me on the internet, you're going to find that I have websites that are dedicated to candida but I also have a website that’s called the New York City Thyroid Doctor. Because candida affects your thyroid and if the doctor doesn’t understand the relationship between candida and thyroid and if he doesn’t understand the relationship between toxins and toxic metals and thyroid, and if he doesn’t understand the relationship between trace minerals and thyroid, he’s not going to get the optimal result when he’s trying to correct someone’s thyroid function. Those are three areas we cover on that website that the average practitioner who deals with thyroid has no clue about.

I actually laugh about it when patients will tell me “I went to this thyroid specialist on Park Avenue and he’s one of the greatest in the world,” and blah, blah, blah, I’ll ask him “Well, what did he say about your zinc-copper ratio or your calcium-potassium ratio? Did he inquire as to whether or not you had any mercury affecting your thyroid? Or, did he talk about reverse T3 or T4?” He said, “No, the man didn’t say anything about any of that.” Most medical doctors are very good in understanding the thyroid from the viewpoint of hormone levels in the blood.

Now, for any people out there who took biology and biochemistry, you studied something called the Krebs cycle in school and you studied something else called the electron transport chain. When you're dealing with the thyroid hormone, the thyroid hormone enters the electron transport chain and the hormone undergoes certain changes. One of the major changes you get with thyroid hormone is that it’s converted from T4 to T3, and in order for that conversion to take place, you have to have a balance of other hormones which is a correct balance, and you also have to have certain trace minerals that enable that to occur. Those trace minerals become coenzymes in helping this transformation to occur. Then, when you hit the cell, the sensitivity of your cells to thyroid hormones depend on a ratio of zinc to copper and calcium to potassium.

For the medical doctors out there who are listening to me or thinking I don’t know what I’m talking about, go pick up Guyton’s physiology book. Guyton’s physiology is a book that's the bible of physiology. Pick up Guyton’s physiology and look up where Guyton talks about how calcium and potassium, in some way, he said not fully known at this time, act as either a receptor or a governor against thyroid function. In other words, Guyton was saying that potassium in your cells sensitize as your tissues to the effects of thyroid hormones, while calcium desensitizes. The reason why that exists is because if you went one extreme to the other, you’d either the thyroid hormone overrunning your body and making you hyperthyroid or you would be hypothyroid.

So, there is hypo- and hyperthyroid based on the hormone levels, but then there is also hypo and hyperthyroid based on the cell receptor levels. The only way you can understand that is that you can’t understand that by a blood test because a blood test isn’t telling you the level of the mineral in your cell. It’s telling you what the mineral level in your blood is and the blood is a means of transportation. The cell is a storage site. So, in order to understand how your thyroid hormone is working in your cells, you’ve got to look at a tissue. And the easiest one to look at is hair which is why we use hair analysis. You look at the ratios between calcium and potassium in your hair and zinc and copper, and then you have an understanding of how well your body is responding to thy thyroid hormone and how well you're actually utilizing it. Also, if you see your mercury or your arsenic is high, you know that those metals are downregulating your thyroid hormones.

[00:50:41] Ashley James: And the stuff in tap water as well.

[00:50:43] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yeah, exactly, of course. Exactly. So this is why we have this other website about thyroid is because thyroid and candida are very heavily related. There are some doctors out there who have told me that they don’t believe that Hashimoto’s occurs outside of a candida patient. They believe everyone with Hashimoto’s has candida and leaky gut. Now, I think that's a bit extreme because there are maybe some other conditions, environmental conditions which would also cause it. But they have a good point. It’s more prevalent in candida patients and patients with leaky gut. Hashimoto’s is. 

When you draw back to reveal a little bit, you find that a lot of what functional medical doctors and functional nutritionists like myself, what we’re really doing is a term that was used years ago which kind of died ago, but it’s called clinical ecology. This is what a lot of us are, actually, in reality, doing. It’s clinical ecology. We’re looking at the environment and how the environment and different infections and toxins in the environment affects this person and their health from a clinical standpoint.

[00:51:56] Ashley James: I love it. I love it, I love it, I love it. So it sounds like your program could take about 2 years. Does that sound about right?

[00:52:04] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes, that's very possible. Of course, people get upset hearing about that because they read advertisements on the internet, let’s say, for different products like Freelac and all these things which claim they get rid of your candida in a couple of weeks. You got to be careful because that's false advertising. They don’t have any proof that they're getting rid of. You take the product and you feel better. That's not proof your candida is gone. That's only proof you feel better. What happens when you stop taking the product? You feel bad again. Well, that's because you needed to continue to take it. That starts to get into the same fallacy and the same kind of racket that you have with psychiatric drugs.

Since I just said that, I will further say that most of the mass shootings, when you go and you analyze the people who have done all these mass shootings, most of them were on psychiatric drugs and now withdrawing from them. If you study the actual data, you find out that when people try to withdraw from psychiatric drugs, their symptoms go wild. Just as a side note.

[00:53:10] Ashley James: It is so painful to see how many people are suffering. And they go to their doctor, they say they’re depressed with anxiety and they're put on meds, and have a worst experience with the meds. My beautiful neighbor was murdered by a man. I mean, just terrifying. She was murdered by a man who had recently been put on drugs and once they put him in the jail with the psychiatric prison and they got him balanced, got him off the drugs or whatever, and he says “I have no idea why I did it.” They put him on these drugs and he started having obsessive thoughts about killing people and he claimed guilty. He’s spending the rest of his life in prison, but he absolutely did not understand why he did it. And he was put on a bunch of new-to-the-market drugs. I’m not saying that’s the cause all the time, but it’s just we see this, like you said, you look at people who do these violent acts and you see a lot of times they're also on drugs. There's got to be a better way.

[00:54:12] Dr. Michael Biamonte: This is something I’d be happy to come back to the show and we can talk about this exclusively because I’ve made it a hobby in the last 30 years to get people off psychiatric medications by handling the real problems that they have in their body, looking for the real physical problems. See, a psychiatrist, when they prescribe these drugs, they really don’t fully understand how the drug is going to work and how it’s going to work in combination. When they talk about a chemical imbalance in the brain, there's absolutely no proof that it exists. No one has ever proven with any tests that a chemical imbalance exists.

[00:54:48] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

[00:54:49] Dr. Michael Biamonte: It’s never been proven. If you go out and look for it, you're never going to find it. There's no proof. It’s a word or a phrase that's been thrown around and it’s been marketed. Psychiatry and the whole field of psychiatric drugs is one of the most amazing marketing scams you’ve ever seen in your life. How it works is incredible. There's a video people can find, which is called Marketing Madness. You look for that video. It’s rather lengthy but it’s incredible in how it explains and give you all the actual proof about how this whole thing is just like one big racket. Because I can tell you they have no clue what they're doing. Psychiatrists are probably the most inept out of any group of professionals. They have the lowest SAT scores, they have the highest rate of suicide, they have the highest rate of committing felonies and other crimes. That's not my opinion. That came out of the LA Times in 1988 when they did a special on psychiatry.

But anyway, rather than wasting our time on them, let’s go back to the main point.

[00:55:56] Ashley James: Yes, I’d love to have you back. I know you are pressed for time and we only have a few more minutes. I wanted to make sure that we understand how we can get on your program. I also wanted to field a few of the questions from the listeners. So you talked about these different products, these binders and all these different products. Your program is really individualized. So, someone comes and works with you. You can perform telemedicine or do they have to come see you in person?

[00:56:24] Dr. Michael Biamonte: No, we don’t see anyone in person anymore. We do everything via the internet.

[00:56:31] Ashley James: So you can order the labs or tell them to get their doctor to order these labs; therefore, they could be covered. Some of these labs could be covered by their insurance. 

[00:56:39] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes, some. But mostly, the lab tests are either self… I guess, you would call it a home test that I’ve developed. So it’s a self-test they do at home on their own urine. Or they can contact one of the labs online and have the kits sent to their house and they can collect a hair sample or urine sample, saliva sample, stool sample, or whatever is needed. The only time that we ever need a doctor is if they need a blood test for anything.

So, the testing, everything is basically done online and right with them at home. Very easy.

[00:57:17] Ashley James: Fantastic. I know you have a few websites. What is the best website for those who want to get on your program? 

[00:57:26] Dr. Michael Biamonte: I’d say it’s either health-truth.com or it would be The New York City Yeast Doctor. 

[00:57:32] Ashley James: Okay, dot com. And we’ll of course have all those links in the show notes of today’s podcast at Learntruehealth.com. So we’ve got a lot of questions from the listeners in the Facebook group.

[00:57:43] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Shoot.

[00:57:44] Ashley James: Okay. So, Desiree says, “I’m super excited to hear the protocol.” So, good, you already heard the protocol because we talked about it. “For kicking candida and heavy metal detox.” She has three questions. “Which would work first? Heavy metal or candida? Sounds like you handle candida and then heavy metal.”

[00:58:01] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yeah, you have to. Because if you handle heavy metals first, drawing those metals out, some of them you urinate out, some of them go out in your poop, and when they go out in your poop, they have to go through your intestinal tract, and the candida absorbs them. So you always have to handle candida first before heavy metals. There's a very famous doctor out in the Midwest who’s been preaching for years that you have to handle the mercury first, and I thank him for that because he has sent me so many patients inadvertently who couldn’t handle it. They come to me, they say, “Dr. Biamonte, everything he said made sense. But when I went on the piss treatment, I couldn’t handle it. My candida was going insane.” So that's how I learned not to do it that way. That's how I actually learned that was the wrong way to do it. I listened to what the patients were telling me and I sat back and I looked at it from the viewpoint of the textbooks in terms of how metals affect these organisms, and it made sense.

[00:58:59] Ashley James: I love it. I love that you figured so much of this out and we get to benefit from your years and years of expertise. Her next question: “What can we do for kids that have this? Can they also go through this program?” 

[00:59:09] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Oh yeah, the kids go through the same program. It’s just that it’s a little different for kids. Some of the products used are not as potent, but it’s the same concept. Kids have to go through the program using the same concepts. Not necessarily the same products and the same doses, but it’s the same concept.

[00:59:26] Ashley James: In the last part 1 of this interview series, we did discuss symptoms to look for to know whether you have candida or not, and of course, you could order Dr. Biamonte’s urine test to determine whether you do have a candida issue. Her third question is, “Does candida have a direct correlation to allergies?”

[00:59:43] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes, it does. Absolutely. Patients with candida will notice that when their candida is worse, their allergies are worse, and they’ll especially, very interestingly, notice that when they have die-off, their allergies get worse. It’s all basically the same mechanism that's going on. It’s all the same mechanism. But the funny thing is, from birth, you’ll find that kids who are born with a lot of allergies, who are born with eczema, who are born with asthma, these are kids who are born with candida. Candida is the underlying reason why they have these problems.

[01:00:15] Ashley James: And by clearing it up, do allergies go away? The asthma from allergies go away?

[01:00:20] Dr. Michael Biamonte: They go away. Allergies go away. Because an allergy is from a hyperactive immune system. People think allergy, my immune system is weak. No, it’s not. It’s hyperactive, it’s hyper vigil. One of the reasons why it’s that way is because it’s dealing with candida all the time. So when you get the candida out of the computation, the immune system, it’s the balance between the thymus gland and the adrenal glands. Any good nutritionist or acupuncturist or chiropractor is going to know this. How you’re handling allergies ultimately is by balancing or rebalancing the adrenal and thymus. Most doctors don’t think the thymus does anything past the age of 2 or 3 years old. That's not true. The thymus makes a hormone called thymosin which is still active and is still doing things well into your years. So there is thymus involution that occurs. As you get older and your adrenals become more active, your thymus does shrink a bit, but the thymus is still there doing something. It’s not like your tonsils that you just remove or something like this.

[01:01:23] Ashley James: Sandy asks if you have experience with—and I hope I pronounce this right—C. krusei candida. 

[01:01:32] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yeah, there are many different strains of candida. What you need to know about them is some of them have evolved and become drug resistive because these strains have been exposed to repeated pharmaceuticals like nystatin and some other drugs. Ultimately, there is no difference between any of these strains as far as I’m concerned. Any strains of candida, whether it’s tropicalis, krusei, glabrata, whatever the strain is, we kill it all the same. There's only, I will say, of interest, there are some Japanese strains of candida which are very interesting because they’re able to produce huge amounts of alcohol in the person’s body to the point where the person could actually be legally intoxicated. But even that candida can be killed. But it is not worthy that those strains exist. They are interesting.

[01:02:25] Ashley James: I’ve seen a few episodes like House or those kind of MD TV shows where they have a patient that's chronically drugged and it turns out it’s in their gut. They love doing that as a plot because it’s amusing. But all these candidas will die in your program is what you're saying.

[01:02:43] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes, I should probably be serving 20 lifetimes in jail for killing candida over and over again.

[01:02:52] Ashley James: Now, there are several listeners so I’ll just group it all together. There are several listeners who are so excited and they're saying they have irritated, patchy eczema lesions all on their body, and they wonder what is the connection between these and one of them said that they started appearing on their body after several courses of antibiotics, and they wonder if there's a correlation between eczema and candida. 

[01:03:18] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Eczema is caused by candida and leaky gut. I had eczema as a child. I didn’t really get rid of my eczema until I finally handled the candida I had, my own imbalance in my flora. Although when I did it on myself, I did it backwards because I hadn’t evolved this technology yet. I did it the hard way. But guaranteed, candida is the cause of eczema.

[01:03:45] Ashley James: Well, that is saying something because right here we’ve talked about 2 conditions that are autoimmune in nature. 

[01:03:53] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Have everyone go online, go on Google, do a search for candida and eczema and take a look at how many documents you end up pulling up.

[01:04:03] Ashley James: There's a listener who talks her tongue that is always coated and she wonders if it’s candida. Even though she scrapes it—she’s wondering is this candida—her tongue is always just covered in something.

[01:04:15] Dr. Michael Biamonte: There's a condition called thrush which typically happens in AIDS and latter stages of cancer where the candida starts to grow in your mouth. The American Indians used to call it furry tongue. Your mouth and your tongue become furry and white-looking. Your tongue is very painful. It’s very hard to swallow, it’s very painful. that's called thrush and that's having live candida growing in your mouth. That's a different condition than I believe what this lady is talking about. Simply having a coated tongue very often comes about due to your sinuses having a constant drip or having allergies. Or if you have candida, your tongue can be coated from the candida in your intestinal tract causing the mucus to form in your mouth. They’re two different things. But those are the two explanations for that. One is the extreme which is thrush and the other, we would just simply mark like let’s say it’s dysbiosis or it actually could be a sinus problem.

There's a great test you can get nowadays. It’s a sinus culture that identifies in your sinuses whether or not you have MARCoNS and biofilm there. I very often see that condition in these people with the tongue type of issue that they have MARCoNS. MARCoNS in their sinus with biofilm and even yeast. And that's what’s causing their tongue to get covered. It’s not the actual infection. It’s the fact that the immune system and the body is creating mucus there to try to protect itself from the irritation of these microbes.

[01:05:50] Ashley James: How would you go about helping the person get rid of those microbes in the sinus? Would these anti-parasitics and anti-fungals that they take on your program help remove that from the sinus. 

[01:06:02] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yeah, they do but we also give them very specific localized treatments using different sinus products that are available now that kill all those bad bugs there.

[01:06:12] Ashley James: Love it. Then my final question is female yeast infections like vaginal yeast infections. How similar is that to a colon candida infection? Would going through this whole protocol also help a woman to balance her body to no longer have chronic vaginal yeast infections?

[01:06:33] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Per the Merck Manual, which is a book that should be in every physician’s library, you do not treat chronic vaginal yeast infections without concurrently treating the yeast infection in the colon. Women who only treat vaginal yeast never get better unless it’s just a flippant one-time yeast infection. Any woman who has chronic vaginal yeast infections has candida overgrowth in her colon and her intestine just like all the other candida patients. She’s never going to get rid of the vaginal yeast infection until she stops worrying about the vaginal area and starts treating her whole body, meaning her colon and her small intestine. It’s never going to happen.

[01:07:15] Ashley James: It was such a blast having you on the show today and having you back. I can’t wait to have you again to talk about getting people off of psychiatric medications. That is just going to be such a great rabbit hole to go down under. I am so excited for that one. I’m thrilled that we brought this information to the listeners because it sounds like a lot of people who suffer chronically for years and years have a candida infection in their gut and it’s this grouping of things. Like Lyme disease is not just one thing. They often find there’s all these co-infections and it’s a co-environment. It sounds like candida is the same thing. It becomes this ecosystem that supports this ongoing chronic infection and you help to break it apart and then support the body in creating that new ecosystem that is inhospitable to candida. I thank you so much for the work that you do and thank you for coming on the show and sharing with us. Is there anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?

[01:08:14] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Lyme disease. What happens in many patients with Lyme is they actually become cured by their doctors but they don’t believe it because they still have symptoms they associate with Lyme. Those symptoms are now candida. Interestingly enough, there are two conditions nowadays which are interesting to consider in this light, one is COVID. COVID causes candida. The COVID vaccine causes candida. And treatments for Lyme disease cause candida. So many of these things you're hearing about long COVID, very often long COVID is just simply somebody who’s now developed candida as a result of having COVID. The same thing with people with Lyme disease who are going around saying none of the tests really work, they're saying that because they had Lyme, they were treated for Lyme, they tested for Lyme, it showed the Lyme improved greatly or was gone but they still had symptoms that they think are from Lyme. Those symptoms are now from the antibiotics they took that caused candida because they took the antibiotics to get rid of Lyme. Very simple. 

[01:09:17] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. That's hundreds of thousands of people right there who are suffering, suffering and suffering. Thank you so much. I hope we help so many people today with the information that you're providing with us. Can’t wait to have you back on the show. This has been wonderful. Thank you.

[01:09:37] Dr. Michael Biamonte: You're more than welcome.

[01:09:38] Ashley James: Wasn’t that a fantastic interview with Dr. Biamonte? Aren’t you just on fire and want to share this with all your friends? I know I am definitely going to be sharing this. The second I finished this interview, I started texting some of my friends, telling my friends how excited I was for them to hear this because I know just how much this interview is going to make a difference in so many people’s lives. I’d be remiss if I didn’t let you know about a resource that I have found invaluable, and that is Takeyoursupplements.com. When you go to that website, it’s very simple. You put in your information and Jennifer Saltzman who is the head health coach there, I’ve been working with her for over 10 years, we’ve become very good friends. Those supplements are designed by the naturopathic physician that helped me to heal and reverse, to no longer have polycystic ovarian syndrome, chronic adrenal fatigue, type 2 diabetes, and infertility. He helped me to resolve all those issues. And Jennifer Saltzman has been trained, as have I, in his protocols. But when you go to Takeyoursupplements.com, you put in your information, and the two of you get to have a phone call together. She will help you based on there’s a set of questions we go through that determine what mineral deficiencies you have or what nutrient deficiencies you have. She’s also an expert in helping people to get especially those who are like have had to eliminate, have a lot of food sensitivities, who had to eliminate a lot of foods, who have symptoms like Lyme disease, digestive issues, bloating, or heartburn. Just frustrating, constant gnawing digestive issues. She’s been fantastic at helping people to strengthen the digestive system and to strengthen the immune system. She’s also fantastic at helping people with chronic pain. Those are her areas of expertise. She’s been trained by these naturopathic physicians that have created these protocols and also designed these supplements, and my favorite being, their mineral supplements are the most bioavailable mineral supplements I have ever found. They’ve made such a huge difference for me.

So if you're like, hey, you know, I’m thinking like I just need to add more trace minerals to my life, or you keep hearing about how important it is to have not only just magnesium but have all 60 minerals or 77 trace minerals and elements in your body, in your life, because our food is really void of minerals. They don’t remineralize the soil in large agriculture. So unless you yourself are growing your own food and you know you’ve remineralized your soil, then you’re not getting all the minerals you need. So, go ahead and just go to Takeyoursupplements.com, put in your information, she’s amazing at working with people, really just very understanding. And she quickly goes through a list of the symptoms you have and then she helps you to determine what supplements you need that are within your budget. They’re dosed by body weight. So it’s a very specific protocol. Then you follow up with her. A lot of practitioners out there will just like drop off into nothing. She will follow up with you and help you along your path. So, I absolutely Jennifer Saltzman at Takeyoursupplements.com and she’s helped so many of the listeners. In fact, if you go to the Learn True Health Facebook group, you will see a lot of testimonials there. You can use the search function in the Facebook group and you’ll see testimonials there of people who have shared how much she has made a difference in their healing process.

So, a lot of times we’re deficient in key nutrients. And we always think about vitamins. But really, minerals are the hardest thing to secure and I just love. They’re liquid trace minerals that are in such a way that the body can readily absorb them even people with chronic absorption issues because they're in such an ionic state that the body can readily uptake them. That was my experience when I started taking those minerals years ago. I immediately felt. I had this gnawing hunger all the time because my blood sugar was out of control and I was exhausted. In one day, the first day of taking the supplements, the trace minerals, I noticed that my gnawing hunger went away. Within five days of taking the supplements, my energy came back. I had really bad chronic fatigue and I had really out of control blood sugar. Within the first 5 days, feeling such a difference, it was amazing. In less than 3 months, my diabetes was completely gone. Of course, I did dietary changes as well. But the thing is, you can’t out supplement a bad diet, so you always have to make literally good positive changes to your diet. But at the same time, you can’t eat your way to enough minerals given conventionally grown food. It’s just not possible. So most people out there are nutrient deficient in certain key minerals. That’s why I love the Takeyoursupplements.com. I love their minerals and I love the work that Jen’s doing.

So, check them out. They also have a 30-day moneyback guarantee which I only ever recommend companies or products that I believe that make a difference for me, that have a difference for other listeners and that also will stand behind their products to make sure that they are legitimate and that they are their priorities and their ethics are there to support you in your health’s success. So, I’m proud of that as well. Awesome. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this show with those you care about. Come join the Facebook group and share your testimonials. I’d love to hear you and I’d love to see you there.

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Book by Dr. Michael Biamonte

The Candida Chronicles

Use coupon code LTH for the listener discount at www.energybits.com 

Energy Bits = Spirulina (for energy and nutrition)
Recovery Bits = Chlorella (for sleep and detox)
Vitality Bits = Spirulina/Chlorella combo

Coupon code LTH at energybits.com www.energybits.com 

Articles:

Protect Your Mitochondria and Longevity with Algae:
https://www.energybits.com/blog/protect-your-mitochondria-and-longevity-with-algae

Algae Outperforms Collagen for a Better You and a Healthier Earth:
https://www.energybits.com/blog/algae-outperforms-collagen-for-a-better-you-and-a-healthier-earth

Gut Healing with Algae:
https://www.energybits.com/blog/get-gutsy-with-algae

Surprise! Your Best Biohack is Algae!
https://www.energybits.com/blog/surprise-your-best-biohack-is-algae

Mitochondrial Self-Healing Superfoods: High Potency Chlorella & Spirulina

https://www.learntruehealth.com/mitochondrial-self-healing-superfoods-high-potency-chlorella-spirulina

Imagine feeling stronger, more alert, and more energized than ever. How? By taking in spirulina and chlorella. These miracle health superfoods contain all the nutrients that will protect your mitochondria, the powerhouse of your cells, from damage. In this episode, Catharine Arnston explains how it works in your body and offers tips on how to use this vital food product.

