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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Book by Dr. Cyrus Khambatta

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.

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Recommended Reading by Kristen Bowen

Healing Is Voltage by Jerry L. Tennant