Highlights:

• Macroalgae and microalgae
• Spirulina
• Chlorella
• Ascorbic acid
• Chlorophyll
• ENERGYbits
• RECOVERYbits
• BEAUTYbits
• VITALITYbits
• Superoxide dismutase

Intro:

Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 487.

I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show Catharine Arnston who was in episodes 234, 265, 266, and 357—all about studying, actually, the most studied food in the world that is used as a medicine. It’s a very medicinal food, a superfood. And today, we’re going to talk about mitochondrial health and healing the mitochondria. I’m really, really excited to dive into this topic. But first, for those who haven’t gone back and listened to those four episodes, Catharine, I’m excited that you're going to give them a quick recap for those who haven’t heard that information because it’s really important information. Listeners can go to EnergyBits.com and use coupon code LTH (as in Learn True Health) at EnergyBits.com for Catharine’s amazing superfood algae.

I’ve tried a bunch of different algae on the market, and there are a lot of companies out there. There's only a handful that I know of that strive to make sure there’s no lead and heavy metals in their algae. But out of all the companies that are sort of the highest quality and do the most testing, the rigorous testing to make sure that they are the cleanest, ENERGYbits is by far my favorite flavor. I’ve tried those other ones that the naturopaths push, and they kind of taste and smell fishy to me and chalky. And I don’t like them. I don’t know what it is about your chlorella and spirulina, but to me, it’s the best tasting. Yeah, I enjoy the flavor. But the real litmus test was getting our son to eat it, and he’s been eating your stuff since he was a toddler. We call it green crackers in our household.

[00:02:03] Catharine Arnston: Yeah, right. I remember that. 

[00:02:05] Ashley James: And it makes your tongue turn green, and we stick our tongues out at each other. And he loves it as a little snack. But I have some great anecdotal stories for detox. I’m having a great experience for the last few years using it in conjunction with my sauna therapy for detox. And then, I have a friend who eats it regularly, and she says her hair started growing and thick—thick, wonderful hair instead of having the hair loss that she was experiencing or the thinning hair. She started growing back thick, thick, thick. And her hair is thick and beautiful and lustrous. She said her skin cleared up and was just healthier. She just notices not only does she feel good while every day eating your spirulina and chlorella, but she sees it. She looks it on the outside. So, that is true health, is when we’re so healthy on the inside, it comes out on the outside.

[00:02:54] Catharine Arnston: Exactly.

[00:02:55] Ashley James: So, I love your ENERGYbits. EnergyBits.com coupon code “LTH“.

So, let’s dive in. Give us the recap for those that haven’t listened to those previous episodes, and then we’re going to jump into mitochondrial health. So, welcome back to the show. It’s been a few years.

[00:03:08] Catharine Arnston: Thank you. Before I do that, I just want to share with your community that I’m so thrilled just to hear about our algae tablets. I do too. But 99.9 percent, so that's virtually everyone else, swallows them. Because the chlorella does I think taste better, but the spirulina is very much an acquired taste. It’s very earthy, and it’s very chewy because of the very high protein and essential fatty acids. So, virtually, everybody else swallows them. And when you swallow them, there is no green flavor. There is no repeat like you would have with fish oil. So it’s an easy, fast, and effortless way to get your nutrients and protect your health and your mitochondria, and we’ll dive into that. But I’m so thrilled that you and your son chew them because I do too. But I’m used to eating them because I’ve been eating them for 12 years, which is how long I’ve been running the company.

[00:04:06] Ashley James: I like chewing them. I like chewing them because I feel like I’m eating a snack.

[00:04:09] Catharine Arnston: Exactly.

[00:04:10] Ashley James: It’s a snack. And then I drink water with it because it’s dehydrated. So obviously, you need to rehydrate it. But I like the flavor. At first, you don’t know what to expect. Right? So, in the first few mouthfuls, you don’t know what to expect. But after a while, you're like, “Oh!” Your body starts to crave it, and you start to really enjoy it. I like to drink water with it. I’ve tried throwing like 30 little tablets in my smoothie. Swallowing it? I don’t know. There's something satisfying about chewing it.

[00:04:39] Catharine Arnston: I agree. But for those who don’t like the flavor, it seems to be most people, swallowing is the easiest thing. But I do want to get into what algae is and I want to segue from something that you just said, which is that it’s food. The first thing people need to understand is that algae is food. It is not a supplement. Our tablets are about the size of a baby aspirin, and they may look like a supplement or a vitamin or a pill, but they are not. We actually call them, or I call them “bits” because they are bits of nutrition.

And first of all, algae was the first life on earth almost 4 billion years ago and there is algae everywhere. Macroalgae is basically seaweed which is high in fiber and high in iodine because it’s come from the sea, with virtually no nutrition. But what we’re talking about is microalgae, which is microscopic in size. Something like a million microalgae cells could fit on the head of a pin. That's how tiny they are. And microalgae is everywhere. Macroalgae is only in the sea; hence, the word “seaweed”. Microalgae is in the lakes, the rivers, the streams, the soil, yes, the oceans, what feeds the whales. It’s probably in your swimming pool, your aquarium.

But the two that we’re going to talk about today, spirulina and chlorella, are not from the ocean. They are harvested as food crops in fresh water. This is really important because we’re constantly getting emails from people asking, “Well, is your algae tested for microplastics?” Well, there are no microplastics because that would be something from the ocean. Spirulina and chlorella, whether it’s ours or whether you buy it from Target or Whole Foods, it’s all grown in fresh water. It’s called hydroponic. We’re well known for our high quality, as you mentioned, and part of that comes from the fact that our water is triple-filtered spring mountain water.

We don’t use high heat to dry it. It’s actually not dehydrated. It’s just dried. And this will become very important when we talk about the mitochondria health issue. Because there are some very important enzymes. I’ll give you a little spoiler. One’s called (it’s a mouthful) superoxide dismutase, which stops the free radical damage of your mitochondria DNA. And that is essential for health and longevity. Anyways, it’s an enzyme. So, if you use high heat like everybody else, it kills that enzyme, so you don’t get the benefits of that particular enzyme as you would with our algae. Then, of course, we don’t use any binders when we press them into these little tablets. And we do third-party lab tests here in the United States.

So, we grew ours in Taiwan, which is world-renowned for having the highest quality algae. But the number one thing is, A, algae is a food crop. You’ll be surprised to know that algae as a food crop in Asia is as big of an industry as the cattle industry is here in the United States. It is enormous. It is a multibillion-dollar agricultural crop.

Now, people outside of Asia don’t know about algae. Why? Because it’s just not grown here. In Japan, you can’t ride your bicycle, you can’t go in your car without going by an algae farm. It is everywhere. Here, we drive by cornfields or wheatfields, neither of which are good healthy crops to be consuming. But in Asia, it’s algae. Now, if I do my job right and I help the world outside of Asia learn more about the healing benefits of algae and you’ll find that there are some that cannot be duplicated by anything else in the world. If I do my job right, we will be growing algae here in America. I have identified Florida as a subtropical environment where we can grow it similar to Taiwan. That won’t be for another 5 or 10 years, but that is the long-term plan. So, number one, a food crop.

Number two, as you mentioned, it is a superfood. I actually call it a super-duper food because it has nutrients, as I mentioned, that are not found in any other food in the world. And some of them are these antioxidants, which we’re going to talk about, that are found in the highest quantity in algae that are essential for your mitochondria health because they are the only four that can get into that mitochondria and remembering which we’ll talk about in a minute.

Algae, by the way, is also the most studied food in the world, as you mentioned. There are 60,000 studies on spirulina, and about 40,000 on chlorella. And in a minute, I’ll just go over briefly the differences between the two algae and what they do differently in your body. This is amazing. So, these studies are from America, from universities, from PhD’s in India, Taiwan. Every single country in the world has contributed research to the study of algae and have determined through all these peer-review studies that it does things like stops cancer, stops Alzheimer’s, improves your gut biome, reduces inflammation, protects your mitochondria, is great for pregnant moms, nursing moms, children, energy, focus. You’d almost think it’s unbelievable if it wasn’t so science-based.

When I started the company, quite honestly, it’s because my sister had breast cancer, and her oncologist in Canada recommended that she change her diet to an alkaline diet because she said it would help with her healing. They didn’t tell her what an alkaline diet was and why it was good for her, so my sister called me, and I did some research. I had no nutrition background at the time, but I discovered that an alkaline diet was a plant-based diet, which led me to algae, and then I discovered that it was endorsed by NASA as the most nutrient-dense food in the world, endorsed by the United Nations as the answer to world hunger because it has three times the amount of protein than steak. A hundred thousand studies document it as a multibillion-dollar industry in Asia. And the only thing wrong with algae is nobody outside of Asia knew about it.

So, I decided that I would dedicate my life 12 years ago to helping anyone and particularly in North America, but anyone who’s listening, to understand what algae is, why it is so critical for you and your family and the earth at this juncture in our world, and how to enjoy the benefits of it. It is the most effortless, concentrated, simple, safe, pure food in the world and a gift to us from Mother Nature, and to ignore it any longer is something you will do at the risk of your health. It’s really that simple. So, it is my honor to be representing Mother Nature here. It’s her concoction. I’m just the voice of algae. I can’t claim that I made this stuff up.

And the tablets, by the way, that we sell, as I mentioned, most of you will swallow them, but you can certainly eat them or add them to a smoothie or the chlorella tastes great—we’ll talk about that in a second—when you add it to your salads as a garnish or as in trail mix. But they’re made like this in these tablet forms in Asia. The company that grows it for us, they’ve been making this for 50 years. So, I remind people when I get on these podcasts that algae isn’t new. It’s just new to you. And just as you didn’t know about chia or quinoa or matcha or CBD or probably collagen powder until maybe 5 or 10 years ago, I’m here to help you understand what algae is and why it is better than any of those things and will basically help you regain and reclaim your health and longevity and your children’s as well. But it’s not new. It was used by the Egyptians 2000 years ago. They used to wrap themselves up in it for health and skin benefits. So, that’s a little bit of a summary, a little quick history of where algae came from and why you don’t know about it.

So, let me segue into now the two algae we’re going to talk about, spirulina and chlorella. Before I do that, I want to mention that spirulina is a blue-green algae. It is one of thousands of blue-green algae that exist. And chlorella is a green algae, one of thousands of green algae that exist. There also is red algae. Red algae is what makes, by the way, salmon pink and flamingos pink because they eat these particular algae. But I mention this because many of you may go to the internet at some point and Google blue-green algae and be horrified when you see some notice about blue-green algae closing your favorite beach. It’s not spirulina. Blue-green algae is a strain of algae and there are thousands and thousands of strains of it. Spirulina is one of them, and it is the one that is harvested, as I mentioned, in fresh water as a food crop. It is not the one that’s closing your beach. And by the way, I want to mention that poor algae get a bum rap because algae will show up only when there are toxins because algae kills bacteria. Now, the reason it showed up to close your beach is because somebody or something has poured toxins into your water. Now, they could have been run off from an agricultural situation or chemicals from a plant or just more people peeing in the water. Who knows? But you didn’t see the toxins. But you do see the algae. But algae is the clean-up crew. It’s there to protect you. It kills bacteria on your beach and in your body.

When you take algae, as we’ll talk about in a minute, internally as we do here with these tablets, it’s killing the bacteria internally just like algae would kill bacteria on your beach. And the good thing is usually, many of it, especially chlorella, it does it while you're sleeping. While you’re getting your beauty rest, you got the cleanup crew in there getting rid of toxins, and helping regenerate healthy cells, so it’s really an effortless way to improve your health and everything else.

So, that being said, spirulina, blue-green algae. First life on earth. Spirulina, drumroll, is actually a bacteria. It’s called cyanobacteria. Chlorella does belong to the plant kingdom. Now, you may say yourself, “What’s so important about it being a bacteria?” Well, when we get to the mitochondria conversation, you’ll find out it’s very important. But in terms of what it does for you now, because there is no cellulose wall because it’s a bacteria, spirulina gets absorbed into your bloodstream virtually instantly, certainly instantly if you chew it because it gets absorbed sublingually through your mouth into your bloodstream. And because spirulina is known as an energizing algae, that’s why we call ours ENERGYbits, and it has the highest concentration of protein in the world. Now, all the protein in both the algae, spirulina and chlorella, are in amino acid form. This is important because this allows your body to get access to the aminos, again instantly, because there is no cellulose wall to break down, no protein to break down, and attached to the aminos are all the B vitamins. B vitamins are what convert protein and glucose into energy. That's why when you take spirulina, your mind and your body and your mitochondria—and we’ll explain that in a minute—are energized.

Now, it’s not like lightning bolts from the sky because that kind of energy is a rush and then you have a crash. It’s based on a stimulant, a sugar or caffeine. The energy you get from spirulina is from the nutrition. You might not even notice it. It’s very quiet energy. You just suddenly realize hey, you're not tired, you're not hungry, you can focus, you can get through your day. You can have a great workout. 

And by the way, you’ll need a minimum probably of 10 tablets. I mean, you could start with 5, but you won’t really experience much. Ten tablets is kind our suggested entry-level amount to take. Most people do take the spirulina tablets in the morning or the afternoon or before a workout. Basically, any time you’re hungry, tired, fatigued, want energy or focus, if you're going on a long trip, or running an exam, we have brain surgeons, students, soccer moms using them. They're great for kids. It’s the safest, purest food you’ll ever put in your body or your children’s body. It’s great for pets. Pets love them. For children, we recommend either 1 or ½ tablet per their age. So if they're 2, give them 1 tablet a day, half of one or 1. If they're 4, give them maybe 2 or up to 4. But there is no upper limit. We have NHL players who put 75 spirulina in their smoothie before a game because they want all that access to that energy while they're doing rapid spurts on the ice. So, you can’t have too much salad and you can’t have too much spirulina.

By the way, I’m the one that discovered spirulina’s nutrient profile, particularly the amino acid profile. It’s virtually identical to mother’s breast milk. Same aminos and same proportions. And we know that mother’s breast milk is the perfect food. Well, algae and spirulina in particular is the next perfect food. Since spirulina and chlorella were given to us by mother nature, I consider it—and she’s a mother—it’s her version of mother’s breast milk. It’s quite remarkable how the nutrients are so similar. So, that's why spirulina is very energizing. The B vitamins, the access to the aminos. By the way, it’s a complete protein. It has 18 of the 20 aminos, all nine that your body can’t make, which is different from collagen powder which is not a complete protein that's missing tryptophan. 

Spirulina also is very high in iron, which is what carries oxygen in your blood, so that's energizing. It’s known as a vasodilator that opens up your blood vessels so that more blood can flow to your brain. It’s loaded with essential fatty acids like omega-3 and GLA, which reduce inflammation and also support brain function. It has boron that helps brain function. So, again, very energizing at the mental and physical levels. And when we get to the mitochondria discussion, I’ll elaborate more on the benefits of spirulina and why it is energizing at the cellular level.

In fact, when you take spirulina, some people take it before bed because it balances your blood sugar and the energy, again, is at a cellular level. What you do once you take it is up to you. You could have 10 tablets before bed, and it would still help you sleep because the energy is at the cellular level. If you take 10 tablets before you go on a workout, you’ll have a better workout because now you're using that cellular energy to propel your workout. So, it’s sort of like if someone gives you $10, it’s up to you how you spend that $10, right? Somebody might put it in the bank, somebody might go have a great lunch, somebody might buy themselves a nice little bauble or something. So, think of spirulina as being given the gift of energy, and it’s up to you and your lifestyle how you use that energy. You could sit and still be enjoying the benefits of it and still be energized at the cellular level. So, it’s pretty cool stuff.

By the way, there are actually two spirulina products on our website EnergyBits.com. The second one is called BEAUTYbits. The reason why there are two is because as I’ve mentioned earlier, I started the company because my sister had breast cancer. By the way, she’s completely cancer-free, 12 years cancer-free. We celebrate every year. I saw her a couple of months ago. So, women’s cells has always been a big priority for me. And I noticed when I first started the company that women were not purchasing ENERGYbits spirulina, and my girlfriends literally said, “Well, you got to make it pink and give it a cute name.” Because spirulina has more collagen than collagen powder, up to 400 percent by the way, and so it builds your skin and your hair, and it has the highest antioxidants in the world which stopped free radicals so it prevents wrinkles, I thought, “Well, the heck, let’s make a pretty version and call it BEAUTYbits.”

So, there are two spirulina on our website. They are absolutely identical. I’m not trying to fool anybody. I just want women to feel comfortable. Because it’s very happy packaging. I design everything. But I can’t help you or your skin or your health if I can’t get the algae into you. Just holding it outside of your body isn’t going to help you. So, that’s why there are two. Whatever strikes your fancy to make you feel comfortable because some people, if they think about algae at all, they think of it as pond scum or something that's closing their favorite beach. But they don’t think of it as something that is a remarkable nutritional beauty ingestible. So, all the things we do here at ENERGYbits is to take away the weirdness of algae, help you feel comfortable with it, help you learn the science, and understand there is no woo-woo. It’s just something that you’re not familiar with and we’re trying to make it more familiar for you and more comfortable because it really does amazing things, and it’s all science-based.

[00:22:54] Ashley James: And also, your company ensures the quality and the safety. Because it really is buy or beware out there. You can go on Amazon and buy some spirulina but it’s made in … I don’t mean to bash China. Unfortunately, there has been a history of toxic things coming out of China like melamine plastics in baby formula, as an example. Right? And the man that did that was put to death in China. China doesn’t condone this behavior. You know, it’s buy or beware out there, and it could be a different country that is producing something. It could just be some kind of green plastic powder claiming it’s spirulina. Right? As consumers, we need to do our due diligence and choose a company that does the third-party testing, doesn’t do skip batch testing. They test every batch. They will provide the test results to the public. They’re showing their integrity. And your company shows its integrity and that's why I trust that when I eat the spirulina and chlorella from your company, I know that it’s lead-free. I know that it’s heavy metal free. I know that it’s not filled with a bunch of fillers like these other companies, and it really is buy or beware.

So, yeah, I’ve heard a few people go, “Well, I can go to, like you said, I can go to Target. I can go to Ride Aid and pick up some.” But, I actually do know some, they're not college kids anymore, they graduated, but back about 10 years ago or so, I knew some college students that decided to do a study on their own of the different things in vitamin C that was on the shelf. And so, they went to every Rite Aid, Walgreens, Walmart, Target, and some supplement stores, generic supplement stores, and they buy all the vitamin C brands they could find and then they test it to see how much vitamin C was actually in it. Right?

[00:25:15] Catharine Arnston: I know the results.

[00:25:16] Ashley James: So, there’s some chewable vitamin C’s. They didn’t have gummies back then. They had some chewable vitamin C’s, they had some tablets, and then they had some capsules. Sometimes it’s powder, sometimes it’s like a hard-pressed tablet. So let’s say a tablet says it has a thousand milligrams, so 1 gram of vitamin C, ascorbic acid or whatever form they were saying the vitamin C was in. Most of the time it’s ascorbic acid derived from corn.

And so what they did was they picked apart each one in their lab at the college. They discovered that there was not one brand, not one brand that they could find that was over-the-counter that sold what they claimed had in it. So, if they said it was 1000 milligrams a capsule, maybe it was only 200. Right? There were some that were 100 percent filler, 0 vitamin C could be found. And most of them had some vitamin C but never was it accurate to the label. And this is a good thing and a bad thing. I know that sounds weird when I say it, but here’s the thing. It’s a good thing that the industry is not regulated. Here’s why: If the FDA actually took over, we would be in deep yogurt. 

[00:26:38] Catharine Arnston: You’d never have anything. 

[00:26:39] Ashley James: You would never have supplements again. And the FDA’s constantly under pressure from big pharma to shut down supplements. Now, there are certain health concerns when someone like takes too much of an herb and they have a negative effect and then all of a sudden now that herb is banned. Those are unfortunate. We don’t want the supplement industry being regulated because then big pharma will control the entire industry and then we won’t have access to things that are actually healthy for us. I know that kind of sounds like I got a tinfoil hat on and the thing is, I have so much more information on this topic and so I have been informed. And how it’s been laid out is that what we need to do instead is we need to do our own due diligence. We still want it to be the wild, wild west, but we need to find companies that will put the money and the time into ensuring the highest quality and stand behind the quality and not be these fly-by-night companies that get big and then get sold to Nestle.

I am so disappointed that companies like Pure Encapsulations were sold to Nestle, like I can’t trust them anymore. And I’ve seen this with like Garden of Life and other supplement companies where they used to have good products, they got sold to a big company and now the quality is gone in the toilet. So, please don’t ever get bought by a big company.

[00:28:10] Catharine Arnston: I’ll tell you. The little company, it’s a grind. I mean, I’ve been at this 12 years, 12-hour days 7 days a week for 12 years. And it’s a grind. Eventually, you run out of energy because you think “why don’t people understand this, what am I doing wrong?” The trouble is, these big companies, they have all the distribution channels. They can get to the product to places where us little companies just can’t go. So, I feel the empathy of other fellow entrepreneurs who have done their best to make sure they have a high-quality product. But at one point, you just run out of steam because it’s not easy. I’ll tell you this has been a labor of love for me. I mean, I just thought if I could stop one more person from getting cancer, I will die happy. But I’m 12 years in, I probably got another 12 years to go. And I do love still what I’m doing, but it’s not easy. It’s really, really hard to bring a high-quality product consistently to the world. I’ve seen pictures of other algae companies, capsules and they got ground up wrong because like you said, filler.

If there were ever a requirement of me to sort of get involved with a larger company, you can set standards of regulations. These things will not happen when you acquire the company. Or, you will file a lawsuit. And there are situations where that has happened and the quality has been maintained. But you have to do this because you love it. And I do love it. But it is not easy.

You were talking about vitamin C and just on that note, everyone thinks ascorbic acid is vitamin C. And I point out ascorbic acid is just one component. There's 200 components to vitamin C. Ascorbic acid is just one of 200, and yet, all the supplement companies make their vitamin C out of ascorbic acid and this is why they are so poorly absorbed because your body is looking for the other 199 pieces in order for it to absorb it. I tell people it’s like going to work with just your shoes on. You can’t just take ascorbic acid and think that you're getting vitamin C because it doesn’t exist in nature like that. When you eat vitamin C from an orange or from broccoli, there’s more vitamin C, by the way, in broccoli than there is in oranges, it has all those other components. This is one of the many reasons why algae is so far better for you than supplements because supplements are made from extracts, and extracts do not exist in nature. And so, when your body is trying to figure out what to do with it, it kind of gives up at some point, and you only absorb about 10 percent of it.

There are some exceptions because there are a handful of really high-quality supplement companies that are making their supplements from food. But it’s a very rare situation and that's why I’m so proud that algae is food and why I really take great lengths to help people understand that it is food and it’s unprocessed food. Again, we do not use high heat to dry our algae like everybody else does because as soon as you use high heat, not only do you kill the enzymes, you change the chemical structure of the nutrients. So, they aren’t as powerful, and they’re a little more difficult to absorb. So, there's lots of less expensive algae tablets on the internet or on Amazon. And lots of times, we have people saying, “Oh, I’m going to go try another brand.” They always come back because they say, “Well, I didn’t get the energy that I had from yours or it just didn’t seem to make a difference.” We have mothers whose kids are ADHD and have been reading statistics that in like within the next 10 years, 1 out of 2 children are going to be on the spectrum. I mean, it’s just insane what’s going on in our world these days. And algae literally is the answer for almost everything, and we’ll get into some of those details in a minute.

But yeah, we do go to great lengths. And these lab tests are not cheap. They're like $15,000 to $20,000, and they will only test what we tell them to do. So, I’ve got a long shopping list of things. Every time we do test, we do more tests. They’re very long and lengthy, complicated lab tests. We get labs from our suppliers in Taiwan, but we do a full set here in the United States. I think we’re the only company that I’m aware of that does that because we sell through doctor’s offices, chiropractors, functional medicine. And they need to know for sure that the algae has in it what we say it has, as you said. And we are only allowed to put a nutritional chart on our products that labeling requirements of the FDA. They don’t allow us to put all the nutrients. I mean, how crazy is that?

So, we have the nutritional chart that's found on all our packaging, but then we have a QR code that you can scan that gives you everything because we’re not allowed to put everything on. To me, that’s insane. Right? And we often get people saying, why does your nutrition chart on your website or the QR code not match the nutrition chart? This is why. Because we are just not allowed to put everything on there according to the FDA regulations. The FDA labeling is so stringent that if you have a line between the different nutrients that’s like 1/16 of a millimeter thicker than what they tell you it should be, they will not allow you to sell. I mean, it’s crazy. The regulations are so strict on labeling. So, anyways, I just want to throw that out there. 

[00:34:20] Ashley James: It’s just silly. It’s like on the one hand I can see how they want to help, but on the other hand, I see they're definitely not helping. I think my listeners are sort of really well-educated or at least they’re more into the health space than the standard American populace, the people who are asleep and just going with the flow. Right? And I say this on the show often that we need to be like a salmon swimming upstream. We need to go against. We need to be the black sheep. We need to go against the flow of the world if we want to not be a statistic.

[00:35:03] Catharine Arnston: Exactly.

[00:35:04] Ashley James: So, look at the statistics out there. 1 in 3 people are diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. That's insane. That is so sad. My mom died of cancer, and I’ve made it my life’s mission as with this podcast to help save other people’s moms so that if we can help some people not lose their family members to cancer, and my dad died of heart disease, and those are the two big ones, the two big killers. But he died six years later, and he really died of a broken heart of losing the love of his life. She died at 55, and she was the healthiest woman I knew and then just very, very quickly died of cancer. That's a whole episode in and of itself to get into. I can see now what the lifestyle that leads to that. This is why I teach. This is why I get guests like you, and we teach how we can prevent this.

[00:36:02] Catharine Arnston: It’s absolutely preventable. Absolutely.

[00:36:04] Ashley James: It is. But if you go with the flow and you eat the way everyone else eats, and you think the way everyone else thinks, and you just do what everyone else does, then you will be a statistic. 1 in 3 people have type 2 diabetes or are pre-diabetic. Seventy percent of the adult population in the United States is on at least one prescription medication, so that’s pain meds, high blood pressure meds, and antidepressants. The list goes on and on. This is a result of the body being out of balance, right? When we look at the body from a holistic standpoint, which is a different lens than the mainstream. So, for the listener who was brought up, like we all were, under the lens of the mainstream, you wait to get sick, and then you go to the doctor, the doctor gives you something that manages your symptoms, and you shop down the aisles of the grocery store, buying the junky cereal that has dye and has sugar as the first or second ingredient, and you just go with the flow, you get your annual flu shot, you take antibiotics the second you have a sore throat or whatever, just like whatever people are doing out there. They eat mostly food that is processed that are factory-made, that was made in a factory, or go out to restaurants, eat fried food, don’t really ever see just whole foods, meaning this is a vegetable, look there’s a vegetable with nothing on it, not altered in any way. That is the standard American lifestyle that has encapsulated most of the world. 

As a result, we can see even in, for example, they have studies, just incredible studies where they see the descendants of because we think how much of this is genetic, right? Well, when we look at heart disease, anything below the Mason-Dixon line is there's just super high rates of diabetes and heart disease and arteriosclerosis, especially in African-American males. They die much younger than their white male counterparts, and we’re like, “What’s going on? Is this genetic?” Well, we look at the cultural diet in that area, and then we look at their cousins not genetically any different in Africa eating a different diet. Completely different outcomes. The heart disease is not there. So, it’s the diet is what I’m saying, not the genes.

Then we look at Japan in Okinawa and how they had very, very, very low rates of disease, incredibly long lifespans. It’s very typical to live to 90 or 100 or even a little bit past 100, disease-free, still gardening out in the garden. Now, the McDonald’s and American lifestyle and processed food has become more glamorous in that area. In one generation, cardiologists saw a shift. And now, Japan is catching up with America in terms of cancer and heart diseases. Catching up. It’s not there yet 100 percent, but it is definitely not where it was 50 to 100 years ago.

If we do not want to live the last 30 years of our life suffering in disease—and if you’ve watched your grandparents or your parents go through it or great aunts and uncles, if you’ve watched anyone suffer in the later years of their life, it should be the biggest motivator for you to pick up that fork and eat that salad instead of a drive through the drive-thru.

[00:39:43] Catharine Arnston: I was just going to say if you don’t like salad, algae is your answer. Men and children, in particular, are well known for not wanting to eat vegetables. I’m here to tell you. You don’t need to eat another vegetable in your life as long as you take at least 10 algae tablets a day and just swallow them and you're done. But we can get to that later on. 

[00:40:04] Ashley James: Well, I believe in the power of eating a variety of whole foods, I love that. But if you can’t get them in, I know my son is super picky, I figured out sneaky ways. And he’ll eat some vegetable. He only wants to eat raw vegetables, which it could be a challenge sometimes, but he only wants raw. There's only a certain kind he wants. So anyways, I think he eats more vegetables than any other kid I know, but I’m still not satisfied because I want him to be more flexible. But you know, he’s 7 and this is what kids do. But I love that he will any day of the week pick up your chlorella or spirulina and chew them up and swallow. It’s so reassuring to me that a neurotic mom such as myself who is so deeply concerned with the health of my child and wants to make sure that he has the best nutrition possible that at the end of the day, I could give him some spirulina and even some chlorella and that he is getting that nutrition.

But back to my point is that we need to be the salmon. We have to. I know it’s a little exhausting to go against the grain, but we need to be the ones to figure out how to do home-cooked meals. And I’m right there with you, figuring it out and doing it. Home-cooked meals, eating healthy food, walking every day even just to reduce stress, go get in nature, go walk through a park, walking every day, doing deep breathing, bringing down your stress levels, getting nutrition, getting the super-duper food like spirulina in you. And all these daily activities will make it so that you are divergent from the mainstream, the status quo, from the 1/3 of the population being incredibly, incredibly sick. You will diverge from those statistics, and you will be the outlier with true health. And that’s what I want for you. So yeah, it does take time and energy every day, but you have to make choices different from the masses.

And sometimes, it looks like grabbing your bag of ENERGYbits and throwing it in your purse or your gym bag or the car. That's a great place, as long as the car is not too hot. But that's a great place to always have it because you know how you're hungry or hangry in the car, instead of the drive-thru, grab 15 ENERGYbits and chew them. For me, I chew them and drink some water while you do it, or just swallow them if you don’t want to chew them. And within minutes, your body is digesting and absorbing that nutrition, and you really don’t feel hungry anymore. I love how it stops the hunger and it gets me to the point where now I can wait until after I cooked dinner. But instead of reaching for something unhealthy or even spending money, I don’t want to spend money out. I want to go home; I got groceries at home. I know that I’m giving my body nutrition. And so, it is a really great snack.

[00:43:02] Catharine Arnston: It’s really your lifeline. It’s a nutritional lifeline. I call it also your nutrition insurance. People know about health insurance. Well, this is your nutrition insurance. Because if you take these every day and if I do my job right, everybody in the world will be taking them every day, then your body is nourished in a way that will allow you to not just survive but to thrive. The sad thing is, most people know more about their cellphones than they do about their bodies. And once you understand what your body needs and the way that it operates, and we’ll get to that once we get to the mitochondria discussion, now you start to understand what it needs. It’s easier for you to give it what it needs because now you know the rules of the road. If you don’t know how to read a map and you’re driving to a distant location, you're kind of out of luck. You have to teach yourself how to read a map. And then, it’s easy. You just follow the road.

So, once you have a roadmap of how your body works, the algae makes that journey effortless because it gives you what you need, gets you where you want to go. You may take the spirulina because you want it for energy, but you’re going to find out that your digestion improves or maybe you’ll take it because you want improved mitochondria health. Maybe you’re taking the chlorella because you want to pull out toxins but you’ll find that you’re sleeping better at night. So, it will take you wherever you go, want to go, and then there’ll be some bonus trips along there as well.

[00:44:43] Ashley James: Love it. I had heard of it, but I hadn’t really gone and tried algae until I want to say about 4 years ago, maybe 5 years ago. I interviewed Dr. Klinghardt. He’s local to me, which is crazy, because people fly from around the world to see this man. He’s been a holistic MD for over 45 years, I believe now. And he has designed a system that detoxifies the body so well that he takes children who are non-verbal and, I think, misdiagnosed on the spectrum.

This is my hypothesis. I hypothesize that most autism is misdiagnosed heavy metals in the brain. That hypothesis is based on my observations of several holistic doctors that are able to take these children who have been diagnosed extensively. And they're non-verbal, they're agitated, they're not making eye contact, they’re beating their head against a wall, or they're beating their hands against their head, they're rocking. They look like their brain is on fire, and they're trying to soothe themselves. And they also have digestive issues. There's a lot going on.

And Dr. Klinghardt takes them and does a very gentle but rigorous heavy metal detox, and he can get these children to the point where they’re happy, calm, making eye contact, talking, going to school, and he says he has had children now, one of them has graduated, become a composer, several have become PhD’s. They’re essentially no longer considered on the spectrum. And the biggest thing is heavy metal detox and he explains that the heavy metals are in the brain, for whatever reason their bodies didn’t detoxify like others do, and this is how it shows up.

[00:46:48] Catharine Arnston: I think a lot of it is heavy metals—and when we get to the mitochondria—but it’s also mitochondria dysfunction. Because the highest concentration of mitochondria is in the brain. There are 2 million mitochondria per cell in your brain. It’s the highest concentration of mitochondria in your entire body. But I don’t want to jump the gun. We’ll get to that in a few minutes.

[00:47:12] Ashley James: So exciting. He uses chlorella as part of his package, as part of his detox with these children and with adults because adults will come to him. Unfortunately, he attracts people who this is their last-ditch effort, like they have tried every single doctor, every single method in their country. Because people fly from around the world to see him and they’re so sick of suffering, they’ve probably been suffering for 7 or more years, and then they come to see him. And yes, it’s expensive because he does a lot with them, and at the end of the day, people get better and mostly, he’s doing detox with them. So, he’s doing sauna, he’s doing the Platinum Energy System foot detox. Yeah, he’s doing all that. And he’s using the chlorella as part of the pulling out of the heavy metals.

So, I remember listening because I was having heavy metal issues. I learned from him in my interview with him. I did my research. I got a Platinum Energy System foot detox machine, I got a sauna, and I was eating your chlorella. Well, I’d throw 30 in my mouth, chew them and drink water, and then go jump in the sauna. When I take it, like it mops up the heavy metals and I don’t have, I don’t know, some people are really sensitive like I am to detoxing and they get like that kind of flu sensation from detoxing. And chlorella mops it up, so I don’t have that, which is really exciting.

So, I know the next thing we’re going to talk about is chlorella.

[00:48:46] Catharine Arnston: Yes, chlorella. So that's a great segue.

[00:48:49] Ashley James: That was my introduction and then I found you. I can’t remember if I found you or you found me, but I tried the company that Dr. Klinghardt likes and they’re a high-quality company, and honestly, I couldn’t even get through a whole bag. I felt bad because I bought, you know, their bags are maybe like $140. And I couldn’t even get through a whole bag because it just smells like dead fish. And I’m like, this is so gross. And then I tried yours because actually, I think I remember you sent me a sample pack and I’m like, “This is amazing!” I think you’re experimenting with like macadamia nuts because it was like a trail mix. And I’m like, “This is delicious! This doesn’t smell weird and fishy. This tastes good to me.” I like healthy-tasting things, but yours is totally different from the other high-quality company that I had tried from Dr. Klinghardt, and I said, man, I don’t know what it is with the Klinghardt one, but yours is way better, and I was getting great results.

So, then I started like singing ENERGYbits from the rooftop and giving them out to all my friends. I couldn’t believe our little toddler at the time was loving them and now he’s 7, and we’ll eat them and even though he’s very picky. So yeah, it’s exciting.

[00:50:02] Catharine Arnston: I remember that was when he was about 2. So, we’ve been connecting for almost 5 years. Wow! It’s really great.

[00:50:06] Ashley James: Yeah, I know. Time just flies, right? It’s just crazy. I’ll be serving ENERGYbits at his wedding.

[00:50:13] Catharine Arnston: Oh, there you go. Yeah, we have to sort of airdrop them from the sky. Instead of confetti, we’ll have RECOVERYbits. 

[00:50:23] Ashley James: Love it.

[00:50:24] Catharine Arnston: Well, that's a nice testimonial. And we will talk now about chlorella. And the great thing about chlorella is that it does taste pretty good especially, as you’ve mentioned, if you have it with pistachio nuts or macadamia nuts are the best. What we call our chlorella, it’s really a wellness algae. Spirulina is an energizing, nourishing algae. Chlorella, we call ours RECOVERYbits because it helps you recover your health. So, when you mix it with macadamia nuts, honestly, you close your eyes, you think you're eating potato chips. It's that delicious. And I still do plan to do a trail mix with chlorella and macadamia nuts and also, we’re working a lot now with pistachios and there's a brand that has a salt & vinegar flavor, and it is, again, ultra-delicious. Not only are these very good nuts for you, they're very soft, so they’re good for your teeth. They're very low in lectin, so they're really good for your gut biome. Dr. Gundry points out that a lot of nuts like almonds are very high in lectins and oxalates, and they can be very damaging to your stomach lining, and these two nuts are very low in both lectins and oxalates. So, I’m very happy that they're the two that we’ve settled on for our trail mix when we finally get that out there.

[00:51:41] Ashley James: Nice.

[00:51:42] Catharine Arnston: So, chlorella showed up on the earth a billion years after spirulina, and as I mentioned, it is a green algae. It does belong to the plant kingdom and so it has fiber in it and a fibrous and cellulose wall. Now, remember I said spirulina’s claim to fame had the highest protein in the world? Chlorella’s claim to fame is it has the highest chlorophyll in the world. Now, chlorophyll is very, very cleansing and healing. If you go online, if this was a visual, I would have shown you a picture, but you can go online to see this, and we’ll send you a bunch of articles that you can link to in the notes.

But the chemical composition of chlorophyll is virtually identical to the chemical composition of your hemoglobin, your red blood cells. Now, this is important because chlorophyll builds your blood. It’s that simple. And so when you have healthy blood, you're going to have healthy organs. You're going to have a healthier body, a healthier brain. So, it’s very, very cleansing.

Up until World War II and even as recent as World War II, they would give the injured liquid chlorophyll because it would help them heal from injuries if they’d run out of blood transfusions for this very reason. And it’s been used for centuries this way. It’s only since the pharmaceutical industry has got their hands around us that people have forgotten about the cleansing, blood-building capabilities of chlorophyll, and there is nothing with more chlorophyll than chlorella algae. It has 500 times more chlorophyll than arugula and 25 times more chlorophyll than liquid chlorophyll. Nothing in the world has more chlorophyll than chlorella algae. You could fill a room with arugula and you wouldn’t even come close to the same amount of chlorophyll as in 30 tablets of chlorella, so that's pretty cool.

Now, the other amazing thing about chlorophyll, of course, as you know, chlorophyll is what makes plants green, is that chlorophyll is a fat-based pigment. The blue that's in the spirulina, which is called phycocyanine, it is a water-based pigment. Now, this explains to me why the blue pigment in spirulina stops the growth of blood vessels to tumors. It’s called antiangiogenesis which in its own right is very important to know about. But the chlorophyll, because it’s fat-based, what it does is it heals your cell walls. Now, we will get eventually to mitochondria, but all of your health issues start at the cellular level. Everything. Whether you're healthy or unhealthy. And it’s not just the mitochondria inside the cell, it’s the cell wall itself. Now, we’ve all been told we need things like omega-3 and D3 and vitamin A because those are fats. Your cell walls are fat-based. They're called lipids. And you need to keep them nourished and moist because that’s how nutrients can get in and toxins can get out. And if they are not healthy with healthy fats, we’re not talking about the rancid, awful, poisonous, toxic, damaging omega-6’s like canola oil, please, if you do nothing else, stop eating canola oil. It should have crossbones on it. That and sugar are the two things that are making ill, diabetic, heart disease, we can go on. That's another podcast in its own way.

Anyways, so chlorophyll is just as healing to your cell wall as omega-3 because it’s a fat-based pigment. And I don’t take fish oil and I would encourage everybody not to because it goes rancid even before you buy it. And by the way, where do you think the fish get the omega-3 from? Because, of course, the fish oil has omega-3 in it, they get it from algae. I remind people to save themselves, save the oceans, save their health, save their cell walls, and get the healthy fats from algae, especially spirulina, it has the higher omega-3 in it. But the chlorophyll is fat-based. So, even if you don’t take fish oil or even if you don’t take D3, you're still getting the benefits of growing and building your cell walls from the chlorophyll.

So, not only is chlorella the highest chlorophyll and we now know it builds your blood and it builds your cell walls, chlorophyll is also very cleansing. And chlorella has a hard cell wall. Now, that hard cell wall not only has fiber, remember spirulina has no fiber because it’s a bacteria, chlorella has the fiber so it feeds the bacteria in your gut biome. And that hard cell wall attaches to toxins, as you talked about earlier with Dr. Klinghardt. It attaches to all heavy metals—lead, mercury, radiation, aluminum, toxins from mold. It also attaches to alcohol, lactic acid, and it will chelate them out of your body. This is very, very, very powerful. I read a statistic a couple of years ago that said the average American has 800 toxins in their bodies. 800. That's crazy! Our immune systems were not built to sustain that kind of toxic load. And even if you lived in bubble, and even if you had no exposure to any toxins, which of course we know it’s impossible, you need to know the good news is our bodies are constantly regenerating on a daily basis every single second. Cells die and cells grow.

Now, we have 30 trillion cells in our body. And literally every day, cells die, new cells grow. But where do you think those old cells go? Well, if you don’t get rid of them by pulling them out with something like chlorella, they sit there and they clog up your lymphatic system and they attract bacteria. And they cause disease. And I remind people, you know, if you didn’t take your garbage out from your house for a couple of days, it would get pretty smelly in there, right? Well, your body is the same way. If you do not get rid of the dead cells, they're called senescent cells, they're zombie cells, they're clogging up your body. This is why you do things like fasting to trigger autophagy, to get rid of all these dead cells that are either mutated or just dead and not gone, you need to pull them out. And chlorella is the best way to do it. 

In fact, I personally feel it’s far better than activated charcoal, which a lot of people use, but activated charcoal pulls out all minerals. The good ones and the bad ones. Chlorella only pulls out toxins and it has 40 vitamins and minerals as does spirulina. So, it introduces all the electrolytes—magnesium, potassium, manganese, and salt so that you don’t lose your minerals. It just pulls out the toxins. That's the big difference between activated charcoal and using chlorella algae.

So, with chlorella, because your body goes through a detox and repair cycle when you are sleeping. We generally recommend people take chlorella before bed. Now, you can take it any time of day. I eat them all day long. I have them for breakfast, lunch, snacks. I eat them with pistachio nuts, macadamia nuts. But I definitely have them before bed. But you could have them any time of day, but if you were only going to take them one time a day, I would recommend before bed because now, when you're getting your beauty rest and you’re getting your deep repair, you have chlorella which will A, facilitate sleep because both algae have the highest concentration of melatonin in the world, so it helps you sleep and know melatonin does not make you sleepy during the day, it’s only triggered by night. We’ll talk about melatonin more in a minute when we talk about mitochondria. It has the highest tryptophan in the world which is a precursor of melatonin. It has your daily requirement of vitamin K2, which pulls out excess calcium from soft tissue. This would have been very valuable for your father. Arteriosclerosis which is the hardening of arteries. I remind people, “You know what’s hardening?” It’s calcium. We’re all taking D3 and we’re taking calcium, but it’s going to our soft tissue. It is not going to our bones because most of us are deficit in vitamin K2, which moves excess calcium from our soft tissue like our blood vessels and our heart, and our skin, and our brain, and moves it into your bones. And chlorella has your daily requirement of K2, so it automatically does that. Kidney stones, you know what they are? It’s a calcification gathering with your gas.

So, all of these things, the high chlorophyll which stimulates peristalsis, highest RNA and DNA in the world, all of these things contribute to a great repair while you are getting your beauty rest. Chlorella, because your body goes through this detox and repair and because chlorella has all the nutrients that facilitate the repair, we definitely recommend taking it before bed. And so, you can just leave it at your bedside and have it as your snack before you go off to your Lalaland and you wake up refreshed. If you had a cocktail or a glass of wine, same thing happens.

Now, in terms of quantity, just like we said with spirulina, 10 tablets of spirulina will give you a slight improvement in your energy and your focus and satisfy your hunger. If you wanted it as a meal replacement, you’d probably want 20 or 30 tablets. Same with chlorella. You could take 10 tablets and you’d enjoy all the wellness benefits from the chlorophyll and all the other nutrients. But for detox, you need closer to 20 or 30 tablets. And you’ll find they're so tiny and as you would start to enjoy eating them, it’s not a hardship. In fact, you’ll probably start looking forward to having your chlorella even if you put maybe a little bit of sea salt on it if you don’t want nuts. It can be your bedtime snack, much better for you than cookies and milk.

And if you don’t want to take that many all of the time, you can do maybe 10 tablets for a week and then 20 or 30 for a couple of weeks and then get back to 10 at night or do 20 or 30 for a month and then do 10 tablets for a month, so you can cycle in and out just like people cycle in and out of doing keto. So, the chlorella, we call it RECOVERYbits because it’s very much a recovery algae that has so many benefits that there's nothing like it. And remember, it’s food. It's not a pill. It’s not a vitamin. It’s not a supplement.

Now, when you take chlorella on a daily basis and we would certainly recommend you do, if you don’t like vegetables or you don’t have time to eat vegetables, or you're traveling, or you want a fast recovery from sports, this is your answer. You just swallow 10 or 20 or whatever many you have or chew them, and you're done. No carrying groceries, the heavy vegetables from the grocery store, stuffing them into your fridge, cleaning them, cooking them, arguing with your kids or your husbands, and then throwing half of them out. None of that. It just goes away. And we sell the tablets in bags of a thousand tablets. And I use the quote from NASA that “1 gram of algae has the same nutrition as 1000 grams of fruits and vegetables.” And I did the math. I realized one bag of our algae tablets, it doesn’t matter which one it is, has the same nutrition as 551 pounds of vegetables. 

[01:03:55] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

[01:03:57] Catharine Arnston: And at $3 a pound, that's like $1500. Normally the bag is $125. With your discount code LTH, it brings it down to $100. If you took 10 a day, the bag would last you about three months. That’s efficient nutrition. Right? It not only saves you money, it saves you time and it saves you arguing and now you’ve got something when you're traveling or going to the gym or going to school, or you're a soccer mom and you're stuck in traffic and you don’t want to eat any of those crappy carbs, here you go. You’ve just nailed. I call it the ultimate fast food.

[01:04:33] Ashley James: Well, I certainly enjoy the idea that it is such a, like you said, super duper superfood. I wouldn’t say don’t eat any vegetables or fruit, but like you said, if someone can’t, and actually there's a listener who has a … I don’t know if they call it a nursing home or a skilled nursing home where they host elderly people in their own home. They’ve got like 10 rooms and they take care of them, and they feed them the ENERGYbits. And how amazing is that? Because they want their clients to be healthy and for some, there's certain people who you can’t feed enough fruits and vegetables, too, right? So, it can be children, seniors, when we’re super busy, when we’re traveling. I know there's days where I’m traveling and I’m hungry and I’m like, okay, I’m just going to skip a meal and I’m going to fast, or I can take my ENERGYbits. I’d rather do that than go through a drive-thru for multiple reasons.

[01:05:41] Catharine Arnston: Exactly. And I’m with you. Because I love vegetables, but I know a lot of people especially as they get older, they don’t have the enzymes for digesting fiber and so they avoid fiber, which means they avoid nutrition. And white mushy stuff just doesn’t have any nutrition in it. So, for those people, or we work with a lot of bariatric surgeons and their patients have such small stomachs. They cannot physically put a lot of food in their stomach. So, they love the algae tablets because they're so tiny and yet they’re so tiny but mighty is what they say, they give them all the nutrition that they need. Or children who are just, let’s face it, kids love pasta, but again, not a lot of nutrition in pasta. We don’t want parents to have to worry. And if you turn the tablets into a bit of a game like you did with your son, they think it’s fun. Their tongues turn green. And now you've turned you eating healthy into something pleasurable. So, whatever it takes to get. And for older people who don’t eat very well, even if they took two tablets, there's probably more nutrition than they're having all week. So, we just want to help people get the nourishment that they need.

[01:06:58] Ashley James: Now, you’ve mentioned earlier that I know it’s going to spirulina, but you mentioned earlier how you’ve discovered that has the same like a really similar nutrient profile to mother’s breast milk. Have you ever thought about formulating a baby formula?

[01:07:13] Catharine Arnston: Oh, I mean, there's no end to the things that we can do, but we’re still such a tiny company. We’re so understaffed and we’re so underfunded. We’re self-funded. The number of things that we could do is limitless. But I have to help people first understand what algae is because those are all very what’s called vertical markets and there's hypersensitivity with mothers and with children and formulas. And the food companies have a stranglehold on that. I couldn’t even attempt to get to that community until we’d established algae as the nutritional…

[01:07:56] Ashley James: Safe. It’s safe, it’s nutritious. I mean, there are so many benefits. And we have four other episodes that listeners can go to. We actually talk about, well, what are the downsides. Are there downsides? And we talked about debunking the algae myths and you bring up a lot of science in episode 357. That was a fantastic interview. I highly recommend listeners who have been listening so far and going okay, well, like they're waiting for another shoe to drop. They're like, what’s the downside to eating this. There's got to be a hook. There's got to be a side effect. Right? We’re used to do that. We’re used to the side effects mindset because everyone’s used to drugs. This is a food. You don’t go, “What’s the downside to eating an apple?” I mean, I don’t know. Maybe you're full. I don’t know. And the thing is, a conventionally grown apple has upwards of 50 different manmade chemicals on it and in it. So, that is why we choose organic and that's why your spirulina and chlorella are essentially organic. They're very clean. There's no pesticides and those chemicals in it.

But we do talk about addressing those concerns in episode 357, so I recommend listeners go back and check that out. I definitely want to make sure that we do get into …

[01:09:13] Catharine Arnston: Cover mitochondria, yeah.

[01:09:15] Ashley James: The mitochondria. One thing I’d like to say is before we move forward, with the amount of chlorophyll, chlorophyll is like a deodorant for the insides. Right? Your poop does not smell when you do chlorella. So, if your husband has particularly horrible bowel movements or farts, give him the RECOVERYbits. It’s like a deodorant for the inside. It’s helping him detox and it’s also saving your marriage and saving your nose. That's one thing.

[01:09:50] Catharine Arnston: And same with people who are they're eating just meat. What’s it called?

[01:09:55] Ashley James: Oh, the carnivore diet?

[01:09:56] Catharine Arnston: Carnivores. Because I ran into some at this keto conference I was at last week and their breath was just it knocks you over. This will get rid of breath issues. That's the same with dogs and cats. You might not notice it with your cats, but with dogs. So, anybody who’s eating meat, the bad breath is from bacteria in your mouth. This kills bacteria. Remember I said algae blooms show up wherever there’s bacteria? Same within your mouth. Same within your colon. That's why they’ve used chlorella for decades for IBS, for Crohn’s disease, any kind of gut, abdominal issues at all, and laughingly, when I was at this conference, I held up a bag of my ENERGYbits on my head and I put my chlorella bag down by my gut. And I said the blue one, ENERGYbits, is for AM, and the chlorella which is the green bag is for PM, but if you need another visual, think of the ENERGYbits which is spirulina with all the nourishment for your brain and the chlorella which cleans out your gut and stops any kind of bacteria and deodorizes your lower part of your body. So, your brain and your gut. If you need simple things to remember what they do and when to take them, that hopefully helps.

[01:11:13] Ashley James: I do. I love it, yes. You mentioned that it’s better than activated charcoal. Would you consider taking the RECOVERYbits when someone has food poisoning? Would it help in that way as well? 

[01:11:29] Catharine Arnston: That's a good question. I don’t know about food poisoning. I guess it’s bacteria that’s caused the food poisoning like salmonella.

[01:11:40] Ashley James: But it’s like the toxins left behind from the bacteria is what I understand. I’m just wondering because people will typically take activated charcoal during food poisoning to help mop it up, and I’m wondering if, well, I guess you could take activated charcoal and chlorella just to see if it would help more.

[01:12:00] Catharine Arnston: But it’d be certainly cleansing. I’ve never had that question come up before, that's very interesting. I can only think that would help. 

[01:12:08] Ashley James: There you go. Okay, so we’ve laid down a good groundwork, although listeners can still go back and listen to the previous episodes because we really, really dove even deeper. But we’ve laid it out. Everyone now is excited and probably going to ENERGYbits.com using coupon code “LTH” and already buying their bags of RECOVERYbits and ENERGYbits. And then one thing I wanted you to mention is if someone wants to try chlorella and spirulina, they can get the 50-50 bag. And what’s that bag called?

[01:12:37] Catharine Arnston: That’s called VITALITYbits.

[01:12:38] Ashley James: That's right. VITALITYbits.

[01:12:40] Catharine Arnston: It’s a blend of the two of them.

[01:12:41] Ashley James: You want half chlorella and half spirulina, get the VITALITYbits. Okay, so let’s dive into this. The superoxide dismutase (SOD), I am so excited about. I’ve had guests come on the show talking about how it is like the fountain of youth. We need more of it. And I’m so excited that your crop, your super-duper food is going to help us get more superoxide dismutase for our mitochondria. Okay, so let’s dive into this.

[01:13:12] Catharine Arnston: All right, well, let me first explain what mitochondria are, why they're so critical for your life full-stop and why algae contains all the nutrients that will protect your mitochondria from damage. [j1] And when the mitochondria are protected, then you have more life. And one of those antioxidants is superoxide dismutase. It’s also known as SOD, so I’ll use the terms interchangeably because it’s easier to say SOD than superoxide dismutase.

So, here’s the deal. Think of your body as a building. Okay? Like a skyscraper. And inside the building are offices. Think of those offices like your cells. And in the offices are lights. Think of the lights as your mitochondria. Now, you can’t do any work in your office without lights. And your building doesn’t function without offices and people in the offices. Your body is the same way. The mitochondria are the fuel, the thing that keeps the lights on in your cells. And the problem is, those mitochondria are getting damaged. The mitochondria, they're little organelles. If you look at any drawings, they're sort of like peanut-shaped things that are inside the cells and they generate energy for everything in your body. Everything from breathing. And the currency of energy is called ATP. We have electricity that is the energy for our homes or our phones, and we have gasoline for the energy for our cars and although soon to be electricity. ATP is what energizes your body. It’s what helps your blood to flow, your lymphatic system to function, your heart to beat, your brain to think. It fuels everything.

So, your mitochondria play a pretty important role just like in the building. Without any lights, you can’t really do anything. The trouble is, your mitochondria are located exactly where … actually, your mitochondria have their own DNA, I’ll say that first. We know that we have about 25,000 DNA and those DNA last a lifetime. The mitochondria have their own DNA. And interestingly, they all come from the female, which is quite different from your regular DNA. Half comes from the male, half comes from the female. All of your mitochondria DNA come from the female. I just have a sort of interesting note to put in there.

Now, there's only 37 of them. But these mitochondria DNA control all of your DNA. They control all of the communication on your cell wall. They control everything that goes on in your body. So, the analogy I like to help people so you can understand how powerful these mitochondria DNA are. They're like the air controller at an airport. An air controller controls absolutely everything that’s coming in and go on out. And if they are ill or not on their job, planes crash. When your mitochondria DNA are ill and they get damaged, your health crashes. It is that simple. Now, the good news is, we can change that trajectory because as you age, you have fewer mitochondria, you have more mitochondria being damaged and mutated and these mutated mitochondria send the wrong signals. It’s like an air controller telling a plane to land on a runway when someone’s taken off. So, when the mitochondria are damaged, they're sending wrong signals and so things, your tissues start to literally rust, that's what free radicals do and your health deteriorates.

Now, the reason why the mitochondria get so damaged and mutated is because the mitochondria DNA, they're located exactly where the ATP is produced. Now, the ATP is good. The problem is, when ATP is produced, a byproduct is something called free radicals. Free radicals are molecules that are missing an electron, and so what they do is they steal electrons from other tissues, from other molecules. It basically is the equivalent of rust. If you’ve ever seen boats on a dock or an old car left on a yard, you see how there’s rusty holes that appear and they get bigger and bigger because of oxidation. That's what’s causing the holes, is oxidation.

Free radicals cause oxidation, damage, and rusting of your cells. Not a good thing. So, because the mitochondria DNA are located exactly where the ATP is and exactly where the free radicals are, they are constantly getting damaged and dying. The average lifespan of your mitochondria DNA is 10 to 20 days, whereas your regular DNA lasts a lifetime. When you're born and when you are about 30, your body creates antioxidants that can get into the mitochondria to stop this free radical damage. But the problem is, there’s only four of them that can get into the mitochondria inner membrane. They are glutathione, melatonin, superoxide dismutase, and also chlorophyll. I know your body doesn’t make chlorophyll, but we’ll talk about that in a minute.

So, those are the only four antioxidants that can stop from the free radical damage. And you go, “Well, wait a second. Blueberries have antioxidants. Oranges have antioxidants. What’s wrong with them?” Here is the problem. Those antioxidants are fine for all the other cells in your body to stop free radical damage. But the problem is, your mitochondria, unlike any other cell in your entire body, have two cell membranes. Every other cell has one. Remember we talked about it earlier and it’s a fat-based membrane and nutrients go in and go out. Well, there's one of those around the mitochondria for sure. But there is a second inner membrane that is impenetrable by virtually anything. Certainly none of the traditional antioxidants, and I’ll explain that in a minute why.

In your regular membranes including the outside one of the mitochondria, these nutrients that get in and out, and proteins, and antioxidants, they go through something called a porin. Now, porins are like little channels that open up and allow things to flow in and out. But that inner membrane of the mitochondria does not have any porins. The only four that can get through that inner membrane and they're not through porins, are these four antioxidants – glutathione, melatonin, superoxide dismutase, and chlorophyll.

Now, you mentioned superoxide dismutase, so let me start with it. It is heralded as the answer to longevity. And here’s why. The most damaging free radical that is produced in your body and it’s all at the mitochondria level, is something called superoxide. And I was curious I read all this literature. Hundreds of NIH articles talking about the super damage of superoxide. And then we’re like, why? Why is it so damaging? And here’s why. Most free radicals have just one electron that is by itself and so it steals one electron from another molecule, which damages that molecule which then becomes a free radical, which damages the next molecule. And that's how the cascading effect of damaged tissue occurs. 

But superoxide has three of these unpaired electrons. So, it steals three times as many electrons from the next molecule, which causes three times as much damage to the next molecule. So that's why it’s known as the most damaging free radical, because it requires three electrons to stabilize. So, superoxide dismutase, what it does is it encounters this superoxide and turns it into water. Harmless water. Imagine a fireman with a hose. Just hosing down all that superoxide dismutase and protecting your mitochondria. The reason why this is so powerful is because again, when you're talking about the free radicals being produced as a result of ATP, if anyone’s ever sat by a bonfire or a fireplace and you got too close to it and sparks would fly, you know that those sparks could burn you. And that's what’s happening at the mitochondria level with all this ATP. It’s generating a fire but the results are free radicals, which are like the sparks. And what’s getting burned is the mitochondria DNA. And so, you’ve got to find a way to protect those mitochondria DNA because when they're damaged, then again, they die or they send the wrong signals.

Now, the other two antioxidants that can get into the mitochondria, as I mentioned, is melatonin and glutathione. And algae has the highest concentration of superoxide dismutase in the world, the highest concentration of glutathione in the world, and the highest concentration of chlorophyll in the world. All four are the four that can get into that inner membrane to stop this free radical damage.

Now there's two ways to stop the free radical damage. One is to reduce the number of free radicals being produced. And the second way is to neutralize them like superoxide dismutase. The first way is easy for anybody to do because carbs and sugar generate the most free radicals in your mitochondria. So, removing processed carbs, anything white, rice, bread, sugar, and replacing it either with a keto diet or at least a low-carb diet, that's number one, because you're going to have fewer free radicals being produced that will then produce less damage. Now, the best way, the thing that produces virtually no free radicals is fasting, either intermittent fasting or long-term water fasting and algae. Algae creates virtually no free radicals because there are no carbs. The remarkable thing about algae is scientific discoveries that if you take chlorophyll and expose your body to red light, either red light therapy or the sunlight, the chlorophyll regenerates the CoQ10 molecule, which is part of the cycle of producing ATP and it creates energy without free radicals. So, now you're taking algae that's full of the four antioxidants that neutralize the free radicals and it’s giving your body, your brain, your organs nourishment, and it's generating ATP without free radicals. So, that's number one. Reduce the number of free radicals that are damaging to the mitochondria DNA, and the second one, which is getting these four antioxidants that can neutralize them like superoxide dismutase.

Now, the catch is superoxide dismutase, as I mentioned, is an enzyme. And virtually all the other algae companies that are lower priced, higher volume, they use high heat to dry their algae. Why? Because they have to get to market quickly, to sell quickly, to make money quickly. Now, when I started the company, as I mentioned, it was just to help my sister. And so, twelve years ago I learned that high heat kills enzymes. To be honest, I knew nothing about superoxide dismutase 12 years ago, but I knew if you got over 118 degrees Fahrenheit, it killed enzymes. And I knew enzymes were important for digestion. So I said, well, we can’t use high heat. We can’t use high heat when we dry it. So, we never have.

So, that's why when you use our algae, the superoxide dismutase which has been heralded as the answer. And by the way, there's 50,000 studies that have been done on the healing properties of superoxide dismutase. It has been proven to stop cancer, proven to stop heart disease, proven to stop brain disease. And 50,000 is a big number just like there's 100,000 on algae. So now you’ve got something that's been proven to stop these diseases and reinstate health at the cellular level. And yet, everybody else is killing it except us. There is one other source that you could use, I want to point out, and it would be frozen spirulina. Chlorella, by the way, does have superoxide dismutase in it as well, but spirulina has the highest. It has four times as much as chlorella.

Now, frozen algae because, again, has not been exposed to high heat would have all the superoxide dismutase still alive and well. Same with such a thing as frozen chlorella. I’ve never found anybody that sells it. The problem with frozen spirulina is that it has a very short lifespan, it’s messy, you can’t travel with it, and it’s even more expensive. But it is an option for those of you who do want to search that out.

So, superoxide dismutase is unbelievable for preserving your mitochondria[j2] . Now, as I mentioned earlier, the highest concentration of mitochondria are in the parts of your body where there are the highest energy needs. Number one, your brain. They have found there are two million of these mitochondria per cell in your brain. That's why they're realizing autism, ADHA, dementia, Alzheimer’s, any brain issue. Any brain issue.

Brain fog is a mitochondria dysfunction, a mitochondria disease. We have people writing in who have had dementia. They’re in their 70s. Within two days, they started being able to focus again. One gentleman said he couldn’t even figure out how to turn his microwave on. And within two days of using the spirulina, he was being able to focus again. The power of these antioxidants cannot be understated. It is crucial that you get these into your body because after the age of 30, your body, which normally makes superoxide dismutase, glutathione, and melatonin drops, and it drops, and it drops. By the time you are 60 and certainly in your older years, it is producing virtually none. This is why when you're 20, in your teens, in your 20s, you have energy. You might get a cold, you bounce back in two days, but once you get into your 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s, you’re not sleeping, you're not recovering, you're getting chronic illness, you're getting cancer diagnoses, heart disease diagnoses, your brain fog is increasing. It’s because your mitochondria, which used to be protected when you were younger by these antioxidants, the three that your body makes plus chlorophyll, it is not producing them anymore. And I’m not telling you anything that's not scientifically proven. This is the reality. So, as your mitochondria get damaged and as you have fewer of these antioxidants to protect you, your inflammation level goes up and up, and your mitochondria and your health goes down and down and down.

We can change that trajectory simply with algae. It’s un-freaking-believable. I have the lab tests that prove that algae has the highest superoxide dismutase in the world. There’s a teeny, teeny, teeny amount in cabbage. It has 28,000 times more superoxide dismutase than cabbage. It has more melatonin. It has 1400 times more glutathione than avocado or beef. I can’t remember the number but some crazy number, more melatonin and melatonin, they're realizing there's way more than help you with your sleep and manage your circadian rhythm. It’s an antioxidant that, by the way, is produced in all of your mitochondria and used by all your mitochondria. These are essential antioxidants that preserve your mitochondria DNA which therefore preserve your health.

But I want to walk you through where the other concentrations of mitochondria are. First, as I mentioned, is your brain. The second highest, you’ll never believe this one, is women’s eggs. There are 600,000 mitochondria per cell in a woman’s eggs, in every single egg. For infertility, is a mitochondria dysfunction. You get this back into your body, it will be so much easier for you to have a baby, carry the baby, nourish the baby because it takes a lot. And why is there so many mitochondria in women’s eggs? Because it takes a lot of energy to create another human being.

The third highest is your heart. Once again, they’re realizing heart disease is a mitochondria disease. It’s anywhere between 5,000 to 7,000 mitochondria per cell in your heart. After that, it’s the rest of your organs and your muscles, which have an average of 5,000 mitochondria per cell. So any athletes who are listening, you want muscle for performance, but you need mitochondria for a long-lasting performance because that’s where your energy is coming from, from the mitochondria in your muscles.

Now, just as a comparison, a fat cell or a skin cell has an average of only 100 mitochondria per cell, because there's not a high need for energy there. But the things that go first when we are aging is our brain and our heart and, of course, our immune system as well.

So, the fact the algae, both the spirulina and the chlorella have the four antioxidants that can get into that inner membrane to stop the free radical damage that is like sparks flying off a fire and damaging the DNA, which is what causes the cascading effect of decreased energy, brain focus, cancer, immune health issues, algae does provide that ability to protect the DNA and at the same time, generate ATP without free radicals.

Now I’m going to tell you why there are two membranes in the mitochondria and why algae is such a remarkable thing and basically saves your mitochondria. So, remember at the very beginning I mentioned that algae was the first life on earth almost 4 billion years ago. And this is all documented in science, by the way, so we’ll send you all the links so you can check it out yourself. So, the first cell was cyanobacteria. And it was an anaerobic cell because before algae, there was no oxygen on earth. There was just gas and water. No one knows why this little tiny anaerobic cell, cyanobacteria, started growing, and of course, spirulina is a cyanobacteria, so it’s effectively spirulina was the first life on earth 4 billion years ago. And after a billion years of it growing, of these little cells growing, and they generated ATP and released oxygen in the process, which always happens, now there's a lot of oxygen on earth. But now this little anaerobic cell is struggling because it did better when there wasn’t any oxygen on earth, and at the same time, larger cells that were aerobic started growing. But they weren’t generating ATP as well.

So, I can imagine the conversation that went on between the two of them because this is exactly what happened. The big cell says to the little cell, “Hey, little guy. I see you’re struggling there with all that oxygen, and we love oxygen. But we’re not doing so well generating ATP. So, how about you come and join us? And we’ll protect you from the oxygen and you can generate ATP for us.” And basically, that's what happened. The big cell engulfed the little cell but did not digest the little cell. That little cell, that little cyanobacteria became mitochondria. Your mitochondria evolved from spirulina, well, from cyanobacteria, which spirulina is a cyanobacteria. Crazy, right?

That is why there are two membranes on your mitochondria. The original membrane is when it was out by itself 4 billion years ago as an anaerobic cell. Then when it got engulfed by the big cell, the big cell put a second membrane around it as occurs in all of the cells in your body that have these porins and allow things to go in and out. But the original membrane was retained. And that is why algae has everything that can get into mitochondria inner membrane where nothing else can get in there because it’s the same thing. There are different processes that allow the absorption to get through the cells. Nothing else can get in there. Your mitochondria and spirulina are family.

[01:36:11] Ashley James: It is so cool. I did a whole interview on mitochondria back in episode 297 with Dr. Warren Cargal. And I feel like I should connect the two of you because he published a book on mitochondria. He’s all about mitochondria. He said exactly what you said, which is really cool. It’s cool to hear it from multiple sources, right? And it’d be cool to hook you guys up. I’m going to do that. I’m going to hook you guys up.

[01:36:38] Catharine Arnston: What’s his name again?

[01:36:39] Ashley James: It’s Dr. Warren Cargal. Anyways, that's episode 297. I’ll make sure I’ll hook you guys up. I’ve had another, Dr. Jack Kruse has been on the show talking about mitochondrial health. He’s a cardiologist that … pretty sure. I’m going by memory. No, maybe he’s not a cardiologist. I think he’s a cardiologist. You know, when you do 500 interviews …

[01:37:04] Catharine Arnston: Oh, I know. I know. God bless you if you're even remembering.

[01:37:09] Ashley James: Yeah.

[01:37:10] Catharine Arnston: I’m the same way. I meet so many people. But when I discovered that mitochondria evolved from cyanobacteria.

[01:37:17] Ashley James: It’s just fascinating.

[01:37:19] Catharine Arnston: It’s called endosymbiosis, which is the scientific terminology that's used. And I tell people it makes me sort of chuckle because it reminds me of, let’s say you had a friend who got kicked off out of their apartment, and they come to you, and they go, “Hey, can I come and stay with you for a few days?” And you go, “Okay, fine.” Then they come and stay with you, and they do your laundry, they pick up your groceries, they pick up your dry cleaning, and you go, “Hey, this is working pretty good for me.” So you tell your friend, “Hey, stay forever.” So it’s sort of what happened with the little single-cell cyanobacteria that kind of took up shop with the bigger bacteria, and instead of digesting it, the big bacteria said, “Hey, you're doing such a great job generating ATP for us. Why don’t you just stay forever?” It flipped me out when I realized that we came from algae.

This endosymbiotic theory was discovered, by the way, in the ‘60s by a female professor who was at MIT at the time. And she was ridiculed by her peers for almost 10 years until they realized she was right. So, any article that you read at the NIH library, the National Institute of Health library on mitochondria, they all reference this thing. That's why I was so comfortable telling you about this because it starts to make complete sense. The mitochondria is where everything in your health starts and ends. Everything. You cannot get any further down the food chain, so to speak, in your health than mitochondria. And algae, you can’t get any further down the food chain. It is the original life on earth. It is the original ancestral, paleo, historic food. And here we are looking at all these people getting sick and taking all these medications and dramatic surgery.

The answer to all this for prevention and for maintenance and for excelling in health and vitality for you, the earth, and your children, has been sitting in front of us for billions of years, but it’s not sexy. It’s not cool. No one’s explained it to you.

[01:39:40] Ashley James: I think it’s sexy. I think, like mushrooms and algae, I think it’s incredibly sexy. So, I have deep faith, and I believe in God, and so many who study the Bible go, “Well, okay, but you're saying something that happened a billion years ago, but the Bible doesn’t say that. The Bible’s only …” you know. Some people take it literally and say 5,000 years. And what’s interesting, as you transcribe the Bible, and we’ve sort of changed definitions of words as you transcribe it from one language to another, but in the Old Testament, where “day” actually is transcribed into a literal day 24-hour around the sun, which, I mean, I think God can do anything; however, it was originally said and remember also Bible stories were spoken before they were written for a long time. It was the original language. And I’m open to being wrong about this, but this is after talking to like rabbis and ministers and priests and stuff like that, and having these wonderful theological discussions. When it comes to theology, I don’t take the stance where I’m infallible and I’m right. I’m open to being completely wrong because I’m listening for God to show me. Show me what you want me to see. And so, I think we should all have this open mind, like show me, God, what is the truth, show me what you want me to see and what you want me to understand about my healing and about life and how I can help others and how I can be in service to you.

What they said is that the word “day” actually means event. On the first event, God made this. On the second event, you know. It was not a literal 24 hours, which is really fascinating, because we’ve taken it as 24 hours. Because I believe God made the universe, and the more you study science, it’s actually really fascinating. Go look under a microscope, under a really, really intense microscope. Go look at a single-cell organism. And when you see how complex a single-cell organism is, it will move you to tears. It is so beautiful. There's more happening. If you study biology, there's more happening in a single cell than in New York City. There's more happening than in a city with millions of people and all their lives. It is so beautiful, and scientists have never discovered something created out of nothing. Anyways, this is just me. I’m not pushing my beliefs on anyone. But try it on. Try on this concept that there's a beautiful higher power that loves you and created this whole universe. And this has been my philosophy since I was a kid that God is the world’s biggest scientist, that He’s the world’s coolest scientist. Right? And I say He, it’s God, it’s everything. Everything, this beautiful universal energy that there's something behind life. There's something after life. There's something behind everything that's a universal life force. There's more energy in us than there's matter. So, you get into studying quantum physics. Just study any of these scientists, and you just start to see God show up in these beautiful ways. At least He does for me.

[01:42:55] Catharine Arnston: I completely agree. I totally agree.

[01:42:57] Ashley James: And He gives us what we need. So, it just makes so much sense that here He’s given us the mitochondria, this beautiful relationship between this interesting bacteria-like object that then is now in our cells, making energy for us. And that makes so much sense because now that we’re just starting to crack open or just starting to go down the rabbit hole. We’re just starting to crack open that pandora’s box. I know pandora maybe isn’t the best reference, but this beautiful deep, deep, deep rabbit hole of understanding how good bacteria plays a role in our health. Right? And there's about six pounds of good bacteria in your gut that digest your food, that make neurochemicals for you, that your gut bacteria is making about 70 percent of your serotonin for your brain, and we’re just scratching the surface. So, it just makes so much sense that here we have chlorella and spirulina, these crops that God has given us that is here in nature, nature has given us that is healing and healthy for our body. Just like when you go into nature and you find a plant that's poisonous, you will always find the cure nearby. That there is a balance, in a balanced ecosystem.

And I wouldn’t say like go into like a state park, might not be a balanced ecosystem or your city park. But in a balanced ecosystem, herbalists, when they go out, and they wildcraft and forage, they will point out. They will say here’s the poison, and here’s the remedy. They're nearby. There's a balance in nature. And here we have this balance and especially now when the world is more and more and more toxic, we need to go back and find what are the cures that are showing up. Like you said, it shows up in a beach when the beach is toxic to help mop it up. We need to bring this into our body and mop up all the damage we’re doing from living in a toxic world. I absolutely love it.

Now, you said it kills bacteria. But what does it do to the good bacteria?

[01:44:58] Catharine Arnston: Oh, it helps it multiply because it’s a prebiotic, so it supports the healthy bacteria and kills the bad bacteria. It’s an adaptogen, so it can identify which team it wants to play with. 

Speaking of teams, it’s also keto, vegan, paleo, carnivore, no lectins, algae is not technically a plant. It’s certainly not an animal. It will work with every lifestyle group. It has zero sugar, zero caffeine. One calorie per tablet, 40 vitamins and minerals, highest protein in the world, highest glutathione, melatonin and superoxide dismutase in the world. And just to go back to you referencing God, two things, they now think that in the passage where Jesus is feeding the masses manna from heaven, they now think it was algae because he was scraping stuff from the rocks and now algae grows on rocks. And if it’s exposed to light, the chlorophyll is pulled out. But all the protein and the polysaccharides remain, so you’ll see it on rocks like this white crystal stuff. That’s algae. But it’s still nourishing. You can live on algae forever. It’s that nourishing. So, that's one of those sorts of things I want to mention.

Because algae is so healing and because it is really truly a gift to us from God from nature, from the universe, whatever you want to call it, anybody who is on a spiritual quest or wants to at least find themselves and get out of the crazy world that we live in, you have to be quiet. You have to step back, listen to your own soul, listen to your own voice because your soul and your spirit whisper. It never shouts. You know who shouts? People and companies that are trying to get your attention to sell you stuff. So, I tell people whoever is advertising the most on TV, run the other way. Because they’re loud and they're pushy. Your soul and your spirit are never loud or pushy. It will just whisper to you. And algae has been sitting around waiting for us to take notice of it.

By the way, the agents have figured it out like 60 years ago. And there was no legitimate reason for me to get involved with algae. I have an MBA, I was doing international economic development, then my sister got sick, and that I just helped her, and then I wanted to help more people. And I kept going. I had no science background at all. I’m completely self-taught. I call myself a citizen scientist, which I was going to mention this at the very beginning. Everybody who’s listening, you need to consider yourself a citizen scientist. It is your job to find out how your body works and find out what you need to give it so that you do not have to be a statistic. You can turn around that trajectory that you are on if you do not do something like this, an algae intervention, because your body is not giving you the antioxidants you need to protect yourself from free radical damage and the world that you live in is too toxic, it’s dumping on your body and your immune system things that you just cannot continue to get access to and expect to live a healthy life. It’s just impossible.

So, I have no science background. I’ve tried to do as much heavy lifting for you as possible. I’ve probably read 3,000 NIH articles at this point. I’ve been on over 200 podcasts. I speak nationwide. I’ve written about 500 papers. I’m in the process of getting a book. I’m going to do a TED Talk. I will do as much as I can to help you understand the science of algae and the science of your body. We write a blog on our website. You could just come to our website. Don’t even buy anything. Just educate yourself. But be careful on the internet in general because nobody understands algae like I do, and so there's a lot of stuff that’s out there that's actually incorrect. And I’m here to help you learn from my 12 years, I’ve given you a bit of a brain dump, and you can listen to this multiple times, and we’ll send you a lot of articles that you can link to. But I can promise you, if you start taking both the spirulina and the chlorella, you, your children, your pets, your family, your health will improve, and so will the world, because it’s also the most eco-friendly, sustainable crop in the world. The earth is begging you to wake up and help it because it needs help, and it doesn’t need a voice.

[01:49:43] Ashley James: I love it. And especially as you dive in, first of all, you have a PhD in algae.

[01:49:49] Catharine Arnston: Algae. I do.

[01:49:51] Ashley James: Well, you’ve been studying it for 12 years as a scholar. Harvard would give you an honorary PhD at this point. Listeners can go to episode 357 to learn about debunking algae myths, especially for those listeners who consider themselves citizen scientists and want to dive into the research. Episode 357 is great for that. Episode 266, we talk about vitamin K2 and the importance of that in relation to algae. Then episodes 234 and 265. We did an even deeper dive than what we did today about these crops and understanding how these crops are made. So, if you want to go back and sort of have the behind-the-scenes tour of how these crops are turned into these wonderful little tablets and all that. You can go back to those episodes, and we’ll link these previous four interviews in today’s episode along with all the articles that Catharine’s going to give us to start diving in and digesting ourselves. And I love it. You can go to ENERGYbits.com and just start poring through the information there, and of course, use coupon code LTH any time to get the listener discount.

Okay, so listeners at this point are sold. They want their mitochondria to be healed. They want all the benefits you just mentioned. I’m especially thinking about heart health and brain health. I’m so, so, so excited about helping listeners to protect their mitochondria, to heal their mitochondria. Which one would be the best bag to buy if they're just starting out and they're like, “There’s four different bags. I don’t know which one to buy.” Which one should they buy?

[01:51:36] Catharine Arnston: Well, because VITALITYbits is a blend of both the spirulina and the chlorella, that might be the way to go. It’s interesting, spirulina has the highest superoxide dismutase and the highest glutathione and then the chlorella has the highest chlorophyll and the highest melatonin. As I said, they do different things. But both of them have the highest of all four antioxidants. But if you take the VITALITYbits, it gives you a nice mix of the two of them. So, that would be my suggestion if you can only buy one bag. And if you are able to buy two, then I would get the ENERGYbits. Well, someone joked and they said you have a boy spirulina and a girl spirulina. Remember, ENERGYbits and BEAUTYbits are identical. So, that would be what you would take in the morning. I personally love the BEAUTYbits, so that's what I have on my countertop because I’m a girl.

 And it’s a very attractive packaging. I design everything, it’s my homage to Mother Nature. The ENERGYbits is blue because spirulina came from the ocean and so it’s in a blue ocean color package. The BEAUTYbits is a gorgeous pink rose in it which Mother Nature knows beauty is healing, and so there's no shame in wanting to improve your own beauty. I mean, Mother Nature does it every day with the gorgeous flowers that she provides for us. The chlorella has a green leaf on it, and of course, chlorella does belong to the plant kingdom, so it’s a green package. And the VITALITYbits is in a bold red, sort of a fuchsia red color because it’s a blend of the two colors, the green and the blue, and it’s almost a purpley color.

I used to have friends say “I want two blue bags and a couple of green bags.” Some people buy it by the color. But the spirulina is generally the best in the morning, the afternoon when you're hungry and tired, and the chlorella which is the healing RECOVERYbits definitely before bed, but anytime that you want. And most people, as I said, do swallow the spirulina, the blue, and the pink one, and they do enjoy eating the chlorella with either macadamia nuts or sea salt or pistachio nuts. The VITALITYbits is a blend, so it’s kind of up to you in your flavor, but there's no shame in swallowing them. You can swallow them, chew them, add them to smoothies, or grind them up first. They don’t dissolve because they're very concentrated.

And just so you know, each tablet has the same nutrition as an entire plate of vegetables. One tablet. So, again, if you have parents, grandparents, who aren’t eating well, just get even a couple of these and if you take one or both of the algae, you could eliminate a multivitamin, especially spirulina, a multivitamin, eliminate your fish oil, eliminate CoQ10, biotin. You can clean up the clutter on your countertop with something that is nourishing and food, and chlorella because of the high chlorophyll, you don’t need to if you don’t like them or can’t get to them, you don’t need to be preparing vegetables as frequently because it gives you all the nourishment that you would find in greens. It’s a one-stop shop.

[01:55:00] Ashley James: I’m an overachiever. I just want more. So, I’m going to eat my vegetables and I’m going to take this because I want to do both. But I can appreciate that people have gaps. There's some people that have gaps in their nutrition, and this is fantastic for feeling it, and for me, I’m like, I want that optimal true health. I want the best of the best, so I’m adding this in addition to my vegetables. But at times when I can’t get a good meal, this is a fantastic quick food on the go that also happens to be the most concentrated amount of food nutrition I can get, which is super, super, super exciting.

[01:55:41] Catharine Arnston: One last thing I want to mention. Because cancer and heart disease and all these other illnesses, Alzheimer’s is so prevalent, when I mentioned 10 tablets a day, that's kind of for adults who are healthy. If anyone listening or you have any family members and we all do who are experiencing cancer or heart disease, Alzheimer’s, please double the amounts, I promise, triple the amount. There is no upper limit.

[01:56:07] Ashley James: It’s a crop, it’s food.

[01:56:08] Catharine Arnston: It’s a crop; it’s a vegetable. Your poop might be a little green, drink a little extra water because there's high protein and that your body needs water to process protein. Please, please, please get them on this stuff. I promise you, it will make a difference. Cancer cannot exist in an alkaline environment. Algae is the most alkaline food in the world. That's how I got started. My sister’s oncologist told her to eat an alkaline diet when she was preparing for chemo. And I will send you a link to a PowerPoint that will give you lots of other references. It’s hundreds and hundreds of science references in my presentation that we’ll send you. Trust me when I tell you this is the most natural, effortless, non-invasive way to nourish and heal your cell and your mitochondria and your health. I’m so grateful for the opportunity, Ashley, to help people understand this.

[01:57:03] Ashley James: Absolutely. Well, I don’t want to use the word “desperation,” but I hear your passion and I hear almost like the tone of your voice, first of all, you have even more information than the last time I interviewed you. But I hear an essence in your voice and, you know what, the word “desperation” is completely wrong. That's not it. It’s urgency.

[01:57:25] Catharine Arnston: Yeah, urgency.

[01:57:29] Ashley James: There is a level of urgency that this deserves because people’s lives are at stake. For me having suddenly lost my mom at 55 and my dad at 62, young ages. It’s so sad that some people are just like drop-dead in their 40s of a heart attack out of nowhere, like young. I have a mom friend of mine who died of cancer. I have another mom friend who’s fighting cancer. These diseases that were maybe diseases of 80-year-olds are now diseases of 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds.

[01:58:10] Catharine Arnston: It’s unacceptable.

[01:58:11] Ashley James: It is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable that teenage athletes drop dead of all of a sudden, a heart attack. It’s unacceptable, right? So, we need to take matters into our own hands. There is a level of urgency and you have an urgency that we need to get the algae to be accepted en masse and widely. You converted us. We’re believers. We’re excited. I know my listeners who haven’t tried your algae are doing a jump and try it. Please come into the Learn True Health Facebook group and let’s talk about it, listeners, those who have tried the algae, tried the ENERGYbits. Please come into the Learn True Health Facebook group and tell the listeners what your experience has been. Those who haven’t tried it, come ask, tell me about it. Let’s start a conversation about it. I want to hear your testimonials and your stories around it. And then those who are new to it, as you try it, please come to the Facebook group and share.

One thing I wanted to say is, and we’ve talked about this in previous episodes, those who are very sensitive like I am to detox and to toxins, I’m one of those people and the second I start detoxing, I feel it hugely. And I found that when I eat 30 of the tablets of the RECOVERYbits, which is the chlorella, that is the magic number for me to not feel detox effects when I’m going through a heavy metal detox. That for me is the magic number. Dr. Klinghardt said that's about the amount like a good handful, is what you want to take when you're doing heavy metal detox. If you take less and you're doing a heavy metal detox, you kind of are dusting in a room with no windows open and no air filter on. You're just kicking up the toxins inside the stores because toxins will store up. When I say toxins, I mean, man-made toxins and heavy metals. I mean like by-products of cellular waste, natural by-products of cellular waste. That's normal. I mean, the 80,000 manmade chemicals over the last 40,000 years that we’re now exposed to that our body has to figure out how to process, plus heavy metals that are in our air, food, medications, and soil, and water.

It gets stored in adipose tissue. Even if you're skinny, you still have some fat. It gets stored in that. And then when we do any kind of detoxing or weight loss, it gets thrown back into the 

blood system for your body to have to figure out how to get rid of and if you're like me and my liver’s not really great with detoxing, then it’s just going to re-damage everything and get back into the fat cells until I do more weight loss or I do more detoxing, then it comes back out. It damages everything and then it goes back in instead of getting out of my body. So, eating 30 of the RECOVERYbits is what mops it up and allows it to leave my body without feeling any ill effects of detox. So, that was my thing. And Dr. Klinghardt said, and he confirmed this that if you eat less than 30 and you're doing detox, you’re going to still feel sick if you're like me. So, eat 30. Don’t be shy. Just a handful. Every day, if you’re going to do detox like doing sauna or other detoxing things.

Because I’ve heard from a handful of people, not a lot of people, I’ve seen people eat 5 and have had no problem, but people who are also sensitive like me, if they're doing a detox and they eat less, they’ll then feel sick and they go, “Oh, this algae made me sick.” And I’m like, no, it’s not the algae that made you sick. You didn’t take enough of it to mop up. Then, they trust me enough to try again, and they're like, “You're right. I tried 30 and I don’t feel anything at all. But if I eat 10, I feel sick. But if I ate 30, don’t feel sick.” And like, see, there you go. It mops it up at 30, but you don’t get enough of the mopping up effect if you eat 10. So, that's been my experience.

[02:02:02] Catharine Arnston: And I agree. That's why you’ll get the wellness benefits from 5 or 10, but just so you know, and I’m not boasting about this, I probably eat 100-150 chlorella a day and have every day for 12 years. I mean, I love this stuff. It’s a main food for me. Probably eggs and algae are the two things. As ironic, when I first started the company, I didn’t have any money and the only things I could afford were eggs and algae. And here I am, I am finally not desperate again like I was 12 years ago. But my favorite foods are eggs and algae. And I’m not suggesting you need to eat 100, but I just share that with you to show you that there is no upper limit. So, if you can eat take the 30, that is the magic number. In fact, we sell them in boxes on our website in pouches with 30 tablets in it. So, for those of you who can, it makes it so easy because all you do is you start your day with a pouch of spirulina with the 30 tablets and you end your day with a little pouch of chlorella with the 30 tablets. You don’t even have to think about it. We also sell them in canisters that come with a bag inside. You open the bag, you put it in the canister and then you just leave it on your countertop, and then you just shake out the tablets through the little opening in the canister. It’s adorable. It’s beautiful, it’s effortless and then when you run out of tablets, you just buy another bag and you fill a bag up with a canister because we found people were sticking their hand in the bags and they're getting green powder on their hands and it was messy. So, we’ve done our best to make it as effortless for you. The little pouches that we call them travel single-servings are just the best. Just buy a bunch of boxes of those.

If you want to learn more too, we’re very active on social media. ENERGYbits is the main handle on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. And BEAUTYbits has their own Instagram handle if you want to see the girly stuff. It’s just that, BEAUTYbits. They're like kids, right? They have complete different personalities.

[02:04:02] Ashley James: So funny. I’m not one of those, a pink, you know. I’m kind of like, why, why is everything pink? Like, I’m not a pink girl, but I appreciate you do that for the girls, for the women who like it. I personally don’t. I don’t know. I liked climbing trees when I was a kid. And I believe that as a female, we have such a beautiful spectrum of what being a woman is. Being a woman is anything that we say we are. We are strong. We are so amazingly strong. And I have this wonderful naturopathic physician who’s been practicing for close to 40 years now. She’s delivered over a thousand babies and she used to be the dean of the naturopathic college Bastyr University just outside of Seattle. Her name’s Dr. Molly Niedermeyer. She says that women, they're so strong. Like blood tests show that they should be dead, you know what I mean? It’s like your energy levels through the floor or your cortisol or through or through the roof. But man, and I’m not putting you guys down but just as a comparison, we drag our bodies through the mud. We have a willpower and a determination to be the most amazing mothers, the most amazing wives, the most amazing businesswomen and students. And whatever we put our minds to, our physiology will keep us going. Just our mindset, our willpower. But we will drag our bodies through the mud and a lot of times put ourselves last because we are taking care of everyone we love and then finally, our body breaks. Then, we finally have to take care of ourselves. And I really don’t want, because I hit that breaking point 15 years ago, and I was incredibly sick. Now, I’ve spent the last 15 years recovering my health from that and going, okay, I put my oxygen mask on first in order to take care of those I love. So, we have to flip that mindset and go, for example, I buy ENERGYbits to take care of myself so I can take care of my loved ones. Feed them to your kids and feed them to you. Feed them to your husband, feed them to the whole family.

I know that there are some listeners right now going, “I can’t wait to give this to my kids,” but it’s like, “Oh, money is tight, I’m going to buy this for my kids but not for me.” Or, “I’m going to buy for my husband but not for me.” I know you’re thinking that. I’m in your brain. And here’s the thing. If you get sick, who’s taking care of the ones you love? You’ve got to take care of yourself. Please, please, please. Putting yourself first isn’t selfish. Putting yourself equal to your kids and husband in terms of the importance of health is necessary to take care of those you love. So, please try it, do yourself that service and try it.

[02:07:06] Catharine Arnston: My final sort of comment is I saw a great quote on the internet and it said self-love is giving the world the best of you, not what’s left of you. And that really resonated with me and I hope it resonates with you.

[02:07:21] Ashley James: I love it.

[02:07:22] Catharine Arnston: I need to run but …

[02:07:24] Ashley James: Oh, thank you so much, Catharine, for coming on the show. This has been wonderful.

[02:07:27] Catharine Arnston: Thank you for having me, Ashely. This is so great and I’m so grateful to share again with your community. And like I said, this is a labor of love for me and I’ve got to get people using this so they can regain their health naturally. It’s possible. It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. But you’ve got to do it.

[02:07:47] Ashley James: Love it.

[02:07:48] Catharine Arnston: Citizen scientists, reunite.

[02:07:50] Ashley James: Yes, absolutely. Well, come back on the show when you discover more information. Just keep going down that rabbit hole. Listeners, go to LearnTrueHealth.com to get all the show notes, get all the links to everything that Catharine Arnston is going to link to us, all those articles, so you can dive down into the science. And please go to ENERGYbits.com, try the chlorella and the spirulina, and use the coupon code LTH to get the listener discount that Catharine so generously gives us. Thank you so much. I’m just so excited to hear the feedback from the listeners as they go down this rabbit hole with us and they notice that their health becomes even better and better from it. So, thank you so much.

[02:08:30] Catharine Arnston: Thank you. Thank you so much. All the best to everybody.

Get Connected With Catharine Arnston!

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Recommended Book by Catharine Arnston

Vitamin K2 And The Calcium Paradox by Kate Rheaume – Bleue

Recommended Links:

Learn True Health – Episode 357

Learn True Health – Episode 265

Learn True Health – Episode 218

Learn True Health – Episode 227

Downloadable Information About Chlorella And Spirulina:

why is our spirulina and chlorella the safest and best

mothers milk and spirulina-have the same nutritional profile chart and explanation 3 pages

chlorophyll content in sprirulina and chlorella compared to other vegetables- one page (2)

Vitamin K2 is found in RECOVERYbits chlorella helps prevent heart disease, Alzheimers and osteoporosis

Dr. Biamonte's website: www.health-truth.com 
Join the Learn True Health Facebook group: learntruehealth.com/group
Check out our new site! https://www.learntruehealth.com

486: Learn From The Expert, Dr. Michael Biamonte on Candida Elimination and Recovery

https://www.learntruehealth.com/learn-from-the-expert-dr-michael-biamonte-on-candida-elimination-and-recovery

Do you ever wonder if you're suffering from candida? Maybe you hear about it in media and don't even know what it is. Or maybe you’re struggling with candida, but that doesn’t mean you have to give in and let it take over. Candida is a fungal infection that could affect your digestive, urinary, and reproductive systems. It can be tricky if you don’t know what it is and how to treat it. Check it out on this podcast as Dr. Michael Biamonte and I discuss candida, its effects on your body, and how to eliminate it.

Highlights:

• What you see in bloodwork when you have candida
• Causes of candida overgrowth
• Candida as a possible etiology of autism
• Vitamins that aggravate candida
• Toxic elements that suppress your intestinal immunity
• Biofilm

Intro:

Hello, true health seekers, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I'm so excited for you to hear today’s interview. If you’ve been struggling with candida, if you think maybe you have candida, or if you know you have some kind of gut dysbiosis, then this is the interview for you. This is only going to be part 1 because, unfortunately, my guest was short on time, but he’s coming back in a few days and we’re going to finish this interview. Listening to part 1 though is going to lay the foundation. I learned so many new things about candida and this has been a very important topic to me. So, the fact that I learned so many new things, I know you’re going to learn so many new things. Your eyes are going to be wide open, you’re going to be on the edge of your seat, then you’re going to, just like me, can’t wait for part 2. I’m so excited to have him back. In a few days, we’re going to finish this interview, so that’ll be part 2, so just watch for that. But in the meantime, strap yourselves in, enjoy today’s interview. And if you have any questions for him, this is actually really exciting. We’ve got a great opportunity.

You can listen to part 1 today right now and then come to the Learn True Health Facebook group and type in any questions you have for him and I’ll be sure to include those in my interview that’s happening in a few days. So, join the Learn True Health Facebook group. Come on down. Come on down to the Learn True Health Facebook group. We’re all friends there. The water’s nice. Come on in, jump in, and ask your gut healing questions, especially about combatting and completely eliminating and resolving candida. I’m so excited to be diving deep into this topic because so many people are suffering from candida that don’t have to be. And it’s so fascinating that we get to pick the brain of the world’s leading expert on resolving and healing candida infections. So, enjoy today’s interview. Please share it with all your friends and family and loved ones and coworkers. Just everyone who you know might be interested in gaining better gut health. Have yourselves a fantastic rest of your day and I’ll see you in the Learn True Health Facebook group.

[00:02:10] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 486.

I am so excited for today’s guest. This is a very interesting topic, and in almost 500 episodes, I cannot believe that we have not covered this topic yet. Dr. Biamonte is an expert in several areas, but one which we’re going to talk about today is candida. I am really interested in learning about diving into this subject, and I’m so excited to have you on the show. Welcome.

[00:02:49] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Thank you. I’m very happy to be with you. I’ve heard some of your work, and I’m very pleased that you’ve chosen me to speak to today.

[00:02:58] Ashley James: Absolutely. So, the reason why candida, to me, is so fascinating is I was six years old, this was back in the ‘80s, my mom ran her own business, so she was gone 10 to 12 hours a day easily 5 days a week and she had a cold one day, and she went to the MD, and the MD put her on antibiotics probably for something that was like a virus, who knows. But she was on antibiotics and then the cold wouldn’t go away and looking at it now from the holistic lens, she was running herself ragged. Of course, her body was worn down and her body was trying to tell her to rest. But she wouldn’t take one day off work. So, six months later, she was on non-stop antibiotics for six months to handle basically a little cold that wouldn’t go away, which we know now of course is crazy, but back then, I guess they were playing it real loosey-goosey with the antibiotics and, as a result, it totally wiped out all her good bacteria and she developed a horrible candida inside her gut and outside. And I just remember her going and finding a naturopathic doctor, and he got her on the anti-candida diet, this is 1986. And subsequently, I was also very sick, but not with candida. I didn’t know; we didn’t know I had a dairy allergy. She took me to the same doctor, and he said stop doing dairy, stop doing sugar, stop eating processed food, and basically told us to eat the anti-candida diet that was close to what we would consider paleo today.

But they had all these weird rules like you're not allowed to eat leftovers and it has to be fresh. And you can’t have anything with vinegar in it and no condiments. The list went on and on. Well, sure enough, she got better and so did I. The rest of my childhood was eating super clean, no sugar was allowed in the house, no flour was allowed in the house. It was a totally different life after that until I rebelled in my teenage years. I went back to eating junk food because I was as a teenager and I had to rebel with something. And I watched my health from bad to good to bad to good every time I chose to eat what I was told by this naturopath was good versus what everyone else around me was eating.

But I watched my mom diligently stick with that anti-candida diet for years and the candida never returned. And it stuck in my brain how amazing is that, that she went to a medical doctor which gave her candida, and the medical doctors could not help her solve the problem, but a naturopath who told her about how healing food can be if you choose the right foods. Eventually, she’s able to overcome it. 

So, when I saw your work and how much advanced are we now in the last 36 years, so much more has been discovered and understood. That's why I’m really excited for you to teach us today about candida now in 2022 as opposed to 1986. So much has happened. And you’ve been a practitioner for over 30 years, so you’ve really seen the science in how we can really understand how to heal the body using food and, in some cases, nutraceuticals, and to support the body’s ability to heal itself and to stave off candida. So, that's why I’m excited about the work that you do and I’m really, really excited for my listeners to hear how they can heal their body and prevent candida and remove it from their body should they have it.

[00:06:44] Dr. Michael Biamonte: I started practicing in 1984. 

[00:06:47] Ashley James: Oh! There you go.

[00:06:49] Dr. Michael Biamonte: In those days, things were very limited. People asked me what college I went to and I said I went to the College of Hard Knocks because I learned a lot of things the hard way. We didn’t have tests back then.

So, when I first encountered candida, I had been out of naturopathic school for a few years, and I was working with some aerospace engineers at Grumman on Long Island because that's where I was from. I was from Long Island. And I ran into those aerospace engineers who were working at Grumman. They were working on a computer model of the human body that NASA approached them to design. They wanted this computer software so that they could use it to analyze or interpret the astronaut’s bloodwork when they were in the space station for long periods of time because they were concerned about negative calcium balance and nitrogen balance. When you're in space and you're weightless for that amount of time, you can start having muscle loss, and you can start having bone loss.

Fortunately, one of the people who was the head of the project that I was working with and I became very close with was the same man who designed the life support systems on the lunar module, Dr. Robert Santoro, who unfortunately passed away a few years ago. I worked with him on constructing this model for about 3 or 4 years. And unfortunately, Grumman cancelled when NASA cancelled the project on us because it was getting a bit expensive, and they weren’t anticipating that they were going to get back the amount of investment that they were putting in. That was partially our fault because we had an expense budget, and we were flying doctors into Long Island from all over the world, all famous nutritionists who were all adding to the model. Everyone had their own data and research that was sort of privy to them.

So, we asked them at this point because we almost had the model complete. Now what this model could do, this was computer software that was designed in they called it table-driven. Table-driven software allows you to take up datum and insert it a different spot, so that you don’t have to rewrite the whole program. So, we were almost finished with this and we asked them, “Well, what are we going to do this? I mean, this project is almost done but you're not going to complete it.” They said, “We don’t care what you do, you can keep it.”

So, we took the model and we started to offer it to physicians, and what a physician would do, they drew some blood on their patients, have an SMA-24 or 26 which is pretty standard bloodwork done. Then we’d ask them to do a tissue mineral analysis on their patients which was typically hair or nails, but it’s commercially hair nowadays. And then whatever other test they wanted to do. If it was a chiropractor, they could tell us what particular subluxations their patient usually had, so we gave them a diagram of the spine and they would circle like L1, T4, C2, or whatever typically came up and then we would input this data in the computer, and the computer would actually run a simulated version of their body and it would look for errors. Then from the product module we had that was loaded with different supplements like from standard process or Metagenics or Nutri-West, all these different companies, the computer would then select supplements that it would recommend to fix whatever was wrong, and it would then recommend the diet based on their blood type and other things. And we had a lot of doctors using it back in those days. A lot of people were getting really good results. But there was this certain population of people and I estimated it was about 30 to 35 percent of the people who would run through the model that got crazy results like they would take the vitamins and get worse. Or they would take the supplements and have crazy reactions.

So, I volunteered to figure out what was going on with that group of people. And it took a while. I studied all their folders. When my wife tells the story, she always talks about walking into the room and seeing this big stack of folders on the desk that were higher than I was. And here I am going through this and what I eventually found out was that all these people had some kind of disturbance in their digestive system. I found that their intestinal tract was fighting something. There was some type of immune response going on there. And they were also having a lot of allergies to the supplements they were taking.

Eventually, I found out that what it was, was candida. Now, I didn’t know really much about candida. I thought it was some fad from California for all I know. And I remember the pop song Candida, that was really all I knew. So, I hit the textbooks and I studied and I understood what it was. And I told the people, “You have candida. Go to your medical doctor. Tell them you have this. Let him clear it up and then come back and we’ll put you back on the program, and it should work.” That's how stupid I was. The people came back and they said the doctor says he doesn’t know what candida is, or he doesn’t know how to treat it, or some doctors were saying, “We don’t know anything about it at all.” So, I told them, what you have to do then is find a doctor who knows about this. And then so I looked it up, and I found Dr. Atkins at the time and Ronald Hoffman and Dr. Teplitsky and these different alternative functional doctors in New York City. And I said, “Well, go to those guys. They know about this.”

So, they went and then they came back to me, and they said, “Well, yeah, they said you were right. I did have candida, and they put me on a treatment and I got better for a while, then I kept relapsing.” So then I said, “Jeez, I got to figure this out.”

So, I spent the next 30 years studying candida and unraveling all its tricks. Then eventually, I wrote my book The Candida Chronicles, which we took the name from our newsletter that we had for many years, which was giving out information on all my discoveries about candida. And it was very interesting because, sure enough, when we cleared these people up of candida and put them back on the programs, they did fine. That experience was empirical to a degree. I mean, there was a lot that I’ve learned from the textbooks, but I essentially reverse-engineered the whole thing in order to figure it out.

So, I would listen to the patients and I would listen to what they said worked and didn’t work, and then I would go and look in the textbooks to figure out why that was. And that's essentially how I developed my candida treatment. I didn’t do it based on dogmatic laws that I thought had to be followed or data that was old or whatnot or insisting on certain things had to be a certain way. It was more by listening to people figuring out why something would work and wouldn’t work and then understanding through the existing knowledge that we had.

One of the first datums I came across was in The Merck Manual, which is a book that most doctors have in their offices. And The Merck Manual regarding candidiasis said that candida is caused by the indiscriminate use of broad-spectrum antibiotics and that if you continue to treat candida only vaginally, you will not get a result, the patient will not recover. You would need to treat it concurrently also in the intestinal tract. When I read that, it all made sense. That’s when I understood what it was I was seeing in their lab work. Because in the lab work of these people, there was a pattern in their white blood cells that was indicating an intestinal infection.

So, that's where a lot of it started for me. Then I just began to continue to deconstruct and reconstruct it and reverse engineer it until I got the program correct, and then at that point, I wrote the book several years ago. Once I felt I had enough of the secrets and the tricks that it plays, where someone could read the book and then have a workable solution, that's when I decided I was actually going to write the book. So, that's from when I first started studying candida in 1987 to like let’s say 2016. So, there you go, that's a little bit of time. But that's how confusing candida can be.

[00:15:29] Ashley James: I’m fascinated you said that when you looked at their bloodwork you could tell that the white blood cells, there was like a storm going on inside the intestines. You could see that based on blood work? Can you talk a bit about that?

[00:15:41] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Oh yes, it’s very simple. When your neutrophils are low, approaching below normal and your lymphocytes are high approaching above normal, that pattern of low neutrophils and high lymphocytes is the pattern for an intestinal infection.

[00:15:58] Ashley James: Whoa! Do all doctors know that?

[00:16:02] Dr. Michael Biamonte: No, they don’t. 

[00:16:05] Ashley James: This drives me crazy. And so, how did you know that? 

[00:16:09] Dr. Michael Biamonte: There were some additives you can put on that. Also, very commonly elevated monocytes in eosinophils at the same time.

[00:16:19] Ashley James: So, did you learn that through this trial and error, like listening to the patient then going back and looking into textbooks? Is that how you discovered this?

[00:16:26] Dr. Michael Biamonte: No, that actual pattern I learned from Dr. Ken Brockman who was a barnstorming chiropractor back in the ‘80s, who was working on interpreting bloodwork using a combination of kinesiology in the bloodwork. So, what he would do is Brockman would take a guy, he would use kinesiology to figure out what was wrong and then he would look in the bloodwork to spot it in the bloodwork, and then he would duplicate this in enough people where he knew that that pattern in the bloodwork meant whatever it was.

[00:17:00] Ashley James: That is fascinating. From an outsider’s perspective, someone who’s raised in the mainstream medical system to believe that you wait to get sick and then go to an MD and get put on a drug, like that mentality, that lens that they see health through which is actually disease management, not health, you look at kinesiology and you think this is total witchcraft. It’s quackery, it’s snake oil. But then, if you go and have a session and do kinesiology several times with many different practitioners and then you can see it. Whatever they find in the kinesiology, they can then back up by looking in other places like you said lab work, and they can find it. It is absolutely fascinating. But from a quantum perspective, we are more energy than we are matter. Right? So, of course, there’s a way to communicate with the body other than physical, other than what we see is what we get. I love that. That is so fascinating.

[00:18:05] Dr. Michael Biamonte: And this is where you’re going to find the validity in Vega testing or the Rife machine, and so many of these other tests have existed that have advanced over the years that are based on frequencies in the body. I’ve used them all including kinesiology. They all have validity and they all work and they all helped me to understand what I understand today. The problem is, they’re not exacting. In the field of engineering which I heavily rely on because when I was growing up as a little baby doctor, all the people that I was surrounded by were all engineers. When I worked at Grumman Aerospace on that project, I worked with a group of doctors who were all systems analysis engineers, and they all had degrees in physiology.

So, I learned to view the body as an engineer, which is the way all health practitioners should be studying. And this is where holistic medicine tries to come in. But because they don’t follow engineering doctrines, let’s say, they can fall short. But this is where it comes from. The body as a system, a large collection of systems and subsystems, which all work back and forth. And where we got the name actually “biocybernetics”, biocybernetics refers to the study of self-regulating mechanisms, biological self-regulating mechanisms. This is also where the word “homeostasis” would come from. This is the body’s ability to try to maintain a balance. But when the body gets off balance, it then seeks to hold on to a balance which may not be correct because that’s what it knows. Many times, what chiropractors and doctors are doing is they're trying to reeducate the system, sort of like rebooting your computer to come back to a normal maintenance level, a normal balance. This is where candida comes in because candida, like many other infections or illnesses, continues to throw that balance off. The body continues to try to compensate for the presence of this organism. This is what makes it so interesting.

[00:20:21] Ashley James: So, when you say the body keeps adjusting, what kind of symptoms?

[00:20:27] Dr. Michael Biamonte: First off, the first thing to establish is that candida is normal in the body. Candida is a fungus or a yeast. It’s a chameleon-like organism. It’s sometimes called dimorphic. Dimorphic means to live in two different states. So, candida can be in your body as a yeast which women experience vaginally or it can be in your intestinal tract as a fungus which is part of your normal flora. It’s part of the normal aggregate of all the microbes in your intestinal, your biome which has become a popular term nowadays.

The problem is, is if you take antibiotics or if you take different medications, it kills the friendly bacteria which balance the candida out in the food chain. There is a food chain in your intestinal tract when it comes to microbes, and the food chain basically is that the friendly gram-negative E. coli bacteria act as a neutral area and the gram-positive bacteria which is the Lactobacillus bifidus and Lactobacillus acidophilus species are the more aggressive bacteria that actually use candida as a food and stimulate your immune system, help your body manufacture vitamins, help you absorb nutrients, etc. When you take something, an antibiotic for instance, or a steroid drug, or chemotherapy, or even antacid pills like Tums, they can kill your friendly bacteria and that allows candida then to go unchecked. The candida no longer has a governor there to balance it. So, it grows and it becomes dominant where it’s not supposed to become dominant, that grows out of control. And once candida grows to a population more than it should be or as a dominant part of your flora, now it’s excreting alcohols into your body because it’s a yeast.

So, what does yeast do? When you give yeast sugar, it ferments and produces alcohol. So, now you have alcohol levels in your body rising where they shouldn’t be. You have mycotoxins which are toxins that are formed by yeast and fungus going into your nervous system. You have all types of other … I think total there's over 50 different toxins we can identify that can releases into your body and they affect you neurologically which is why you find so many children with autism have candida. And children with autism, the prerequisites for a child to be autistic, as far as I’m concerned, are number one, he’s got to be born with a set of genes that make him a really bad detoxifier and then he happens to get an overload of toxins from the old vaccines that have thimerosal or from the mercury in his fillings, and that affects him neurologically.

But back to the person here, the person now has this candida overgrown in his body and it’s releasing all these toxins. The toxins are causing multiple problems. They're causing him to have brain fog, he loses his memory, he gets rashes, he gets asthma, he gets digestive problems, he’s bloating, he’s burping, he’s farting, he’s doing all these things. And the guy is saying, “Where did all this come from?” Because it’s the symptoms you wouldn’t necessarily associate having lower gas with brain fog, you see. So, the symptoms that candida can produce are of such a spectrum that it can be very confusing and you would never think that this was all coming from the same place. Then, when you have the fact that diet changes, so if the guy eats sugar or too many carbs that feeds the candida, and now you have more toxins forming, he goes into a toxic environment where his body absorbs mercury or copper or a lead or something, well then that further makes the candida worse, you see. He goes up to a hot humid environment, well think about fungus and molds and hot humid environments, well, that’s going to make it worse. See, so all these things are going on around him and he can’t quite put his finger on what’s happening but he knows that all of these different changes—changes in his diet, changes when he takes medicines or vitamins, because vitamins aggravate candida. It’s one of the things a lot of people don’t know.

B-Complex vitamins taken in the presence of sugar or carbohydrate would drive candida crazy. Because what do B-Complex do? B-Complex break down carbs into simpler forms of sugar for your body to absorb. Well, guess who’s standing right there waiting to absorb those sugars? It’s the candida.

Vitamin CoQ10 is going to aggravate candida. Vitamin D and iron can spread candida. In fact, some of the pharmaceuticals, the common ones like ketoconazole and nystatin, how they actually work is by blocking the candida’s ability to absorb iron and vitamin D so you can kill the candida.

So, you have all these things going on and this is what makes it such a mystery. This is why this mystery of candida probably could have only been solved by someone like myself who was looking at it from the viewpoint of an engineer.

[00:25:43] Ashley James: And you're not looking to wipe candida out because again, that's more of the medical doctor; the MD system is let’s throw a nuclear bomb at the body and wipe something out. But that is also just leaving the body susceptible to whatever is going to kind of grow in its place. And we need candida, like you said, it’s food for those good bacteria.

[00:26:05] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Right. You need a certain amount of it and you couldn’t knock it out totally even if you tried. I’ve never found that to be even possible because it’s so intrinsic to the gut, that you got to have some, so it’s not even possible to do that. But yeah, that would be a more allopathic viewpoint. But it doesn’t work if you're trying to do that.

So, here you have the person now, they have all these symptoms going on and there all these different causation points and they're utterly confused as to what it’s all about, what’s happening. Now if they go on the internet, I don’t know if that's good or bad, they're going to learn something about it, but then there's the old adage that a little knowledge can be dangerous when it’s incomplete. And you're going to get people who start self-treating. I’ve heard of a few people but I’ve never actually met anybody who actually self-treated and got rid of their candida. The best I’ve been able to ascertain that people have done is by staying forever on a very strict diet—a diet so strict that most people wouldn’t want to do it, they’ve managed to maintain their symptoms. See, because candida is literally a plant and as a plant, it grows roots, and these roots permeate your tiny blood vessels and your intestinal tract to draw glucose, to draw sugar out so that candida can stay alive.

So, if you go on a very strict diet, an anti-candida diet, you can starve the candida down to the point where like a wilted plant, it has not so much activity, but those roots are still there. So once you go off the diet, within a few weeks the candida grows right back and blooms to its former glory and it’s going to spew out all kinds of toxins once again, and you're right back in the same boat.

[00:28:04] Ashley James: So, in order to bring it back into balance, you must bring what eats candida back into balance.

[00:28:10] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes, that is the goal. I preach this to my patients. The whole goal of my treatment plan is to reduce the candida enough to where we can get the friendly bacteria to take over again. And that sounds easy, but it’s not as simple as just giving the person a probiotic. On the step of my program where we reintroduce probiotics, in order to get to that step, the person has to have reduced their amount of candida, their total amount, by at least like 90 percent. And we have ways of measuring that with the urine test that we do.

[00:28:44] Ashley James: Really?

[00:28:45] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yeah. They’ve got to have it down by at least 90 percent, and they need to take a series of prebiotics. Now, a probiotic is the actual good bacteria like the acidophilus or the bifidus. The prebiotic, theoretically, could be any substance that aids the probiotic in returning or in multiplying or attaching itself back to the lining of the intestine. And while candida does not do permanent damage to people, there is something that candida does to the intestinal tract. And we never figured out exactly what that is, but it does do something that makes it harder for the bacteria to come back. I speculated that something to alter the collagen in the intestinal lining, it makes it a little harder for the friendly bacteria to reattach or reinoculate, as we would say.

[00:29:36] Ashley James: Wow!

[00:29:37] Dr. Michael Biamonte: But nonetheless, that’s the whole game. The whole game is get your candida low enough to where the probiotics will come back. And very rarely does anybody accomplish that because you have to handle the candida like peeling an onion that's layers. The step that we do right before we put the person on the probiotics is we give them antifungals which are fatty acid-based because those fatty acid-based antifungals are the only thing that can kill the candida deep enough in its roots to then allow the space for the probiotics to come back where the candida won’t repel. Because the average person with candida who takes probiotics, the probiotics will lower the pH of their intestines, which is a good thing. The candida loves the pH of your intestinal tract to be like over 7.4. Your body wants it to be between 6 to 7.2. When you take the probiotics, the probiotics acidify your intestinal tract. That's where we get the word “acidophilus” from. Acidophilus. Because the acidophilus releases acids, hydrogen peroxides and different things which lower the pH. So, when your pH lowers in your intestinal tract, a lot of the candida symptoms stop. But once you stop taking the acidophilus or the probiotic, the pH comes right back up again and then you have the same story.

But that is the goal. The goal is to take the probiotics and the prebiotics and get that re-established. Then, once that’s reestablished, then you can go and look at other aspects of what’s going on like does the candida produce different vitamin deficiencies or candida as a causative agent might be involved with mercury toxicity. Once you’ve reestablished your prebiotics, then you're free and clear to go and handle all those other issues.

But if you try to do it the other way around … like there is a doctor I won’t mention his name. He’s very famous, and he’s in the Midwest. His whole gig that he preaches to people is you’ve got to get rid of the mercury; otherwise, the candida is going to come back, you’ll never get rid of it. So, he takes everybody and he puts one on mercury detox. And over the years, I’ve gotten so many patients from this doctor who have come to me because they couldn’t handle his program that it’s embarrassing. And it doesn’t work because when you start to pull mercury out of somebody who has candida, that mercury comes through your intestinal tract. Your liver dumps it into your intestinal tract as a way to try to get rid of it and wants to put it in your stool. But guess who’s sitting right there with its arms open? The candida’s right there saying “give me the mercury.”

Somebody even came up with this wild theory that your body produced candida as a protective mechanism to help against mercury toxicity. Well, that's total nonsense. Candida absorbs mercury and it uses it as kind of like a nutrient, but mercury depresses fecal IgE and IgA, so no wonder if you have mercury, you get candida, so it dampens your intestinal immune response. It’s not there helping; it’s not what it’s doing. Mercury and copper and other toxic elements, when they're in your intestinal tract will actually lower and suppress your intestinal immunity, and that allows the candida to grow.

[00:32:59] Ashley James: So, if someone has like I have this problem I have been working on detoxing heavy metals and I’m one of those people you mentioned that just is not great at detoxing. I’ve got MTHFR, my liver came in last in the race. And I’m doing everything I can naturally to support my body’s ability to detox heavy metals and it really helps. All the natural stuff I do really helps. But what you're saying is that when our body, our liver removes these heavy metals, puts it in the bile to be placed into the intestine, so we poop it out. We’re not pooping it out because if there's candida overgrowth, which so many people have, it’s really, really common, which is just crazy. Those drugs you mentioned—steroids, antacids, even chemotherapy and antibiotics, everyone’s taking at least an antacid or an antibiotic or a steroid. It’s very, very, very rare that someone’s not had any of those drugs.

So, there's so many people walking around with candida imbalance, and then if they're like me and they are overly toxic with heavy metals, if they start doing some kind of heavy metal detox, then the liver is pumping it into the intestines to be released, and then the candida is right there sucking it up and basically keeping it in your body even though it’s not inside your body, it’s inside your intestines, which is then, like you said, lowering the immune system to support the body in fighting off infection. The candida is almost protecting its own environment by sucking up the heavy metals. It’s like they're wearing a coat of armor protecting themselves against our immune system.

[00:34:48] Dr. Michael Biamonte: And this is what you’ll occasionally hear of doctors who will tell their patients that when you go on this candida elimination program, don’t be surprised if you start re-experiencing symptoms of toxic metals or a toxic metal detox because when the candida dies, it releases the metal. This is why in my Phase 0 program, my Phase 0 program is very specifically designed to be able to absorb toxic metals that come from the candida when we first start to eliminate this. 

[00:35:16] Ashley James: I definitely wanted to get into the discussion, but before we do that, I wanted to go back because you had mentioned something. It sounded like biofilm. When you hypothesized that candida creates its own collagen to protect itself, to create its own little environment that not only protects itself but uses up the space so that the other healthy bacteria can kind of get in there and start eating up the candida. Is that biofilm?

[00:35:45] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes, it is. That is what biofilm does. Biofilm is produced by a particular type of bacteria. It’s not all bacteria but it’s certain bacteria, and these bacteria release this mucus, slimy substance to cover themselves, to cover parasites, to cover candida in order to protect them and to protect itself. Even before we knew about biofilm, we knew that these phenomena existed of cluster bacteria. If you were in a little ship and you could drive through your intestinal tract and look around with cameras and lights whatnot, you would see that candida doesn’t grow in a uniform manner. Candida grows in a splotchy, uneven format. And this is why people will have candida, and you’ll find in those clusters of candida, you will also find harmful bacteria and parasites. They’re all synergistic and symbiotic, so they all tend to cluster together. We knew that before we knew that also biofilm was being produced in those areas.

[00:36:49] Ashley James: Is part of your program to strip away biofilm in the intestine?

[00:36:55] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yeah, it has to be. Our Phase 0 program addresses that, the biofilm.

[00:37:00] Ashley James: Very cool. Yeah, that is such a big deal. I have so many questions for you, and I definitely want to have you back on my show. I know that you are really crunched on time right now, and we have just begun to open up this pandora’s box of candida. I’m going to make sure the links to all your websites and your book is in the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. We’re definitely going to have you back because I’ve got like 10 more questions and then I want to dive into how we can start to fight this. But just letting people know that this exists, they're going to start listening to the symptoms of their body and going, “Wait a second. I really need to read The Candida Chronicles and I really need to look into this further.”

So, you do have at-home tests. Could you please let the listeners know? You have three websites, and you have at-home tests. Please let the listeners know what are the websites and what steps should they take to follow you and start learning from you.

[00:37:53] Dr. Michael Biamonte: The main website is Health-truth.com. The two other websites are The New York City Candida Doctor. It might be The New York City Yeast Doctor. I think they might have changed the domain. But it’s either The New York City Yeast Doctor or Candida Doctor, and The New York City Thyroid Doctor. Why we have the thyroid website is because candida hits your thyroid and your adrenals the hardest, and the one thing you’d be guaranteed is after you handle a candida patient and you got the acute phase of candida, you're going to need to do something to restore thyroid and adrenal function.

Many people treat themselves for candida forever because they still think they have it even though they have it suppressed or in remission. What they’re experiencing now is adrenal and thyroid exhaustion, and they confuse it with still having candida, so that’s why we have to separate those things out.

[00:38:45] Ashley James: Fascinating. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We’re definitely going to have you back because we’ve got to dive in. We’ve just sort of opened up pandora’s box and we’re going to dive in with the next episode. And I know you’re crunched on time, so I really appreciate that you took the time today to talk to us and we’ll have you back on soon to continue this discussion. 

[00:39:04] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Okay, great.

[00:39:05] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Dr. Biamonte. Wasn’t that amazing? And this is just the beginning. We just have scratched the surface. Come join the Learn True Health Facebook group, ask your questions about candida. I know some questions have bubbled up for you after hearing just this first part. And oh man, I have my list of questions. I am so excited to dig into him next time. I’ve got him on the schedule for early October. So jump in to the Learn True Health Facebook group and let me know what questions you have for him. Let’s tap into the community and to the hive mind, and let’s come up with some really great ones for him. In my next interview with him we’ll just be digging in deep, figuring out all the why’s and the how’s and getting the plan of action that we can take so that we can take each step to resolving candida. But please, ask away. I’m sure you guys have got some great questions as do I. Let’s all join heads and think of what we can say to him. If you don’t have Facebook and you're not able to come on the Learn True Health Facebook group, you can always email me ashley@learntruehealth.com, although you're missing out because the Learn True Health Facebook group is pretty awesome. 

Have yourselves a fantastic rest of your day. And stay tuned. Make sure that you subscribe. Wherever you listen, if you listen on iTunes, or Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Podbean, wherever you're listening from or even just LearnTrueHealth.com, you could be listening on my website, whatever app you're using, make sure you subscribe and make sure that you’ve got your notifications. So when I do list part 2, that it will be up there for you. And please, give us a 5-star rating and review. If you love my show, if it’s made a difference for you, I absolutely love it when I hear back from listeners and I see your reviews. It means so much to me. It warms my heart, it motivates me to keep going when I know that I’m helping you guys. So, you can help me in return by leaving a 5-start rating and review. I’d love to see that. And also, if you haven’t already, come check out the LearnTrueHealth.com website. We spent all summer long revamping it and it looks totally different. It’s super cool. There's a Choose Your Own Self-Healing journey on the home page. Just scroll down and you’ll see that. And you’ll find all kinds of really cool content there. So, go to LearnTrueHealth.com, check out our new website. Let me know what you think about. And hopefully, I’ll see you in the Learn True Health Facebook group soon. If you don’t know how to find that, you can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/group, and it’ll take you there. Awesome. Have yourselves a great day and I’ll see you in part two of this interview soon.

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The Candida Chronicles

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485: Medicinal Mushrooms That Heal Brain & Immune Function, Tim James

https://www.learntruehealth.com/medicinal-mushrooms-that-heal-brain-immune-function-tim-james

For thousands of years, people have been consuming mushrooms as food and natural remedies. In this episode, Tim James talks about the science behind medicinal mushrooms and how he has used that knowledge to create a tincture designed to bring you closer to your ideal state of well-being. He also takes you through the facts about each mushroom and provides an overview of some of the products that he specially and intentionally formulated.

Highlights:

• Ayurveda and Siddha medicine
• Green 85
• MultiShroom
• Naturally-occurring citric acid
• Xanthan gum
• Chaga
• Lion’s mane
• Cordyceps
• Reishi, shiitake, and maitake mushrooms

Intro:

Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 485.

[00:00:15] Ashley James: I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show with us, Tim James of no relation, but honestly, I feel like we were twins separated at birth and tragically separated at birth. We both are incredibly passionate about holistic health and healing and so many other topics that are affecting all of our lives. Honestly, it’s like, Tim, if I was a guy, I’d be you. I really feel like if you were a lady, you’d be me. It’s just so funny how we both have fantastic health podcasts and we’re both incredibly passionate about spreading this information. We both have the same last name, which is really funny. I feel like we should start a podcast together, which might be a little confusing. The Tim and Ashley James Show of No Relation. It’s so great having you back on the show. I loved our interview, episode 442 where you shared how you overcome some major health obstacles and went on to have helped now thousands and thousands of people to recover their health. Even very difficult to heal issues, things where doctors have said that you’ll always have this problem, you always need to be on these drugs, or you’ll definitely never recover from this because XYZ, it’s genetic, or this is just how it is, or this is just because you’re aging. And yet, when people listen to you and do what you say, they heal in ways that no doctor would ever expect.

So, I’m so excited to have you back on the show. Welcome!

[00:01:49] Tim James: Ashley, it's absolutely my pleasure. I'm happy to be back on. I just want to be really clear about one thing, is like I don't heal anybody. That's very important. So, it's like I healed myself. That’s the only person that I’ve healed. What I try to just show people is, like, my journey, what I did, and changing their environment and reducing stress and cleaning up the body and getting the chemicals and toxins out and flooding the body with nature, which we are nature, and allowing the body’s immune system and its natural responses to just take over. And I’m kind of really good at getting people, I guess, motivated or inspired now to put their health as a priority because it’s just a lot of people are struggling out there with their health today.

[00:02:35] Ashley James: And Tim, that is such a clear distinction because we are our own healer. Our bodies know how to heal. We just really need to get out of our way. We need to stop putting stuff in our body that’s hurtful, give our body the nutrients it really needs, make some lifestyle changes that are really simple but really powerful, and boom, the body starts healing itself.

So, that’s a really clear distinction. No one does healing to you. And we have to put the power back into the listener’s hands because it’s their body that’s going to do the healing. We’re here to guide them and give them new information. Perfect. It’s really, really well-said.

Tim, since having you on the show, you have formulated some amazing products. You have a drink. We talked about it in episode 442. And listeners, if they want to go get it, they can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/green85 and check it out. It’s delicious. In fact, I have a glass of it right now. I’m drinking it currently. It’s so good; it’s so delicious. And it also gives me a buzzing energy in the morning. I feel like the oxygen is just penetrating into my cells at a better rate when I drink it. I could really feel it. So, I’m drinking your juice right now.

You have this amazing healing story which we talked about, so definitely want to go back and listen to episode 442. But since then, you’ve made some amazing discoveries. And I’m really surprised about other companies because you’re a one-man show. Right? You’re not this giant company which I really like because you’re all about the quality of the product. You design your products for you first and you take your products daily for you first, and then you’re helping others at the same time.

But you figured something out that these big companies are just really looking to make a profit and they kind of get the lowest quality stuff and throw things on the shelf that in some cases, they’ll say, for example, there’s a certain amount of vitamin C in this and then when tested, it shows there’s absolutely no vitamin C in this. Right? Because it’s buyer beware. We don’t know what’s out there on the supplement shelves. We don’t really know if there’s gingko biloba in those gingko biloba capsules or vitamin C in those vitamin C capsules. Because they can say whatever they want and then just put filler in because it’s not a regulated industry. Whereas I know, working with you, everything that you do is incredibly high quality.

So, you figured something out and I’m really excited to talk about it today because when you first told me about it, and my husband and I tried it, it’s so cliché to say life-changing, but I want you to talk about it.

[00:05:30] Tim James: Well, some of the stuff actually is because we’re just so detached from nature. But let me backpedal just for a little bit.

Number one, just the size of our company. It started with me. I have a full-time assistant. I have a full-time web and designer type person. I’ve got coaches that work underneath me now. We have Dr. Scott Treadway who is our formulator, and he is the bedrock foundation for the formulations. And I just want to be clear on this because this was a gentleman who was groomed to go to medical school. His whole family expected him to go, so he did. He went to Cornell University and as a young man in his 20s, he walked away and said this is not medicine. For somebody to do that at that age, it’s just mindboggling to have that awareness. Then, he went into naturopathic school, and he said this isn’t even good enough, and he walked out of that too.

Now, I’m not here to bash naturopaths because I have a lot of them that I work with all over the United States with clients that I partner with because I look at myself like a general contractor of health. I just kind of help people organize their team. Especially if they're dealing with stage IV of this or that or they got fibromyalgia, they got something, seriously bad arthritis or whatever gout, and they're trying to fix themselves up. You got to get a good team around. You got to get really good at putting teams together for people in their local areas, right?

So, Dr. Treadway gets on a plane and he flies to India. And this is really cool. He actually meets one of like the foremost healers in India. A big name, everything, the guy had herbal shops all over, so the family was pretty wealthy. He was asked to speak at the scientific universities and stuff all the time on the immune system and health. You have to understand that the Ayurvedic traditions over in India of medicine and in the northern area, so it’s all Ayurvedic, but the northern hemisphere it’s Ayurveda and then the southern hemisphere it’s called Siddhar healers. So, there’s two different factions of them, but they’re doing similar stuff. All of Ayurvedic traditional medicine is steeped in system science, biological system science.

So, they have literally taken an engineering systems approach to health and wellness. What does that mean? For a layperson like me, if somebody had said that 12 years ago, I’d be like, “What? What are you talking about?” You know, I’d be like watching peanuts and the teacher’s like “wah, wah, wah,” doing that deal.

So, what this means is, is like what do engineers do in other capacities? Well, engineers build planes. And they kind of have to be perfect on that, right? Otherwise, the wing falls off and we crash and people die. Engineers build bridges and they have to be perfect. They do trusses for buildings. They have to have stronger snow capacity in areas where there’s more snow; otherwise, in the middle of the winter, your house could crush you and kill your kids. So, engineers literally can’t make mistakes. And yet, sometimes through society, they are.

There’s actually a really interesting story, Ashley. There’s a guy named Allan McDonald. Now, I don’t know if you remember the Space Shuttle Challenger. Remember that? When it launched and blew up and killed those people. They were rushed. Because what happened was they launched on a very cold day in the winter. Allan McDonald, I think he was one of the head engineers of the program in the launch. He said, “We cannot launch. We have not tested this one little O-ring in those cold conditions. We do not know how it’s going to perform. So until we do, I cannot sign off on this.” Another guy, another engineer wouldn’t sign off on it either. But the rest of the engineers signed off on it probably because they just want a paycheck and they were under pressure. Right? And they went ahead and launched, and guess what, that O-ring failed and those people died. And millions of dollars. But forget it. People died.

So, my point is, from an engineering standpoint, this is the one profession where you can’t hide from your efforts. You see what I’m saying? There’s no gray area. There’s no like, well, maybe next time. From an engineering standpoint, they can’t make mistakes, like electrical engineers. Like think about, oh, well, yeah, just put the wire over there, and then the house burns down. You just can’t do that. People get sued, people die. Okay, I’ve made a big point about engineers. Right?

So, when you look at a system, a basic system which is called an open system, has five components. Now, if any engineers are listening out there, they're going to know exactly what I’m talking about. This is basics. That has five parts to that system. It’s got input, it’s got an output, in the middle it’s got transport, conversion, and storage. Very interesting, right? So if you look at a light bulb. What’s the input? You flip the switch, the electricity goes in. It’s transporting. Then you’ve got the bulb that houses the filament, that’s the storage component. Then the conversion is the electric goes through the filament, creates heat and then creates light. And the output is light. Right? So there’s a basic system right there. It’s either called an opener AKA dumb system. It just works. Okay?

Now, when you go to Ayurvedic medicine, and traditional herbal healers and what they're doing over there, they have something called karma and karma-phal. Well, that’s what karma is. People think karma is what you do is what you get back. Actually, that’s not what it means. Karma is input. Karma-phal is output. In the middle, vita, pitta, kapha; transport, conversion, storage.

Now, Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, he left MIT after four degrees of MIT. His grandmother was a Siddhar healer back in the village. She used to work six days a week, 16 hours in the field and then one day a week, there’d be 20-30 people at her door and she would help them heal through mixing up herbs, certain massage, touch, working through things, giving them certain yoga positions to go home and practice so these people could heal themselves.

So, he grew up and he saw his grandmother as a young child healing people. He went back to India with four degrees from MIT as an engineer, and he kind of made the Rosetta stone and made this whole connection. What I’m sharing with you right now is what I learned from him and his work. When he had a Fulbright scholarship and he went over to MIT, people were like “What are you doing? You could be billing at $2500 to $3500 an hour. And you’re over here trying to fodder around with herbs and stuff.” Well, he was interested in that. He’s one of the top immune system experts in the world.

So, what you have to understand is that for the folks listening, is that Ayurvedic medicine is not like they're trying to figure it out. It’s engineering principles. The medicine is steeped in engineering principles over 10,000 years. They know what’s going to work.

My formulator talks to one of the most gurus of all gurus in India and he walks up to me and he’s like, “Will you train me?” And the guy said yes. So, his training began. Long story short, Dr. Scott Treadway became a master herbalist in Indian herbology, trained in the ways of engineering system science and medicine over there in Ayurvedic technologies basically.

So, then he came back and he went on to become a master herbalist not just in Indian herbology but also in Chinese herbology and Western herbology. The only one he hasn’t mastered was the aboriginal herbology in Australia just because the aboriginals over there are kind of keeping their medicines tight to their chest because they don’t want big pharma to go over and start raping their lands for this stuff and synthesizing it and doing all this stuff. And there’s other indigenous places around the world—South America, North America with Native Americans here. There’s medicines and stuff they’ve been using for thousands and thousands and thousands of years that works.

Just to give people an example. Because sometimes people are questioning like oh, that’s woo-woo medicine man stuff. It’s like, no dude, they’ve been doing this stuff for tens of thousands of years, it works. So, I’ll give you a good example. And people can look this up. I like to give examples so people can cross-check me.

Paul McCartney. You heard of that dude? I think he was with a band called The Beatles. They had a couple of songs or something. Well, he was dating this supermodel named Heather Mills. So, he’s dating a supermodel and she gets in a horrible accident. I think it was some type of car accident or a motorcycle went by really fast or something and cut her leg off. She lost her leg. She went in the hospital, I believe, over in Europe and got an infection in her stump. It got worse and so they gave her antibiotics. But they weren’t working. So they had to cut off more of her stump after they just fixed it. It got infected again and so they were trying more antibiotics and different types and higher amounts. It didn’t work. They had to cut more of her leg off. Then it got infected again. Then her friends said, “Hey look, Heather, you need to do something different or you’re going to die. This is very bad. These antibiotics things are not working.” And she said “You need to go to The Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida and see what they have for you” because she had a great experience there.

Just happens to be that’s where I started my health journey when my friend Charles got diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Like you said in that past episode, pretty much went into the whole journey and everything. It’s quite remarkable. I just saw Charles this weekend by the way and got to hang out with him. We’re friends and he’s playing guitar and he’s got his cancer handled. He healed himself. He made his health a priority. He healed himself.

So, it’s really interesting that Heather went to the same institute that I went to, that I think is cool. Originally started by Ann Wigmore who healed herself with stage IV colon cancer. A gal from Lithuania. So that’s a whole another story we can get into today which is amazing.

And she goes over there and guess what they did? They said, “Oh, you have an infection, a topical infection. Here, let’s show you how to take care of that. We're going to take 100 percent raw organic garlic clove and you’re going to press that. You’re going to put that in a dish. One-thirds that, two-thirds organic olive oil.” So, one part fresh pressed organic garlic and two parts cold-pressed organic olive oil and then mix it together. Then you have to let it stand for about 30 minutes. Why? Because garlic is very caustic on the pH scale. It’s about a 3.3, so it’s highly acid.

Now I’ve actually seen a video, a zoom-in type of video of where you can see bacteria on a table, then you have the garlic oil stuff. Just the fumes when you zoom in the fumes, it’s almost like a nuclear bomb is wiping out all the bacteria. It’s 100 percent kill zone. It kills the bad bacteria. But here’s the cool thing. It doesn’t kill the good bacteria on your skin that’s going to stitch you up and heal you, which is very important.

Hydrogen peroxide is a great way to go as a disinfectant because it’s going to go in there and it’s going to kill the bad bacteria, but it’s also knocking out the good as well a little bit. And that’s why you don’t want to use stuff like hand sanitizers. In those cases, not 100 percent kill zone. They kill 99.8 or 99.7 or 99.9, so that .01 or .02 or .03 stays behind, becomes stronger and more resilient, starts breeding, get stronger stronger and stronger, and you’re actually killing your immune system when you put Purell and that kind of crap on your body, like literally.

Anyway, back to the garlic story. They taught her, like literally, imagine she just got her leg whacked off. She’s about ready to die. She had her leg whacked off once in an accident, two more times at the hospital, and now she’s at Hippocrates. They showed her how to make this mixture and then let it sit for 30 minutes and then apply it to her stump and put some gauze on it and change the gauze and bandage three times a day. Guess what happened? In two weeks, she was running around the Institute on her prosthetic. Go look it up. Heather Mills.

And you know what happened since then? When I was a kid, I got ingrown toenails. Have you ever had those?

[00:18:29] Ashley James: I’ve had like an infected toenail. It was like ingrown and infected, and it was really bad. I was in Florida walking around barefoot. I couldn’t figure out whether it was something I did just walking around barefoot or because it was ingrown, but it was so bad. It was my big toe and it got so infected, the entire toenail fell off, and it was incredibly painful. Then I just tea tree oil every day and a bunch of other essential oils. I wish I had known about the garlic. But I just used a bunch of essential oils to get over it. The healing didn’t happen as fast as I would have hoped, but I bet that garlic would have…

[00:19:10] Tim James: Check this out. This is so cool. So, I had an ingrown toenail when I was 16 and it prevented me from playing a baseball game. And I was totally into baseball. So what ends up happening is when you have an ingrown toenail, typically, what they have to do is they got to numb the toe first thing because what they're going to have to do is they’re going to have to cut. If they do it properly, they're going to take scissors and they're going to go a third of the nail and they're going to angle it in towards the corner, just a slight angle so as it grows out, it doesn’t catch again. So they literally take scissors and cut your nail down to the nailbed, tear it off and then take silver nitrate on a stick and then burn the cuticle down there with silver nitrate on a stick, then they bandage you up. Well, that sounds horrible. Imagine how painful that would be. So that’s why you have to have an anesthetic, right?

To administer the anesthetic, they have to take that little needle and they have to stick it into the nerve bundles on the tip of your big toe. This is what was used in wartime. They would take bamboo splinters over in Vietnam or whatever, and they would shove them down the toe because it’s one of those painful things in the planet. So, they would give me something to bite on, and then they would jam that antiseptic in which is a toxin, basically. But they got to numb the toe. Then they cut it off, and then they send you home, and you’re on Vicodin, and they're destroying your liver. Your toe is like thump, thump, thump, and it’s painful for a day or two, and it slowly gets better, and voila, then you’re finally better and thank God.

I had been through that process three times in my life. It’s one of the most painful things I’ve been through. My son, he’s about 16 too, I think, he got an infected toenail, and I was like “Aha! We’re going to do garlic and olive oil.” You know what it’s like, you can’t even touch it, right? It’s so hot and it’s just so painful. I was like, yeah, your toenail is ingrown. So we bandaged it two to three times a day, changed the bandage, and within two days, the infection was completely gone, no pain, and we’re able to get in there and get under the nail and start packing cotton underneath it and allow it to grow out. That’s what we do. And he never had to have that nails jammed out of his toe. He never had to have the anesthesia which is a toxin in his body that his body had to chelate out. And he never had to take any pain meds. He did it himself at home.

And my question is, is that with Heather Mills and my son, how expensive was that?

[00:21:30] Ashley James: Like, 30 cents. 

[00:21:32] Tim James: Yeah. And if you have that stuff at your house, which you probably should if you’re kind of eating healthy and you’re into it, you didn’t have to go anywhere. You just handle it right there. Now, maybe you had to make a trip to the store. But you didn’t have to go to a doctor’s office, waste their time on something you can handle yourself literally, right? And it’d be a much better process for you and you don’t have to wait in the waiting room and do all that stuff and put on masks and all the crazy stuff. They make you put Purell on your body as you go into these places and lower your immune system, first thing they do.

So anyway, my point is, is that these herbal technologies work and they’ve been working for thousands and thousands of years. This is why our products work so well, is because they’re steeped in engineering system science. That’s number one.

Number two, we already know how they're going to work on the human body. Number two, it’s the quality of ingredients. Dr. Treadway has been sourcing ingredients for well over 40 years. He said it took him over 20 years to get all the right sources in place. Imagine his main job is like sourcing ingredients for 20 years. So, I’m piggybacking off of that as well. Right? The source and the quality of the materials that are going into the products. Right?

So, those are two main things. Now, the third thing is how it’s processed. The third thing is very important because if you process stuff like with too much heat or too fast, it could create heat, it’s going to oxidize it even more. Any time you’re processing anything, you’re going to lose nutrient value at some level. It’s just going to happen. Right? So, we want minimal processing.

One thing we didn’t talk about, I don’t think in the last episode, because you brought up Green 85 which is our first product and it’s our number one seller, is that our products actually have life force in them. They have energy, they have enzyme activity. What does that mean? So, have you heard of Kirlian photography?

[00:23:22] Ashley James: We talked about it on episode 442.

[00:23:25] Tim James: Sweet. Okay, quick recap. Kirlian photography measures the energy that emits from any living thing or even rocks and stuff. You could see how much it puts off. You can take a picture with it or you can shoot a video with it.

When I was looking for a lab to make my stuff, that was one of my criteria. They had to know about the energetics, not just the quality of the nutrients and stuff. I wanted it when it was finally packaged and done that I could open a capsule up and take a photo and it’s glowing, or take the greens and put them on a table and played it or something, videotaped it or take a picture with Kirlian photography, and I’ve got all this energy emitting out of it. Over 30 labs and none of them even knew what I was talking about. Like I said before, they tilt their head sideways like there’s a dog here and a weird noise.

But when I talked to Dr. Treadway, I said, “You know about Kirlian photography?” He’s like, “Oh yes, we have two of those cameras here at the lab.” That’s when I knew I had my dude. Then he’s become like one of my best friends, like a surrogate father, a mentor. He’s one of the top supplement consultants in the industry. But the cool thing is when he told me, he’s like, my company is one of the few companies that allows him to make it the way it’s supposed to be made and then they don’t change the ingredients or modify parts of it or put in some type of excipient binder, filler, or flow agent that is not good for you for speed of manufacturing. So we’re one of the very few places on the planet that do all that. That’s why everything works so well and I build everything for me. All this stuff, all these products, I’m building for myself. I want the absolute best because I was on a slippery slope, and I do not ever want to go back to the health I had that created a lot of contrast for me, and I want to move forward in life and I want to wake up and feel so good and have so much energy and not buy into oh, you know, you’re 49 years old and you’re getting older. Screw that. I want to keep learning how to have my cellular age be younger and younger and younger every year, and I’m learning these things and this is what I’m up to.

So, that’s the whole backstory on the products, the quality and the ingredients, and the history. It’s literally steeped in system science over 10,000 years and we just don’t compromise because I put this stuff in myself.

[00:25:49] Ashley James: Yeah. That’s exactly what I meant by one-man show. I didn’t mean there’s only you sitting in a room alone. I’m sorry.

[00:25:56] Tim James: A mad scientist. No, I have the vision and I have assembled a team of the right people. And Dr. Treadway is a very instrumental part in this. But like I said, how many people that want to start a supplement company are going to go around to 30 labs plus. And most people don’t even really know what they're looking for. Because there’s good people out there. I’ve helped over a dozen other companies get their supplements right. Just because I met them and I got to know them, like, wow, he or she really has a good heart. I’m like, are you open if I could share something with you about your products because I see you have seven products here, but there’s five of them that I wouldn’t put in my body. Do you want to know why? They're like, “Yes, please tell me.” And I would share with them and they're like, “Oh my God, I had no idea.” Right?

They're not bad people. In some of these cases, other places, the bigger companies, they don’t care. You’re just a number. If you ever want to find out if a supplement is good or not, an easy litmus test. If it’s in a great big grocery box store, it’s probably not. It’s 99 percent chance. But what you can do is you can type in the name of the company, XYZ company, and then type in who purchased and then put the name of the company. Then if something like Nestle or Procter & Gamble shows up, in my opinion, you probably wouldn’t want to buy that.

[00:27:11] Ashley James: There are so many companies I used to buy from that got bought up and you just know it’s not the same. I go on forums and stuff like that and people will say it’s not the same, they changed the formula, that kind of thing. But that’s what I love about the first product, which is what you created, the Green 85, and have gone on to formulate a few others. Amazing stuff. Which we’re going to talk about today, the one that had a profound impact on my mental health and on my husband as well. So, this one product, frankly I don’t want to say skeptical, but I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I’m going to try it. Because you told me, hey, this is good for the immune system. Like, well, my immune system is okay, I don’t really have any major issues there, but I’m going to take it.

I’ll just tell a story. So, last year, many of my listeners know that last year, we lost our daughter during childbirth and she passed away four minutes before delivery. And we don’t know why the autopsy was inconclusive. No one knows why. I was incredibly distraught beyond measure and then days later had COVID. I had it really, really bad. Of course, my immune system shot, my stress is through the roof, my blood pressure was through the roof because I’m grieving and I’m post-partum. And then, my immune system shot, and then the doctors were like, “Well, we think maybe,” because I couldn’t breathe, well I couldn’t breathe for many reasons, one being I was fighting a lung infection, but they were worried it was a blood clot and so I went to the hospital. They tried to get me on these experimental meds which was a real trip to watch the medical feeder happening before me, knowing the right questions to ask and I looked into their studies. I wasn’t going to take it but I was just like, well, they're offering me this experimental drug that they're not sure if my insurance will cover, but they have really high hopes because they think I’m going to die, I’m going to look at it and just see what the studies say. And it showed that I had 1 percent greater chance of dying in the hospital should I take this med that if I were to not take this med. I’m like, there’s your first clue.

So, I went home and interesting the doctor said between day 8 and day 9 is sort of that’s when most people enter the hospital. It’s kind of like the tipping point. He goes, “If you can get over day 9, you’ll be fine, you’ll be back on the mend. So you really came in at the worst time.” And I could have stayed home had I known for sure it wasn’t a blood clot that it entered my lungs from just having given birth. So anyways, they cleared me for the clots. I went home. The next day, I was doing much better. Of course, I’m taking all my homeopathy, all my herbs; I’m taking everything that I possibly can and I’m getting better and better.

Since then, fast forward a few months later, we had to move out of our home of seven years. So, it was like a tremendous amount of stress and grief and then unfortunately, a family member was passing away and my husband left us to go take care of them, so now I’m alone homeschooling our son, managing the household kind of thing alone. And I started getting PTSD attacks daily. And I don’t know what’s going on with me. I don’t know why. I enter the kitchen and I cannot put a meal together. I love cooking but I didn’t understand why can I not complete a task.

So, I sat down with Dr. Glenn Livingston. I just love the man. I’ve had him on the show multiple times. He’s a PhD psychologist and he primarily deals with helping people to heal emotionally with eating and overeating. But I reached out to him, I said I don’t know what’s going on with me, like maybe it’s COVID brain, like long-haul COVID brain; I feel like my brain is Swiss cheese. I explained to him everything that was going on, waking up five or more times in the night. Really getting broken sleep, can’t even complete basic tasks. I walk into the kitchen, I could maybe start to cook but I just couldn’t even have the brainpower to complete things. I used to do three episodes a week of my show. I was doing one a month.

Everything was just incredibly difficult. At the drop of a pen, I would just burst into tears. And I’m a very strong person, like it’s not that I’m like this, I don’t know, I’m not weak emotionally, mentally, or physically. I’m a strong-willed person. And I explained everything to him, and Glenn goes, “Ashley, you have post-traumatic stress. You are experiencing post-traumatic stress.” I was like, oh, this makes sense. And he explained to me what it meant. So, this was back in January, February and March. And I feel so bad for our son. He would, I don’t know, talk too loud and all of a sudden I’d burst into tears. It was just any kind of stimulus and I couldn’t control it at the time.

But I was looking to heal. So, I was reaching out to different experts that I knew that could help me, starting with Glenn Livingston. I started seeing a fantastic therapist that was a friend of mine. He was giving me some great pointers. I was doing all kinds of stuff.

Then comes along Dr. William Davis. He came back on the show. This is in, I can’t remember, it was like February maybe of this year. He talks about the Lactobacillus Reuteri yogurt which he says increases serotonin and helps with depression. I’m like, oh this sounds great, I’m going to try this. So, I made a batch. The day I started eating it, those breakdowns where I could cry at the drop of a hat stopped. I’ve never been on antidepressants but I felt like I was on an antidepressant. I was all of a sudden like wow, it’s not like any part of my life circumstances have changed but I feel like the cloud is lifting. And I feel like now, I can manage things. Now I can go into the kitchen and actually start a task and finish a task. Things started being a bit more manageable.

But I still was waking up about five times a night. Then, we had to move again. So there’s another stressor. So now we have to move again. And then you tell me, you and I get in contact with each other and as we do every few months, and you say, “Hey, you’ve got to try this product I’ve made and I want you to try it before I launch it.” You start telling me all about the immune stuff and I’m like, okay. Immune wasn’t sort of on my list. My list was more mental and emotional health. So you send us a bottle. Your bottle says take one dropper full. I got to tell you, I’m one of those people who’s going to take two droppers full. So, I take two droppers full thinking it’s no big deal. Right? Just two droppers full. 

And I lie down to go to sleep fully expecting to wake up five times that night because I have since our daughter died. And I close my eyes, fall asleep and all of a sudden, it’s light in the room. I open my eyes and I’m really confused why is it light in the room, what’s going on. And I come to and I realize it is the morning, I have slept the entire night first time since she died. Since then, since starting taking this, I have had such sound sleep, and I really feel like you know how the Lactobacillus Reuteri yogurt helped me, it immediately took the edge off, increasing serotonin in the brain.

But this stuff, your MultiShroom, what it did, it healed something in my brain. Some kind of stress levels, it decreased the stress levels in my brain to the point where I slept soundly and then I just noticed I was way more rested jumping out of bed and it was directly related to the ambient stress that my body was holding at from the grief and the stressors from losing another family member and the stressors from the two moves in the last year. Just all that. That ambient stress was disrupting my sleep. And I take all kinds of stuff and I do all kinds of things. I’m very, very crunchy. But this singlehandedly fixed that for me.

So, that was me. My husband who’s never dreamt, like we’ve known each other for 14 years, we’re now in our fifteenth year of marriage. He doesn’t remember his dreams and when he started taking this, maybe he’ll come on the microphone and share.

[00:36:55] Ashley James’ husband: Just not being a dreamer and then taking this and then having really vivid dreams, it’s just been a huge change in how I function.

[00:37:10] Ashley James: He’s never remembered his dreams or dreamt in color or any of that, and since taking it, he will not run out. He’s like, “Get me another bottle of this.” We’re ordering another bottle because he now just has these really long intense dreams that are full of color and then the next day he’s telling them to me. It’s just like this whole new experience in his life. So, I want to know how does this work.

[00:37:39] Tim James:  First off, that’s pretty awesome because that’s telling me, like for me, I always look at things as in order of importance. So, oxygen is number one because without it, we’re dead in 4 to 7 minutes. Air is pretty big deal, and we know the air quality in people’s homes is terrible and the air quality outside is bad, so this is why we teach people to clean their air. You get an air purification system or at least start cracking your windows at night at least when you’re sleeping to get fresher air in the house. So, we take 20,000 breaths a day. Air is important. 

Number two, water. Without water, you’re dead in 11 days. Right? So, water is very important. You got to get your water right, clean it up, restructure it and all that jazz, especially with tap water.

Then number three, which is actually a tie for number two, is sleep. Because without sleep, you die in 11 days. So, water and sleep are equivalent—think about that—in my opinion. Because without it, without water or sleep, either one, you will die in 11 days. So they're kind of a tie for the silver medal. The gold medal is the oxygen deal. But number two is water and sleep. So, everybody listening, sleep is so important. It’s just as important as drinking water. Your body is mostly made up, what, water. Right?

What it’s telling me is he’s dreaming, he’s getting into those deep rapid eye movements. He’s getting into a deeper state where actually his body can rest and restore itself properly. So, this is really huge for boosting immune system, helping people lose weight and their suffering, because there’s a thing called shallow sleep syndrome where people are sleeping, they might even be sleeping eight hours but they're not getting into the deep restorative sleep and their body doesn’t have a chance to really balance its hormones out and do all the things it needs to do.

So, this is a very important thing.

And since you’ve mentioned it on the MultiShroom, we’ve had other people starting to reach out and talk about the sleep aspect too. It wasn’t built for that. It really wasn’t. I built it because it was another pathway for me to build my immune system. I was buying chaga, as an example, in chunks from another company and then I would make tea out of it. There were different powders where I was getting lion’s mane or cordyceps and reishi and shiitake and maitake, and just putting all that stuff together. Then I just decided that I’m going to build a mushroom product so I can just get all of it in one squirt basically and make my life easier and help people with it.

So, we built it for me, to build for another pathway of immunity, but it’s really, really, really good for mood, mind, and mental clarity. We have a lot of people who are taking it that have anxiety and depression and also, like I said, it’s an immune system boost. The sleep thing was just like this added massive side benefit that people are starting to get.

[00:40:34] Ashley James: And listeners can go check it out. And actually, you have a ton of science on your website. If they scroll down, they’ll see. I love it, you titled it “Science” below it. So listeners, you can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/mushrooms and it will take you to the page and then just scroll down. We’re going to talk about some of that science today because I really want to get into why this is different then. Because my husband even said at one point when we were running low, he’s like, “Can you just go downstairs and get your dried mushrooms and just like make me a juice or something so I can keep having these benefits?” And I said, “No, it’s actually Tim’s product. It’s different and you can’t just make it in your kitchen.” If we took all these mushrooms, we can’t just make it in our kitchen because of… and I don’t remember the name of it but can you explain how it’s broken down so that we actually absorb it in our mouth?

[00:41:34] Tim James: Yeah, so this is huge. What happened was I literally feel like I found a treasure chest full of gold. Literally. Imagine you’re on an island with your friends and somebody gives you a map and you’re digging around and you literally find it. You find a big old thing and it’s worth billions of dollars or something. But I’m talking about billions of dollars of health equity is what I found.

A few years ago, I was reading a study on turmeric where they were able to increase the anti-inflammatory response in turmeric by 185-fold. Think about that. Not 185 percent, 185-fold it says in 63 people that they had. What they did was is they took the curcuminoid, the curcumin, which is active in turmeric, that’s the anti-inflammatory, curcuminoids. They mechanically made it very tiny. It’s almost like nano particle size, but it’s not been messed around with the lab. This is a mechanically made deal. So they just take their raw materials and basically just visualize that they get ground down to super tiny particles. Okay? What that does then is they become hyperabsorbable. Then you have to suspend them in a liquid, which makes them even more absorbable. So they actually fed these curcuminoids that were make in this manner to these people and they noticed 185-fold more reduction in inflammation.

So, anybody listening out there that’s got knee pain, joint pain, back pain, arthritis pain, all this kind of stuff, turmeric should be in your daily regimen. But for me, I did want that, but I knew cellular inflammation was a big problem. So, when your cells are inflamed, you can’t get nutrients into the cell as well and you can’t get the toxins out. So, I wanted to reduce cellular inflammation so I could have better response in my whole body and then I knew the pain thing, any aches and pains, or recovery from workouts would just improve. Which it did. It reduced my inflammation from workouts by 50 percent. It was quite remarkable.

So, that process, we bought the machine. It was very expensive and we built Turmeric 100. That was our first product where we used for this proprietary cellular absorption system. Well, like I said, we’re a small mom and pop company basically and I’ve got lots of products that I want to launch, but it’s just a matter of having the funds to do it. So, as more and more people learn about this stuff and get on the products and consume them and use them and tell their friends about it, we’ll just keep coming out with new stuff, which we got a whole bunch of cool stuff coming out anyway. Because that is happening.

All right. So, that system now, we used on MultiShroom because we have the machine already. What we did was we took the highest quality Chaga, lion’s mane, cordyceps, reishi, shiitake, and maitake (there’s six of them) and we put those altogether.

Now, I told Dr. Treadway, I said,